Chapter 32: Leaving the Dragon's Wing Inn

I slept very well that night. For some reason I felt safe and secure in the Inn, and S’Alor reaffirmed my feeling but wouldn’t go into any specifics when I questioned him. I got the very definite impression though that it had to do with the presence of D’ar’Beth. She was definitely more than she seemed.

I awoke refreshed, with a new energy and a desire to see what the day would bring. I only realized when I thought about it that the previous few days a weight had been building in my mind; a foreboding about the future. I wasn’t sure how or what it had lifted, but I was glad it had.

I got cleaned up and, after making sure the others were up and in the process of getting ready, went down for breakfast.

Greta was on duty again, and after greeting me pleasantly, went bustling off to get me my morning meal. The others trickled down one by one, and each seemed content to sit in quiet contemplation once they had all finished eating.

Just as I was starting to wonder whether we would be spending another day or two in the inn, the door opened and Hand Evans entered. He looked vaguely surprised to when I greeted him, and I was curious why when I had thought that he had come to the Inn to collect us, or to task us in some way. After greeting me, he went to the counter and spoke in low tones to Greta, stood and waited for a while. In a few minutes, Daffid came out from the kitchen area and the two of them chatted for a while in quiet tones. I was watching them carefully, as I realized that Hand Evans had some other business in the Inn, and after a few minutes of conversation he looked startled, and turned to stare at me. A few minutes later he left Daffid and came to join us at our table.

“You seem to manage to always be around when important things are happening Cy,” Hand Evans commented quietly, once he had taken the first sips of his warm drink. “How does that happen, do you think?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I responded, and my puzzlement must have been convincing as he relaxed slightly and leant back in his chair.

“You have no idea?” he asked.

“No. All I know is that we were told to stay in this Inn over-night, which we did. Now I’m waiting for further orders. I thought that was why you were here, to tell the truth. Obviously that’s not the case.”

“Well, it wasn’t. That’s changed. Daffid tells me that you met with one of his other guests last night …”

“Yes. With D’ar’Beth. What about her?”

“She’s the reason I’m here. She has agreed to travel with us when we leave here. When we first requested her company, she refused point blank, but then she inexplicably changed her mind. Now I’ve been told that she will travel with you and your Finger.”

“Oh. That’s a surprise. Why with us?”

“She apparently approves of you. She’ll be accompanied by Daffid’s daughter, Greta. You are to treat them as guests, but also as part of your finger, if that makes sense.”

“No, actually, it doesn’t. I’m getting the idea that it doesn’t make any difference what I think about this though, what with you being so cagy. Isn’t there anything more you can tell me about her?”

“You can ask D’ar’Beth anything you wish. What she chooses to tell you is her business. It’s certainly none of mine. I would like to caution you though; be very careful in your dealings with her.”

“Oh, I’ll be careful all-right. I already realised that she is more than she appears.”

“More than you think,” Hand Evans replied enigmatically, then he tossed off the last of his drink and stood. “You have the rest of the day to get your stuff together. Do some shopping in the market and get what you think you need. We are getting all the logistics sorted out, and negotiating things like rights of way for our journey. We expect to be able to move out early tomorrow morning. You’ll get the call. Expect it soon after midnight. Ok?”

“Yes. That sounds fine.”

Hand Evans tuned on his heel and left, rather abruptly I thought, but then figured that he would have many arrangements to make so I suppose it was a little egocentric of me to think so.

Once he was gone, we sat around a while speculating on what we had just been told. Greta came over to our table to clear up, and I asked her whether she was ready to travel.

“I’ll have my kit packed and be ready. You won’t need to worry about me,” was her tart rejoinder.

Having been put firmly in my place by a woman, once again to S’Alor’s vast amusement, I decided that we needed to do some practice. I walked over to the counter and called Daffid to ask him if there was somewhere we could use, and he pointed me to a door to the Inn’s inner courtyard.

The Finger joined me and we started warming up. Within a few minutes, we were deeply into the Sword-Dance and I could feel that it had been a good decision, because it drew us together and energised us in a way as we flowed through the forms. After a while, I noticed that there were two others who had joined us, a little hesitantly at first, but quickly speeding up and integrating with the rest of the Finger. I noticed in an abstract way that it was Greta and D’ar’Beth. They didn’t know the exact forms that we were using, but had forms of their own, and I was able to push our forms to them easily enough.

Once we had worked through our normal forms, I picked up from great a tentative suggestion to use some of the forms she knew and I accepted gratefully, always keen to learn new things. It then became obvious that her forms were designed for a double-bladed axe, and had to be adjusted for our use with swords. It was quickly apparent why she had been a bit hesitant with our forms; she was wielding a pretty impressive axe and had been adapting our forms from the sword to the axe as she went along. I was very impressed, because that was not a trivial accomplishment, as I soon discovered trying to do the conversion in the other direction.

Greta was generous with her knowledge however, and I allowed her sense of her axe; the way it moved; what muscles she used to heft it; how she placed her feet and how she used her whole upper-body to make the axe sing through the air; suffuse the Dance and imprint itself on my memory.

D’ar’Beth was part of the Sword Dance, but she seemed to hold herself aloof. There with us, but rather as if she was an observer and not a participant. I got the feeling that she was quite amused with it all, although there was no malice; rather a sense of affection. She let nothing about herself slip into the union that we created, so we didn’t learn anything from her. If S’Alor hadn’t been so reassuring, I would have been very suspicious of her and especially of what her motives were.

Once we had wound down out of the Dance, I took the opportunity to examine Greta’s axe. It was a fearsome thing, but beautiful; beautiful in the way that good design is beautiful. The axe had absolutely no decorations on it whatsoever; it was simply a plain steel head and hasp, with a leather-wrapped handle. When I gave it a few practice swings, I could feel that it was perfectly balanced. Most of Greta’s forms were for slicing movements through the air, keeping the head of the axe moving at all times. The axe had a spike sticking out of the head though, almost an extension of the hasp, which could be used in a formidable stabbing attack.

After complimenting Greta on her axe, I turned to D’ar’Beth.

“I hear you’re accompanying us on our trip?”

“Yes, your leaders asked me to go along, and I didn’t make up my mind to join with them. I changed my mind after meeting you and your delightful companions,” D’ar’Beth answered.

