Translated From Sarconian Scout

John Breaker looked across the table at Jasper a few  mornings after he and Jack returned from the North.  "Well, Jasper," he said, "You've just finished three months of studying swordplay under one of the best swordswomen in the mountains.  Now what do you want to do?"

Jasper poked at his food.  "I don't know."  He wasn't sure if he should voice what he really wanted to do or not.

John turned to Jack.  "What about you?"

"I want to learn how to run the ranch," said Jack.  "Dad's foreman has been running it for a while, and I'd kind of like to take some responsibility for it.  As Melissa's a Junior Scout now, I'd like to move back there."

John nodded.  "I figured you'd want to do that at some point.  Jasper, you're sure you don't know what you want to do?"

Jasper sighed. "Don't you need me here to help run the farm?"

John leaned across the table.  "If I didn't need you here, what would you do?"

"Join the Scouts, I guess," said Jasper.  "But-"

"No buts, Jasper.  It's a respectable life.  Even if you don't choose to join the ranks of the Scouts, you'll get a good education."

Jasper set down his fork.  "You mean I can join the Scouts?"

"If that's what you want."

"Don't you need me here, though?"

"Not necessarily.  I've had some people ask me for a job here, so I can do without you working here, even with Alethea leaving for Corvan in a few months."

"Really?"

"Really.  I can take you down there tomorrow and enroll you, if that's what you want to do."

"Okay."

 

Anyone could join the Scouts, though whether they made it through the three levels or not was a different matter altogether.  This fact was annoying Jasper, however.  It was the evening of his first day.  For the next three months, he would be living in a room at Scout Headquarters with three other boys and a councilor.  Two of the boys in his room had all too obviously been sent to Scout training by their parents in hopes that it would reform their character.  They had thrown their things on the floor and left the room, snickering about something.

Jasper was happy to stay in the room, away from the rushing crowd of people outside.  The room was not large, but it was sufficient to keep the occupants from being too cramped.  Green curtains hung over the single window.  There was a oval rug on the wooden floor between the bunks, which were stacked two high and placed in a U shape around the rug.  The mattresses on the bunks were supplied with dark blue and brown sheets and blankets.  The bunks themselves were  longer than usual and had a chest built into the end of each for clothing storage.  Two shelves were nailed to the wall next to each bed, and a small lantern hung near the head of the bed.  Jasper, sitting cross-legged on one of the top bunks, unloaded his bag and put his things away.

The doorknob turned, and a tall, dark haired boy with olive skin stepped into the room.  "Afternoon," he said to Jasper.

"Afternoon," Jasper responded.  "I'm Jasper."

"Lar," said the other boy.  "Is that upper bunk over there taken?"

"Nope," said Jasper.

Lar threw his gear onto the bunk across from Jasper and jumped lightly after it.  "So who left their gear all over the floor?"

"Our two roommates," said Jasper, "and I don't intend to pick it up for them.  If it gets squished when I jump down, it's their fault."

Lar grinned.  "Do you really think we should squash it?" he asked as he unpacked his things and stowed them in the trunk.

Jasper shook his head.  "Not on purpose."

Just then, the councilor stepped into the room and lifted an eyebrow when he saw the mess on the floor.  He looked first at Jasper, then at Lar, who both looked innocent without even trying.  The councilor had already introduced himself to Jasper, now he greeted Lar.  "The name's Ryan," he said, holding out a hand to Lar, who shook it firmly. Ryan sighed.  "Usually I don't have to give my 'keep the room clean' lecture until the second or third day.  Where are those two, anyway?"

Lar shook his head, and Jasper shrugged.  "They left," said Jasper.

"Hm.  I'll go find them then," said Ryan.

He returned with the other two boys, Eldvitch and Melvin.  They whined like two-year-olds when he told them to stow their gear, and Ryan told them in no uncertain terms to "Stow their whine too if they didn't want some cheese with it."  They sloppily shoved their things into place, but that wasn't good enough for Ryan.  "There's not much of it, put it away neatly," he said sternly.  Grumbling, Eldvitch and Melvin put their things in order.

