Chapter 5 What Rhett sees

By the third day the men had stopped pretending. The ones who thought they were fit found out they actually weren't and the ones who thought they were tough found out there were levels to ‘tough’ that nobody warned them about.

Dane had spent the first day quietly picking out the ones he thought would struggle. By day three, most of his predictions were completely wrong. The man he had been most wrong about was an unremarkable recruit from somewhere in the valley. Nothing about him suggested he would last. He was average in every way you could measure and Dane had written him off on the first day without thinking twice.

But by day three, that man had outlasted almost everyone on every run. He just kept going when other people stopped. There was no pain or fatigue or any expression at all on his face. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other long after it stopped being comfortable.

Dane watched him and said nothing but he filed it away. He found himself watching other men differently after that.

The border had taught Dane to judge people quickly because sometimes there wasn't time for second chances. This place was teaching him that quick judgement wasn't always accurate. Some men carried courage quietly. Others carried fear so well it looked almost the same.

---

Aldric ran the sessions and Rhett watched them.

Aldric was everywhere — shouting corrections, timing runs, appearing beside men who were cutting corners before they had even finished cutting them. Nobody tried to fool Aldric twice. An extra lap while everyone else rested was punishment enough and was somehow more humiliating than being shouted at.

Rhett showed up at the edges. He didn’t say a word, just watched for a while and then was gone again. Half the time nobody noticed he had even been there until someone mentioned it and then everyone would look around trying to figure out where he went and how long he had been watching.

It became its own kind of game among the recruits.

Someone would whisper, "He's here," and half the yard would instinctively glance towards the perimeter. By the time they found him he was usually looking somewhere else entirely, or gone altogether.

Bram became convinced Rhett enjoyed it.

"He's doing it on purpose," he muttered one afternoon.

"No," Corin replied.

"Then how does he keep appearing behind people?"

"Because you're looking everywhere except where he is."

Bram found this deeply unsettling.

"He just appears," he said to Corin one afternoon, keeping his voice low while they ran. "One minute he's not there. The next he is. Then he's gone again."

"Keep running," Corin said.

"I am running," Bram said. "He makes me nervous. Don't tell him I said that."

"He already knows," Corin said.

Bram glanced sideways.

"That is not helpful."

---

On the fourth morning Aldric walked along the lineup slowly. He stopped in front of Dane, looked at him for a moment and then moved on without a word. Bram, standing several men down, caught Corin's eye afterward.

"Did you see that?" he said quietly.

"Yes," Corin said.

"That quiet one from the border," Bram said. "Aldric stopped in front of him specifically."

"I noticed."

"What do you think it means?"

"I don't know," Corin said, tiredly. "But Aldric doesn't stop in front of people and study them for no reason."

They both looked down the line at Dane, who was staring straight ahead like nothing had happened.

---

That afternoon Rhett pulled three men aside. He appeared beside each of them at different points during the session and said the same thing quietly.

"Find me when this is done."

Then walked away. Dane was one of the three. He nodded and kept moving. But something settled in his chest that he couldn't quite name. It wasn’t nerves and it wasn’t quite excitement. It was somewhere between the two and closer to neither.

Bram saw it happen from across the yard.

"He did it again," he told Corin during the next water break. "Rhett. He pulled that quiet one from the border aside."

"I saw," Corin said.

"Along with two others."

"I saw that too."

"And you're not curious?"

"I'm always curious," Corin said. "I just don't say everything I'm thinking like you."

Bram stared at him before a smile cracked his lips.

"Must be nice," he said.

---

They found Rhett at the far end of the yard as the sun went down. He had his back to them when the three recruits arrived. He waited until they were all there before turning around. He looked at them for a moment before he spoke.

"You three keep moving to the outside edges of the group," he said. "Every session. Why?"

The other two said nothing.

"You can see more from the outside," Dane said.

"See what?"

"Everything that's going wrong," Dane said. "Before it goes wrong."

Rhett held his gaze for a moment.

"Stay in the middle," he said. "Seeing the problem isn't enough. You have to be close enough to fix it."

He looked at all three of them.

"That's all."

They walked back. The other two talked between themselves. Dane didn't join in. He was thinking about the fact that out of three hundred men, Rhett had noticed exactly where three of them stood.

Rhett had noticed.

The thought stayed with him for the rest of the evening. Out of three hundred recruits, Rhett hadn't chosen the fastest men or the strongest. He had chosen three who preferred watching before acting.

Dane wasn't sure whether that should have reassured him or unsettled him.

It managed to do both.

---

That night Bram lasted about eight minutes before he said something.

"That quiet one from the border," he said to Corin. "Rhett pulled him aside today. Did you see the way he answered?"

"Yes," Corin said.

"Everyone else said nothing. He just answered. Like it was obvious."

"It probably was," Corin said. "To him."

Bram thought about that.

"Rhett doesn't do anything without a reason," Corin said.

"Good reason or bad reason?"

"That man seems like he can handle either," Corin said.

Bram nodded slowly.

"We should find out his name," he said.

Corin said nothing.

"Tomorrow," Bram said. "First thing."

Outside somewhere across the compound a recruit was still running. Nobody said anything, but they all heard it. An instructor barked a correction that carried across the darkness before fading again. The compound never seemed completely asleep anymore. Even after dismissal there was always someone cleaning equipment, tending blisters, carrying water or trying to claw back one more lap before tomorrow arrived.

War, Dane was beginning to understand, wasn't something waiting beyond the walls.

It had already started changing them.