I knew she was really referring to S’Alor. She didn’t seem to be too concerned about me questioning her, so I decided to push it a little.

“Why would my ‘leaders’ invite you along? I find the whole thing a little strange.”

“Oh, they know that I’ll contribute to the fighting strength I suppose,” she answered with a little smile playing over her lips.

I suspected that her reply had been a little disingenuous, but I got the sense that pushing any further wasn’t going to get me very far, and might actually cause problems that I didn’t need.

“Ok. I suppose we’ll discover more about that as we go. Is there anything that you need to do to get ready for the journey?’ I asked her.

“No. I’m ready. I would suggest though, if I may, that you ensure that you ensure you have provisions of food and water of your own and don’t rely on the Fight to provide everything for you. There are some stalls in the market which will supply you with some very good travel rations. Ask for ‘Way-Bread’. That’s good.”

“Ok, thanks for the advice. We’ll do so.”

With that, we all re-entered the Inn and I lead the Finger out through the main door to explore the town a little and search for the market-place.

Chapter 27: Lectures

I hadn't realised juts how tired the swim had made me until we had been running for a while and I found myself flagging. It took some concentration on my body and some concerted effort before I felt my body starting to adjust again as it flushed all the toxins. I {tasted} how the rest of my Finger were doing, and when I saw that they were battling as much as I had been, I did the same for them as I had done for myself. We eventually completed the run back where we had started at the big rock, and S'Alor took himself off into the bush when we started swimming. It was a lot easier this time, both because all the warriors in my Finger now knew how to swim and because it was down-stream back to the base. When we got back to the base, Hand Evans dismissed us for brunch.

***

After brunch, all of the 'knuckles' were called aside by Hand Evans while the rest were formed up and started to practice normal sword drills in formation under the cadre's watchful eye.

***

"Knuckleheads," Hand Evans began, "we are going to start teaching new concepts, drills and formations to you, so that you can teach them to your Fingers. The schedule to start with is going to be PT in the mornings, then a lecture for you after brunch at 10h00 till about 14h30. After that you will have time to instruct your Fingers until 16h00. Supper is from 16h00 to 16h30. You will then be able to work with your Finger on drills and problems experienced during the day stopping at 20h00. After that you have personal time with lights out at 22h30.

"There will be no formal inspections of the Barracks, but be aware that you are responsible for them and that means that the punishment is yours if they aren't spick and span. I suggest you hold your own ad hoc inspections to ensure that we never have trouble about this.

"Depending on how things go, we will switch to a night program where everything will be reversed. Yes Desrae?"

"Hand Evans, how will we know that things are on schedule?" asked Desrae.

"We will tell you," Hand Evans answered. "When we determine that you are up to scratch, we will schedule a break and then start the night phase. When that is completed, we will have an evaluation and then we will look at a few possible specialisations. Please understand, our normal schedule for this first day phase is four weeks minimum. We suspect though that if you can get your 'Sword Dance' technique to work for you, you might be able to progress slightly faster. From what I saw of the hair loss earlier, I suspect that won't be any trouble at all... "

Everyone laughed at that.

"Right, lets begin with the order of march when crossing hostile country" Hand Evans launched into his lecture. I had to pay very careful attention to what he said because I had come to realise that a lot of what I 'knew' from my previous military experience could get me into trouble. I had to remember that there were no mortars, patrol or otherwise, to provide a quick response to an ambush to to assist in breaking contact. There were no fire-support missions or casevacs, no transport vehicles to handle logistics and no battle-taxis, or Infantry Combat Vehicles. Everything here was done on foot at the pace that the warriors could move. The essentials were the same, the same principles and concepts, I just had to remember that the assumptions based on motorised or mechanised infantry had to be re-evaluated and thought through in the light of the current situation.

Hand Evans introduced us to the concept of the 'Tactical Decision Exercise" and told us that as we progressed, we could be presented with a scenario at any time and have to come up with a solution on the spot. This was tied initially into the broader concept of the way that the Hand would move and fight, so there was very little scope for individual Finger decision making. The one place where this was different was in the skirmish line. When the Hand was moving tactically through hostile terrain, one of the Fingers would act as a skirmish line a short distance ahead of the Hand, and if they hit contact, their job was to delay the attack for long enough for the rest of the Hand to prepare for battle. One of the other Fingers was responsible for protection of the HQ element. The HQ element would be where any odds and sods would travel with the Hand, to ensure that they didn't interfere with its smooth running. Depending on the terrain, there were various formations that the Hand could travel in. Generally in forested or bushy areas, this would be with less seperation between individuals. Finger formations would generally be line ahead or a 2-up-T formation. Each Hand would be close enough to at least one other Hand so that they could provide support in need. For more open terrain such as desert or savannah, the formations would be a lot more open and dispersed, concentrating only for obstacle crossing and to confront a mutual threat.

With this very broad outline, we were dismissed to join the rest of the Hand for us to start working with them as Fingers.

My first priority was to teach my Finger the Sword Dance, and in the process start to bind them into a unit that would think and act together. I had readlly struggled on the swim and run to do any more than to maintain contact between the members of the Finger. There was certainly no team as there had been with my original Finger.

I started off by going up into Battle Mode and then pulling the Finger up with me, then I began on the simplest sword drills, one after another until they started to flow together into the beginnings of the Sword Dance. When we reached this point after about an hour, it was as if I had broken through a brick wall. After that it started to go a lot faster as I didn't need to do quite as much controlling, but could rather just 'show' and have the Finger members pick it up with less and less direct control from me.

By the time 16h00 rolled around, the Finger was performing pretty well. i could see that it was still going to take a lot of working together to get the fluidity and control that I had come to expect, but it was a solid start that could be built on.

I had considered dropping in instruction similar to the way that S'Alor had shown me how to push instructions to their bodies to lose their hair and modify their characteristics, but I was feeling guilty about that. S'Alors cavalier attitude had crossed over to me and had influenced me to feel the same way about it that he did. If I had thought about it first, I would never have done what I had without at the very least obtaining permission first. I thought that it smacked of mind control or domination and it was a violation of privacy that I would object to strenuously if it had been done to me without my permission. I also considered that it would be more efficient in the long run for the warriors in my Finger, and others, to learn how to take this sort of instruction with the least amount of interference with their minds on the part of the instructor.

