Whoever told them, I would skin them alive, dump their bodies into the Lake of Doom, and have tea and cake while the alligators ripped them apart. But I was a captain, which meant I had to be responsible and focus on the matter at hand.
There were seventy-eight new recruits—
"Seventy-seven," Bilal corrected me. "Two of them took a boat outside the castle last night and dared each other to free-climb the outer wall. One of them lost."
And we would choose nine of these men to fill out our team.
I stood with my team in that nook between the archway leading out to the wooden drawbridge and the stone-framed storehouse that smelled… really, really bad. Like a chord of dead animal, mold, and sour milk.
Renou waved his hand in front of his nose and crossed over towards Miyani and Blue, who stood beside the massive gears of the gatehouse.
God, she was pretty. Petite; her shoulder with the white bat's wing tattoo barely came up to Renou's chest, thick muscles graced her nearly-naked body and, damn. I will feed whoever told everyone about us last night to the kitifkani vine.
"Tomorrow morning," I was focused, really, "we need to choose twelve men for a special training out there in the jungle. What are we looking for?"
"Not Borel." Ta'o leaned his back against the outer wall of the castle. His dark-green skin was the same as hers. Same white hair, too, but while she kept hers in that adorable pixie-cut, his fell over his shoulders and down his back.
Miyani closed her eyes and laughed. Renou shook his head and smiled. Bilal asked, "Who's Borel?"
I answered. "Birds ate him."
The lizard squawked, then jolted to the edge of the storehouse towards the courtyard with the torn-up grass and hissed at something around the corner.
Miyani called after him, "'ʊŋe damʌ?"
Blue answered with a layered chorus of clicks, chirps, and squawks, then raced off.
I loved the way her nose crinkled when she smiled at me. "He says is Rolon of Kyfe."
"That guy?" Bilal ran his fingers across the stubble over his scalp and sneered.
Renou chuckled and turned to Ta'o. "How do you say brown-nosing suck-up?"
Ta'o laughed. "'epaxifiyuza."
"Piss connoisseur?" I reeled. "He's not that bad."
"My turn," Bilal spoke up. "Yesterday we started on the mold situation in the barracks. There's this guy, Siddik, who did mold with his father back in Kyoen."
"That's perfect," Renou inserted.
"Last night he took charge of the whole job. We grabbed a dozen volunteers, and he gave me a list of tools and materials we're going to need. I'd like to see how he manages the crew today. Another guy, Rool, big guy, quiet hard-worker."
I turned to Miyani. "Twelve guys for tomorrow. Any favorites?"
She had to know people were talking. "I like Dax."
The fighter responsible for Ta'o's swollen cheek and that bruise in his stomach darker than his skin.
"He has a lot friend."
"I noticed that, too," Renou added. "A lot of guys here seem to really look up to him."
Ta'o added, "he's one of the few conscripts the locals tolerate. Iyemi says Kadelou nearly eviscerated a guy before we got here. The man refused to back down until Dax stepped in."
"Also," Miyani added, "Blue say he like Wan because smart."
Ta'o, Renou, Bilal, and I asked, almost in unison. "Who's Wan?"
"He has young brother, not smart young brother, but Wan very smart. You look for him."
"Alright," I said. "Right now, I'd like to see who volunteered for the shit pit."
Bilal chuckled. "You've got ten guys. How's it feel to be a myth?"
I blushed at that. Miyani's voice perked up. "I teach Ahmi lesson. I watch, eh… who have a lot question. Questionssss."
Renou was going to train archery, and Bilal organized the whole thing. We all looked at Ta'o. He shrugged. "Uh… I could do a… cultural orientation."
It could have been him. What if Miyani was being nice last night because she didn't want me to feel bad, and then she went and confided in Ta'o? Maybe she thought he could help sort through her disappointment, and then he went and blabbered about it? She'd only come to Carthia shortly before I did, so a lot of people were still new to her. How did she know who she could trust with that sort of thing, and who she couldn't?
I didn't see either of them at breakfast.
At the end of the courtyard, between the laundry and the stacked mud-hut apartments, was a small, stone building with seven curtained stalls that wrapped around the outside, each of which had a chute that led to a deep, underground pit. That pit needed to be emptied, and the contents taken to a compost heap outside the castle walls. Because of the lingering mass of recruits that would normally have been shuffled along to Carthia, we needed to clean the pit twice a day.
