My routine continued almost unbroken for a month after I arrived. Mornings spent on chores, afternoons on spear training. I kept myself as busy as possible, trying to occupy my mind. I had no idea how I was faring when it came to my attributes, but I wasn’t taking any risks. If I ended up getting too far over the six point threshold, then that was for the better. I’d already died once, after all, and I wasn’t looking to do it again.

  And while physical attributes were nice, I wanted to work on my mental skills as well. Any day, we were going to be called to fight, and I had no illusions that a fight was going to be easy. It was going to be chaotic. Hectic. If I couldn’t focus or pay attention to my surroundings, that would be just as dangerous as my lack of strength.

  I’d asked a few times to test my attributes, but there was only one reading slate in the camp, and Galliard kept it close. Normally, Dupes were supposed to test themselves at the start of each month, and the slate was passed around the camp. So I had to wait until the beginning of August.

  As Galliard had explained it, “I don’t need our Ealdorman breathing down my neck for breaking the slate. It’s best not to overwork it.”

  And soon enough, the month drew to a close. The day before my first attribute test, during our daily training, Shave said, “Come, Levi. Attack me.”

  “But—”

  “You haven’t sparred much. I need to see how you’re progressing.”

  I wrapped the tip of my spear in a strip of fabric, but Shave didn’t. I figured he knew what he was doing. After all, he was an Iron, and he had a few years of experience—plus, he’d actually trained at Homecamp with the rest of the Dupes.

  Already, a small crowd had gathered around me. We stood on a small hill just outside our camp. The grass was slightly slippery from a recent rainfall, but my boots gripped it fine. I whirled my spear up into a fighting position—the main offensive stance of Sun Splinter—and pointed it at Shave. He took a defensive stance.

  My hands were sweaty. I shouldn’t have been worried, but then I noticed Ticks observing, and everything got worse.

  I blinked quickly. Focus, Levi. Focus. Show them what you can do.

  Shave was holding his spear low. He’d called it the fool’s guard, similar to what swordsmen used, and exposed his shoulders, waiting for attack. Trying to draw me in.

  I focused down on Shave, narrowing my eyes and purging my surroundings from my mind, framing him perfectly and focussing on what I needed to see. I imagined my eyes were a camera, isolating all the distractions and anything unimportant.

  Shave expected me to attack high. He wanted me to. Then he’d win by striking me in the exposed gut. Oldest trick in the book.

  But I hadn’t learned much else except the offense-heavy Sun Splinter style. He knew I would see the fool’s guard and adjust. He wanted to push me to use something I wasn’t good at.

  I had other plans.

  I charged forward, jumped, pretending to fall for his fool’s guard, then, at the last moment, swooped the back end of my spear down, like I was abruptly changing directions after leaping off a jump on a ski hill and moving my poles accordingly. It deflected Shave’s spear, and the crowd let out a soft gasp.

  And now, with Shave reeling, I could truly go on the offensive. I jabbed and thrust at Shave’s upper body, looking for an opening, but he kept deflecting my spear. I was in control, though.

  “How do I resonate a Skill?” I asked as I attacked. I had enough leeway to ask a few questions while we fought—I was in control for the moment.

  “You can’t,” Shave replied. He defended with ease still, and part of me got the impression he was leading me on. “Not ‘til you make Iron.”

  “Not even a passive Skill? Like mine?”

  “Not without Presence, no. But there’s no such thing as passive skills, Levi. You have knowledge Skills. You can resonate a knowledge Skill with a weapon they apply to. Otherwise, they just represent the knowledge you’ve accumulated.”

  “Damn,” I said. “I really wanted to know what mine do.”

  “Most Skills are knowledge skills. Cooking. Woodworking. Fletching.” Shave knocked my spear to the side, and I redirected, changing to push him back the other way across the hill.

  “Do you have a knowledge Skill for a weapon?”

  “I have Apprentice-tier [Spearmanship],” Shave said. He kicked me back, giving himself room and turning the tide to the offensive. For a moment, the air trembled around him, but the resonance shifted to his spear. A ripple ran along the spearhead, and he drove the spear forward.

  It pierced the air with a static crackle, racing forward as if it was splitting the air itself. The whole purpose of the spear was to jab, to pierce, and Shave’s skill resonated with the weapon to improve that function. I stepped to the side and swung my spear around in a high circle, keeping Shave back. “What about an Art?”

  “No one here has an Art. When you earn one, it will reveal your affinity—spatial affinities, attraction, wedge forces, and more.”

  “No fire magic?”

  “Not for Dupes.”

  “I get it now,” I said. “I think.”

  “There are many complexities to magic,” Shave replied. “And you won’t understand them all right away.”

  But the ability to gain knowledge had to be important. If I was going to go anywhere in the world, I would need high Focus. I kept that in the back of my mind as I continued attacking. Each of my strikes hit with enough force to send a deep clack echoing over the hills. I wasn’t the strongest by any stretch, but at least now, it didn’t feel like I was working with the strength of a toddler.

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  By now, I was pretty sure Shave was toying with me. But at least he’d resonated his spear, and he’d used up his Presence for the day. He couldn’t resonate his Skill again. As an Iron, he would only have one Presence.

  Which meant I had plenty of time to wring more information out of him.

  “Alright, but what do I do with my knowledge Skills if I don’t have a weapon for them?”

  “Either leave them be like most people, or if you’re lucky enough, merge them. They make good merging fodder.” Shave pushed one of my jabs up, then knocked the other to the side. “But you won’t find anyone with a merged Skill out here. You need at least five Skills to properly merge, and anyone good enough for that wouldn’t be trapped out in the 294th.”

