*
Eleanor paced the hall as she waited for the second years to arrive after breakfast. Greg, Nate, and Raf came in together; Raf winked at her and smiled.
“What’s up, Eleanor?” Greg asked. “Come back for some extra training?”
“Not quite. I’m taking over Ivan’s classes for a few weeks while he’s up in the mountains.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “Really.”
“But you’ve only just graduated,” Nate said. “How do we know you’re that much better than we are?”
“Because Ivan asked her to do this,” Raf said, clipping Nate across the head. “And he knows what he’s doing.”
“Would you rather teach it yourself?” Eleanor asked. “If you think you’re almost at my level?”
“No, I didn’t say that. It’s just a bit unusual. That’s all I was saying.”
“Well, you can tell me what you think at the end of the lesson. Meanwhile, we’ve got work to do.”
The others had filtered into the room while they were talking, and a quick head count confirmed to Eleanor that she had all the students she was expecting.
“Okay, let’s get started.” She clapped her hands together to get their attention. “I’m taking over Ivan’s classes for a while, but he’s caught me up on what you’re studying and where you’re all up to, so it shouldn’t be too disruptive. We’re going to start on the balance board – you’ve done this before, so at least you shouldn’t have any trouble hitting the targets. Nate, since you’re feeling so confident do you want to come up first?”
The balance board constituted a plank which rested across a thick log, and just standing on it without falling was a trick that required a fair degree of practice. Nate clearly hadn’t been practising and he wobbled, struggling to keep his balance while he aimed three knives at the three boards Eleanor had arranged along the wall.
She gave him a score based on his performance across the three targets, and called on a scrawny lad called Stefan to go next. By the time everyone had taken a turn – with only a couple of them falling flat on their backs in the attempt – she felt she had a fair idea of their relative strengths in agility, if nothing else.
She gave them a balance board each, after that, and their own targets to aim at. She watched as they practised a series of shots in quick succession. Much as Ivan had told her, their skill was acceptable but none of them exhibited much polish. After a full morning of balancing and throwing, she sent the exhausted students off to lunch and started to pack everything away.
“Great job,” Raf said, coming to help her with the boards.
“I’ll get better,” she said. “It’s hard to take over in the middle of something like this.”
“No, you did fine. Are you coming for lunch?”
“If we’re quick – I need to set things up for the first years.”