The fabric sat cleanly on Stephan’s shoulders as he buttoned up his shirt. It fit better than his old tunic. And that, somehow, made it worse.

  Stephan resisted the urge to grumble while putting on the uniform prepared for a generic paladin lookalike.

  I’m lanky. And probably have the same wet broom hair as the rest of the guys.

  A seventh student had joined them just before Stephan had changed his clothes. The servant used the exact same words as he did with Stephan, the same tone, the same polite distance. Stephan realized the man didn’t even know who the real Paladin was. That or he was perfectly indifferent.

  By the time the soldiers summoned them for supper, there were nine Paladin candidates, all wearing identical uniforms, all roughly the same height and build, all with similar confused expressions. Stephan had to admit he blended in with them seamlessly.

  It reminds me of the nightmare hollow’s blurry-faced monster. If you don’t look at us closely, you can’t really tell us apart.

  Dinner was stew, thick, brown, hot, but not steaming. Most of the Paladins tucked right into it, Stephan included.

  Mark didn’t. He stared at his bowl with a scowl, lips pursed, acting as if it had offended him.

  “What’s wrong, Mark?” Stephan asked.

  Mark’s gaze flickered back towards his diner with distrust while Bill went to ask for seconds. “It’s not really that good.”

  Stephan looked at the bowl. It certainly wasn’t a feast, but his mother cooked worse every third night. Maybe even every other night. And the meat was plentiful, the vegetables soft, well boiled, the way he liked them.

  “It’s decent if you ask me.”

  Mark’s lip twisted.

  “My father runs an inn, Mum’s an Artisan cook. This…” He forced a smile and took a bite anyway, appearing in agony. “Well, this isn’t decent.”

  Mark tried to keep the fake smile and forced himself to keep eating. Stephan nodded compassionately without slowing, not really understanding the hardships of those raised on fine food.

  And with his belly full, sleep couldn’t have come early enough for Stephan. Morning, however, did.

  The day started with weapons training. Only twelve of the fifty lookalikes were present. The rest were scheduled to arrive by the end of the week.

  The instructor, a woman with a soft voice but hard words and even harder eyes, handed out wooden swords, lined them up, and told them to start swinging.

  She corrected everyone, Stephan included. Everyone save for Bill and one of the new arrivals.

  “Excellent form, Bill, keep it up.”

  Stephan frowned.

  He adjusted his grip and set his stance exactly as the instructor suggested, and swung again. The move felt wrong. He wasn’t making the most of his body, the way he had before receiving the instruction. A part of him knew he would be less lethal in battle if he fought like that.

  Just as he was about to complain, he realized. She’s teaching me how to lie low.

  He waited for her to come around to him, and when her boots squeaked as she approached, he shifted his feet closer, narrowing his stance. She looked him over and then in the eye. Her expression didn’t flicker. There wasn’t a hint of recognition, but she moved on without correcting him either.

  That confirms it. She knows.

  She knew who he was, and the lesson wasn’t about swordsmanship. It was about blending in with the amateur sword-swings of untrained youths. It was about staying hidden.

  After sword training came breakfast, then basic reading, and while everyone was literate to some extent, most fumbled through longer texts. Stephan landed close to the top of the lower third of the class, with Mark and Bill by far the best readers amongst the lookalikes, completely fluent, never hesitating with their words.

  Mathematics came next. Stephan managed addition and subtraction comfortably, as long as the numbers stayed under thirty. He rarely needed bigger ones.

  Stephan expected his advanced proficiency would let him breeze through the lesson, but there was no hint of addition or subtraction in the classroom. Instead, they had to quickly count small circles chalked onto the blackboard, pebbles scattered across the floor, and grains piled on the teacher’s desk.

  By the end of the lesson, Stephan understood something that left him hollow. One day, he would watch over thousands clashing on a battlefield. He didn’t yet understand how to count such high numbers, let alone what they meant when translated to human lives.

  Physical conditioning followed math.

  The instructor expected students to lift logs and perform various exercises with them in hand. Stephan carried his and ran, jumped, did squats. His arms burned; his lungs screamed for air.

  Around him, others moved with alarming ease.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  How can they carry these like it’s nothing? With my strength and level, I should be the strongest. Almost everyone at Brighthollow was level five or six, and these guys have recently gotten their classes or they still don’t have them. So how?

  By the fifth lap around the yard, most of the runners were ahead of him. He could hear footsteps behind him, closing in, about to overtake him for the second time.

  The same instructor who taught them swordsmanship watched the scene without emotion.

  Finally, at the end of the day, came physical examinations to ensure none of the Paladin lookalikes had suffered any injuries or overstrained themselves during the training. A Healer brought Stephan into a small, private room. Inside sat a blindfolded soldier with a mangled arm, its flesh swollen, tinted an angry red.

  “Please don’t speak, Sir Paladin,” the Healer said quickly after closing the door. “Lord Marshal said we should do everything in our power to ensure you do not reveal your identity.”

  The soldier saluted with his healthy arm, despite gritting his teeth against the obvious agony he was feeling. “It’s an honor to have the Paladin heal me in person, Sir.”

  Stephan nodded and reached out, his hand glowing gold. The wound was severe. The soldier was certainly higher level than Stephan. Based on those facts, Stephan braced himself for a great surge of warmth. He had expected a flood, but only got a trickle.