Ten recruits were ready to do the job with me. Rolon of Kyfe was among them. He stood beside me and rattled off names. "OK so this here's Daemon, that's Aydel, Haron, Charis, Rumen, this guy don't talk so everybody calls him Cutthroat."
Cutthroat was Saeni; yellow-green hair and light green eyes, and complexion a shade darker than mine. He lifted his chin and showed me a big, old scar that cut across his neck.
Rolon continued. "And that's John, Vayance, and Finn."
Too many names for me to remember them all at once, but these men wanted to be on my team bad enough to volunteer for the nastiest chore there was. Of the twelve for tomorrow's training, I wanted to leave plenty of room for my friends' recommendations. "We should split into three shifts so that no one has to clean the pit twice in a row. I'll go first…"
"I'm with you," Rolon rested a hand on my shoulder. "Daemon, Aydel, you're with us as well…"
"Now hold on," one of the other men protested. "How the hell is that fair? Maybe I'd like first shift."
I liked that he had the courage to speak up. His shirt sleeves were torn off, and the edge of a burn scar peeked out from below his right shoulder.
"Law of Dibs, man," Rolon shrugged.
"Them two didn't say nothing!" the man pointed out.
"Dibs!"
"Dibs!"
Two other men spoke up. Daemon and Aydel had barely moved, and still said nothing.
"What the hell?" the protester shouted.
"Law of Dibs," the first man excused himself with a wide grin and stepped forward. He was a stout Herali with a strong build and his hair cut short below his ears like Geraln used to wear it. The other one had his long hair in a pin like a silver Wolf's head.
"Remind me your names again?"
The first one bowed low with an easy smile. "Finn of Sutra. Ozaria county, Falcon clan."
The Wolf stood still and solemn. His voice was like soft velvet. "John of Boilya."
"Fucking bullshit!" the protester continued.
"Haron, come on," another man tried to calm him.
Haron looked me square in the face. "That shit your friends said last night, that was all bullshit, wasn't it?"
"Not…"
"You in real life about as spectacular as fucking your girl, yeah?"
I froze. I didn't have an answer for that.
He spat on the ground before my feet. "Fucking piss off!"
And he left. Where he went, he didn't say, but I stood like an idiot while the world spun around me. A voice spoke, but I was too flustered to see who it was. "I call tonight. Whoever's on tomorrow morning can't do the special training."
Finn replied. "Who's gonna be stuck with Haron tomorrow morning, then?"
The others chuckled.
Borel lasted a long time with his woman, and he's dead. I should have said that; that would have been a snappy comeback.
Rolon, Finn, John, and I entered through a small wooden door on one side of the circular building that greeted us immediately with the soup of a thousand bowel disencumbrances in a broth of piss. We wore cloth masks over the lower halves of our faces and had special torches laced with sprigs of some herb like a cedar-rosemary that… kinda helped.
Kinda made it worse.
The whole point was to get to know these men and decide who we wanted on our team. "Guess I'll go first. I'm Caleb of Gath. I grew up…"
"Gath?" Finn interrupted me. "You know Guenevieve? Her mum makes pastries."
"Yeah, man. We grew up together. How do you know her?"
Even in the dark corridor I could see his eyes smile. "First bloody kiss, man!"
Wen was tall and thin. Finn was maybe an inch or two under her and considerably heavier. She used to tell me she liked guys who made her laugh; could I see them together? Her father had family in Ozaria, and more than once they would go visit. She never told me about this.
There were several large iron ladles and a stack of twenty-ish three-gallon wooden barrels to one side. My first scoop from the pit had some white, slimy stuff floating on top. How the hell… with that smell…
"Priorities!" Finn laughed and scooped out some globs of poo.
"OK my turn," Rolon began. "I grew up on a farm, but it's not our farm; it belongs to the Baron. My mum works sun-up to sundown. We grow almonds, walnuts, pecans, gorns, hazelnuts…"
"That's nuts!" Finn chuckled again.
Rolon continued. "Our school was small, and we didn't have no money. Most of my friends' mums was in the field all the time, so mostly they complained about how the Baron was supposed to pay for the school but he didn't want to…"
Finn pulled up a lump that looked redder than it should have.
"Wait," I brought over a torch to see it better. In his ladle was a semi-solid turd covered in blood.
