Book 4. Chapter 29
The next morning, the Lance exited the tents with such a quick intensity that Brin was sure most of them had already been awake before the trumpets.
This time, there was no fumbling around looking for supplies and no worrying about who would do what. Meredydd had agreed to do the armor for the three members of the Lance who'd been called out on doing a bad job, and Cowl had been convinced to relent and let the Lance use his sharpening stones as needed, without supervision, with Brin promising to fund a replacement if they ruined his nice one. He in turn was able to give his full attention to packing up the tents, and while he still was a bit more of a micromanager than Brin would've liked, he wasn't near as much of an impediment as he'd been the day before.
Govannon and Anwir had been chosen to sleep in their armor, so after sharpening their swords they left directly to start on Cid and Hedrek's horses. Then they'd prepare their own, and then help with anyone else who was late to arrive.
For Brin's part, he mostly shouted at everyone. He'd decided to split his mind, keeping only a quarter for himself, and use the rest of his mental space to assign a watcher to each of the men.
The last touch was a Directed Thread running a Mouth Manager, so that each of his split minds could get a chance to give directions. The result made Brin feel kind of cool.
"Govannon, sharpen first! We need you at those horses. Anwir, slow down and do it right! Hedrek, that buckle is wrong. Undo it and try again! Rhun, help Hedrek. Cowl, leave it, Aeron knows what he's doing! Aeron, not like that! For the love of Solia, I just told Cowl that you know what you're doing! Cid, sir, if you don't mind, Rhun and Hedrek need help."
The result was something even more chaotic than yesterday, but it was also faster. Everyone was in the right place, and they were all working at the same time instead of being bottlenecked by Cowl. When the last of the men set off towards the corrals to get the horses, they were among the first instead of the last.
They lost some time against the other teams while the men were preparing the horses, but even this was a positive sign; they were actually taking the time to be thorough and he knew the judges were looking for that.
When Brin rode with the rest of the men and found their place in line, they found that they were faster than nearly half of the other Lances instead of being among the last. That was better than it sounded, because the other Lances had also all improved from their performance yesterday. The competitive spirit was infecting more than just their Lance.