It's not as if Ifan is a mercenary himself -- he doesn't yet have the training or even the strength to serve as a sell sword, but part of this position, being an apprenticeship of swords, will entail training later on. For now, his duties are simple -- he'll fill water pails, help cook in camp, help clean the men's armour and hone their weapons, repair their clothes, run errands.
No one mentioned how much fucking walking there'd be.
"Come on, probie, it's not as bad as all that," laughs Ursus, a big, hairy mage with a stave as thick as a tree trunk strapped to his broad back, and he claps a huge hand into the centre of Ifan's back, thumping heavily between his shoulders. Maybe the blow would have winded him, were it not for the fact that he was winded already -- they'd been walking uphill for what felt like since the beginning of time, and his whole body ached. His feet were sore, blisters forming on his soles; his calves and thighs ached and felt exhausted from working their way up the hill; his shoulders screamed out with heat and pain from the pack strapped to his back.
His skin felt sore, all over -- and worst of all was the hardness of his breathing, the pound of his heart under his jerkin and the sweat dripping down his back and face and thighs under his clothes, and the taste of acid in the back of his parched throat.
"Everything hurts," Ifan mutters, and it's not just Ursus that laughs this time -- the other two mages, Ax and Mace, share a laugh as twinned as their square faces are, and other of the nearest men do too -- Jona chuckles and shakes his head, and Alder, Yen, and Orr are all laughing themselves.
"Fuck me, lad," Jona says, "we haven't even started training you yet -- just taken you for a stroll!"
"A stroll?" Ifan repeats incredulously. "I'm fucking dying."
"You'll get used to it," says Orr in pleasant tones, and claps him on the arse as he walks on by, making Ifan jump, and he exhales hard before he drinks heavily from his waterskin and tries to brace himself for the rest of the day ahead. He can fucking do this.
He knows he only has the position because his father is a clerk for the defence corps, knows that they're probably being easier on him than they otherwise would be -- the training he'll get with these men will be invaluable, especially compared to anything he could pay for from travelling tutors in town. He doesn't exactly have the bargaining power to get to one of the prominent institutes, let alone the social status to go to one of the royal training academies -- and in any case, while he's sparred with the blacksmith's girl and taken tutelage from her, taken the training that swords and mercenaries have done as they've passed through, but he'd never be able to keep up with the nobles who've been trained in everything imaginable since they were babes in arms.
If he wants to leave home as something other than a scribe or a bureaucrat, this is the only opportunity he'll get, and if he's going to quit, he's certainly not going to quit his first day travelling.
He'd only have to fucking walk home anyway.
* * *
When they finally make camp, Ifan feels like he could fucking drop -- the sun has dipped below the horizon, and the skies are beginning to darken from red to purple as he helps clear space around where Orr is building a fire, space for everybody to set up tents and lay out their bedrolls.
"Here, sit down," Jona orders, catching him by the shoulder once the clearing has been cleaned up, and Ifan is torn between gratefully obeying the order and not wanting to look so fucking useless.
"But, sir -- "
"You're not used to this shit yet, and you've weathered well today, lad," Jona says, nudging him toward a log -- Ifan drops down onto it with a loud sigh of relief, feeling his whole body suddenly sing out in different aches and pains, pangs that run through him as his working body is suddenly permitted to relax.
"Strip off your armour," Jona tells him, and nods to Ursus and the twins, who have laid out the huge steel tub that magically folds up flat to be carried, and are conjuring steaming water to fill it with. "You can take the first bath, eh?"
"We're bathing?" Ifan asks, disbelieving, but he can't strip off his heavy leather armour fast enough, laying it over the side of the log. It's agonising to take his boots off, let alone his socks, and before he walks over to the tub, Ax comes over and makes him sit back so that he can run some healing magic over the blistered flesh.
It's awful.
Healing magic often feels strangely warm and tingles, but it works by speeding up the natural healing process, and he can see the skin changing and shifting before his eyes as the blisters move about before the fluid in them is reabsorbed and the flesh repairs itself, feels a hot, electric tingle in the soles of his feet that runs up his ankles and calves.
"You'll get callouses soon enough," Ax says, patting his knee, and Ifan stumbles as he initially stands, not expecting the now-weird painlessness in the soles of his feet at first as he goes toward the tub.
"There he is," Ursus rumbles. "Strip off the rest, lad, you're not about to wash in that shirt, are you?"
Ifan pulls his filthy chemise off over his head, and as he shoves his trousers down his thighs, he's aware of Ursus' gaze on him, the way that the other man isn't averting it at all, isn't even pretending not to look at him. Ifan swallows, but keeps on peeling off his trousers as he looks around and realises that it's not just Ursus watching him.
A lot of the men are. They're stopped in their work, looking Ifan's way, and they're not just looking at the tub -- they're looking at him, their eyes roving his body, probably thinking about how little muscle he has compared to them, thinking how small he is, how he's not a big, strapping guy like a lot of them are.
"In you get," says Ursus softly, and nervously, Ifan puts his leg over the side of the bath and gets in.
He can't help the moan he lets out at the sudden sting and then soothing heat of the water, feeling it sink into his muscles and force their stiffened, tangled forms to relax a bit, to melt in the water around them.
"Feel good, probie?" Ursus asks, smirking at him.
"Fuck yeah," Ifan sighs, sitting back in the tub.
