“You’re on mister!!!!” I yelled back at the man who just insulted the wrong girl.

“You little girl go back to you tent and play with your dolls, I wont waist my precious time on you!” He said sneeringly back to back to me, as if I were a little girl asking for a lesson.

I drew my sword out, and pinned him to the wall of the meal wagon. “You want see what kind of warrior I am? Then fight me!” I whispered with all the rage in my voice, with my sword to his neck.

“Fine I will fight you but only because you won’t stop pestering me, not because I’m afraid of you.”

“Oh, you’ll learn to be afraid.” I growled, and suddenly felt my brothers’ calm hand on my shoulder.

“you really need to work on your leadership skills” He said as he gently pulled me off of him.

I gave him a halfhearted smile, my mind was still too hazy from the rush that came over me to say anything to him.



“So what did you do this time?” he asked as we entered my tent and sat down on the makeshift bed.

“What do you mean, ‘what did you do this time?’ I didn’t do anything!!!”

“I mean you seem to always get in these fights.” He replied with a melancholy look on his face.

“What are you thinking?” I looked at him skeptically, not having a clue what’s going on in his head.

“Trying to figure out why the head mistress appointed you the general of this group?”

“Ha Ha, very funny, but seriously how am I supposed to keep control of my men when they have no faith in me just because I’m a girl, that is why I must fight him.

“So it’s not just because he said you were girly?” He looked at me with sincere eyes but you could tell that his mouth was hiding a smile.

“Only you can think up something as stupid as that for a reason to fight a man. Although…….”I turned to look at him sitting on the couch with his legs and arms crossed the way he did when he was enjoying my torment in a conversation. “He did say I liked to play with dolls maybe he found your old Doll house that u and….” I stared at the dirt floor of the tent. We had never really talked about our past openly, every one in the tribe new that we were adopted by Max, the only man that was anything like a father to us, but no one not even my brother and I new what happened to our father.

I grabbed my cloak and prepared my self for the battle, not wanting to continue the conversation.

“I miss her to, and you know I wasn’t your fault that she died” he said, with his hand on my shoulder.

“You know John sometimes I wonder why he didn’t at least make sure we had water to make it through the dessert but instead, HE DROPED US IN THE MIDDLE OF NO WERE AND LEFT US TO DIE!!”I yelled as loud as I could with out disturbing the rest of the men.

“Yea I know...” He didn’t finish, he was trying to be strong in front of his sister but he couldn’t help that one tear fell from his stormy blue eyes. He quickly wiped it away. I was glad that I was wearing the hood of the cloak over my eyes so that he couldn’t see that the same thing was happening to me.

“Well I shouldn’t keep the shines waiting.” I whispered we each put our right hands on the other left shoulder (it’s a way of saying good luck)

“Wasn’t it the main solider, why would u need a clean up crew?”

“Yea it was, there guys who are going to clean up after I’m done with this jerk.”

“Ah I see now, well I can’t wait to see how this ends”. He smiled and mad a gesture to the bottom of the tents canvas.
“Apparently we have some visitors.” Whispering, and lightly moving to back to were I was standing.
I opened the tent flaps and half the bratiolon was there listening with there ears cupped to hear what was said in side. I stood there for a minute waiting to see if the noticed me o not. “May I help you men or were you all looking for something in your ears?” They all looked at me with terror on their faces.

“No miss just looking for my ladle and got these men to help me look for it, then we herd you yelling and was curious to why.” The cook said standing up; he had an honest face and an honest soul.

“You never heard anything said to night right?” I leaned forward to make my point clear.

“YES MAM.” The all hastily stood up and ran toward the center of the camp

John just stood there with a goofy grin on his face, one that he rarely showed in public, he always tried to maintain the seriousness of him self in front of the men.

“That was handled well for once” I gave him a dirty look, to bad he couldn’t see it.





“All right shall we go over the rules of this duel or are both competitors aware of them?”

“You may want to repeat them for the stuck pig over there.” I said to the cook, who was playing referee for the duel since my brother was not allowed to be since we can’t have a relative by blood referring to make it fair.

Kevin growled he was a man of substance with a long beard made into a braid to keep it out of the way, for the duel; he had a silver hilted double-handed sword. He wasn’t really the best of the soldiers that’s just what he says to make himself feel skinner.

“I don’t need the rules repeated; I know them just as well as the girly over their does.”

“Well then you should be well aware that we are allowed only one weapon and only one person can fight.”

“Can you not count I see one and that’s the sword in my hand” He smiled in satisfaction.

“Oh I can count, but apparently you can’t, I see three because there is your sword, you dagger up you sleeve, and the extra club under the folds of you belly” I grinned ruefully, he was scared out of his wits, he wasn’t very good at hiding things because I could clearly see the outline of the dagger under his tunic.

“Well do you have the accused weapons sir?” The cook asked

“Of course I don’t!” There was a cold sweat on his brow, he was lying, and every one could tell by the fury building up in his eyes that he wasn’t going to give up.

