POV: szeth
Summary
*Twenty-six years ago.* Young Szeth arrives at the Shin soldier camp on the ridge near the Stoneward monastery, holding to his mother's side and overwhelmed by the *people-smell* of the place. Black smoke pours from the forges, the cries of practising men carry from the yard, and the ground here is stone — close to the great aboshi, the mountains and the spren that are their souls. His family has come with him: Elid resentful, Neturo silent at the family's side, Zeenid crying as she palms him a small wool sheep that smells of Molli — pelt the boy had thought buried. He pockets it and steps onto the stone.
Betheth-son-Vetor — *captain of recruitment and discipline*, burly, dark-haired, reading from a rolled scroll — welcomes the family in the cheerful tones of a man who has not been told what is actually happening. Only Szeth was conscripted; his parents are *volunteers*, which is rare. Father refuses to be split off and follows the boy to assessment. As they go, Neturo pries at Betheth about the camp's methods — *beatings* enforce both discipline and personal kit — and observes the place with the eye of a man who once herded shepherds. He shakes his head when Betheth explains that recruits are *deviants*. *Beating one sheep rarely makes the others obedient.* Betheth has no reply.
At the assessment line, Szeth is asked to surrender his coloured kerchief. No splash of true colour graces the camp; the uniforms are dark brown. Handing it over feels like surrendering something vital. The moment it leaves his hand, a Voice speaks inside his head — a voice he cannot pin to male or female, calm and approving: *this is where you belong.* Apprehensive, Szeth asks what it is and gets no answer.
Betheth hands each boy in a line of five a spear and points at a row of dead sheep on wheeled racks. *Pretend those are enemies. Subtract them before they reach the houses beyond.* If they refuse, they do not go home — once sent to the camp, no recruit ever does. The older boys boil forward and stab in shouting, near-ecstatic frenzy; Szeth notes that they *seemed to need this.* The Voice returns and warns him that the *test* is self-fulfilling: it asks recruits to attack all-out and uses the result as proof they were always broken. *Make a single surgical strike at the neck.* Szeth obeys. The spear-tip goes in until it grinds on bone. He steps back.
Betheth is not impressed — *that's all you have?* — and tries to steer the boy onto talking about the Shin soldier he killed back home with a rock. The Voice feeds Szeth a script line by line: *That man was sick. I did what I needed to make sure the sickness didn't spread. My tool was a poor one for the task, but I needed to defend myself.* Szeth repeats each line, ad-libbing apology for using the rock. Betheth takes notes. Behind him Neturo folds his arms and looks across the camp like a man who has found a problem to solve.
Betheth sets a hand on Szeth's shoulder. *Let's talk to the camp's general. You might find a better home in officer training.* Szeth follows him away from the line, the Voice silent in his ear and the wool sheep warm in his pocket — still wondering, *was there a plan? Were there answers? Someone watching?*
The intake itself has placed things into Szeth's head he cannot yet fit together. Zeenid and Elid will get the camp choice every non-soldier family does: cook, scrub floors, tend the animals for slaughter, or — after a year — apply to the Stoneward monastery to train as acolyte shamans, where women may also take up the spear. Generations of soldiers' families, when they age out, drift into city guard work or lumberyards — the *stabler individuals*, Betheth says, with the implication hanging that Szeth's family will not be among them. The whole camp has the lazy air of a poorly watched flock: half the men lounging while others spar, women at the cookfires, others at the laundry racks. *The Farmer said humans choose, and are defined by that choice*, Szeth thinks. *Is that true even here, in this place of bloody stone and men who subtract?*