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When Tarun Thrymmson had dreamt of his future only two weeks ago, it had not looked like this. Now all he had left of that future were his dreams. That might explain why Tarun had come to both hate and love the long, empty hours of night.

A voice had awoken him, dragging him from dreams of The Academy in Amenthere. Tarun imagined the famed home of Goran's brightest minds as a stately place, filled with smooth stone floors that echoed in the dignified silence beneath the footsteps of passing scholars. What awaited Tarun as he blinked his eyes open were musty darkness and the snores of five hundred men.

They had arrived at Geristan almost five days ago. The men of Trosk, now officially drafted soldiers in the royal army, had been exhausted, footsore and shell-shocked. Most of them had never even been on the western side of The Teeth before. Some like Berin, the surviving twin son of Trosk's former tanner, were still nursing injuries from their ill-fated 'battle' with the Fourth Company. Borse had had to half-carry Berin for the last stretch of the journey into Geristan.

One of the very first things Captain Jerriod did once the men of Trosk were inside the barracks on the edge of town with the gates shut firmly behind them was to issue them uniforms. Even before eating or sleeping, they were given a new set of clothes and ordered to change right there in the yard. Tarun had disliked the red tunic, stamped ostentatiously with the symbol of the crown, on sight. After days on end of trekking along The Old Mountain Road and sleeping by the roadside though, at least the uniform was clean.

Further adding to the indignity of it all were their accommodations. Tarun might have expected as much from a military barracks, but that didn't make sleeping in a cavernous thatch building filled with stacked bunks any easier. At home, he and Marden had shared a room, but that was different. Here, surrounded every night by just about every one of his neighbors and strangers alike, Tarun found it very difficult to sleep.

Sleep didn't come any easier whenever Tarun's mind found its way back to Marden. He still remembered the way Lhara's face had crumpled, tears tracking through the grime on her cheeks when she told him the news that their elder brother was dead. It still didn't feel real. Maybe it was having left Trosk so abruptly after the fighting ending, but for some reason Tarun kept imagining that Marden was alive and well back at home, preparing to marry Yelaina and take up a place at Calder's table in The Giant's Shoe. To even contemplate otherwise...well...Tarun did not want to, and so he didn't.

It seemed one person at least did not share Tarun's approach of tending to grief by ignoring it. Tarun recognized the voice; oddly clear in the vast darkness of the bunks, as Calder's. The innkeeper had alternated between blubbering and listless shuffling the whole way from Trosk to Geristan. Yelaina, Marden's intended and easily the most beautiful woman in all of Trosk, had been Calder's pride and joy. Now though he seemed to speak into the night with a strange animation.

"Now don't you worry...yes I know it's not...won't be long you have to wait..."

Tarun didn't know who Calder was talking to, but the snatches of conversation he caught didn't make much sense. The only thing any of the men of Trosk had to look forward to now was the day they were freed from their forced service, and that most certainly would be a long time in coming.

As Calder prattled on, Tarun became increasingly sure that the innkeeper was talking to himself. It wouldn't be long before the one-sided conversation drew whoever was on night watch into the bunks to investigate. That would likely mean soldiers crashing around, barking demands for quiet and consequently no peace to be had. Calder needed to wrap up his babbling, and soon. Rather than do so however, it seemed he only became more animated with every passing minute.

"...don't know what I'd do without...he was with you when it...you can't dissuade me you know..."

Tarun ground his teeth in irritation. He was just beginning to reach for the edge of his thin sackcloth blanket when someone else sat up in their bunk first.

"Calder, do you need anything?" Garrit, Tarun's cousin called out softly in the dark. Calder jumped, his head nearly hitting the bottom of the bunk above.

"Er...no! No, just...restless. Restless is all, Garrit."

"You sure? It sounded like you might have been talking to someone?"

"Don't bother about it...I'll try to rest now."

Tarun watched as Calder turned from Garrit and laid himself back down in the bunk. Garrit remained sitting upright for a few moments more before shrugging, scratching at his stubbly chin (the army didn't allow for the longer, braided beards often sported by mountainfolk), and resettling himself.

"You sure you're alright?" asked Garrit.

"...Go back to sleep, Torlson."

A few minutes later and Garrit was indeed snoring once more. The same couldn't be said for Tarun. Now that he was awake, he found his ever-active mind flipping through unwanted thoughts.

Marden and Yelaina had been in the inn when it collapsed. Lhara had told him as much. Calder grieved his daughter often and openly, accepting her death even as it by all appearances ate him alive from the inside out. Even though it was dark, Tarun knew the innkeeper's eyes would be deep set in grey sockets, his cheeks hollowed and face grey when the sun came up. Calder was making himself ill with mourning, and it could almost have been expected that his mind would start to go after his health. Such grief was, in Tarun's opinion, as useless as it was unsafe, especially here and now in Geristan. That was partially why Tarun shoved all thoughts of Marden from his mind by stretching out a hand in search of distraction.

He found it, tucked away right where he had left it between the straw mattress and the bunk. The loose sheaf of parchment; training lists torn from the wall of the mess hall when nobody was looking, was Tarun's private escape. Using a shaved crow feather for a quill and blood from a shallow cut he kept re-opening on his forearm for ink, Tarun had been stealing hours of precious solitude after the final bell to write. Or rather, to copy.

Taking care not to make the bunk squeak, he spread the lists on his pillow and turned them over, blank backsides looking up at him awaiting words. The makeshift ink where he had already written was dry, and in the faint moonlight filtering through cracks in the wall his tight, jagged letters appeared almost black.

Slate grey eyes scanning to the place where he left off, Tarun read the line twice silently to himself to prompt his memory. He was currently transcribing one of his da's old books, this one an architect's ledger penned to detail the magnificence of Derbesh's harbor front. Thrymm had traveled between Anset, Joska and Derbesh before coming to Trosk and meeting Tarun's ma, Mira. Among the few possessions which had made the move to Trosk with Thrymm were his small but precious book collection; a collection which Tarun didn't imagine was getting much attention with just Lhara left in the house...

There he went, thinking of Lhara and Marden again. Tarun brought his mind to heel and set it to the task at hand by using the standard-issue boot knife he had been given to re-open his 'ink well'. The cut stung, and would no doubt scar from the repeated interruptions to healing. Neither of these things troubled Tarun though. In fact, few things troubled him whenever he set quill to parchment, thoughts of home most especially.

Feather scratching carefully across the calf skin, Tarun worked almost until the dawning. When the first shifting and sighing from other bunks warned of early risers he had to put the pages away, but even then he did not sleep. Instead Tarun lay awake, sleeves carefully rolled down over his arms and mind briefly eased. Another day of training, drilling and orders awaited the Gorian army's newest recruits. They were now just muscle to be handed a sword and told to do stars only knew what. Die at the end of a Factionist pike, probably. If that was to be his fate, then Tarun was determined to at least leave something more than a bloodstain behind. Well...or at least he'd leave bloodstains with some rhyme and reason to them.

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Volume 3 of 'The Book of Terrus'; 'A Land of Sunlight' now on Wattpad!

The nation-breaking saga continues!

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