Aurie had her hands spread across the handle of the axe the way Balor had shown her. The first time he showed her how to split wood was about this time of year, perhaps a few weeks earlier. The mornings and evenings were cold, but the days were still sweltering and he was spending his days in the field directing the laborers with his father and Balian, his brother. So, she had to help his mother split wood for the winter and—of course—her mother-in-law refused to show her how. She was expected to already know. The old shrew just pointed and did her chores in the house.

  Aurie took the first sideways swing at the tree and felt it vibrate through her arms. It was like a bolt of lightning struck her nerves from her thumb to her back. She yelped through gritted teeth. The axe barely made a notch in the bark. She even did the sliding of her hands together as she swung, just the way Balor had shown her when he saw she hadn’t been able to split more than a handful of logs by the time he returned from the fields. She took another swing. Another bolt of pain shot through her. Another tiny notch in the bark.

  Enya returned with buckets of water from the river that flowed only a few paces away. She set them down beside a log they had moved to sit on when they needed a break. There was an axe leaning against the log next to it along with two cups for them to drink out of and a wrapped pair of sandwiches for their lunch.

  Aurie gave her a shake of her head. It caused a strand of her blonde hair to fall over her face. Sweat was beading off her. She was regretting changing into the linen shirt tucked into softened leather trousers with boots. Even after rolling up her sleeves, she felt like she was wearing an oven as the sun was rising above her.

  “I’m not strong enough,” Aurie growled as she swung again. She grunted instead of yelping this time.

  Enya came up behind her and pressed against her, “First, you’re swinging it like it’s an axe.”

  Aurie blinked. “Oh, I forgot.” She leaned to look up at her. “Those craftsmen in Strasbourg have an odd way of making spoons.”

  Enya chuckled, “No. What I mean is, we don’t use axes. So, I’m not trying to make you into a lumberjack. I’m making you into a Paladin. Here,” Enya moved her hands closer together, but still apart. Then, she moved her into a swing that caused her to shift her shoulders and hips, nearly knocking her off-balance.

  Enya leaned to see why she stumbled and slid her feet, “Widen your stance. Bend your knees…There you go…Now, swing like this. You’re not a man. You don’t have their skeletal infrastructure. Even I don’t.”

  “What is that?”

  “Their bones are thicker,” Enya stood back from her. “Just a fact, really. Different makeup. Men have a density to them we don’t have. We have our advantages, they have theirs. We’re not raised using our arms to lift things, throw things over our heads, punch things. We’re raised using our legs, our hips are made to shift, our bones are made to hold weight in different areas then men, too, because of childbearing. Different center of gravity. Which means, our armor is weighted differently. And, that means, you don’t swing your sword the way they do to get the same result. But you will get the same result.”

  Aurie lifted her head to that. She nodded and took the stance that Enya showed. She practiced how Enya taught her to swing, moving her body more than she did her arms. It felt…awkward. She stumbled.

  “Bend the knees more,” Enya grabbed the other axe from leaning on the log and took up the same stance beside her. She nodded for Aurie to copy her as she slowly made the swing. “See? Move the hips. Shift your feet. Keep your wrists straight. Elbows bent. Don’t reach. Your arms will never be strong enough to put more than a touch of power in your swing. Move those shoulders. Keep the edge at your target.”

  Aurie watched Enya as she mimicked the movement. “So, if you went against a man your size, arm to arm, you’re saying you’d lose?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Enya laughed. “I’m just saying, time and conditioning are rarely a match for generations of conditioning. My people on both sides were hearty people. Men and women fought side by side, hunted together, farmed together, everything. We didn’t genderize things that way.”

  Aurie blinked, “I see.”

  Enya shrugged, moving closer to the tree. “Your people treat women like one of two ways,” She swung her axe the way she showed Aurie and sank the axeblade into the bark. With a jerk to free it, “either as delicate little dolls they let play in their living rooms, or as childbearing housemaids. Very seldom have I seen otherwise.”

  “I was a wife, not a doll or housemaid,” Aurie growled, letting the axe fall to only one hand as she straightened. “What people were your people anyway?”

  “Zulu and Mongolian,” Enya took another swing that sank deeper, “And, as far as I could tell, you might have been the exception because all the other women here are basically breeders as far as I’ve seen. Proud breeders with hobbies, but little else. Except Coraline. That one’s dumb as a bucket of rocks in a bucket of rocks, if you ask me.”

  Aurie gritted her teeth, ready to see if Enya really was as good a fighter as everyone says she was. “Call us breeders again you man with tits!”