Finn dumped it into a barrel and leaned in to see Rolon's ladle, still with a smile in his voice. "What did you get?"
Rolon ignored the question. "So one day, my friend's mum goes to the Count of Kyfe to complain about the Baron. So then we got the Count's people all over the place for a little while and then the Baron has to pay for the school 'cause that's the Duke's law and everything."
Yellow drops fell from one of the chutes adding the warm smell of fresh piss to the shit smell that seeped through our masks. Finn looked up and chuckled. "I prayed for rain; that's not what I meant!"
"bʊ'ape," a woman's voice echoed through the stone pipe from above.
Rolon kept talking. "But then the Count's people leave and the Baron cuts my friend's mum off and she can't work or pay her rent or buy food no more so they got to move away. Then he don't pay for the school again. I got a kid brother through my step-dad, you know. He's at the same school, so me, Daemon, and Aydel was talking about going back to the Count to tell him what the Baron did, but then we got called up to Carthia."
If I'd let him, Rolon would have talked for hours whether anyone listened or not. John stayed mostly quiet, so I asked him. "What's your story?"
He topped off a barrel and tied a cord tight around the lid. "Not much to tell. Most of my childhood was skipping chores to hide somewhere and read a book. They all said I needed to leave home because I already read everything in the village. I don't think they had death-trap in some alien world in mind."
"You're going to love Carthia," I told him. They all looked up at me. "The library there is huge. It's on the scale of Kyoen Central, and get this: they have a whole section devoted to illegal books."
John's dark-green eyes gaped at me and he froze. "What do you mean, illegal books?"
"They had Indictment."
"Wait," Finn paused. "The Indictment?"
"I was going to read it as soon as my friend Faren was done with it. You're not allowed to take books outside the city, but he snuck it in his pack anyway. Now he's gone, and maybe the enemy has it, maybe it's rotting in the jungle somewhere. But they have others as well."
John wiped his eyes and stopped his work to gape at me. "And you can just… read them?"
"Oh," Rolon leaned over. "I win."
In his ladle was a mass of something with a tail sticking over the side dripping brown goop. We all leaned in as he poured off some of the liquid to reveal a rat with half its skin missing and maggot-infested guts spilling out between its bones.
John, Finn, and I glanced at each other. "He wins!"
As we neared the end, Finn had leaned over to scrape out the bottom when a clump of brown paste dropped from a chute and glanced off his forearm leaving a smudge behind. He laughed. "Shit!"
If he can handle poo on his skin, he should be fine with thirty-foot snakes and spiders the size of your face.
With the last barrel sealed shut, we carried them upstairs to a cart. I made the mistake of hoisting one over my shoulder, and it leaked sauce all down my chest, down my back, and in my hair. It wasn't the only one, either; all four of us were covered in drops, splashes, spills, and brown and yellow clumps.
We were washing off before heading outside, and Rolon was still talking. "I got my bow from my dad. It used to be his; he was in the Count's guard before he died. My mum told me a whole bunch of people died in the plague, and when he got sick he stayed away because he didn't want to make her sick, you know, 'cause she was pregnant with me at the time…"
Finn cut him off to ask me, "how long have you been here?"
"Maybe two or three months? Feels like forever. There were three of us called up from Gath; I'm the only one left."
"How'd you survive?" John asked.
"I got lucky."
Finn chuckled.
The Wolf didn't accept that, though. "I can't depend on luck. If I have to run a mile and luck takes me halfway there, I still have to run the other half."
Beside the staircase leading down to the pit were sacks of quicklime and some long pole-brushes, and we scrubbed the chutes down one by one.
Rolon continued. "So like I was saying, my step-dad, he's got this idea of being a cheesesmith, and have you ever tried to milk a bison? They get real pissy if you're not careful…"
Finn's eyes went from Rolon to me. "You've got to tell us more, man. Sorry, Rolon, but I'm more interested in what's going to get me killed."
They all looked at me.
"I watched a guy threaten to kill a baby vita'o, mum was upset, he pulled a knife on her, and she ripped his throat out. A friend of mine got stabbed by a street kid for protecting his coinpurse, another almost died of the mosquito pox. That thing Renou told you all about, he didn't exaggerate. While I was working on his foot, we saw an enemy sekɪwa who brought us safely back to Carthia, then she demanded my medical kit as payment. That thing Ta'o told you all about, that was… mostly true."