***

After supper, I got together with the other knuckles and we decided to do a Sword Dance of our own. While we were busy with that, I explained my thinking about the mental instruction and the rest agreed that we needed to ensure that we started out on the moral high ground, so that as we developed this further those who came afterwards would have a good example to follow. We also agreed it just made good sense to act morally.

While we were busy, we also shared our impressions and memories of the lecture that we had received from Hand Evans. I found that this was extremely useful as it helped me to commit what we had learnt to memory and there were things that each of us had missed that one of the others had picked up on, so we filled in each other's blanks in this way. During the Sword Dance, S'Alor joined us mentally, and he had some pithy and pointed comments to make on the practicality of quite a few of the things that we had been taught.

***

This set the schedule for the next few weeks activities. Every day we followed Hand Evans' program and learnt like crazy from what he and others had to teach us. At the same time, we were teaching others what we had learnt which tended to force us to think about it and remember it. There is nothing that teaches you a subject like having to teach someone else. After two weeks of this, I felt that my Finger was fully competent, just having to have a few sharp corners smoothed, and I was starting to hope for something a little different and challenging.

***

Chapter 26: Swim

Once I got Brad sorted out, we could pick up the pace a bit. I could feel that the swimming was using my muscles in a completely different way to running and fighting had. I had known that being swimming fit was different to being running fit before, but with my new awareness of my body that came with the Battle Mode I was able to see the difference in detail. As we swam, I started working on adjusting my body to compensate for the strain that the swimming was putting on it. I could see though that the warriors in my Finger were not able to do anything like that. The changes to their bodies were still at the involuntary stage that I had experienced during the run on my first day on War World. I thought about that a bit and decided that I could ask for some advice.

"[S'Alor, can you hear me?]"

"[Yes Cy.]" S'Alor gave the feeling that he was sleepy and a little grumpy at being woken up.

"[Sorry to wake you, I just wanted to ask you a quick question. Is it possible for me to teach the members of my Finger how to control their bodies a little better?]"

"[No. You are their pack leader so you can do it for them. {image/explanation}. Now leave me to sleep.]"

S'Alor dumped a fairly complex concept in my mind which took some time for me to unravel. If I understood him correctly, I could guide the process in the members of my finger in the same way I had done for myself. I decided to be very, very circumspect in what I attempted with this because I didn't want to do anything that would be dangerous to them. I picked on the shaving thing as a good place to start, because even if I messed up, it was no big deal. According to S'Alor, once we were in battle mode with me leading the gestalt, I didn't even need their permission. I thought carefully about the way that I got rid of my hair, and reached out to the Finger and gave a {push} for them to lose theirs. There was an immediate chorus of confusion and shock.

"[Cy, What's happening?]" called Bridget.

That didn't surprise me at all. She had just lost her mane of blond hair after all.

"[Sorry Bridget, and the rest of you, I just got rid of your hair for you.]" I told the Finger.

"[That was the strangest thing,]" Bill chipped in, "[I could feel all of my hair falling out and washing away. Did you get rid of everything?"]

"[Yes. We are all hairless for now. It is fairly easy to speed up hair-growth later on if any of you wish, but I thought that for now it is better this way. I am going to make some other changes so don't be too surprised]"

"[{agreement}] came from all of them.

I thought carefully about the next bunch of changes I wanted to make. I started changing each of them one by one, basically slimming down all of them and optimising their bodies for both endurance and strength. By the time I had finished, we were at the rock that Hand Evans had told us about so we all climbed out of the water. I felt energised as I always did after being in battle mode, but once we were waiting at the rock, I dropped us out of battle mode. I examined all the members of the finger and I was truly amazed at what I had been able to accomplish. I had thought that being able to change myself was a rush, but this was way beyond that.I could see that a fair number of the changes had happened already, but I knew that some of them would take a bit of time to happen. One of the more obvious ones was that I had decided that we should all be the same height. I had tried to change us all to be six foot two, but that hadn't happened yet. The most obvious change was the absolute lack of hair on all of us, but the change in physique was also readily apparent.

Desrae's finger had got out of the water a few minutes before us and she had watched us arrive.

"[Do you have some sort of fetish for hairless women Cy?]" she asked me with barely suppressed mirth.

"[{amusement} I just did that as a first step and as a test. I also think it will be good for hygene.]" I was a little defensive, but took her teasing as a sign of her affection.

"[How did you do that Cy?]" Desrae asked so I explained it to her and to the others in the same way that S'Alor had explained to me, along with a few more detailed mental images.

It was hilarious to watch as suddenly all the hair started falling off the members of first Desrae's Finger and then, one by one, the rest of the Hand.

Just as this was happening, Hand Evans and the rest of the cadre arrived at the rock. I was watching Hand Evans' face and got to see his face when he noticed what was going on. It was very amusing to watch him struggle to get his face under control and try to pretend that he was completely unsurprised.

"Right," he said. "If you lot are quite finished playing silly buggers, let's take a run. This is going to be part of our routine every morning from now on. We will swim the two klicks from the jetty to here, run about twenty klicks on various different routes ending back here, then swim back to the jetty. In your fingers, by number, follow me."

I got into line directly behind Hand Evans with my Finger with me and we set out. We hadn't gone more than a klick when S'Alor was running silently next to me.

"[You gave me a fright S'Alor. I though you were sleeping?]" I greeted him.

"[I wasn't interested in swimming. I like to run.]" was his very curt reply.

"[I didn't see you on my Mind Map. How do you do that?]" I asked him. This was something that had been puzzling me for a while.

"[Practise. Like this {image/explanation}.]"

I tried to figure it out. It seemed that it was simply a technique that was an extension of the situational awareness that being in Battle Mode gave me. All I had to do though was to integrate myself so thoroughly with the envirionment that I was invisible so much as people would overlook me. I tried to do this and S'Alor just laughed at me.

"[It will take you some time to practice that. I'll tell you when you get it right.]" he told me.

I had to content myself with that. I took the Finger up into Battle Mode and I concentrated on practicing 'I am a rock, I am a bush' while we ran to the constant under-current of S'Alor's amusement.

Chapter 25: New Finger

I moved my kit from the Barracks room that we had used the previous night across to the Finger One Barracks. This was a move from one side of the semi-circle to the other, from the furtherest East to the furtherest West. My new barracks was right on the bank of the river. I stood in the door and waited to see what would happen next.

