They came for us an hour before sunrise, when we would be at our most vulnerable. I, for one, definitely was.

  We had left our dusters and kuubras draped over our packs in a simulacrum of sleeping bodies. Three on each side, with Tal in the middle, far from the fire, and far from each other bunk, so as to widen the field. Then we had spread ourselves amongst the dunes, where we had sat vigilant, but growing stiff with the cold and the cramp.

  There were seven of them.

  The Captain had shown the tysir the sign of the hooked noose. We had told him we were going about the Hand’s business, though we hadn’t said which Finger we swore allegiance to, nor the details of our mission. For all he knew, we could have been his closest comrades, working on plots that would have benefited him. He may have completely believed our charade at the impromptu kjuram. And it all meant absolutely nothing.

  But even as allies we were enemies. Eliminating us would mean less competition for his Finger’s favour, if we indeed served the same master, or a great deal of favour if, as was more likely, he disrupted the plans of another Finger by killing us. And though he had met us in peace, under the rules of the kjuram, no one could claim responsibility or lay blame if we were murdered in the dark of night.

  There were seven of them, one for each of us. We watched them spread out, exactly as we encouraged them to. The ysirak would not have fallen for such a trap, but they were too honourable. And if the tysir had a Harashuut bound in service to him, we would have seen nothing all night. So these must have must have been warriors from the outer rings of the tysir’s Claw, desperate enough to raise their rank in any way. That put the odds in our favour, but no battle was a given.

  I waited for Tal to give the signal. My hands did not shake, but I felt nervous in my heart.

  Silently, one of the men dropped to the sand. Somewhere in the dark folds of his clothes a bolt was buried deep.

  I rose, keeping low and at an angle so that I slid down the face of the dune, rather than attempting to run down them and inevitably falling on my face when my feet couldn’t keep up with my inertia. Six other clouds of disturbed sand were cast up into the night around me. I had been anxiously flicking my blade’s hilt with my thumb, in and out of the clasp on the scabbard, so that now the whole length came free smoothly despite the chill.

  We came with no battle cry, and so our enemies did not notice us descending upon them. They were too focused on the lumps they thought were sleeping bodies, creeping forward to plunge daggers into their ‘chests’. Only then did they realise something was amiss, and, whipping back the coats, raised cries of alarm. By then I was on flat ground, and closing. Part of me hoped Tal would drop my assigned man for me, but her second bolt went to the opposite side. Briggs surged forward on my left, body low, thighs pumping. His shoulder hit his man in the hip and sent him flying.

  My own man whirled in circles. From his perspective, the calm night must have descended into chaos so suddenly. There was perhaps a chance I could have caught him in the back as he struggled to bring his attention to each threat happening in turn, from multiple angles. But I had slowed, just a step. I didn’t have the brute strength of Briggs to press through any lucky strikes by my enemy. He turned a final time, and came to settle on me.

  His face was a grotesque sneer. I flinched. But, how had I forgotten the sculpted faceplate he wore. I tried to calm my breathing. Some men fight with the adrenalin of insanity. That was Briggs, a bear. Others are more collected and precise, striking only once if they can help it, like the snake. Such a description probably gave me a little more credit than I deserved. Nevertheless, I couldn’t afford my faculties to abandon me. I focused above the mask, which had succeeded in its design of distracting and intimidating me, onto my opponents eyes.

  They were analysing me just the same. He must have seen an old man: bald, grey in the beard, with joints that were slow to respond and pained him even when they did, a round belly, and a lame right leg. And he must have smiled behind that mask, that perhaps he alone could return to the claw with a blooded knife.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Good. Let him think that.

  Well, it wasn’t all good. My joints did pain me, and I could feel the weight around my middle, throwing me off. I felt old, because I was. And I did have a wound in my leg, the first and only time I had been too slow. It only ended my career, and not my life, and that was enough of a warning that I was too old for that game any longer. So I quit, and tried to find some other way to make myself useful.

  But it was my left leg, not my right, that was slightly lame. And that is where an old-timer could catch out these young bloods, despite their quickness of foot and of wrist. They took everything they saw as truth, even what you gave them for free, when those were the gifts you should regard with the most suspicion. The difference between a young blood and a blade lord was not prodigious talent, not a greater constitution, but that they had lived through being fooled once so that they could learn not to be fooled again.

  My opponent did not know I was heavily favouring my better leg, and exaggerating the limp, so as to draw him into my strong side. He scented weakness and took it as blood already spilled, rather than a deliberate musk to mask my truth. He would not earn knowledge for his next opponent by surviving with a scar. I would be an end to his education in the blade, and in the workings of the world.

  So I did not shy away from him too early, out of fear. My breathing was steady now. The world had been reduced to just my enemy and me. Perhaps even further than that, to a series of edges and flat planes, and the movements and interactions between each. Nor did I react too late, taken by surprise, even though my opponent was fast. I knew what to look for: the small adjustments of his grip on his knife, the turning in of his knee as he went to push off. All the little tells the body gives away.

  He crossed to me in two steps and lunged for my belly. I let him in close, allowed him to extend, then pushed off from my ‘weak’ leg, sidestepping his blade while at the same time bringing mine up fast and hard. I put all my strength into cleaving through his neck, but he twisted mightily, and that, in combination with his faceplate and gorget, saved him. I scored him deeply in his trapezius, where his shoulder rose to meet his neck, and a second, glancing blow across the front of the deltoid muscle. He grunted in pain, but it was not the fatal blow I sought.

  I expected him to take a step back outside my range, to reassess. But whether he was driven by desperation, or bloodlust, or because he thought he had found me out in that moment, he came at me immediately. We exchanged three blows: the first low over his hip, then up beside his head, then finally across my chest, where we locked blades. He pushed, and I stumbled. His eyes flashed.

  I was taller, and broader, but he had that rangy muscle common to all Sunsuga for whom every day is a battle for survival. With a snarl, he shoved with his whole body weight, and I fell backwards, with my toppling onto me. The back of my head met the sand hard, and my ears rang.

  I felt the edge of my own blade bite into my chest. My opponent was scrabbling to get his knees into my guts, giving him leverage to stab at me rather than try and flatten me with his meagre weight, and for a moment we kicked in the sand like tangled serpents rather than men with tools and training.

  I reached up and grabbed the side of the man’s head, digging my thumb into his eye. He threw his head back and howled, but maintained my hips trapped between his legs, and then he was reaching for his knife, and I couldn’t swing my blade more than to graze his rib.

  Then the shadow of Briggs loomed over both of us. He placed one hand on my opponent's shoulder, another on his chin. Then he ripped the man’s head sideways, snapping his neck. My opponent crumpled, and Briggs tossed the corpse off me without a struggle.

  I lay back, panting, letting the thirsty sand swallow up my sweat.

  “That was a nice little move, Doc,” said Briggs. He didn’t bother to try and help me up. “But these desert rats, they’re a wild breed. You could cut off both their hands, and they’d try and tear your throat out with their teeth.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I had forgotten the desperation of them.”

  Briggs grunted. He probably thought me quite dim, to forget such a simple tenet of the world as how life would struggle so fiercely to keep living.

  Eventually I sat up. The desert was quiet once again. Church had a cut across her cheek, but we appeared to be the only two with injuries.

  “How is it?” said the Captain.

  I dabbed at my chest with two fingers. They came away sticky, but not drenched.

  “Superficial, it seems,” I said. “Help me tie a bandage around it - there’s some in my kit bag - and then I’ll deal with it more permanently whenever we get the chance.”

  “That’ll be the day,” said Tal, and the trenchers barked a laugh.

  “Welcome to the hunt, Doc.”