  “How do I gain new Skills?” Grunting, I lunged, aiming for Shave’s chest, but he knocked the blow aside.

  “By getting good at new things. Like using a spear. When the System recognizes a base level of proficiency, you’ll get a ‘novice tier’ Skill, and the more you work on it, the more the tier improves. As the tier improves, the better it resonates. But merging Skills always results in the merged Skill being a tier higher.”

  I’d been skiing as long as I could remember, and had spent a few years in film school. But skiing was only at the apprentice tier. Skill merges must’ve been critical for levelling up Skills, otherwise it’d take years to get through the tiers.

  But I realized too late that I’d gotten myself distracted, and I cursed under my breath when Shave lifted his spear to my chin with impressive agility. “You lost focus.”

  “Sorry, sergeant.”

  The rest of the crowd laughed and dispersed, but Shave lowered his spear and patted me on the back. “Don’t worry. You did good, lad.”

  “Let’s just see how tomorrow goes.”

  ~ ~ ~

  I don’t think I slept at all the night before my attribute test. Yeah, stiff cots in the tents were never comfortable at the best of times, but tonight was different. The anticipation was killing me. It was almost time to see if anything I’d done worked.

  Otherwise, it was time to say goodbye.

  When the sun finally rose, glinting around the side of the enormous planet in the sky (which I’d learned was called Welkinmere), all the Dupes gathered at the center of the camp early in the morning. Campfires still simmered, and the wind was blowing the wrong way, carrying whiffs of the latrine ditches over the camp. My nose was starting to go numb to the scent, though.

  The entire battalion passed the slate around. Some of the Dupes chose not to test themselves, but with Ticks standing right behind me, I got the sense that avoiding the test wasn’t an option for me.

  When the slate reached me, I took hold of it and waited for the words to swirl across its surface again.

  Everything on the sheet except the attributes were the same. Now, it read:

  Vitality: 1

  Agility: 2

  Strength: 1

  Perception: 1

  Focus: 1

  Presence: 0

  I’d gained a point in everything but Perception and Presence, which had to count for something. But in total, I had six points. With a smirk on my lips, I turned back to face Ticks and showed him the stats. “Sorry, man,” I said. “Looks like I’ve got six points in total.”

  Ticks scowled, shook his head, and marched away.

  “Jesus…” I muttered. “He’s not going to leave me alone, is he?”

  “Those are good numbers for an Atoning,” Shave said. “Don’t take it to heart.”

  “Anything you can do about it, sergeant?”

  “Not if I want to stay on everyone’s good side,” he replied, confirming my suspicions. “You’ll have to earn their respect the hard way.”

  I saw a few others in the camp glancing at me. Some skeptical gazes, some attentive. Certainly, there were less accusing looks than before. As I left the center of the camp, heading to the stream to clean myself up, a few of the other men patted me on the back.

  When I reached the stream, I made sure I was alone, then I stripped down. I stared at my reflection in the water for a few seconds. I wasn’t nearly as thin as I had been when I arrived, though I was still skinny. But at least my cheeks had filled out and I didn’t look on the brink of starvation. And hey, I had some defined muscles now. My skin had become a healthy pale bronze shade, similar to the rest of the Dupes, but my chin was a little pointier than the rest of the Dupes—like it had been back on Earth.

  With a sigh, I pushed the thoughts of home to the back of my mind and doused myself in the stream. Over the past month, I’d stopped wondering about home as much. I certainly had no desire to go back there.

  But halfway through cleaning myself, a bell began tolling back at the camp. My head sprang up, and a moment later, the shouts began. I couldn’t make out any words, but something was happening.

  Cursing, I dragged myself out of the stream and pulled on my clothes, then tugged on my gambeson for what little protection it’d give me. I scrambled up the shore to where I’d left my kit bag and pulled it on, then hoisted my spear and sprinted back to the encampment.

  On the way in through the palisade, Shave crashed into me. “Levi!” he snapped. “I was looking for you.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Orcs.”

  “What?”

  “Stay in formation, and come with us.” He tossed me a chainmail hauberk, and I took it, pulling it on and tucking it into my belt. It was a little long, and a lot heavier than I thought it would be, but I didn’t protest.

  I did, however, say, “I don’t know any of the formations!”

  “Stay close, and don’t stick your neck out. We aren’t going to do anything complex. Understand?”

  “Understood, sergeant,” I replied.

  I followed him to the other side of the camp, where we grouped up with our squadron—under Shave’s command. Squads contained six Dupes, and there were fifty squads in a battalion. Sergeants all commanded a squad, and they reported to lieutenants, who commanded ten squads each. And Commander Galliard controlled it all.

  Our squad contained, Shave, Ticks, Trench, Romance, another Dupe named Elf, and me. At first, I hung back, until our lieutenant summoned us over. Our lieutenant was a Dupe named Finger, who wore a complete set of plate armour and a standard helmet with an orange horsetail plume ran out the top. I was pretty sure it was enchanted equipment of some kind from the tingle it left in the back of my mind when I stared at it for too long.

  “Orcs were spotted in the woods northeast of Slowbend,” Finger said. “We’re to support the 5th Battalion. They’re slowing them down, and we’re the cleanup crew. Nothing reaches the town, am I understood?”

  “Understood!” the sergeants called.

  “Moving out!” Finger called, and Galliard trotted past atop a horse. A few Dupes in orange cloaks trailed him, and one blew on a horn, sending a deep, woody tone through the camp.

  “Keep the commander alive!” Shave called to the men in our squadron. “Or you won’t get your wages for a few months—until our Ealdorman finds someone to replace him!”

  That caused a chorus of laughter to rise through the crowd. I simply kept hold of my spear, gripping it tight, and followed Shave and the squad out toward the woods.