After a short while the Cadre Finger Leaders started sending warriors out to the different barracks; I could hear them calling names and then see the warriors leaving the formation to return to their original barracks, collect their kit and move to their new homes, just as I had done. Three warriors came to my new barracks to collect their kit and move out before the first of my new finger arrived to join me. As he walked up to the barracks carrying his kit, I tried to guess what sort of man he was. He was tall, somewhere over six feet, and very bulky. I couldn’t tell whether this was a hold-over from his previous build or not, but he looked as if he was a typical body-builder with an extreme development of his muscles. As he came up the stairs, he looked at me without saying anything, until I realised that he was waiting for me to clear the path into the barracks. I moved aside and let him in. When he had dumped his kit, I was waiting on the ground in front of the barracks and I asked him his name.

"I’m Bradley," he grunted and came to a stop next to me. We both watched as the rest of my new finger straggled in one by one. It took about ten minutes for the rest to gather. Once the last straggler was there, I looked them over.

"My name is Cy Peters. Being appointed as a ‘knuckle’ to a new Finger has been a huge surprise for me, so I have probably just as little idea what to expect as you do. I think we should spend some time introducing ourselves while we wait for more information. I come from Durban in South Africa and I was in the Army there. I saw combat in Angola and Namibia at section level in Motorised Infantry, and then later on as part of a Mechanised Battalion Group near the Lomba river. I was a reserve force soldier for twenty three years, doing time in the army for between thirty and ninety days every year. My last deployment was as a company commander on peace keeping operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although there wasn’t all the much peace to keep up in the North East where we were. Before I joined up for War World, I was the battalion training officer. You might recognise me from the Combat Competition. Brad, what about you?"

"Bradley Commons. Called Brad, not Bradley," came the surly response. I was British Army. Got to Staff Sergeant and they kicked me out. Wouldn’t let me stay in for my thirty years cause I wasn’t a Sgt Major. Did a few tours in Ireland, one in Aden. Latest was a tour to the Sand-Box."

"Thanks Brad. Next?" I asked of a short wiry man.

"Jeremy Ellis. Jerry to my friends. Originally from Kenya. I was the son of British expatriates and I volunteered for the British Army and ended up doing the P course. I instructed for a while on secondment from the Paras. Did a combat tour in Cyprus fighting the Greeks. I got out after my five years but found I was getting bored on my Dad’s farm, so I signed up with Mad Mike Hoare. Did two contracts with him in the Congo. After that I had had enough soldiering, so I bought a farm in Rhodesia. I was in the BSAP there and did a lot of tracking. I have been retired for a long time now and was living in Mooi River."

"Interesting. Seems we have eaten some of the same dust," I said with a smile. "You didn’t live that far away from me either. Next?"

"That’ll be me." The voice came from a woman around 5’8" in height with a close-cropped head of brown hair. "I’m Shelly Booth. Grew up in Chicago. I have no military background, but I know weapons and fighting." The last was said with a touch of defiance.

"I would be interested to know where you learnt about those Shelly?" I probed gently.

"I ran with a gang," came the succinct reply.

"Ok. Makes sense. That’s Brad, Jerry and Shelly. Next please?"

"Bill Riley. I did twelve years in the US Army. My last tour was with the 10th Mountain in the Stan."

"Light Infantryman hey? Carry light, Sleep Cold." I grinned at Bill. "What rank?"

"I left as a Sgt. Up or Out got me RIFd".

I could see that there was an incredible amount of resentment there. Bill had the classic American soldier’s build; heavy in the arms and shoulders.

"OK. And you?" This was to the last member of the finger. A short, blond, Barbie type.

"I grew up on a farm in Wyoming. Lived around horses and did pulled my weight but I got sick of being the butte of Dumb Blonde jokes. I decided to take the opportunity when it came up. I lost one brother to Desert Storm and another to an IED in Iraq just last year. I figured that if they had been alive, they might have liked to take advantage of this opportunity, so I came in their place. "

"OK. You didn’t tell us your name?"

"Oh. Sorry. I am Bridget Amory. Folks were of German stock."

"Ok Bridget. Thanks. Right. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s try something else. How far did you guys get with the mental side of things?"

I watched them while I asked this question. I had been surprised to see that all the men had beards and mustaches, so I guessed that they had not got quite as far along as I had with my old Finger.

"[Can you all hear me?]" I asked when I got only a few mumbled responses. As it turned out, they could all hear me, but they could not send at all. I had to pick up their replies from their minds, rather then having them send it back to me. After a little observation, it was obvious that their mental development was sorely lacking.

"[Finger Leaders,]" I heard Hand Evans calling, "[Take your new fingers down to the Jetty. We are going to start out with a bit of a swim. When you are there, swim up-river till you reach a large rock {image} on the left bank. The rock is about two klicks upriver. Get out of the river, and wait next to the rock.]"

"[Can everyone swim?]" I asked the Finger as we walked rapidly the hundred meters or so to the jetty. All of them said they could so as soon as we were there, I dived into the water with the Finger following. Two klicks was a very long way to swim to my old way of thinking, and the last time I had swum that far was when I competed in the Midmar Mile a few years before. I had experience now though of what my body was capable of here on War World.

I started out at a very slow pace, doing an easy breast-stroke while I checked on my Finger. They were all OK except for Brad who seemed to have progressed as far as doggy-paddle before deciding that was all he needed to know about swimming. I realised that I had automatically moved into the meditation state, and I was at first surprised that the rest of the Finger hadn’t followed me in doing so. I suddenly felt the other ‘knuckles’, the members of my old Finger, as they also entered the state we had used for the Sword Dance, so I reached out to them.

"[Are you guys doing OK?]"

"[Yup,]" Desrae replied, "[although it looks as though our Finger was something special. This lot {image/taste}]"

I laughed. Desrae’s image showed a bunch of drunken slobs falling around and vomiting on each other.

"[It’s not that bad.]"

"[Almost. We need to get these guys as much up to speed as we can Cy. Interacting with them has made me realise we are already light years ahead.]" Desrae’s scathing tone came through clearly.

"[Agreed. Why not start by seeing if we can get our Fingers into the ‘battle mode’ first, then we can see if that helps us with teaching them the other stuff we know?]"