  “Hold on,” Enya put her hands up—though she still had the axe in both of them—so Aurie could see her palms, “I meant no offense. I was merely giving my observations of our differences. Physical differences in people change over time by the way they live. My people lived differently than yours. My mother’s people are warriors of the plains, hunters. My father’s people are warriors also, horse folk from the steppes of the far east. Nomads and hunters. That’s what I meant. Not better or worse. Just different.”

  “Barbarians. Another barbarian,” Aurie fumed. “And you look down your nose on us? We do more than breed! We make the clothes on our family’s backs, we grow the food on our tables, patch the injuries of our husbands, manage the coin for the laborers, track the crop rows to be tilled. What did your mother do? Fashion a harness and ride your father?”

  Enya’s eyes went wide. “Going to be like that? Okay,” she let the axe rest on the ground and rolled her shoulders. “We can do this. You want to do this?”

  Aurie let her axe fall to the ground beside her. “Yeah. After what you said, I do. Tell me, with your people, what do you call your children? Foals or a litter?”

  Enya bit her lower lip, calmly nodding. “That one was deep. You cut me on that one. So, we’re animals to you, is that it?”

  “Breeders, you called us breeders. What am I, a cow to you? Your family could grow as tall as a house but they decided they didn’t need to build one, so you take it out on us? You're trees with tents!” Aurie roared, balling her fists.

  “That’s it,” Enya balled her own as she leapt from beside the tree.

  Aurie saw the fist, big as a sledgehammer. She saw it coming for her, but she didn’t move. Her arms hung where they were. Her balled fists, ready to swing, were planted at her sides. She watched it coming. She watched the fist moving air around it and was frozen, still as a statue. She didn’t feel it connect with her cheek.

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  It happened. She knew it happened. She saw her boots, standing on the sky as normal as if it were the ground. The clouds were merely a fixture of what they could walk on. The deep blue of the sky was no longer up. It was where her feet belonged.

  Aurie’s back hit the ground with a splash of her limbs around her. Everything was spinning. Half her face felt like she had been pulled apart and thrown back together with a red hot skillet.

  The sky wasn’t where her feet could walk. It was the sky again, only with Enya leaning across it. Those slanted eyes weren’t narrowed into a glare. They were wider, red around the greenish brown eyes of hers. Her overly thick lips were pulled into a scowl.

  “Anything else you have to say about my people, breeder?”

  Aurie was still trying to blink away the flashes of stars in her vision and the spinning. “Please don’t call us that.”

  “That’s fair.” Enya squinched a little and took her hand. She pulled her up onto her feet. She held her by her shoulders to steady her. Aurie was…wobbly. “Don’t call me a tree.”

  “Sorry,” Aurie put a hand to her face. It was beginning to feel like it was filling with a stone that was shifting her skull and jaw. “You hit me really hard.”

  “Yes,” Enya nodded, following the spinning of her eyes. “Yes, I did. It felt good, too. Actually,” she smiled. “Really good. Thank you. Plus, consider this an important lesson.” Enya was still holding her shoulders, keeping her steady on her feet. “Actually, two lessons.”

  “Two lessons?” Aurie was feeling the spinning slow, but the flashing stars were still far too many and that rock on the side of her face was getting bigger, shifting her jaw and skull sideways.

  “Yes, two,” Enya was smiling a little too widely. “First, if you’re going to insult someone, maybe pick someone whose arms aren’t thicker than your thighs. Second, if you see someone attacking you, instead of looking directly at their fist…duck.” And she laughed. Loudly. There was a snort in there somewhere. “You took that like it was the Second Coming and you were Moses. Never seen anyone…ever…just…plow…take it!” She threw her head back and cackled.

  “Funny,” Aurie was finally able to stand on her own.

  “Excuse me!” A man called from the river.

  Enya finally stopped laughing. Her head perked up and tilted with a pleased yet suspicious expression.

  Aurie pursed her brows and turned to see who she was looking at. And there he was. Thick auburn hair that only curled where it clung to the sweat on his forehead and neck, but was otherwise straight. He had tucked his hair behind his ears, though it only stayed behind one of them as he turned to direct his horse through the shallows of the river. Even from where she stood, Aurie could see the squareness of his jaw, the high cheekbones that still had some time before they became fully defined, and full lips. His nose was large enough not to be mistaken for a woman’s, but still shapely enough to make him…pretty. And, it had been broken and reshaped at least once.

