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Quester pulled back, frustrated, then attacked again by lunging. When that failed, he swung the stick in wide arcs, but with each move, Shell easily met it with the staff. Shell watched Quester’s feet for the shifts in weight that told of the coming moves, but he also watched Quester’s waist. As his father had taught him, a body goes where the waist does. An enemy can feint with a head or off-hand, but the body will always follow the waist.

Quester grew peeved that Shell blocked his attacks so easily, and while Quester became winded as he attacked again, Shell had barely exerted himself. Quester finally fell back and said, “Sooner or later you’ll be too late to block me, and my sword will cut you in half.”

Shell shrugged and said, “You have only seen the defense a staff provides.”

“There’s more?” Quester charged him again, swinging wildly.

This time, Shell blocked the first blow, an overhead chop. .Then, Shell advanced, his staff, slashing and swinging, the ends striking Quester time after time, on his upper arms, not hard, but firm, with at least four strikes on each arm. A switch of handholds and Shell struck three firm hits on the outsides of Quester’s thighs. Quester fell back in stumbling steps. Shell made a wild swing with the staff above his head, and his hands slid to the very end, and the next roundhouse swing stopped just short of Quester’s unprotected head, like a woodsman chopping firewood.

A stunned expression filled Quester’s face. His eyes were glued to the staff a handsbreadth from his head. He said, “By the old gods, that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. If I didn’t know better, I’d think your stick is better than a sword.”

Shell lowered the staff, his breath coming harder with the exertion of the fancy moves, but a lopsided smile sat on his face. “Staff, not stick.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Not with your attitude. Seriously, it takes years of hard practice to do what I just showed you.”

“Yet you carry a bow?” Quester asked.

Shell shrugged and said, “I have never shot a single arrow with it.”

“By that, I suppose you mean you’re the best archer I’ve ever encountered?” The voice was snide as if testing Shell for the truth, and expecting to find Shell was an expert archer. “Like you’re just a herder and don’t know how to defend yourself, so you carry a staff.”

Shell laughed for the first time in days. “No, what I mean is that I took this bow from five highwaymen and a woman who were trying to rob me last night before I burned down their huts. I’ve never even drawn the bow but once, to test the pull. A poor shepherd like me does not have a use for a bow.”

Quester crossed his arms over his chest and squinted, giving Shell an appraising look that lacked any humor. His voice growled when he spoke as if he didn’t fully believe the answer. “I think you should take the lead.”

Confused, Shell shrugged. “Okay, but why?”

“Because you, my new friend, are either much more than you seem, or you’re a damned liar and until I know which, it’s hard to put any trust in what you say. I should watch your every move.”

“I still don’t understand.” Shell took a step closer to speak on a more personal level, but Quester took an equal footstep back, his hand lowering to the hilt of his knife.

Quester said, “You tell me you don’t know how to fight, but then say you can defeat any swordsman with your stick. You tell me you took that bow from five highwaymen? You say it as if you do that sort of thing without effort every day. Five of them against only you? Then you burned their homes? All that as calmly as if you’re telling me what you ate for dinner last night and you wonder why I’m concerned?”

“Concerned? Over me? I guess I still don’t understand.”

Quester hadn’t moved back again, but he still appeared upset. He said, “Maybe we should go our separate ways.”

Shell took a few steps back and sat on a ledge of sandstone, and in sudden understanding. He allowed a smile to grow. “Hold on a moment, Quester. If you had seen them, all five of them, you wouldn’t be so impressed. Hear me out and then leave if you want.”

Quester didn’t move any closer, but he nodded as he said, “This had better be some story.”

“First, there were just two of them to fight. They caught me beside the river after the rain, separated from my staff and belongings. While they talked, and threatened, they sent me to my backpack to get the money for them that they thought I had, and instead I grabbed my staff and broke the arm of one and jabbed the other in the stomach.”

“Earlier, you said there were five of them. And a woman.”

“After I had left those two, I decided they might follow me to take revenge, so I followed them. The first two met with the others at their huts and the other three men left to track me. They were a sorry lot, dirty, poor, and stupid. I waited until almost dawn and burned their huts.”

“That’s when you stole the bow?”

“And waded across the river. I waited there on a stone shelf for half a day to see if they followed.”

Quester relaxed. “You never know who you’re going to meet out here, and for a while, it sounded like you were either a fearless killer or the biggest liar I’ve heard of in a year. Either way, it was time for me to leave.”

“Let’s talk while we walk,” Shell suggested, still a bit confused and miffed at the attitude. A change of subject might help. “Tell me about your mountains to the west.”

“You’re interested in mountains of any sort, it seems.”

The statement didn’t offend Shell, but he decided to be honest with Quester, up to the point of admitting he was Dragon Clan. There were limits. “No, not all mountains, but you bring new possibilities that may help my family. I know people of the plains who have traveled west, and none has ever mentioned mountains in that direction. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but they must be so far away that people never go there.”

“People you know may never go there, but I lived in a village of a hundred, and on the other side of those Blue Mountains are cities that they say have thousands of people.”

“The other side?” Shell had never considered that across those mountains would be more people, perhaps, even more, grasslands like his home, or even another ocean. And beyond that could be more. “Is there a king?”

“At least three. And beyond there are more. I don’t know much about them.”

“Why didn’t you go that direction instead of crossing the grasslands?”

“A good question. Raiders came to our village. I was out hunting. When I returned, our village was burned, our farm too, and our animals slaughtered or missing. I was careless and searched for my family, but left plenty of footprints and tracks for them to follow.”

“They came back and found them?”

“And chased me,” Quester said without emotion.

“What about your family?”

“Dead. All of them, and almost everyone else I knew in our village. I took off on foot with three of the King’s men on horseback chasing after me. I headed into the mountains where others joined them in hunting me down.”

“Then you slipped away to the grasslands and kept going?”

“Close enough. I lived with other people a short time, and there were a few other things that happened, but that’s the basic story.”

Shell found it hard to believe someone could live in the grasslands without water, and the animals living there were few, so hunting was scarce. He said, “Water?”

“The Grasslands turn into the Drylands five or six days walk west of here. The food was scarce, but water is critical and harder to find. I made arcs.”