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Jon awoke as the red sun began to rise over the eastern horizon turning the sky a deep violet.

They didn’t kill us, he thought, and they didn’t send us away. Few in this hellish desert would have done that for us and I must remember that when they ask me to die for them.

Jon stood and walked a short distance to relieve himself. When he turned, Thorn was there. Jon had known many good fighters and he had trained very well, yet he never heard Thorn arrive.

Jon looked into the huge Voth’s eyes, black pupils and irises. He looked down at the tattoos that crossed the large man’s chest. He saw the line of small scars that ran down Thorn’s left breast, each one marking a death by his hand in battle.

There were over one hundred and thirty of them. Few outside of the Voth tribes knew what the scars meant, but Jon was one of those few.

“The mindwalkers don’t just show you something or speak to you,” said Thorn.

“I know,” said Jon.

“The Voth used their art on commanders in your army to bend their will, learn of your plans, and make them betray you,” Thorn continued. He paused and

narrowed his eyes at Jon.

“How do you know that she isn’t doing that to you right now?” Thorn said.

“How do you know that she didn’t twist your will to force you to kill your friend? How do you know that you are not a puppet for a young girl? How do you know you act on your own? How do you know if you really love her?”

Jon looked at the man a long time. He was painfully aware that he left his gun belt at his bedroll. He felt the offhand dagger’s weight in the small of his back.

The feel of it reassured him. Thorn’s words, however, did not.

“I don’t,” said Jon. “I can only know how I feel right now. Perhaps she twists my mind. perhaps I truly love her. Does it matter? Either way the results are the same. I’d die to keep her out of the tower of the Eye.”

“What do you think?” Jon asked Thorn. “Do you think she is manipulating us for her own goal?”

Thorn stared at Jon for a long moment before speaking.

“No, I don’t,” Thorn paused again. “But I wanted to be sure.”

Jon and Thorn turned back to the rest of the group. Adrin still slept. As did the Kal. Vrenna stretched her body. Gods, she was beautiful, thought Jon. San’doro started a morning fire. Ca’daan awoke and hid behind a bush to move his

bowels.

Throughout the morning their eyes moved to Susan. She ate quietly, eyes on the ground. Jon sat by her and ruffled her hair. She squinted and grimaced. She was such a child in so many ways. Yet the glimpses of the things she had seen, the things they had done to her, they gave Jon nightmares for weeks. Thorn had moved to Vrenna and the two spoke briefly and then began to eat.

“Are you ready to train before our ride?” Jon asked Adrin. Adrin looked at him as he took another bite off his spit.

“I’m still sore from yesterday,” said Adrin.

“You’ll be even more sore tomorrow,” said Jon. “Today you’re going to fight the Kal.” The Kal smiled at Adrin. Jon hated that smile but Adrin clearly hated it more and that worked for Jon.

The Kal stood a head taller than Adrin, thicker, and clearly stronger. He took a cloth belt and wrapped it around a sturdy stick. Though less sinister than his war club, two hits on Adrin proved that it served the job well.

The information Jon had shared about Susan shook Adrin and his confidence lagged. That served well. He would learn more if he wasn’t so worried about impressing them so much. Still, it took a while to get near his normal speed. The Kal didn’t help much. Adrin stood ready, offhand dagger in front and rapier in his rear hand. The Kal feigned and Adrin reacted. The padded club hit Adrin’s

forearm close to the elbow. The offhand dagger went to the earth. Adrin bent to pick it up and the Kal hit him in the head sending him flat.

“Shite!” shouted Adrin. Keeping his eyes up, he stood and readied himself. The club sailed in, head over tail. Adrin cursed again and brought his arm up. The club fell harmlessly but the Kal was there. He palmed Adrin in the chest, taking his wind. Both rapier and dagger fell. Jon shook his head.

“What in the hells,” said Adrin, picking himself up again. “How do I fight this barbarian?”

“I’m sorry I’ve never had the proper schooling to not so quickly kick your arse,”

said the Kal. San’doro laughed.

“What advantage do you have over him?” asked Jon. “You’ll have to get used to the lack of any fighting style out here. You could be dueling beautifully until an arrow hits you in the back.”

Adrin stood and prepared again. The Kal shifted and moved, feigning both a throw and a swing. Adrin was watching his feet. That was good. It wasn’t enough though. The Kal swung in and Adrin caught it with his offhand dagger.

The Kal kicked low into Adrin’s thigh. Adrin grunted and went down to one knee. The Kal tangled both of Adrin’s arms, keeping the blades far away. He hit Adrin hard in the head with the back of his arm. If he had hit with his elbow, Adrin would be unconscious.

Adrin picked himself up again, a look of anger and frustration. Jon smiled. He went to the fire and picked up a pair of sticks, both charred black. He went up to Adrin, took his sword and dagger, and gave him the sticks. One he broke back to about the length of his forearm.

“There’s no good defense against a man of his size fighting the way he does.

Don’t worry about defending against him. Think about cutting him. I want you to mark him. No matter what he does to you, mark him. Keep the moves simple.

If you cut him it won’t matter.”

