The red wax seal on the notice nailed to the door of Annex 4 was still tacky when Toby Mallow tumbled down the final flight of stairs.
“We’re ruined,” Toby announced. He skidded across the damp flat stone slabs in his wool socks. He grabbed his red expense ledger like a shield. “Officially, legally, and exactly ruined. Look at this!”
He shoved a stiff document into Arthur’s face. The ink at the top bore the heavy header of the Ironfang Academy Office of the Bursar.
“Pay freeze,” Toby gasped, glasses sliding down his nose. “Dean Pendelton invoked Office Code 88-B. The backup surcharge of fifteen thousand credits is unpaid. Because of that, your monthly cadet living allowance of eight hundred credits is suspended. No cash. No mess vouchers. No free grain. Arthur, we have eighty-two credits! Grimm eats three pounds of dense protein a day just to maintain his bone thickness! In twelve days, we’ll be eating boiled boot leather!”
Arthur didn’t look up from the zinc table. He was using a fine oilstone to polish the edge of an eight-inch amputation knife. He drew carbon steel across the stone with a rhythmic rasp.
“Put the ledger down, Toby,” Arthur said. “Boiled boot leather contains too much tannins and zero nutrition.”
“That was hyperbole!” Toby wailed, collapsing onto an overturned wooden packing crate. “I’m allowed hyperbole when our heat horizon is twelve days away! What do we do? Apologize to Pendelton? Offer to scrub Drake stables? Julian’s family would have us scrubbing scales with toothbrushes!”
Grimm lifted his head from his straw pallet by the hearth. He gave Toby a slow blink, yawned wide enough to display forty-four black glass-black teeth. Then he lowered his broad chin back down across the toes of Arthur’s spare boots with a low, rumbling sigh.
“We’re not apologizing to Pendelton,” Arthur said, testing the edge against paper scrap. “And we’re not paying fifteen thousand credits for sleeping next to an incinerator. Hand me the charter volume from the bottom shelf.”
Toby hauled a massive, calfskin-bound tome from a crate. Then he dropped it onto the table with a heavy thud. The Founding Charter and Military Bylaws of the Ironfang Vanguard Academy, drafted one hundred and forty years ago after the Great Rust Incursion.
Arthur turned the yellowed thick parchment pages. He stopped at Section 8, Subsection C.
“Read this,” Arthur said.
Toby leaned forward. “‘Section 8: Emergency Triage, Veterinary Sanitation, and Utility Beast Upkeep.’ Wait... ‘Any matriculated tamer cadet possessing checked trauma test credentials who establishes a working sanitation and beast-doctor triage station for Academy service beasts shall be chosen an Essential Sanitation Officer.’”
Toby blinked. “Essential Sanitation Officer? Like the sewer wardens?”
“Keep reading.”
“‘Said officer,’” Toby read aloud, his voice rising, “‘shall be exempt from all town, residential, and kennel surcharges levied by the academic council during active service. Plus, the work-yard shall be granted direct supply order privileges for Grade-2 draft rations, clean heating coal, and medical-grade disinfectants from the Central Logistics Depot, chargeable to Academy Upkeep Overhead.’”
Toby stared at the page, then at Arthur.
“Pendelton froze our student account,” Arthur said. “The student account is managed by the Academic Dean. The Central Logistics Depot is run by the Garrison Supply boss Corps. Pendelton has zero power over upkeep fuel and draft rations. Under Section 8, the academy legally owes us coal and meat for keeping their work animals alive.”
“Does anyone actually use this bylaw?” Toby whispered.
“Not for forty years,” Arthur said, unrolling his canvas tool kit. “Noble cadets consider service beasts dirty. They only want to treat pureblood war-drakes and thunder-hawks. But there are over two hundred draft oxen, sanitation hounds, and fire mules working beneath this academy. And their handlers have nowhere to take them.”