By the time everyone had settled in, it was time for supper.  Everyone filed off to the mess hall, from which wonderful smells drifted.  A few bone-weary Scouts just in from missions and the oldest instructors were placed at the front of the line, while the room that had to help in the kitchens that meal shifted to the back.  Eldvitch and Melvin complained about not getting to go first, then caught sight of some girls, started flirting with them, and got violently slapped for their pains.

Lar and Jasper, who were quickly becoming friends, watched their roommates with amusement.  While some initial politeness had stopped them from saying anything mean to Eldvitch and Melvin, the girls the two were trying to flirt with obviously had no such restraints on their tongues.

"Do we know each other, you goon?" one girl demanded of Eldvitch.

"No, sweetheart," Eldvitch replied with what he thought was a charming grin that actually made his face look more like he had just eaten something very bitter.

"Then don't call me 'sweetheart,' you dweeb!"

"Would 'girlfriend' be more acceptable?"

The girl glared at him.  "No."  She slapped him, hard.  "Fishface!  Jerkhead!  Go away before I forget I'm supposed to be a lady and give you a black eye!"

Jasper, Lar, and several other people coughed to conceal their laughter as Eldvitch stepped hastily out of arm's reach.

 

The next day started with chapel.  Eldvitch and Melvin obviously considered this boring; they slumped in their seats, passed notes, and dozed.  Jasper blushed a little in embarrassment to be associated with the two.  He did not accept The Way himself, but there was no call to be disrespectful.  As far as Jasper was concerned, all gods were equally dangerous, and it was best to keep them all pleased with you.  He and Lar exchanged expressive glances and kicked their roommates discreetly in the shins.

The man at the front of the room was reading the Word.  "And the Lord took the man he had formed and breathed life into him.  He gave him rulership over the creatures of the earth and blessed him."

"Have you ever made anything?  Did you care about it?"

"Well, yeah.  I made it."

"God made you, and don't you think He would care about His creation?"

Jack's words came back to Jasper as a soft echo in the back of his mind, setting him to thinking very hard.

After chapel came breakfast, then a history class.  The teacher paced back and forth in front of the large piece of slate mounted on the wall, lecturing about the beginning of the world.  Jasper leaned over his notebook, writing furiously until his hand was sore.  Eldvitch and Melvin goofed off, drawing unflattering pictures of the teacher, blowing their noses very loudly, trying to get the attention of the nearby girls, and flying papers around the room.  After class, Lar, who had been at the desk next to Jasper, looked over at Jasper's notes.

"You don't know how to takes notes, do you?" he said.

"Well," said Jasper, "not really."

"I can show you what I've learned about note-taking tonight," Lar offered.

"Would you really?" asked Jasper excitedly.

"Yep."

The next order of the day was running.  They jogged a quarter mile, walked a quarter mile, jogged another quarter mile, and walked the last quarter.  Those that were, like Jasper, still fresh at the end of this, were sent off to jog a half mile.  Jasper loped off, leaving Eldvitch and Melvin laying on the grass moaning something about cruel torture.   When he got back, the instructors sent him off to jump at the sand pits.  They ran and jumped and jumped from a dead stop, then went off to run some more, this time sprinting.    Then there was another class - geography.  They learned the names of the countries, their locations, and started a study of their major cultural differences.  Map drawing was then capitalized on until the lunch bell rang.  Everyone was more than ready to eat.

After lunch was horseback riding, then unarmed combat.  Jasper loved learning about the horses and their overall behavior.  He had always considered himself a boatman, but now he found that he liked horses just as much.  Unarmed combat, however, was a different matter.  Though Jasper found it useful, he did not like it very well.  He much preferred using a sword to using a fist or foot.  Through all this, Eldvitch and Melvin made nuisances of themselves, asking mindless questions during class, accidentally/on purpose hitting their opponents in the face during unarmed combat, and even managing to get a bur under one of the horses saddles, causing the poor creature to go wild with pain.