"[{Agreement}]" came back from all four of them.

I reached out to my Finger "[I want you to follow me in your minds.]"

As I got each person’s attention I started guiding them into the battle mode state. I started with Brad as it seemed to me that he had the most to benefit from learning how to do it. While I was struggling with him, we were swimming at a snail’s pace. This didn’t worry me too much as I could see in my Mind Map that there were at least three Fingers that were having problems and were proceeding slowly. It took me much longer than I had thought it would, but eventually the whole section had managed to move into battle mode. Once they were there, I started pushing swimming techniques at them. The change in Brad was startling. He learnt from this process very quickly and the section started moving at last with a fairly rapid over-hand crawl. As we swam, I started trying to confirm my initial suspicions that the warriors that I had been given had barely scratched the surface of the potential of the mental aspects of what I had found available. I checked with Desrae and the others and they were adamant in confirming my thoughts. I decided to move this up the chain a little and contact Finger Roberts. He very quickly confirmed what I had suspected. He explained to me that the real forging of a Finger normally happened in battle where the bonds between the members would be created under extreme stress. it was only after this first battle that we were supposed to really start coming into our mental abilities as we fed off the synergy from a bonded Finger. He pointed out to me that we had been an aberration, which was why they were experimenting with placing us as knuckles to see whether we could use our abilities to short-cut the process.

Chapter 24: Second Phase Training

After about three hours of running, we crested a ridge and entered a small valley. The new training base was next to a broad river. It was a delightful base that reminded me of nothing less than Lothlorien in Lord of the Rings. Each Finger had a house to itself that was raised from the ground about three meters on stilts. The five Finger houses were arranged in a semi-circle around a small clearing in the forest. Off to the East side there were a number of other houses that acted as an admin area including store-rooms, a mess-hall and classrooms.

Hand Evans called us to a halt in the center of the clearing and dismissed us. Finger Roberts led us to our house which was the one closest to the admin buildings. I chose the a bed against the far wall in the corner and stowed my kit. S’Alor wasn’t interested in coming into the camp, and said that he would make himself comfortable in the forest.

Settling in took almost no time at at. We simply dumped our gear and then left the house to walk around and take a look at our new home. One of the first things I spotted was a notice board with a series of pages on it listing each Finger, their Finger Leaders, Knuckles and members. We walked towards the river and onto the jetty that stretched out into the river.I looked down and saw that there were fish visible through the clear water. We were soon joined by some of the members of the other fingers.

"Let’s go for a swim," Desrae suggested.

"Great idea" I replied, and we headed back to get our towels. On the way there, I asked Finger Roberts about showers.

"Haven’t you learnt how to warm water yet Cy?" he asked me.

"I’m on to you Finger," I replied with a smile.

Finger Roberts laughed. "Yes, I figured one day in base would expose me."

"Do we have any showers?" I asked again. I was a bit obessed with the idea by now. It was the one major luxury that I had missed during our first phase training.

"No. Maybe it’s time to re-examine that water-heating idea of yours."

"Great idea. All we need is a container for the water and some piping."

With that Finger Roberts led me off to the Admin building, all thoughts of swimming shelved. No matter how nice the scenery, this came first for me.

At the admin building, Finger Roberts introduced me to a guy I would come to depend on. "Cy, this is Mark Knoble. He acts as our quartermaster. He is part of the admin section, and not part of a Finger."

"Hi Mark," I greeted him. Finger Roberts wandered off and I was left talking to Mark.

"Hi Cy. What can I do for you?" Mark asked.

I explained what I needed to Mark and he disappeared into his store with a quiet request for me to wait for a few minutes. When he reappeared, he was carrying a length of piping.

"Will this do?’ Mark asked.

I examined the piping. "That’s perfect. What about the other things?"

"In the back" said Mark and led me around the building to where he had an outdoor shed for storage. In the shed Mark pointed out a barrel.

"What is that thing made of?" I asked him.

"I have no idea. All I know is that it is the standard barrel used to store liquids. It is very durable and can be put on the fire to heat water. We have done that before."

That was welcome news. I went to man-handle the barrel out of the store and found it was made of an extremely light material. Once I had the barrel outside, I rolled it along away from the admin building towards the river. When I got it there, I turned around and found Mark had anticipated my need; he was standing behind me with a two-handed wood saw in his hands.I gathered up a number of large stones and created two piles of them for the barrel to rest on, then I took the knife that Mark offered me at my request, and cut a hole in the top of the barrel and another on the top of the one side. I attached a pipe to the hole on the side for siphoning off hot water and got a bucket from Mark. While I was fetching water to fill the barrel, Mark started cutting wood for a fire.

It took me a while, but I eventually got the barrel filled with water. When we got the fire going I placed the pipe into one bucket and fetched another bucketful of cold water. I waited for the barrel to heat up, chatting to Mark while I did so. once I thought it was hot enough, I poured the bucket of cold water into the top of the barrel and collected the warm water that came out of the other. I would at last have some hot water in future.

Finger Roberts and I went back to our barracks room and grabbed some towels to join the others in the river.

* * *

The next morning we were woken up early as usual. It didn’t bother me; armies since the dawn of time have had to instill this habit in soldiers to be ready for the typical dawn raid, so it was something I was completely familiar with. This morning though we were in a new place and I was unsure of what the routine would involve, so I went with the others down to the river for a quick wash and got dressed. We were called shortly after that to form up in the central parade ground.

We formed up under the guidance of the Finger Leaders into a large formation, but each finger formed two rows of three, with the Finger Leader at the head of the right-hand row. Once everyone was in place, Hand Evans addressed us.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Today we will start your second phase training. We will start with a reorganisation. Your Finger Leaders will now withdraw from you and become part of the training cadre, while those of you who have been identified as potential Finger Leaders will take over in those positions. While you are learning about how to fight as a Hand, these people will be learning what is involved in being a Finger Leader. While they are under training, they will be addressed as ‘Knuckle’ but you will treat them as if they are actual Finger Leaders. Think of them as ‘Candidate Officers’ in that while they do not hold the rank yet, they will have to perform as Finger Leaders and the cadre will back up their temporary authority.

"Once that has taken place, we will start with the drills that you already know from Finger training, and how they apply to fighting together in the Hand. Finger Leaders, carry on."

