To Serve the Light (Part 9)

Outside, the familiar clang of blade against blade filled the yard under the grey skies, followed by the familiar shouts of Sir Bernhardt’s lieutenants. The militia was now short two promising recruits, and so the training for the remaining young would-be protectors of Menethil Harbor had been intensified. That meant more training sessions for all of them.

All save one.

Wyn was not out with the group of recruits. Instead, she was indoors, toiling away at a different kind of training, honing a different kind of skill. Hunched over a cramped desk piled with books pushed over to one corner, her strokes were not the sweeping strokes of an axe against a training dummy, but the clumsy strokes of a pen. Instead of the clear sound of blades slicing through air, her world was filled with the soft scritching of pen nib against parchment.

Scribe work. She hated it. But rather than give way to her ire, she clenched her teeth and tried to focus on her strokes.

“You’re not carving the letters into wood, Stelhamor,” growled a voice softly from the window. “Don’t waste the parchment.”

“Aye, sir,” she replied.

“Yes. Yes sir. Not ‘aye,’ Stelhamor. You will speak properly in this room, remember.”

“Yes sir,” Wyn repeated.

Three weeks. For three weeks now, she’d been under the “special supervision” of Sir Bernhardt. Punishment for the loss of two prized recruits. The mayor and Sir Bernhardt had agreed to it, as it seemed the regular brand of discipline did not seem to be all that effective. Isolation from the other recruits. Pen scribbling. Copy work. Language lessons. All things she’d most hated about her time as an initiate at the temple in the Mystic Ward.

As if she weren’t already feeling horrible enough for her actions.

Taylor was gone. Alive and well, from what she’d been told, but no longer in Menethil. Sir Bernhardt said he’d been sent to Stormwind, to recover under the care of his aunt at the Cathedral She had tried to say goodbye before he left and to apologize, but there was a distance between them now. After one awkward meeting, they had found it easy enough to avoid each other.

And now he was gone.

“Focus, Stelhamor. Don’t just copy that text. Read it. Understand it. Memorize it.”

“Ay… yes sir.”

He nodded absently from the window, still watching the training below. Brow furrowed in concentration, the dwarf focused on the words, murmuring under her breath as she copied them down.

Unseen by all, Sir Bernhardt indulged in a small smile.