Read Guardians of Magessa (The Birthright Chronicles Book 1) for Free Online Page B

remained empty for most of the day.
    “So what’s with all the
activity around campus?” Cirro asked
Josiah as they walked.
    “They’re trying to make it look better—more presentable,” Josiah responded.
“You’ve been here less than a year so you don’t know this, but every year the
academy in Belvárd sends some of their students over here to visit. Don’t ask
me why. Maybe it’s supposed to build unity in the army or something. Anyway, the people in authority around
here find it necessary to make our campus look as nice as possible.”
    “So that’s what’s up,” Cirro exclaimed.
“Yesterday I had an altercation with a teacher and got put on a painting detail
as punishment. We put new coats of paint on a
dozen buildings. Now they look as good as new. You’d think the counsel was
coming to visit from all the things that are happening.”
    “Which means that you had better be on
extra good behavior,” Josiah said. “If they catch you doing anything out of
line, you’ll probably be planting flowers along twenty miles of road or
something like that.”
    “Yeah, not exactly something I want to
do,” Cirro responded, “especially not in this heat.”
    Josiah and Cirro entered the barracks and
were immediately assaulted by the strong stench of body odor. It wasn’t because the building had an inadequate
ventilation system; there was just no way to decrease the smell of one thousand
sweating men. Already the lunch bell was ringing ,
so Josiah and Cirro quickly changed into new clothes and headed for the mess hall.
    The dining facility was crammed past its
capacity as usual, but Josiah and Cirro had little trouble getting to their
table. They sat down and began to ravenously devour their meal.
    “There's never enough food at this place,” Josiah grumbled to Cirro. “It’s a
wonder we haven’t starved yet on these rations.”
     The hall was
suddenly plunged into silence, and Josiah looked up to see what had
caused it. A high-ranking instructor was
standing on a table at the front of the hall and holding up his hands for
silence. As soon as he got it, he began to speak.
    “Thank you,” he said. “I have an
announcement. The time has come for the annual academy
get-together. For those of you who are new here, that means that some of
the cadets from the academy in Belvárd are coming to visit our campus in the
next few days. As such, you are expected to be on your best behavior while they
are here. Also, all of the cadets will be expected to help make our campus
presentable. You will be assigned by companies to do different tasks; you will
hear about that from your company leader.”
    “What does that mean?” Cirro asked after
the instructor had gotten off the table.
    “Exactly what he said,” Josiah replied.
Then he smirked and added, “Also, since we’re having company, we’ll be getting
better meals.”
    “Well, you’re the barracks leader; so what
assignments do we have?” Cirro asked.
    Josiah shrugged. “I haven’t heard anything
about them yet, though I’ll probably find out pretty soon.”
    “This’ll be fun,” Cirro said
sarcastically. “I always thought that I’d end up planting twenty miles of
flowers, but I figured that it would be for something bad that I’d done.”
    “It’s your dream to plant twenty miles of
flowers?” Josiah asked as he rose from his seat. “I’ll be sure that no one else
steals that job from you.”
    ******
    The mess hall bustled with activity as
those who had finished their meal left and those who were on KP cleaned up.
Senndra sidestepped two of the cadets headed to the kitchen with massive stacks
of dishes. She trotted across an open area and squeezed past two other cadets who were talking. She pushed her
way out the mess hall doors and glanced around. Rita was nowhere in sight. 
Senndra figured that she would be in their dorm room since there were no
classes for two hours after lunch and the morning classes always tired Rita out . She