Chapter 68 — Fifty Names

Cade divided eighty recruits into groups of five and put a weighted litter before each group. The load weighed two hundred pounds, but no single man could win by lifting it for fifty paces. They had to carry it around the wall, cross the ditch, pass a narrow gate, and return without letting the wooden head strike earth.

"The man on that litter cannot help you," Cade said. "If you drop him, he dies. If one carrier fails, the rest decide whether to change places or abandon him. Begin."

Raw strength helped for the first hundred paces. After that, grips slipped, shoulders tired, and teams discovered whether they could name a pace instead of arguing over it. One broad farmer tried to take most of the weight and exhausted himself before the ditch. His group changed carriers twice and finished. Another team crossed fastest until a man stumbled; its leader ordered the litter left long enough to preserve the time, and Cade struck all five names from that station.

"We reached the line," the leader protested.

"Your casualty did not."

The next station put thirty-pound sandbags on every back and sent the remaining men ten miles around the outer farms. Counters stood at each turn. Halfway through, a horn behind them sounded the signal for withdrawal. The route markers now pointed back across a muddy slope rather than along the easy road.

Some men treated the change as permission to run alone. Others shortened their pace, shifted the weakest marcher toward the middle, and reached the gate as files. One recruit caught another by the elbow in the last mile and lost enough time that both nearly missed the mark.

Cade looked toward Arlan. "They are competing for places."

"The man he helped may carry the shield beside him. Record the time and the choice."

No single act passed or failed a candidate. The boards held marks for endurance, obedience, recovery, and judgment. A man strong enough for the load might lose his place by abandoning another. A slower man might survive the first cut because he kept five people moving when their leader went down.

After the march, Wayne formed the recruits beneath a rain of padded shafts. They had to replace a front shield, pass a simulated wounded man to the rear, and obey a retreat horn while men outside the formation shouted a contradictory advance. The false command carried no recognized signal. Eleven men followed the voice anyway. Seven corrected themselves when the file leader refused to break; four continued far enough to expose the side of the group.

Brienne ran the fourth station in the lane beside the smithy. A wagon blocked the road with one wheel removed, an injured driver lay beneath its axle, and two routes led around it. The broad route was faster and exposed to blunted arrows from the wall. The narrow route required leaving shields behind to lift the wagon.

The best groups did neither at first. They raised the axle with spear hafts, pulled the driver free, fitted the loose wheel, and moved the wagon as cover along the broad road. Others saved the man but abandoned the supplies. Cade marked both outcomes differently; a commander might sacrifice a wagon, but he should know he had done so.

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The final station looked like rest. Candidates stood an evening watch in pairs after hunger and fatigue had stripped courtesy from them. Veteran guards tried to provoke arguments, offered watered ale, passed false rumors about who had already been chosen, and twice sent a child through the marked ground with a plausible story. The test was not silence for its own sake. It was whether the watch checked what mattered without punishing a frightened civilian or abandoning a post to chase an insult.

One pair challenged the child correctly and still failed to notice the woman following twenty paces behind him with a covered basket. She carried only turnips, but Cade had tied a red cord beneath the cloth to represent a weapon. Another pair searched the basket and let the boy wander beyond the marked gate while they argued about procedure. The strongest answer came from two recruits who kept the travelers together, called the next post, and asked a veteran to verify the story without leaving either stranger alone beside the wall.

Rodrick and Cade compared boards before any name was read. Three men had identical physical marks; one had shared water after the march, one had hidden a strained wrist to protect his place, and one had blamed a slower companion for every lost breath. Cade chose the first, sent the second to treatment with permission to try again, and returned the third to ordinary watch. Strength had tied them. Conduct separated them.

The thirty not selected received their marks in private. Eighteen remained on a reserve training roll, six returned to skilled work FireStorm could not afford to lose, and the rest could test again after the next harvest. No rejected man surrendered his ordinary ration or housing. Cade wanted competition for responsibility, not thirty angry soldiers told their previous service had become worthless overnight.

At twilight, Cade carried fifty names to Arlan. Several belonged to FireStorm locals, others to refugees, veterans who had followed Cade, and men from Rainwood's poorer quarters. No village or patron owned the list. Each name had failed somewhere; the chosen men were those whose failures had not made the people beside them expendable.

"Fifty," Cade said. "Fit to begin. Not finished."

They stood in five groups of ten, bruised, filthy, hungry, and too tired to hide it. Fitted black leather replaced the mixture used during selection, though Morton retained every sword and spear in the armory until the final field standard. Rodrick recorded the serial marks; local leatherworkers noted every altered strap.

Arlan kept the address short. "The equipment belongs to FireStorm. The choice to use it lawfully belongs to you. In a village, you do not become the raiders we trained you to stop. On a road, you do not spend another man's life to make yourself look brave."

Higher pay began with the active training roster, and household support entered Morton's book beside each name. If a man died in service, his children would not become beggars the following morning. If he deserted, the armor did not become family property.

Cade lowered one spear butt. Fifty men answered with a single impact.

Afterward, every unissued blade returned to central stores and every damaged strap went to the smithy instead of into a soldier's private chest. Wayne watched Morton close the last crate. "The songs omit a remarkable amount of counting."

"Counting is why some men live long enough to hear songs," Cade said.

Before dawn, the fifty were back on the road under load. Selection had given them names. The next days would decide whether those names could become a unit.

One rejected recruit reported anyway and asked to carry water. Cade put him beside the reserve roll, where he could watch the standard without taking a selected man's place. The answer traveled through the waiting men: failure had closed one roster for now, not every useful door in FireStorm.