Finger Roberts turned to us and called us aside. "In case you hadn’t guessed it before now, you lot are the new ‘Knuckles’ for this training Hand. Cy, you will take Finger One, Desrae two, Lian three, Elaine four and Geraint Five. Go to the barracks and move your kit to your new barracks rooms, your new Finger members will join you there shortly."

I looked around at the others and realised that they were just as surprised as I was at this latest development. I shrugged and went to do as I had been ordered.

Chapter 23: S'Alor & Second Phase

I woke up the next morning in the barracks room with the rest of my Finger. Lorraine and I had spent a good three hours the previous day exploring all the various athletic options that are possible between two consenting adults, and a few that I hadn’t known were possible. I had made my way back to the barracks room and gone to sleep after having to endure the friendly joshing from Desrae and the others.

I got up and took care of my morning routine, only too happy to have access to a hot shower for a change. It was still early when I was finished and dressed. I had given some thought to how I was going to handle introducing S’Alor to the powers-that-be, so I reached out to make contact with Finger Roberts.

"[Finger, It’s Cy.]"

"[What is it Cy?]" It seems I had woken Finger Roberts for a change.

"[I need to see you as soon as possible. There is something that you need to know.]"

"[OK. I will meet you on the parade ground in 20 minutes. I just need to get myself sorted out.]"

"["No Problem, Finger.]"

I woke up the rest of my finger and once they were all firing on all cylinders, told them the story of S’Alor. Desrae told me that she had suspected that there was something going on as she had detected what she thought was a dream character on the periphery of our Sword Dances while we were training. That surprised me. I had often felt S’Alor hanging around mentally when we were busy, but I hadn’t know that anyone else had sensed him. Lian confirmed that he had also sensed something, but Geraint and Elaine claimed to have been oblivious.

I left them to get ready and walked out to find Finger Roberts.

"Over here Cy," he called me and handed me a tin mug of coffee. Ambrosia. Something else that I had missed. While we sipped coffee I told him the story. It’s one huge advantage to mental communication, you can talk while eating or drinking.

"[Remember when you detected that I was speaking to someone who wasn’t on your mind-map?]" I reminded him.

"[Yes. Are you going to tell me who he is now?]" Finger Roberts didn’t sound at all surprised.

"[How did you know?]"

"[I have sensed him since then on the fringes of the Sword Dance, and once or twice while we were on runs I felt that we weren’t alone. Nothing definite, but you forget that I have been doing this a while Cy.]"

"[Why didn’t you ask me about this?]" I asked in puzzlement.

"[{Amusement} I consulted Hand Evans about it and just watched you. I could sense that this was something that you thought was important, but we decided to wait until you felt you were prepared to tell us on your own.]"

"[Hand Evans knows?]"

"[Yes. He’s waiting for us. I suspected that you wanted to tell me about this and gave him a heads-up.]"

"[Can he meet us near the edge of the parade-ground?]"

"[Sure. I’ll let him know.]"

Once I got over my initial surprise, I realised I had been thinking like a typical recruit. The instructors often see things that the recruits think that they don’t, and just as often choose not to do anything about them for one reason or another. I had been on that side of the fence, and I should have known better. We walked on and we were joined by Hand Evans at a spot under some trees.

"[Morning.]" Hand Evans greeted us curtly. I took a careful look at his communication then realised it was simply tiredness, and not anything to do with me. It seemed that I was not the only one to have celebrated a little last night.

"[Finger Roberts. Hand Evans."] I began, "[I need to tell you about someone that I have met.]" I went on to tell them the bits of the story that I had left out before; about S’Alor and our communications. Hand Evans seemed to be most interested in S’Alor’s ability to move close to us without appearing on our mind map. I didn’t realise it, but somehow I didn’t tell them, and they didn’t realise, that S’Alor was Smilodean.

"[S’Alor is right near by. Can I call him in?]" I eventually asked.

"[Sure.]" I got back from Hand Evans.

S’Alor had been waiting. I had barely got the permission from Hand Evans when he appeared out of the shadows and came to stand at my side.

Hand Evans and Finger Roberts looked as if they were going to die from strokes. They had the most incredible looks of shock and horror on their faces that I had ever seen. I couldn’t help smiling, and my mind was full of S’Alor’s "[{Amusement}]".

"[S’Alor, this is Hand Evans {image/taste} and Finger Roberts {image/taste}.]" I introduced him.

Both men replied politely enough, although I could see that they were seriously shocked about the fact that S’Alor was a Smilodean. They had all considered the big cats to be a particular danger to humans in the forest, and I could see that they were pretty nervous about being this close to S’Alor.

Just then I spotted Marek walking up, with Shiyla in tow.

"[Good morning S’Alor,]" Marek greeted calmly.

Hand Evans swung around to stare at Marek. "[You know him? You knew the Smilodeans were sentient?]" he asked, the fury obvious in his voice.

"No need to panic Hand Leader Evans" Marek said calmly. "S’Alor specifically asked on behalf of the Smilodeans that you not be told of their nature. They have spent some time observing the operations on War World with a view to joining in. S’Alor contacted me last night to tell me that they have made the decision to test the relationship. He seems to like Cy Peters here and has chosen to be his Battle Companion. It is in the nature of a test of the relationship. If it works out, then there might be further members of his race that will decide to join."

"[{Agreement} I have watched Cy. He tasted to me like a predator, but told me that he was a cub. He was open to me and seemed more prepared than most to act like a cub in order to learn new things. This thing he calls a Sword Dance is something that I helped him to achieve. It was already within him, but I just pushed him to focus on it.]"

I was very interested by this. Not only did it seem as if S’Alor could understand our spoken language, and not just our mental communications as I had at first thought, but he was a lot more erudite than he had appeared at first. I was to discover that he was learning just as much from me as I was from him.

"You are about to start your second phase training. Might I suggest that for now you consider S’Alor to be a companion to a warrior in one of the fingers, and we can see how the relationship develops?" asked Marek.

"That sounds good to me," replied Hand Evans, "do you agree Finger?"

"Yes Hand," Finger Roberts answered. "It is going to make things interesting though!"

* * *

To say that the rest of the the warriors who had been on War World for some time were surprised would be stretching the concept of under-statement to the breaking point. The other recruits took it basically in their stride as for them it was just one more aspect of their new situation. Once Fist Ryon had stopped pissing and moaning, and the rest of the leaders had calmed down somewhat, the entire training Fist was assembled on the parade-ground.