  Still, that trickle was enough for Stephan to level.

  “Thank you, Sir.” The soldier saluted again, still blindfolded, and the Healer escorted Stephan out.

  Days blurred together in a monotonous rhythm of forced, scheduled activity as the number of paladin lookalikes swelled. Fifty of them lived in a small space. Had someone rounded up youths around Stephan’s age from Brighthollow, there would’ve been fights or at least arguments, but somehow things worked out harmoniously.

  “You buttoned the shirt the wrong way,” Bill, the driving force behind their good culture, said to Derek in passing, who thanked him and redid the shirt to avoid the rod.

  Stephan was certain that back home nobody would’ve warned Derek. And it wasn’t that the guys in the Paladin barracks were all good people.

  Mark, Buck-toothed Hugh, and a couple others gave Stephan a shifty feeling, but they were all trying to do the right thing. Perhaps it was because they knew that the Paladin was among them. Perhaps they were afraid to misbehave since they were in the army, or they just wanted to be on good terms with people who would watch their backs on a battlefield one day.

  After lunch on the eighth day came a lecture on a subject completely unknown to Stephan - strategy.

  The group of fifty followed a big, burly man into the same classroom in which they had attended lessons on reading and writing. A huge sheet with a strange drawing covered the blackboard, displaying scribbles of various kinds. Clumps of circles filled most of it, but there were also empty patches, triangles, wavy squiggles, and straight lines.

  “Welcome to your first lesson on strategy,” the burly man said. “Here we have what is called a map. Maps are terrain represented on vellum for the purpose of planning. Good ones are rare and valuable.”

  Stephan looked at it, trying to figure out what was so valuable about a bit of painted hide and he didn’t see it.

  “This one,” the burly strategist struck it with a thin, long stick, “is worthless in military campaigns since it shows a made up terrain, but it makes for an excellent teaching tool. On maps, these small circles represent forests. Before anyone asks, no, we don’t count trees and add as many circles. Numbers change all the time and good maps remain relevant for decades or centuries.”

  Why would anyone ask that? Stephan wondered and spotted Buck-toothed Hugh nodding slowly as if a great mystery was explained to him.

  “Plains are the empty spaces, here you expect to find shrubs and grasslands. These are rivers…” The man continued showing mountains, marshlands, lakes, roads, and finally turned his attention towards the handful of drawn buildings.

  “Houses represent villages and towns with weak fortifications. The bigger the house, the more people live in it. Shields are outposts and garrisons, towers are fortresses, and towers with flags are castles.”

  He turned towards the students.

  “Is everyone following this?”

  Stephan nodded, as did all the rest, though some less confidently than others.

  “These are troops,” he took out a fistful of fabric from his pocket.

  Unfurled, they revealed themselves to be white cloth with red swords, blue spears, black horse heads, and green bows. The lecturer raised two flags.

  “Most believe swords are better than spears. They are not. For organized warfare with hastily trained conscripts, spears outperform swords without a doubt, especially in defensive battles. Offense and quick movement or other situations where holding formation becomes difficult prefer swords. If swordsmen or axmen draw close enough to engage a spear formation, they will most likely rout the spearmen.”

  He put down the melee weapons and raised the bow.

  “Bowmen are a terror on the battlefield, but,” he raised the black horse, “cavalry destroys them. Most archers have long knives in case they get caught in melee, but those are useless against horses. Can anyone tell me what’s the weakness of horses?”

  Bill raised his hand.

  “Yes?”

  “They present a large target, sir. If either the horse or the man get hurt they are out of the fight, and they are expensive. They eat a lot and nursing a wounded horse to health costs a lot.”

  The burly teacher looked up, and waved his hand from side to side in a so-so gesture. “Mostly correct. What I wanted to hear was spearmen.”

  Stephan expected the teacher would elaborate, but he didn’t. Instead, he arranged the flags on the map, hanging them by a string.

  “Now, this is the battlefield and these are your enemies,” he gestured at the map. “Each flag is one hundred strong. You have the same troops, now take your tablets and write down where you would place them and how you would attack, then I’ll read out a few of your answers. We can discuss what you’ve done wrong and what you’ve done right.”

  [Level 10 reached

  Skill acquired: Mercy I

  +1 Agility, +0 Charisma, +1 Composure, +0 Dexterity, +1 Endurance, +1 Intelligence, +1 Luck, +0 Perception, +1 Presence, +1 Strength, +1 Toughness, +1 Vitality, +1 Willpower, +1 Wisdom]

  [Mercy I - You may choose to inflict the physical damage of your attacks to spirit instead of the body. Individuals with critical spirit lose consciousness.]

  [Stephan Cobblerson, Paladin level 10

  Class skills: In Living Memory XVI, Blessing of Healing I, Blessing of Arms I, Smite I, Blessing of Protection I, Inspiring Aura I, Blessing of Conviction I, Blessing of Intuition I, Blessing of Health I, Bane of Darkness I, Mercy I

  Attributes: Agility: 18, Charisma: 18, Composure: 20, Dexterity: 18, Endurance: 19, Intelligence: 15, Luck: 17, Perception: 17, Presence: 18, Strength: 19, Toughness: 19, Vitality: 20, Willpower: 19, Wisdom: 18]