Free Lord of the White Hell Book One lotwh-1 by Ginn Hale Page A

Donamillo cut him off with a shake of his head.
    "Unfortunately this morning when I put the question to Master Ignacio, he would not allow the exemption. Apparently he has already made arrangements for your training. Upperclassmen have been pulled from their free hours to tutor the two of you." Scholar Donamillo studied Kiram's cheek for a moment. "Did anyone treat that?"
    "Upperclassman Javier applied a salve to it last night," Kiram replied. He wished he had known what exactly the salve was. He guessed that Scholar Donamillo did because he nodded approvingly.
    "It looks clean, but if it should become red or painful come to see me." For an instant an almost sly look flickered over Scholar Donamillo's hard features. "I wouldn't want all the practice of war arts to cause you to develop a fever in the injury. That could keep you from practice for quite a while."
    "Ahm. Yes, sir." Kiram wasn't quite sure of how to interpret Scholar Donamillo's words. It sounded like he was telling Kiram to pretend that his injury was worse than it was. In fact, Kiram was almost positive that was Scholar Donamillo's meaning. But it would also mean lying to Master Ignacio, the prospect of which terrified Kiram.
    "You had both best report to Master Ignacio now." As Scholar Donamillo stepped back into the infirmary, Kiram caught a brief glimpse of huge iron supports curving like the ribs of a globe around a sphere of milky glass. Golden lights flickered from within the mechanism, then died away. Then the door fell closed.
    "They are going to wipe the floor with us," Nestor groaned.
    "What are you talking about?" Kiram asked, still thinking about the majesty of the mechanism he'd glimpsed. "Who are you talking about?"
    "The upperclassmen." Nestor looked at Kiram as if there could have been no other answer. "Scholar Donamillo just said that Master Ignacio had pulled them out of their free hours just to tutor us. They are going to be furious!"
    "You don't think that they'd actually hurt us, though?" Even as Kiram asked the question he realized that hurting the two of them was bound to be part of their training. No doubt the more Kiram or Nestor annoyed any given upperclassman, the more often he would seize on the opportunity to train them a little too hard.
    "We are bent over a barrel," Nestor said flatly.
    Kiram simply nodded. The two of them made their way from the main building to the dark low structure of the sparring house like condemned prisoners.

Chapter Eight
    L ike the stables, the sparring house seemed suffused with the living presence of its occupants. Here, instead of horse feed and leather, the heat and sweat of men filled the air. The pungent scent saturated the gray mats of the wrestling ring as well as the sawdust-strewn floor. Even with windows all along the length of the gallery propped open, the heat and smell of men remained.
    Here and there dark spatters stained the sawdust. He had always wondered if those spatters were blood and felt afraid to touch them. Now that he had some idea of how easy it was to draw blood, he realized that the sawdust was there in the first place to catch the dribbles of gore and keep the floors beneath from becoming stained.
    "At least we aren't the only ones," Nestor commented.
    Master Ignacio had listed three other second-year students for intensive training. They lounged beside the wrestling ring, standing in the shafts of hard light that fell through the open windows. Kiram knew all of them by sight but not well enough to have any opinion of them as individuals. They moved among the mass of second-year students who snickered at Kiram's accent and squinted at Nestor, mocking his poor vision. They were neither instigators nor protestors, just followers.
    All three possessed a blandness of appearance that made them hard to tell apart. Pale, splotchy skin, lank brown hair, long faces and bodies like marionettes with all their weight built up in their jutting joints. None of them were as slender as Kiram