He spent the next two hours systematically transforming the abandoned stone chamber into a functional beast-doctor clinic. Arthur scrubbed the central zinc slab with antiseptic wash, hung kerosene lanterns from overhead channel brackets. Then he lined up his razor knife rolls, bone scrapers, and stitch spools in strict order of work. Grimm lay flat across the threshold, ears perked toward the distant rhythm of foundry steam.
By the fifth bell, the iron-banded door of Annex 4 stood wide open.
A hand-painted wooden shingle hung from the iron sconce: Sub-Basement Triage. Service Beasts & Draft Stock. No Appointments. Cash or Supply Barter.
The first visitor arrived twenty minutes later.
He was a thickset man named Garek, senior boiler stoker for Bio-Furnaces 01 through 04. His trousers were stiff with soot, his forearms scarred by burns. He was dragging a huge Iron-Rank Draft Ox (Bos Ferreus) by a frayed halter.
The ox weighed over a ton, trembling wildly, refusing to bear weight on its left hind limb. The hock joint was swollen to the size of a bucket, weeping yellow fluid through cracked horn plates.
“They said a cadet set up shop down here,” Garek muttered, eyeing Grimm’s alert dark shape. “The upper clinic turned me away. Said a draft ox wasn’t worth an aether-salve, told me to cull him and sign for a replacement next quarter. But this beast hauled my grandfather’s coal carts. He has two good years left if his leg doesn’t rot off.”
“Bring him to the center grate,” Arthur said, stepping forward.
He clicked down his Zeiss monocle magnifying glass and ran bare hands down the inflamed leg.
“Suppurative pododermatitis with lateral knee popped joint,” Arthur diagnosed in thirty seconds. “He slipped on grease in the fire chute. The kneecap slid out, and infection settled in the joint capsule.”
“Can you fix it?” Garek asked. “I don’t have gold, cadet. Ten coppers and a melted rock waste voucher.”
“Keep your coppers,” Arthur said. “Toby, fetch the three-inch trochar, antiseptic wash, and boiling water.”
With Grimm standing quietly at the ox’s shoulder to calm the shivering titan, Arthur lanced the abscess, evacuating purulent fluid into the drainage grate and flushing the cavity with hot carbolic solution until it ran clear.
Then came the reduction.
Arthur braced his shoulder against the ox’s stifle, gripped the tibial crest, and instructed: “Pull his head left. Firmly.”
As the ox shifted weight, Arthur applied forty pounds of sudden aimed pressure.
A dull clack echoed through the chamber. The displaced kneecap snapped back into its body groove.
The ox gave a deep bellow and planted its hoof flat on the granite. It stood on all four legs without trembling.
Garek stared in disbelief. “By the anvil. You set it. Clean as a whistle.”
“Keep the bandage dry for four days,” Arthur said, washing his hands in lye water. “Flush with salt water twice daily. Toby, log the treatment under Section 8.”
Toby stamped the supply order form with Arthur’s Bronze Vanguard seal.
An official pop-up alert resolved across Arthur’s vision:
Word traveled through the service tunnels like steam through a pipe.
Within two hours, four more boiler workers and a stable groom arrived. One brought a terrier with a torn flank. Another led a mule with intestinal colic. Arthur treated each with steady, cold and exact focus.
And the service staff didn’t leave with empty hands. Garek returned at twilight. Then, he brought four boiler apprentices hauling two hundred pounds of premium hard coal and a crate packed with twenty pounds of fresh beef shank trimmings.
“Pendelton can freeze his own spit,” Garek spat on the threshold. “If Annex 4 needs fuel or meat, come to Fire 01. The boiler crews have your back, Cadet Vance.”
The heavy footfalls of the boiler crew faded down the vaulted hall, their grateful murmurs swallowed by the surrounding hum of the deep machinery. Arthur wiped his razor-sharp shears in a carbolized rag. He set them neatly into the canvas roll. Meanwhile, Grimm nudged a metal water bowl toward the corner with his snout.
The quiet victory in the basement didn’t shield Arthur from martial reality.
At the eighth bell, Arthur stood in Underground Gym 03, the scent of sweat, chalk, and high-pressure fluid thick in the hall.