Adrin got the point. If he attempted to block or parry with the charred sticks, they would break. He still defended however. The Kal charged, stopped short, and kicked. The kick connected but not hard. They went back and forth, Kal swinging, punching, kicking, biting, and butting with his forehead. Adrin

bobbed, dove, spun, ducked and fell bruised to the ground.

Adrin grunted and the expression on his face continued to fall into frustration and hopelessness. But he stood again. The two sticks hung loose in his hands.

His knees were bent. The Kal came at him, club swinging high. Adrin ducked underneath, spun, and the two men grappled again. The Kal whirled and Adrin went skidding across the ground. But when he recovered, he smiled. A black line of ash ran across the Kal’s stomach.

They dueled again and again. Most often Adrin ended on his back in the dust but a few times he ended on his feet and each time he left a new mark of ash on the Kal’s large body.

As the morning matured, the two men stood facing each other. Adrin was breathing heavy but a dozen or more lines of black ash covered the Kal’s body.

“You’re getting it,” said Jon. He handed Adrin his sword and dagger.

“You fight better with those sticks than you did with the teatsword,” remarked the Kal, grinning his awful grin. Adrin scowled. They returned to the camp where their horses had been packed for the journey south.

They spent two days crossing the barrens, the bluffs rising high above the flat plains. Jon watched in wonder. He had spent many years in the south desert but never had he seen such a place. The air was cooler and even the sky lightened as the dust clouds left the dark orange sky leaving it a beautiful amber. They

camped the second night in the barrens, keeping fires sheltered in a deep pit.

Ca’daan spoke of the bandit tribes in the barrens and, as well as they had done against the slavers, Jon had no desire for further battle.

Adrin fought San’doro the next day. The brown man both fought and instructed as well as Jon so Jon simply watched the exchange. The small desert man fought with both his daggers held backwards which confused Adrin, but San’doro

fought just hard enough to keep Adrin moving but not hard enough to put him into despair. In this, San’doro was a much better instructor than the Kal who had trouble holding back his skill.

Both men stood facing one another. Adrin with his long stick and short stick, San’doro with two short sticks held in a reverse grip. Adrin saluted, long stick to his nose, short stick out to his side, palm open. San’doro smiled, crossed both his

sticks in front of him and bowed. Jon saw hell in San’doro’s eyes.

Adrin fell back into a more relaxed version of his traditional fighting stance, much less graceful but much more functional. He held his offhand dagger higher and his rapier lower than he normally did. He had made the stance his own now, not the strict stance of the duelmasters of the north but his own relaxed stance prepared for any attack that might come his way.

San’doro spun low and threw one of the daggers twirling end over end. Adrin parried it away with his rapier-stick. The move was smooth, relaxed, and very impressive. San’doro followed the dagger with his own body, grappling Adrin’s legs, lifting, and throwing him hard to the ground. Adrin struggled for position but San’doro straddled the young man, keeping control of Adrin’s hips. San’doro roughly gripped Adrin’s chin and pulled Adrin’s head up, exposing his neck.

San’doro’s other stick came in, point toward the hollow in Adrin’s throat.

“Think for a moment,” said San’doro. “What is open to you.”

“I’m not even standing,” said Adrin.

“Sometime you may have to fight hanging upside down with nothing but your teeth,” said San’doro. San’doro didn’t make it sound hypothetical, thought Jon.

Adrin cocked his head, moved his elbow, and slid his offhand stick across San’doro’s exposed belly. Had the blade been real, Adrin would have

disemboweled the man. “Good,” said San’doro. He helped Adrin to his feet.

The two men dueled as the rest of the group watched. San’doro fought with slow precision, attacking with unique techniques and a variance of styles. Jon was continually impressed with the small man. Jon wasn’t convinced he would win a duel against the desert native. Yet San’doro left openings, some clear and some very subtle. Adrin missed some and found others. As they continued San’doro fought harder and left fewer openings. Adrin found those few more.

When they were done both men stood, criss-crossed with dozens of stripes of black ash. The Kal laughed and Ca’daan laughed with him. Jon looked at Susan and smiled. She smiled back.

“How are they doing?” said Jon as he sat down next to her, chewing on a strip of salted steak.

“They don’t trust me, but they don’t want to hurt us,” she said. “Ca’daan doesn’t really understand yet.” Jon could not get used to her adult vocabulary. He hadn’t known so many twelve-year-olds but none he knew spoke the way she did.

“What about Thorn and Vrenna?” asked Jon.

“Thorn cares little. He thinks about a woman he was with recently and a woman he knew long ago. Sometimes he thinks about a family he killed in a castle in the north, a young boy still clinging to his mother’s breast. He thinks about another boy he saved from the Eye the way you saved me. That seems to make up for how he feels about what you did to the Voth. He is very dangerous but not to us.”

“And Vrenna?”

Susan turned and looked at Jon for a moment.

“I cannot read her at all.”

“Nothing?” Jon asked.

“Nothing.”

That worried Jon a lot. He didn’t think Vrenna was a spy for the north but very few knew how to block someone like Susan.

“I’m not worried bout her,” said Susan, reading his mind. Jon looked at her and smiled, roughing up her hair. He loved her.

“Swords,” Jon shouted. “Mount up.”