The twenty-four base students gathered in a wide half-circle around the center chalk mark, close enough to hear the grit shift under Seyun’s boots. Up on the high terrace stone railing, Senior Elder Tor Ves still stayed by the pillar. Even so, two of the inner-court clerks had come down the side steps to listen from the shadow of the woodshed.
Seyun picked up a plain white-wax training staff from the rack. He tested its light, familiar flex with his right hand while keeping his braced left arm tucked comfortably near his ribs.
“What’s the stated purpose of the sixth base form?” Seyun asked, looking not at Joren or Hesh. But at a twelve-year-old boy in the middle row whose knuckles were white around his staff.
“Barring the Mountain Sluice,” the boy recited promptly from the primer. “To hold a narrow threshold or doorway for ten breaths against a charging weight without yielding the center stone.”
“Without yielding the center stone,” Seyun repeated. “Show me the textbook posture.”
The boy stepped out onto the gravel. He planted his right foot forward on the chalk cross, locked his back knee at forty-five degrees. Then he braced his staff diagonally across his chest with both thumbs turned inward. It was the exact shape carved into the wooden plaques along the porch wall. An even triangle designed to absorb a straight level ram at chest height.
