Hansen straightened. “Now,” he said calmly, “let’s try something different. Maharg, I want you to hit the post when I yell `Strike,’ do you understand?”
“Ah . . . All right.”
“Mark,” said Hansen, lighting the post on their screens. “Strike.”
Maharg feinted clumsily. Hansen’s arc hit him from behind. The young warrior toppled to the mud.
“Not next year, not next second,” Hansen said. “When I give you an order, you do it now. Do you understand?”
Maharg started to get up. “You bas—” he growled.
Hansen waited a beat for Maharg to get far enough off the ground that hitting it again would be a useful lesson. Then he slapped Maharg down.
“I am going to make you a real warrior,” Hansen said to the youth’s prone form. “I’m going to make you a baron, just as I said. But you’re not going to argue, you’re going to take orders. Do you—”
“You bas—”
Hansen’s arc lashed out again.
“Nobody’s ever given a shit for you, boy!” he said. He was shouting. “Nobody! But I care, and I’m going to make you what you want to be if I have to kill you first! Do you understand? Do you?”
The recumbent suit twitched into life again. “Yessir,” Maharg said.
“All right,” Hansen said. He was trying to keep the adrenalin shudder out of his voice. He wasn’t successful. “Get up and watch how Shill does it.”
He turned toward the post. Smoke trembled from a few splinters Hansen had knocked away with his earlier cut. “Mark,” he said.
Chapter Fourteen
By late afternoon, Shill and Maharg had gotten surprisingly adept at obeying Hansen’s orders. On their own, with the pair of them engaging Hansen, things didn’t work as well.
When Maharg was ad hoc leader, he tended to strike before he remembered to call the designator to his partner. Shill, on the other hand, dithered. His command to `Strike!’ was always followed by Maharg’s lunge—but usually not by Shill’s.
Still, this was only the first day of training. When it came to the real thing against the Thrasey forces, Hansen would be there to give the orders—unless he got his head burned off.
In which case, he couldn’t pretend he much cared what happened afterward.
By the time Hansen led his tiny force back across the field, Taddeusz had been joined by Golsingh—in boots, breeches, and a fur cloak. A group of warriors were going through exercises before them.
“That’s the lot what made trouble in the hall,” Shill grumbled. He angled his steps to pass a little further to the side of the seven warriors.
“Hold up,” said Hansen. A thought struck him.
“Group secure communications,” he said, then, “Can you two hear me now?”
“Hey, that’s real clear,” said Maharg. His own voice was much crisper than it had been on straight audio between the suits.
“Shill?”
“Huh? Yeah, I kin hear.”
“When I tell you to report,” Hansen said in a controlled voice, “you report. Understood?”
“Whatever,” Shill muttered.
“Right,” Hansen said. “Now, are you guys up for some serious play? Trying out what we just learned on our friends there?”
“You think we can take them?” Maharg demanded.
“Designate hostile forces green,” Hansen said and watched spikes of bottle green dance from the helmets of the warriors from the `East,’ wherever that was.
He was getting to like his suit. It would’ve been useful to have back on Annunciation, where he belonged. . . .
But that was for later. “No,” he said aloud. “I think they’ll kick our butts, frankly. But it’ll give us some practice that we need.”
Neither of the juniors spoke for a moment. Then Maharg said, “Hell, I’ve had my butt kicked before. Once more don’ matter.”
“Then stick close to me,” Hansen said. “Remember your orders. And for god’s sake, when it starts, don’t quit till they’re all down or we are!”
“Cut!”
The three warriors stepped forward in line abreast. If Hansen looked to either side he would have seen an underling with a blue spike on his helmet, but for now he was taking that on trust.
“Mark,” he said with the seeming leader of the Easterners centered in his display.