23 - Hida's Back in Action

                                        

                                              
Just under a month after being attached and Hida was back to training with her cohort. As she'd told Farran, the Information Bureau had conducted their interviews, and once the Truther used their magic to verify who was lying, Hida had been righteously declared the victim. She knew Alaric had pushed for the maximum punishment allowed against children, 10 lashes and a complete expulsion from the Knight's training. That wasn't exactly what had been granted though, as the tragic death of Celinia Lazzarini at the start of the Season still bought the family some mercy. His behaviour was declared an outburst of misplaced grief, and he was given 5 lashes and had to voluntarily withdraw from the Knight's training for this year. But he'd be allowed to join next year's cohort even if he would be Debuting. 
Alaric had been enraged at the supposed failure of justice, but Hida wasn't bothered by it. If the Truther had determined that Fabrizio's actions could be pardoned with these punishments, she'd be satisfied with it. In the end, all he'd been able to do was cut her up a bit and ruin his own reputation; Hida would rather focus on herself than spend energy worrying about him. 
Especially as there was a new Knight Instructor, and this one seemed to have a full jousting lance shoved up his back end. 
It'd started the moment Hida had arrived to her first day back. She'd realized that three of the female commoner cadets had dropped out as the rest of her cohort came to welcome her back. And both Antonia Fidalgo, who was pregnant, and Adessa looked beaten down. 
"And here I thought I'd cut off all the dead weight I could," the new Knight Instructor called out, everyone looking tired at his arrival, even Anton who was top cadet. 
If the man wasn't so obviously trying to provoke a response, Hida would have commented but she held her peace. The Knight Instructor could make nasty comments all he wanted, Hida just had to learn what she could from him anyways.
Pain and endurance, that's what Knight Denerim was teaching them.
Every class started with a full sprint until someone slowed down; whoever failed first was subjected to verbal abuse and automatically volunteered to be his demonstration assistant for the day. That often meant having to let him beat the daylights out of you while he demonstrated the proper techniques. And he seemed to take extra time and creativity to break down the female cadets, endlessly criticizing their weaker bodies and emotional minds, and he seemed personally offended by Antonia's now obviously pregnant belly. He couldn't physically target her, but his venom was expressed verbally and with purposeful silences; Hida saw how he could punish her by simply acting like she didn't exist in his lessons, her whole cohort learned and did what they could to undermine his wrath. It didn't matter that he was giving them tasks and skills to try and master that were for advanced classes, using their inevitable failures as proof of female inferiority; and as much as he ignored Antonia, Hida found herself a direct target as he often called her a literal baby with a sword. She was the youngest, shortest, and since she'd been off for the three weeks of investigation and healing, he'd deemed she was the weakest too. 
Even when she could beat everyone else consistently except Anto and Bruno. It didn't matter that she had consistently outpaced Ghanam, Andre, Cosmo, and Baltan; instead he used her success against them for failing against a little girl. According to Denerim, it should be easy to beat Hida because she could never match their natural strength, meaning he believed they were letting Hida, Antonia or Adessa beat them because otherwise it'd be impossible. They boys weren't spared his poor attitude, if any of them dared try defending the girls, they'd be given an immediate demonstration. Bruno was Hida's dear friend, but after he'd had his arm nearly broken by Denerim in the last demonstration, she'd told him to let the man be vile and just ignore it. 
"How are your so untouched by it?" Bruno demanded, looking ready to try and use his size to beat an adult man into respectfulness. 
"On day I will be a Knight," Hida shrugged, "I will need to learn to ignore this kind of thing, so all Denerim is doing is helping me build my mental fortifications against it now."