Teacher Valerie Koslov was waiting for him.
Known across frontline regiments as “The Trench Hammer,” Koslov was built like a bunker. Her dark hair was cropped in a buzz-cut, a jagged scar crossed her left cheekbone. Her left arm was a matte-black prosthetic forged from carbon-fiber and silver-steel alloy. Resting across her shoulder was a six-foot air-powered riot lance tipped with a heavy, blunt counter-moving hammerhead.
“Vance,” Koslov barked. “Drop your kit. Pick up a training stave. Let’s see if your hands are as good at keeping your own skull intact as they’re at carving dead pigs.”
Arthur unclipped his nine-inch heavy dark metal stiletto and stepped onto the rubberized grid. Grimm trotted to the edge of the mat, ears pinned back, a low diesel growl shaking through the floor.
“A knife against a lance?” Koslov scoffed, eyes sharpening. “You’re either arrogant or suicidal.”
“In a trench hall, a six-foot polearm has three inches of turning clearance before it strikes timber walls,” Arthur said evenly. “A stiletto has infinite clearance.”
“Good answer,” Koslov said. “Now survive it.”
Her carbon-fiber arm hissed as air-powered valves engaged. He drove the riot lance forward in a blistering thrust toward Arthur’s chest bone.
Arthur didn’t try to block. Blocking six feet of heavy steel powered by a combat prosthetic invited a shattered collar bone.
Instead, Arthur stepped inside the line. His lead foot pivoted, his torso rotating by less than three inches. The heavy lance head whistled through empty air. His left forearm came up. His heavy was dark metal stiletto sliding along the lance’s steel shaft with a screech of shearing sparks, guiding the striking force past his hip.
Arthur closed the distance, driving an open-palm strike toward Koslov’s throat.
CLANG.
Koslov’s black clockwork arm snapped across her chest, catching Arthur’s palm with a solid metal thud that sent blast waves through his wrist. Arthur swept his heel toward her ankle. That forced the veteran teacher to take a hard step back to maintain balance.
Grimm let out a short, sharp bark from the sidelines. A hearing feint that drew Koslov’s gaze for a heartbeat.
Arthur used that split second to disengage, slipping five paces back into a balanced low guard, breathing evenly.
Koslov lowered the lance, her scarred face breaking into a grim smirk.
“Not bad, Vance,” Koslov said, rolling her clockwork shoulder with a whir of gears. “You fight like a trench rat. Low, dirty, and you don’t waste energy on tournament posturing. Most cadets stand tall and wait to be applauded. You move like someone who expects a sniper behind every pillar.”
“Survival is primarily a matter of spatial discipline,” Arthur replied, resetting his grip.
Koslov’s smile faded into cold seriousness. She leaned the lance against her hip and stepped closer.
“Pendelton knows you invoked Section 8,” Koslov said quietly. “The bursar received the supply order slip from the Central Depot an hour ago. The Dean threw a crystal decanter across his office.”
“The regulation is binding,” Arthur said.
“The regulation protects your bread and coal, Vance. It doesn’t protect your neck in the arena,” Koslov warned, tapping her clockwork chest. “The Beast Test Trials start in four days. Pendelton and Gregory Vance have already submitted the bracket matchups. They aren’t putting you through an obstacle course. They’ve rigged the live-combat bracket to draw an unlisted, combat-frenzied Grade-C Ironhide Mangler.”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed slightly. “An arena accident.”
“Exactly,” Koslov said grimly. “They’ll claim the beast lost holding during the test. By the time the exam guards engage crushing weight fields, you and your hound are supposed to be paste on the floorboards. Be ready, Vance. In this academy, rules only keep you alive until someone decides you’re too expensive to ignore.”
“I’m always ready, Teacher,” Arthur said.
He offered a crisp salute, sheathed his stiletto, and turned back toward the stairs. In the dim stairwell, Grimm fell into step beside him, his dark shoulder brushing Arthur’s knee as they dropped into the deep shadows of Annex 4.