John smirked. "Didn't get a ride from an alligator, did you?"
Finn shook his head with a smile. "Gods, that's disappointing!"
Rolon turned to him. "You want to ride one, man?"
"Don't you?"
"What parts were real?" John asked me.
So I told them. I told them about how Miyani had killed an enemy in battle and gave me their ear for me to wear, and they all leaned in close to inspect it. Rolon was mortified; Finn was fascinated. I told them about those fanged monkey creatures, whatever Marya called them, that screamed at us until we couldn't tell up from down.
"How do we defeat those?" John asked.
"If you kill one before they attack, the rest will scatter."
I didn't tell them about the supernatural magic trick I couldn't control that would get me burned at the stake if the wrong people found out.
We found a bison tied to a stake beside the storehouse. We weren't sure if we were supposed to borrow the creature, but we hitched it to the cart, and I slung my bow.
A wave of apprehension passed among them, and they slung theirs as well. All three of them brought eupin bows like mine. Finn's had a design of Falcon with diamond-tree stones embedded into His feathers. Rolon's had Bear standing on His hind legs overlooking the central valley. John's was mostly black and showed a light-colored pack of wolves chasing down a bison beneath the moonlight with ancient Herali runes that spelled out verses like I am thunder, We are the storm.
Outside to our left against the backdrop of the Terbulin mountains, a gray-and-purple cliff bursting from the jungle some twenty-thousand feet into the sky, Miyani stood with Blue in a circle of men. The way the sunlight shimmered off her dark skin, the way she commanded their attention, the way she bit her lip when she smiled at me, it was a good thing I wasn't in that circle else I wouldn't hear a word she said. Some of her students turned to look at me briefly.
But who snitched, and how did they find out?
To our right, Renou supervised a line of men with native short bows who faced off against a row of burlap practice dummies by the treeline. Behind us in the glaring overhead sun, the castle rose up from black water without even a sand bank at the foot. Whoever climbed that had stupid balls, but he also made it past the overhang beneath the rampart. I could probably free-climb that.
Rolon walked beside me the whole way there. "so there was this one girl, real pretty, I liked her, she went to the knowledge tourney in the big city. I took her to the hills one time. She got all these burs in her shoes and she didn't like that so she just complained the whole time. It was hot, she complained about that, too. I shot a few rabbits for supper, she complained about that, too. I don't like a girl that complains too much. My Naveris is this other girl, she picks nuts for the Baron like her mother and her mother before her, probably her kids gonna do that too, but she don't complain about it…"
'epaxifiyuza.
At the far end of the field was an earthen mound built around a stone funnel with an opening at the bottom and a ramp that was too narrow to fit the cart, so we had to once again carry the leaky barrels.
I called the three of them over. The edge of the dense jungle was about seventy yards from the compost heap and filled the air with a chorus of chirps, whistles, and the steady grinding of insects. "Let's assume there's an enemy watching us from those trees. They'll need to come out to those rocks to put us within range. That won't give us a lot of time to react. Two of us stand watch, while the other two empty barrels."
Finn nodded. "Then we switch, so that we can all get an equal amount of shit juice on us."
John had the forethought to bring an extra washbasin with clean rags. As we made our way back across the field, several guys from Renou's group raced across the grass towards us, startling a small flock of goats and earning some choice words from the woman who had to gather them back up. Renou directed several men to help round up the goats, and five of the men in his class stood before me with eupin bows slung over their backs.
"Ayo!" one man started. "We really gotta use these bows, man?"
"Yeah," several others echoed. Another man took advantage of the break by pulling a bright red mango from his pack and wiped it off.
"Ayo," the first man strung his eupin and nocked an arrow. He grabbed the mango before the guy could bite into it.
"Hey!"
The man threw the fruit high into the air, drew back his bow, and impaled it on its way down. He turned to me and shrugged.
"I was going to eat that…"
I nodded. "A shot like that deserves a name?"
Rolon gave it to me. "That's Gaius of Zoinia."
Finn strung his own bow with a grimace towards Gaius. "Big, scary jungle-apple. Is that the best you can do?"
Gaius raised his hand to silence him and turned back to me. "Ayo, we be using them kiddie bows out there, man? Can't hardly shoot with them things."