So it was no great surprise that while Jasper and Lar sat on Jasper's bunk, laughing and talking about their experiences, Eldvitch and Melvin were off scrubbing the floor of the east hall under Ryan's disapproving gaze.  As promised, Lar showed Jasper how to take notes.  Lar's method was simple and straightforward, and Jasper caught on quickly.  Their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the loudly complaining Eldvitch and Melvin, but the two friends decided that they had had a profitable evening.

Ryan came in a few minutes later and conducted a devotion (which Eldvitch and Melvin paid little attention to) that Jasper soaked up.  The subject was on the beginning of the world, like the other lessons.  On the plains, there were many beliefs about the beginning of the world.  Some said the the world had been created when two gods were having a contest over who was the most powerful.  Other said that the nothingness that had existed in the beginning had exploded, and from that, everything had spawned.  Jasper had yet to figure out how 'nothing' could explode.  Still others said that the world was the product of an accident that had occurred while a goddess was cooking.  But this that Jasper heard now - of a God who had made the world for men, made men, and the breathed into them life - seemed most reasonable.  He swung a foot in the air as he listened, feeling that he was finding something that satisfied his questions.

 

The first month ran much like this.  Eldvitch and Melvin goofed of during every class, acted like they were dying during running, and then spent the evening doing menial tasks for punishment while Jasper and Lar studied together.  At the end of the first month, however, Eldvitch and Melvin were expelled.  The class sizes went down a great deal - at least a third of the recruits could not stand the rigorous physical, spiritual and academic training.  Jasper, Lar, and Ryan moved across the dormitory to a four bunk room instead of a six bunk room.  They had no fourth person, however, so one of the bunks remained empty.

This end of the dormitory was different in the sense that there were girls around the boy's quarters and vica-versa.  The girls were on one side of the main hall, the boys were on the other.  This arrangement made Jasper very nervous until he saw how the halls were laid out.  Two rows of rooms were set back to back on each side of the main hall.  Between the back-to-back rooms were halls, known simply as the Girl's Hall and the Boy's Hall, each accessible only from the dorm rooms of the gender to which they belonged.  Therefore, Jasper's room, like the others, had two doors, one opening to the main hall across from the girl's rooms, and one opening to the Boy's Hall across from the other row of boy's rooms.   Jasper had only had a few swift glances of the girl's dorm rooms, but these glances had given him enough information to know that the girl's rooms were decorated with flowers, glass beads, and all things sparkly.

Ryan was a much more lighthearted person when he wasn't having to deal with two trouble-makers at once.  He had a boyish sense of fun behind his stern nature.  He laughed over many a joke with his two charges, and the three of them decorated their room with a wild assortment of maps and trinkets, which they hung wherever they could.  Their weapons were always in easy reach - one of the first habits instilled in the recruits.  When Jasper woke up in the morning, he had only to turn his head to the side to see his sword hilt where his belt hung on the bedpost.  The feathered ends of arrows were also visible, for his quiver hung next to the belt.  His longbow hung on a hook on the side of the bunk, and schoolbooks were piled on the shelves.  Fascinating objects were brought in until the room was comfortably cluttered with interesting things.

The end of the first three months came around sooner than Jasper would have thought possible.  Both he and Lar decided to move on to being Scout Students, as did about thirty others.  On the last night of the month, they were rambunctiously 'initiated' by the current Students.   The initiation consisted of being chased to the lake that lay outside of the city and then being pushed into it.  Jasper was greatly applauded, for he managed to drag his pushers into the lake with him, a rare feat.  The Students then good-humoredly pulled their victims out of the lake, wrapped them in warm blankets that they had waiting, and led them back to Headquarters, where they ate finger foods, made parodies of songs, and otherwise had fun until late in the night, when their councilors sent them to bed.