Fist Ryon addressed us again as he had at the start of our first phase.

"Warriors," he said, "we have had some excitement the last day or so, but we need to put that behind us now and continue with the next phase of your training. To this point you have focused on individual skills and Finger formations. In the next phase we will continue to work on improving those skills, but we will now move into fighting in larger formations, the Hand and the Fist, as well as how some of the other pieces of the organisation work. The Hands that you were assigned to yesterday will be the Hands you are in for this phase of the training. We will move out as Hands to the Hand training bases where this phase will begin. I will be seeing you from time to time both as I observe your Hand training and when we finally get together as a Fist to train. I encourage you to pay attention to what you are taught and to work hard. Some of you have experienced what it is like to be defeated in battle in our Combat Training battles here yesterday, and I am sure you can attest to the fact that it is not pleasant. Keep this in mind for this next phase. During this phase we will also be confirming our evaluations of you and we will make some decisions about who will be earmarked for leadership positions. That is all. Hand Leaders, take over."

Hand Evans called his Finger Leaders to him and they spoke quietly together for a few minutes, then they all returned to their Fingers. He gave the order to move out and we started walking in finger formations behind him. Once we were off the parade-ground and on the pathway through the forest, he pushed up the pace and we started running. S’Alor found this way too restrictive and started ranging out to the side.

While we were running, I discovered that my connection to S’Alor extended the range of my mind-map. Ever since the decision had been taken that he could join me as a companion, we had started developing a connection between us that seemed to be constantly ‘on’. I couldn’t see through his eyes, but I found that the my mind-map included the normal area that I could normally cover, as well as another area that was centered on him. I mentioned this to S’Alor, and he seemed to be surprised that I thought that there was anything strange about that.

"[That is how the pack works Cy. We are each individuals, but we bond into groups very similar to the way your Fingers do, but each is boosted by the connection to the others so that we can range widely and even when we are not thinking about it, our mind maps are the sum of all the contributions from the individuals. Don’t you do that with your pack mates?]" S’Alor asked.

"[I have never tried it. We will have to experiment a little later. There is not much room to test our boundaries here.]" I replied.

Blog: Battle Diagrams

In case you hadn't noticed, I have added some diagrams of the battle in Chapter 19. No-one has commented on them. Were they useful? A waste of time? Should I go back and do the same for the first battle and/or do them for future battles? Should I draw a Map of War-World? I am just wondering how important readers feel that is. All the best John

Chapter 21: Debrief

We had a great lunch. Nice and hot, steaks and potatos, salad and bread; all cooked for us and served on plates. It felt almost civilised. Finger Roberts warned us not to get too used to it because, he said, our second phase of training would be hard.

After lunch, we got called to see Fist Ryon. We were directed to a room in the main base that looked like a mini conference center, similar to but larger than the one that we had been in to receive our first briefing on arrival on War World. Sitting at a table in the front of the room was Fist Ryon, and he was flanked by Hand Evans and a couple of the other Hand Leaders that I hadn’t met yet. I was directed to the front row of seats facing the table and I sat, with the rest of the Finger following suit. It looked as if we were the last to enter the room as there were a number of other people in the ‘spectator’ seats, and after we entered the door was closed.

Once we were settled, Fist Ryon looked around the room and then called on Finger Roberts. He proceeded to grill Finger Roberts about all the aspects of the training that we had been through, with the odd question thrown in by one or the other of the Hand Leaders sitting at the table, and even a few questions from the seats behind us. Once he was finished with Finger Roberts, he moved on to me and I had to tell it all again. I explained everything that had happened to me from my perspective, although I left out any reference to S’Alor as I figured that would just cloud the waters. After that, there was some too-and-froing with questions put to us both, mostly just to clarify something that we had said. Once that was out of the way, Hand Evans took over from Fist Ryon and started on a different tack.

"Can you explain to me the tactical choices you made in the two battles you had today Cy?" he asked in a rather friendly voice. He had the ability to make it seem as if we were the only people in the room and were having a little chat over a drink, not as aggressive as Fist Ryon at all.

"Sure Hand Evans. I decided that we would have to approach the first battle as if we were in the meleé..." I started out and proceeded to go through both battles step by step, explaining exactly why I made the choices I had and being forced to think about them to answer the questions. A lot of the details of the action had happened so fast, I couldn’t believe that they had even been seen, never mind having to explain and justify them. I decided that Hand Leader Evans was an absolute master at debriefing as he wrung me completely dry without ever making me feel defensive or scared to voice an opinion or to shade what I was saying to satisfy what I thought he wanted to hear. It was impossible to tell what he thought about the things he was asking; there were no clues from his face or his voice. Each member of my Finger got a chance to answer questions from him, and then he moved on to Lorraine’s Finger and repeated the process. It was an incredible learning experience for me, as it showed me how a proper post-combat debrief should be run, and also taught me how to look at the action from all sides and extract ‘lessons learnt’.

Once Hand Evans was finished, Fist Ryon took over again. He summarised what had been discussed in the first part of the session and then thanked us all for cooperating so well in the second.

"Do you think you would be able to demonstrate your Sword Dance to us?" Fist Ryon asked.

"I would be only too happy to do so" I replied and the whole crowd of us moved outside.

Once we were all outside, Fist Ryon asked "Please demonstrate the Sword Dance and then, if possible, pull me and a few others into it."

"I will try my best Fist," I told him.

I focused on moving into the meditative state and entered it smoothly and easily. I started doing the Sword Dance and without any concious thought swept my finger up into doing it with me. Once I started, I contacted Fist Ryon mentally and went through the same process of showing him what was required as I had done with the others the first time I showed them the Dance. Fist Ryon caught on incredibly quickly. It was obvious to me that the Battle Mode I had seen in Lorraine’s Finger was pretty much the same thing that I had discovered, and that Fist Ryon knew it very well. The difference lay in how I used that state, and in how I applied it to learning. Within a minute or two Fist Ryon was moving through the forms with us and I moved on to Hand Leader Evans and the other Hand Leaders standing there. Within a very short period of time, they were all moving through the forms with us. On an impulse swept Lorraine up into it as well, and it turned out that she was only too happy that I had. Once we were all moving with the forms, I began accelerating both their speed and complexity. After a few minutes, I asked Fist Ryon "[Is there something from your experience that we don’t know that you could show me?]"