A fair question. "For tomorrow's exercise, and others to follow, we will be using practice arrows. You can't shoot practice arrows with eupin because one, they're too short. Two, eupin is so powerful that even an arrow tipped with a chalk bag will shatter bones."
Then another man asked me, "I see you carrying; you know how to use that thing?"
A smile almost escaped my lips. No, I was there to observe; I had important responsible duties. I couldn't just drop everything for something frivolous and unrelated to anything important and responsible.
John and Rolon strung their bows, as did several of the men.
I didn't. I was a captain; I didn't have time for fun and games.
"Some Falcon," another man spat on the ground. He turned and launched an arrow at the dummy, about two-hundred yards from where we stood. It popped into the burlap, and he turned to face me. "I bet that bow is purely decorative."
I still didn't.
Another man crossed his arms. "I bet that stuff they said last night was complete bullshit."
Still another. "Can't perform in any way at all, can he?"
I walked away and said nothing.
Finn's voice was behind me. "What the…?"
Another answered. "Well that was disappointing."
But I kept walking. That comment about Miyani and I last night, I probably should have struck him off my list for that. But, it's not like I was innocent of such taunts.
Rolon came with me. He pleaded with his hands as much as his words. "What are you doing, man?"
I kept silent. Miyani had finished her lesson and her whole group went inside for lunch.
My performance with her. I still needed to find out how everyone knew.
Rolon implored me on our way across the grass. "You gonna walk away from that? They gonna lose all respect for you, man! Hey, at least… let me shoot for you?"
"No," I took hold of his arm.
It came down to Ta'o, Renou, and Bilal. They staked their reputations on me. They'd built up this narrative that I was some legend who would carry these men safely through the war. So no, this was not fun-and-games. I was a captain; I was responsible to the men I'd made promises to.
The fun was… a bonus.
I silently counted out another hundred-fifty yards and stopped. Rolon looked at me curiously as I pulled an arrow and inspected the fletchings. One of the vanes was bunched up and another had separated, so I chose another arrow.
Rolon's eyes went wide and he looked downrange with his hand over his brow like a visor. "Gotta be three-hundred-fifty yards, man! You can shoot that?"
The trees behind the practice dummies shuffled from a moderate crosswind coming from the north, and it would have been easier to see the target if that one guy would just move out of the way. I raised my bow to arch high over them, and breathed in.
And while the recruits argued over who would take the next shot, my arrow came down and smashed through the burlap dummy's head, tearing through the fabric and sending scraps of brown material everywhere.
They all turned to look at me.
I was there to recruit these men. That was hard work!
Two men raced ahead while the others walked behind. By the time they reached me, they panted for breath with big smiles on their faces. "Names?"
"Toyin… of Maliak."
The other raised a finger and needed to catch his breath first. He was quite a bit shorter than the others and had several callouses over his fingers. "Josha of Statac."
They readied their bows, but I held them back while everyone else caught up.
Something tapped my shoulder. I snapped around, and a lizard face with a blue stripe chirped back at me. I stroked his neck, and he rubbed his face in my cheek.
Finn lined up at three-fifty for a shot. His arrow sailed up, came down, and nailed the burlap dummy in the center. Guenevieve always did like to watch us try to outshoot each other.
John took a shot as well, then gritted his teeth with a sharp exhale as his arrow fell short by a few feet.
Gaius Mango's Bane went next. He took careful aim but held it too long. His arrow caught the crosswind and sailed off somewhere in the trees.
Josha the Kid stepped up, but Gaius held his hand out. "Wait, let me try again."
Another called him out for that. "You already lost, man."
"I know," he said, shaking his head and nocking another arrow. "But I can do this."
The other man turned to me. "You gonna say something?"
I pretended I didn't hear him and turned to Blue instead. "Some look-out you were last night; somebody saw us."
He squawked and clicked. Some gift; I still didn't understand him.
"Fuck!" Gaius missed his second attempt and nocked another arrow.
"Um…" Josha swallowed.
"I can do this!"
John rested a hand on Gaius's shoulder. "Let everyone else have a turn, man."
Gaius exhaled sharply and lowered his face.
Then Josha nailed his own shot. Toyin did not.
I turned to Rolon. "What about you?"
He shook his head nervously. "I can't hit no three-fifty, man."
John urged him on. "Neither can I, didn't stop me from trying. Go on."