“I demand a search, though something tells me that you won’t want to look under those flaps you might find more than just a maze, maybe last nights dinner bowl.” I pointed towards his belly; the men were trying so hard not to burst out laughing, then the cook stepped down from one of the dinner tables to grab a few men and search Kevin.

They did find the knife up his sleeve but they didn’t bother looking through the folds of his stomach, you could plainly tell that they were afraid of even touching it.

“Kevin is disqualified for bringing more than one weapon and saying other wise, the winner by fault is Stephaney.” He walked over to me and held my hand in the air.

“Paul, don’t raise my hand like a victor of a battle, I didn’t fight so I can not be a winner, we shale call it a draw and hold it off till Kevin can learn to follow the rules given to him.” I turned towards my brother while removing my hood, and saw the faint smile on his face. “Until then he has two weeks of stable duty.” His smile got bigger as I got closer. We join arms and turned around together to the rest of the crowd of men.

He raised his other hand like a king making a decree. “Go, eat, be merry for tomorrow we join swords with the rest of our people!” John said with his booming voice, he could really get the men’s hopes up when needed.

“Well so much for keeping it a secret till tomorrow.” I whispered in his ear.

“I couldn’t resist leaving it off any more, as you can tell the men are glade to know that they will soon be reunited with there brothers and finally be able to use there gifts of war.” John definitely knew what to say and how to say it right.

That night we all drank, and reminisced on what we would do when the war was over, then after we had our fill of food and wine, we all headed towards our own tents, and even then there merriment didn’t seem to die down (some men would bring the ale with them to there tents, they just couldn’t leave it behind.)



“Rest well my friends for tomorrow we pack and get ready for the travel home.” I paused and turned to the moon. “Home, I don’t think that could ever sound any sweeter.”





Chapter 2



Morning, I thought it would never come. That day we were to pack our things and start the march back to our homeland. My brother and I both had little to pack since brot little, and lost almost all of what we did bring.

While my brother and I were packing he noticed the one wound that I had told no one of, and was hoping no one would see.

“What’s that? And don’t dare try and squeeze your way out of this one!” He bent over me and pulled on the corner of my tan sleeve to make the mark more noticeable. It ran from my right shoulder blade across to the left side of my waist.

“While we were fighting I thought I saw our poor excuse for a father, and went after him.” I paused letting this information sink into him, we had both been in a long search to find our father to get the truth from him to why he abandoned us.” When I reached the man and made him turn around” I knew I didn’t have to say it he knew what I was saying before I said it.

“So then you two got into a fight and he bit you before u could, please tell me that it’s not as bad as it looks and that’s all of it on our shoulder.” He said with a pleading look in his eyes.

“I wish I could” I traced my finger across the scabbing line on my back. He pulled my hand away from my back.

“No more please.” He said looking into my eyes. I understood, he was my older brother and he felt reasonable when anything bad happened to me, the same way I feel when something happens to him.

“Well the good thing is I got him back, so now if we see him in battle again we’ll know for shore it’s him. Just look for a man with two slash marks on the right and one on the left side of his face.” I gave him a reassuring smile, I had to try and make him forget about the mark that was soon so become forever branded into my skin.

“Ok” he took a deep breath and tried to seem like his cool normal self “Lets finish packing and start patrolling the camp grounds and make sure all the tents are being pulled down.”

“All right, but you have to take the south section, unless you want another duel between ‘our best fighter’ and I”

“I don’t think the men could afford that much of a delay again” He smiled back at me from the tent flaps, he seemed to be else were though, like his mind wasn’t here on Earth were it should be.



The next day we all set out towards our homeland.

“John, are you all right, I mean you don’t seem like your self?” I asked riding up next to him on my chocolate horse.

“What? Oh yea I’m fine just thinking that’s all” He still seemed to be else were, but I didn’t think it wise to try and push him to reveal more so I pulled back to the rear of the march.

“RUN! RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN!” A man came running all we could see of him was the charcoal black cloak he was wearing.

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“There coming, the worst men alive, run, run as fast as you can!” He caught up to us and started to catch his breath.

“What do you mean, and why do you look as if you’ve seen a ghost?” John said as he rode up next to me. The men were all looking around wondering what was going on.

“I… never mind about me GET OUT OF HERE!”

“NO” I demanded “Tell us what you are so afraid of then we will decide wither or not we stand and fight or we run” I boomed so that the man would understand that I wasn’t bugging. I didn’t know what my face looked like but what ever I did made the man look taken aback, like he thought I was just a maiden help the men when they were hurt.

“Fine but you will regret stalling you leave this long. My people thought there were just folk tales, then they attacked, without mercy they destroyed everything in their path. I barely escaped but not unscarred.” The strange man took the hood of his cloak off to reveal a burn on the right side of his face, very close to his eye but not close enough to damage it.

“I see...” I took a breath in and looked at my brother.

“My lady he speaks the truth!” an archer yelled from the top of one of the wagons with a hand over his eyes pointing to a giant mob of black heading straight towards us.