"[Sure. {image/taste}. How’s that?]"

"[Perfect.]"

I took the manoeuvre that Fist Ryon had given me and passed it out to all those involved in the Sword Dance. Once I determined that it had ‘settled’ in all the minds involved, I moved us into the sequence of forms that comprised the manoeuvre. We executed it flawlessly, almost as if it had been something that we had rehearsed. I was feeling pretty good, and a little peeved that Fist Ryon had not taken what he was told about us seriously, so I moved up the pace; getting faster and faster until I hit my limit. They were all sucked along with me. I kept it up for as long as I could, then started to wind it down and eventually stopped. I looked at Fist Ryon, and could see that I had wasted my time. he was obviously just as fit as we were.

"Dammitalltohell" exclaimed Fist Ryon. "That was incredible. Amazing to be able to teach and learn like that, and I think I like the Sword Dance. What is your limit on the number of people who can take part knuckle-head?"

It seemed like that was his way of keeping me in place. Not that I minded being called names. I was not something that had ever bothered me. More importantly, it reminded me that I had been told that there was a limit to the number of people that someone at each level could communicate with, and I had just exceeded the limit for a Finger Leader, never-mind of a knuckle-head.

"That is the most I have done Fist. I have no idea what my limit is," I answered him.

"OK. Can you teach anyone else how to do this?"

"I’ve never tried Fist."

"Try. This could make a huge difference to us. We will have to think this through. Decide what impact it could have on us."

He turned and walked away, with all the Hand Leaders following after him. Hand Leader Evans gave me a brief smile and a nod before he left.

"You did good!" Lorraine told me. "I really enjoyed that. I would like you to try and teach me how you do it. I will teach you some of the stuff you need to know in exchange. OK?"

"Sure. Do you know what we are supposed to be doing now?"

"As far as I know, all the others have been assigned barracks. You will be over-nighting here and leaving in the morning," Lorraine shrugged.

"That’s right." Finger Roberts confirmed. Your room is [here {image/map}]. You are on your own ‘till morning. Enjoy." He walked off leaving me with my Finger and Lorraine.

"Cy," said Desrae, "I’ll take the others to our room. Why don’t you spend some time with Lorraine and see if you can’t teach her what you know?"

"Ok Des. Thanks. See you later."

"Have fun," Desrae said and walked off with the others trailing her.

"Let’s get to some shade and we can try this," Lorraine said and I followed her across the parade-ground to collect my kit. We wandered between the trees for a couple of hundred meters until we came into a shaded grove.

"This ought to do it," Lorraine said and we dumped our kit and looked at each other.

Chapter 18: Battle Ready

I moved away from the scene of our fight and was joined by the rest of my finger.

"Wooo that was intense." said Desrae.

"Damn right, but a walk-over. I don’t think it will be quite as easy next time."

"Don’t be too sure. I have been watching just as closely as you and I think that we are a lot better than you realise."

"Maybe. Let’s see what happens. We have definitely lost the element of surprise though."

"Not necessarily. I suspect that even the veteran finger leaders are a little surprised, and they have experience of the real thing. If we keep changing our tactics, I think we will keep them on edge. I also think that our speed is going to be very, very difficult for them to counter."

"Agreed. I think we have just proven though that the use of shields could be an advantage. We couldn’t have broken them as fast if they had been using shields, although if we have to fight a finger that is experienced in the meleé with the parry-dagger, then we might have more of a problem."

"I think you are still underestimating how far we have come. Looks like there is some discussion going on..."

I looked over at Fist Ryon. He had walked off to the side and was involved in an animated conversation with hand Evans and Finger Roberts. The other Finger Leaders had also all congregated in a clump and I saw some arm-waving going on. I grinned at Desrae and the others. Finger Roberts had warned us that we were about to set the cat amoungst the pidgeons.

After about 10 minutes, Finger Roberts left the other two and walked over to us.

"Any pidgeons left alive Finger?" I asked him with a smile.

"Not many!" he smiled back.. "There was some discussion about what you guys did, and whether there was anything that you had done wrong, but mostly they were concerned about what would happen to anyone else that they sent up against you. They are going to consult the other finger leaders and find out if there are any of them that think that their fingers could stand up against you. If not, then they are going to set you against the veteran finger straight away. The whole concept of the competition is essentially scrapped.

"I had to face a few hard questions about what was up with you lot, but Hand Evans supported me. I suspect he is going to have some words with Fist Ryon about believing reports that are passed up through the chain of command. He was hanging around here expecting to see some fireworks. It turns out that he, at least, believed what I told him about you guys. The other hand Leaders have also been called so that they can watch you in your next battle."

"Do you think we will have any trouble with the veteran finger?"

"No. I think that at the very worst, you will find the fight a little more even than your last one, but even then, I think that you have gone beyond what anyone has done before; at least after the first phase of training. Let’s see how it pans out."

We waited for a little while longer until I saw Fist Ryon turn away from Hand Evans and walk over to a bunch of guys sitting under a tree. I had them mapped on my mind-map, but I had paid no particular attention to them up to this point. When I noticed Fist Ryon speaking to them, I realised that they must be the veteran finger that we would have to fight. They were not any brighter on my mind-map than any of the other fingers, but when I focused on them, they seemed to be more intense somehow. As I watched them, both with my eyes and on my mind-map, I saw them get up and start to walk onto the parade-ground. As they started moving, the mind-map images of them seemed to blur slightly and for a moment I had trouble distinguishing the individual warriors. After a few seconds I managed to compensate. I realised that what I had seen was a seasoned finger that had just gone into battle mode by entering the meditative state similar to what we did.

* * *

"[Here comes trouble guys,{image]]" I announced to the rest of my finger.

They all turned to look at the veteran finger, and I could feel them all adjusting their mind-maps in the same way that I had.

I moved back up into battle-mode myself and the rest of the finger followed shortly behind me.

"[Watch out for these guys,] "Finger Roberts warned us, "[they are very very good. The original idea was to put the fear of god into all of you by having the best fingers not only beaten, but wiped out by the best fighting finger of the War Brothers Fight. We were supposed to let you build up a false sense of security and think that you were the best. