CHAPTER 22: TRAINING FOR BATTLE AND QUIET MOMENTS

At dawn, Summers would join the warriors—not merely to fight alongside them, but to study them. Every shift in stance, every feint and counter, every sharp intake of breath before a killing strike—he would absorb them all while pushing his own body to its limits. The yard would become his classroom: the rasp of steel on leather, the scuff of boots on packed earth, the grunt of effort before a decisive blow. By the time true battle came, he would know his enemies by sound alone.

In the heat of midday, we would strip away all comforts. Hand to hand, blade to blade—no mercy, no hesitation. I didn’t need him to master every weapon by week’s end. I needed him to respect them—to understand their weight, their balance, their purpose. If he could pick up a sword, a spear, a dagger, and wield it like a warrior rather than a fool, that would be enough. The rest would come with time.

And when the sun finally bled into dusk, we would embrace the dark.

Tonight, I would teach him how to listen.

Not just with his ears but with his whole body.

Darkness strips away sight, sharpening other senses. Tonight, we start with awareness—how to track what you can’t see. Under the cover of darkness, we’ll refine his ability to move unseen and interpret his surroundings. Tonight, we begin with spatial awareness—how to sense movement, breath, and intent without sight, just as I did when I detected him behind me during our spar.

For the first hour, we started with a light sparring session to see what he retained from earlier, and he did better than I expected. He remembered a little more than half of the techniques I taught him. I will continue to train on old stuff while adding new. Eventually, it will become muscle memory.

After we sparred, I gave him a break before I had him sit down in front of me on the dirt floor of the training yard.

“Tonight, I want to work on surrounding awareness. Your enemy will always fight dirty to survive, and so should you. Sometimes they will try to remove one of your senses, starting with sight, hearing, and smell, because those are the senses we rely heavily on during battle. They will throw dirt in your eyes to blind you, hit you hard enough in a certain area to deafen you, or break your nose to prevent you from smelling your enemy. So, we are going to start training without those senses one by one until we eliminate all of them while fighting,” I explained, and Summers looked at me like I grew a third eyeball. He was having a hard time believing me.

“There is no use in arguing. So, what do we do first?” Summers asked. He was just going with the flow at this point.

“Now you’re catching on. First, we are going to start with loss of sight. Here is a blindfold; I want you to put it on,” I said as I handed him a heavy-duty, thick black blindfold.

Sometimes I would climb to the top of a tall building and use this to cut off all sense of sight and just listen. When you clear your mind and learn to just listen, you will find that the world has such unusual but beautiful sounds that we normally don’t notice.

“Okay, I am ready now,” said Summers. He tried to make it seem like he was doing this for my sake, but I could tell he was very curious to learn this. From what I could tell, they don’t teach this in their training.

“You need to be completely relaxed, clear your mind of any thoughts, chores, worries, everything. I want you to take five deep breaths in, then let them out.” I sat next to Summers and closed my eyes. I took the same deep breaths with him.

I opened one eye to check his body posture, and he looked much more relaxed, but there was still some tension in his shoulders.

“Good, just remember you are in a safe place. No one will attack you here; I will not let them.” For some reason, that did it; the remaining tension in his shoulders left him.

In a very soft and almost too quiet voice, so I wouldn’t break his concentration, I closed my eyes again and spoke to him. “Now, I want you to take a few minutes to just listen to your surroundings. Listen to the wind blowing through the trees. Listen to the crickets in the nearby grass, the owls waking up for the night, and the neighborhood cat meowing for food. Listen to the water running down the small creek in the distance and the deer walking through the leaves.”

We sat there for a good five minutes, just listening to everything.

“It is so peaceful,” said Summers softly.

“You will find that nature is peaceful and beautiful. You just have to be willing to shut out everything to listen,” I said honestly.

“Next, I am going to get up and start walking around. I want you to track me. At first, I will make my movements obvious, but then I am going to slowly start to quiet my movements and go into stealth mode. Once I am done, I will slowly make myself present again to not startle you. I'll then have you tell me the path I took.” I got up and made sure to ruffle my clothes, and with heavy yet normal, average person's footsteps, I walked to the entrance.

I walked to the weapons shed that is straight across the yard from the entrance. I made sure to have heavy footsteps and rustle my clothing.

Once I got to the shed, I walked to the right to the shower house. I kept the heavy footsteps but did not ruffle my clothes. Once I got to the shower house, I turned and walked to the opposite wall across from the shower house and made some lighter footsteps, but still audible if you paid attention to my movements. On this path, I walked right beside Summers.