  His eyes were what drew her to gape the most. He had…Draka’s eyes. Green circles around gold. Perfectly hazel eyes. For a moment, she had to blink to not see Draka in the way that he brushed at his horse nibbling at his cheeks while he approached them. The way he walked. The way he grinned at them. The way he didn’t hold his horse’s reins but expected…her to follow him. It was even a small white horse with—brown eyes, but still—just like Draka’s.

  Aurie blinked again and shook her head. He was dressed exactly how Draka was dressed the first day he arrived in Talkro. Cotton shirt, hide trousers beneath leather riding trousers, boots, a sword belted at his side, his armor and pack on his horse’s saddle. He didn’t have the spear or claymore, though. Not a Paladin, she assumed. Maybe. But…Draka…but not. And young.

  Lasse?

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I might be a little lost. Please,” He looked between them, speaking rapidly, “My boat…say how…in…over…dirt…under sky,” he pointed south then looked between Enya and Aurie.

  Enya made him blink a few times. Aurie, he crinkled his brow at. Then he shook his head a little, tightening his lips.

  To himself, “Blasted Swiss. They speak German, he says. No, Draka, they bloody don’t. They speak Swiss. It’s like French and German took a shite and they made parfaits with it!”

  Aurie began laughing, even though it made half her face burst with hammering pain.

  “What did he say?” Enya asked, wanting to laugh, too.

  The man pointed at Enya, “I understood that! I understand you! I—understand—YOU!” He began jumping and cheering. “Civilization!”

  “You’re in Alcalia and this is Talkro,” Aurie said between guffaws and ouches, a hand to her face. She gave Enya a winced glare. Enya only shrugged at her. She’s definitely not going to get an apology.

  “Talkro!” The man cheered again, this time to his horse. The horse nodded its head and danced with him. “We made it! We made it, Pearl! We’re here!”

  “I don’t think he’s at the right Talkro,” Enya said, blinking at him in wonder.

  Aurie shot her another glare. Then, she called to the man, her hand still on her face, “Who are you and why…?”

  “Oh,” the man turned from dancing with his horse, his smile making Aurie wish that returning it didn’t hurt so much. She must smile back. There was no way not to. “I’m very sorry. I am Adrian, a friend of Dra—” He corrected himself by clearing his throat and stiffened his back. “His Majesty, King Dietrich Luminis.”

  “Adrian…” Aurie rolled her hand for him to continue.

  “Friend of the King.” His smile faded. She knew the look instantly. It wasn’t deception, it was the same look a man gave when he was begging for food. “I’m not trying to do anything but see my dearest friend. I don’t want any…ruckus. Just, can you tell him I’m here? I’ll wait until summoned. Right here, I can wait right here. Or an inn, if there is one.”

  “There’s one at the fort,” Aurie lowered her hand and tilted her head at him. “I am Paladin Aurelie Clevlan, the Regent until his return. How do you know the King?”

  Adrian’s shoulders sank and he hung his head. “Please, I didn’t come here for any sort of reception or—”

  “The Regent asked you a question,” Enya stepped toward him with her arms crossed. She pressed a thumb to her chest, “Paladin Commander Khanyisile Dandarvaanchig. Might want to answer.”

  “That’s a mouthful,” Aurie whispered to her. “But very pretty.”

  “Thank you,” Enya beamed at her.

  “Well?” Aurie crossed her arms at Adrian.

  Adrian shook his head, looking past them in disappointment. He sighed. “I’m Prince Adrian Taggerty. Draka—King Dietrich—was my guardian until I was sixteen. I would prefer it if no one else knew. I don’t like my nobility being known by anyone without reason. Especially when I’m not in official capacity. I merely want to visit a friend. No parades, no ceremonies, no parties, no honorable mentions, and please no announcements. The last thing he or I need is someone to call for some tournament. We both hate those. A good hunt would be nice.”

  “You’re who?” Enya nearly went a pitch higher than Aurie was capable.

  Aurie only huffed in disbelief. “You missed out on that, unfortunately. He should be back tonight or tomorrow from the last hunt of the season.” She turned to Enya with a questioning look, “If I may?”

  Enya nodded, “Don’t take too long.”

  Aurie nodded, “I won’t.”

  “And,” Enya grinned with a wink, “Put some salve on that pillow while you’re up there.”

  Aurie glared back saying through gritted teeth, “Not a bad idea.”

  “Why would you put salve on a pillow?” Adrian asked his horse as they both followed Aurie up the hill. The horse blew butterflies as an answer.