The Seventh Cadence (The Continua Chronicles Book 1) by Jim Wilbourne

Author:Jim Wilbourne [Wilbourne, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781735922560
Publisher: Emergent Realms
Published: 2021-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty

To Live with Honor and to Die with Honor

“Sixty-two eighty-five!”

Gabriel stood, shouldered the sack filled with his belongings, and walked toward the open door. Once inside, a man behind the parchment laden desk looked up at him. Blond with grayed sideburns, the man scribbled a few early notes. Without bothering to look back up, he gestured for Gabriel to sit.

Gabriel set his sack beside the seat and sat on the small wooden chair, straight-backed and waiting for orders. He glanced around the cramped office. The building had obviously been constructed in haste out in the middle of the North Hzorah fields to accommodate the encampment, but the officer had already made it his own. He’d decorated the walls with three Border Guard medals of stationary honor and two paintings, one that appeared to be the officer’s mother. The other was Gabriel’s father.

The man paused for a brief second to look at him before returning to his reports. “Can you read?”

“No, sir.”

A lie, but the more he did to avoid suspicion, the smoother this would go. It’d been that way since he’d left, moving from one trader’s wagon to another. None of them questioned if he was Hzorah’s prince, especially in the ragged state he’d fixed himself in, but he’d landed on a faux personal history that was, so far, believable enough to anyone who questioned.

“Family name?” the officer asked.

“None, sir.”

The officer raised his eyebrows.

“I’m an orphan,” Gabriel added, sticking to script. “I don’t know who my parents were.”

The officer continued staring a moment before he took to scribing once more. “Trade?”

“None, sir,” Gabriel said. “That’s why I enlisted. I had nowhere to go.”

“So …” The man set the pen in its holster and met his eyes. “How is it that an orphan without a trade got so good with the sword and bow?”

“I lived in an orphanage,” Gabriel said, reciting more of his contrived backstory. “We were allowed outside to play twice a day. We often dueled with twigs and sticks. As for the bow, I think I was just lucky.”

“No such thing,” the officer grunted and lifted a sheet from his desk. “Says here that you shot better than most trained soldiers, and you dueled like a master swordsman. You lost twice, but your form was impeccable. That’s not luck. That’s genius.”

Better than most soldiers? Gabriel thought. Are the troops really that under-trained?

Perhaps he should have held back a bit more. He’d faked the two losses he’d earned. He’d thought that doing too well would draw attention, but dueling was already second nature only to walking for him and tripping realistically when the path is swept smooth is a difficult feat.

“Not only that,” the officer continued, “you’re tall, strong. You could really do well on the field.”

“Thank you, sir,” Gabriel said, trying to sound both appreciative and inconspicuous.

The man eyed him for a moment longer before lifting his pen again. “I’m assigning you to the Second League. The Crown places great value in young men like you. We take note of those with potential.

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