Lastly, I went into stealth mode. I made no sounds. I quieted my breathing, slowed my heart rate. I bent my knees and walked heel to toe to silence my footsteps. I made extra sure that my clothes did not rub against each other. I was a ghost as I walked straight to him. Once I was standing right behind him, I waited for a few minutes before backtracking my steps. Once I went to the wall, I walked in the same manner as the first exercise, so he knew I was coming.

Once I got to him, I said, “You can take off the blindfold for now.” Summers removed the blindfold and looked at me before I continued, “Where did I go, and what were your observations of my movements?”

Summers looked around, then spoke, “First, you walked to the front gate. I could hear your heavy footsteps and rustling of clothes. Then,” he looked to his right, “you went to the weapons shed. I could only hear your footsteps. Then I heard your footsteps quietly as you walked in the direction of the shower house, but I couldn’t tell if you made it. At that point, I lost you, but heard you again as you walked by me. Then nothing for a long time until I heard you behind me by your heavy footsteps and clothes rubbing together.” He looked down, then said, “I did not hear you in stealth mode.” He sounded disappointed in himself.

“Hey, it’s okay. The man who taught me everything I knew, couldn’t hear me when I was in stealth mode either. He is 10 times better than me. Over time, with practice, eventually you will too. You are a fast learner,” I said with some respect in my tone. This caused him to look up and smile.

“I’m sorry for being a jerk the first time we met and during our session earlier today,” was all he said.

“It’s okay, but just remember, never think you understand someone until you know what they are capable of. Most people will surprise you once you get to know them,” I replied with a small smile.

“Okay, next, you are going to put the blindfold on, and I am going to say ‘ready.’ Once I do, I will start to perform an action. I want you to listen and do your best to figure out what I am doing. When I say ‘stop,’ then you know I am done doing the action, and I want you to tell me what you think I was doing. For example, ready,” I started to do jumping jacks. Then, when I stopped, “Stop. Now you will be listening to my movements and say ‘jumping jacks.’ Make sense?”

Summers nodded his head and put his blindfold back on. I did some jumping jacks for the first activity to see if he was listening to the sounds when he had his sight. It took him a minute, but eventually he got it.

I then pulled out one of my knives and waved it around. He should have been listening to the sound of metal whooshing through the air. It is not an obvious sound, and it is one that he will have to really listen to when training in the morning. I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get that one.

Then I got out my sword, which he recognized the sound of when I was removing the blade. So, I put it down on the ground.

Next, I took out my bow and an arrow, which he got correctly. He heard the arrows rubbing together and the sound of my hand gripping the handle. Then I kept them and drew the arrow back and released it. The thud on the target made him jump, which made both of us laugh.

Lastly, I waved my sword around, which he got after talking through what he was hearing.

“Good, you may remove the blindfold.” As he removed the blindfold, I continued, “Not too bad. You did miss my knives; I was waving them around like this,” I performed the same action as earlier, “listening to the whistling of the blade cutting through the air. Good job talking through what you heard on the last one.” Summers smiled a true, genuine smile at the praise.

“We will meet again tomorrow for an afternoon lesson and a nightly lesson. I will let you train in the mornings with the warriors. While training and going throughout your day, I also want you to listen to the different sounds, not only during training, but also to the sounds that people make while performing their day-to-day activities. Keep a list of the sounds you hear and what they were doing, and we will go over it tomorrow night.”

Summers nodded his head, then I dismissed him to go shower, then get a dinner plate from the pack kitchen that I asked Julie to keep warm for us.

After walking to the pack house, I grabbed my own plate and ate in the kitchen before heading upstairs to go to bed.

I walked into the sitting area in our shared room, where my mates are and plopped down between Dean and Jason. I lay my head in Dean's lap and my feet in Jason's. Dean started to play with my hair while they talked about something. Honestly, I wasn’t paying attention. Jason took off my shoes and socks and started to massage my feet, and it was not long until I fell asleep.

It was just after dark when I was woken up and led to the bathroom for a shower. Dean and Jason washed me quickly, then tucked me back into bed, naked.

“Why am I naked?” I asked groggily.

With a chuckle, Jason answered, “For easier access.” This caused the others to chuckle.

“Jason is such a horndog,” giggled Cece.

“Hmmm,” was all I could say in response to them both, before drifting off to sleep.