Free Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan Page A

He'd shown them, all right.
    The door at the end of the dormitory crashed back on its hinges and heavy boots sounded on the bare floorboards. Horace raised himself on one elbow and groaned inwardly.
    Bryn, Alda and Jerome were marching toward him between the neat rows of perfectly made beds. They were second-year cadets and they seemed to have decided that their life's work was to make Horace's life miserable. Quickly, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, but not quickly enough.
    "What are you doing lying in bed?" Alda yelled at him. "Who told you it was lights out?" Bryn and Jerome grinned. They enjoyed Alda's verbal sallies. They weren't anywhere near as original. But they made up for their lack of verbal invention with a heavy reliance on the physical side of things.
    "Twenty push-ups!" Bryn ordered. "Now!"
    Horace hesitated a moment. He was actually bigger than any of them. If it came to a confrontation, he was sure he could beat any one of them. But they were three. And besides, they had the authority of tradition behind them. As far as he knew, it was normal practice for second-year to treat first-year cadets like this, and he could imagine the scorn of his classmates if he were to complain to authority about it. Nobody likes a crybaby, he told himself as he began to drop to the ground. But Bryn had seen the hesitation and perhaps even the fleeting light of rebellion in his eyes.
    "Thirty push-ups!" he snapped. "Do it now!"
    His muscles protesting, Horace dropped full length to the floor and began the push-ups. Immediately, he felt a foot in the small of his back, bearing down on him as he tried to raise himself from the floor.
    "Come on, Baby!" It was Jerome now. "Put a bit of effort into it!" Horace struggled through a push-up. Jerome had developed the skill of maintaining just the right amount of pressure. Any more and Horace would never have been able to complete the push-up. But the second-year cadet also kept pressing down as Horace started back down again. That made the exercise all the harder. He had to maintain the same amount of upward pressure as he lowered himself, otherwise he would be driven hard against the floor. Groaning, he completed the first, then started another.
    "Stop crying, Baby!" Alda yelled at him. Then he moved to Horace's bed.
    "Didn't you make this bed this morning?" he yelled. Horace, struggling up again against the pressure of Jerome's foot, could only grunt in reply.
    "What? What?" Alda bent so that his face was only centimeters away. "What's that, Baby? Speak up!"
    "Yes… sir," Horace managed to whisper. Alda shook his head in an exaggerated movement.
    "No sir, I think!" he said, standing upright again. "Look at this bed. It's a pigsty!" Naturally, the covers were a little rumpled where Horace had dropped across the bed. But it would have taken only a second or two to straighten them. Grinning, Bryn cottoned on to Alda's plan. He stepped forward and kicked the bed over on its side, spilling mattress, blankets and pillows across the floor. Alda joined in, kicking the blankets across the floor.
    "Make the bed again!" he yelled. Then a light gleamed in his eye and he turned to the next bed in line, kicking it over as well, scattering the bedclothes and mattresses as he'd done to Horace's.
    "Make them all again!" he yelled, delighted with his idea. Bryn joined him, grinning widely, as they tumbled the twenty beds, scattering blankets, pillows and mattresses around the room. Horace, struggling still through the thirty push-ups, gritted his teeth. Perspiration ran into his eyes, stinging them and blurring his vision.
    "Crying, are you, Baby?" he heard Jerome yell. "Go home and cry to Mummy then!"
    His foot shoved viciously into Horace's back, sending him sprawling on the floor.
    "Baby doesn't have a mummy," Alda said. "Baby's a Ward brat. Mummy ran off with a riverboat sailor."
    Jerome bent down to him again. "Is that right, Baby?" he hissed. "Did Mummy run away and leave