While Rolon stood with his fingers trembling, another man stepped up, drew his bow with no fanfare, no hesitation, and impaled the practice dummy dead-center. His bow had an etching of Falcon with His wings spread and Rattlesnake in His talons. He turned his smug face to the rest of the crowd. "Anyone else?"
"One more!" John slapped Rolon's back.
Rolon shook his head slightly and stepped back.
John smirked at him. "How much money you got on this?"
Gaius grabbed him and pulled him forward. "Ayo, not a damn thing! Take your shot, man!"
At that, Rolon stepped forward. There was a camaraderie. A friendliness. No one even came close to a knife fight. But when Rolon drew his bow, he held the string in his thumb, locking it in place behind his index finger.
Another man glared at his hand. "What the hell kind of draw is that?"
I'd never seen it before, either. His arrow sailed upwards and came down several yards short of the dummy.
"See that?" Gaius chuckled. "You're in good company!"
And so Finn, Josha, and myself, along with the guy with the Falcon bow stepped back to three-hundred-sixty yards. Everyone else crowded around. Josha and Toyin stood together with another guy, Finn had a friend, and the other guy had two friends who patted his muscles.
Then he reached into his coin purse and tossed a five-kren onto the ground. The others glanced among themselves.
The responsible, captainly thing to do would have been to tell him to put it back, remind everyone that we're all friends, and I tossed a sixteen next to his.
Blue squawked, Josha and Toyin stared at each other, and the other guy added another eleven from his purse.
"I'll get your name?"
"Hereim of Groza. Took gold at Osenia County."
I'd never been there, but it wasn't far from Gath. "Do you happen to know Kelint of Dignestran?"
"Shit, man! I watched him hit three-seventy-five in Heralia City!"
"He's at Carthia."
"Well OK then!"
Finn eyed the two of us with a smirk and threw sixteen kren into the pile.
We all looked at Josha. He had a young, narrow face and a young build. I'd have guessed him too young for conscription. He shook his head and backed down.
Finn looked between me and Hereim. "Just the three of us, then!"
Blue sniffed my bow and rubbed his face in it. He touched his nose to mine and rested his head on my shoulder while I lined up for my shot.
"I don't suppose you know who told everyone about us?"
"Ayo! Ya girl did, man!"
"What?"
Finn confirmed. "That was her running around. 'We sex one second!' She was real excited about it, too!"
"You're joking!"
"Nah, man," Rolon added.
I faced Blue directly. "Did Miyani tell everyone about… last night?"
He chirped. Yes.
What the hell?
Three-hundred-sixty yards. I should have been able to hit that. I'd nailed that man's feet to a log at about the same distance, so I'd done it before. But when I drew my bow, the question of why the hell Miyani would tell everyone how quickly I'd finished burned a hole in my concentration, and my arrow sliced through the air a few inches to the right of the dummy.
Blue squawked and groaned, then pushed me with his snout, only to rub his face in my cheek again.
"Gods!" John slapped my shoulder. "That was close!"
"My shot!" Finn stepped up.
"Let me add this," I said. "The winner between you two gets a guaranteed spot on tomorrow's training. The loser stays home."
The men glanced at one another. I really was making this up as I went.
Finn's friend was chubby with long, wavy hair and light green eyes; he could have passed for Goloagi. The two of them gazed at each other in silence before Finn stepped up to the line. He drew back his bow, and launched his arrow. We all held our breath as it fell down and perforated the dummy off-center.
"Yeah!" the chubby man threw his fist in the air, and Finn blew out a deep breath through pursed lips.
Hereim's friends were a pair of identical twins, one who cut his hair below his ears, and the other who wore it down his back. The three of them huddled for a moment before Hereim took his shot. His landed an inch outside Finn's, but it was a hit.
We stepped back to three-sixty-five.
Hereim bobbed his head back and forth and rolled his neck around. He selected an arrow, drew back, and loosed. His arrow punched through the dummy's groin and lodged into the wooden post holding it up.
Finn raised his chin at the poor thing. "Well I guess he's a she, now!"
The others laughed while he stepped up. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I never shot this distance before."
"First time for everything," I told him.
He cocked his head, drew, and loosed. When his arrow came down, it stuck into the ground inches from the post that held the dummy. He gritted his teeth and sucked in.
Hereim walked back to the castle thirty-two kren richer, and I had a few names for my list.
I just couldn't believe she told everyone!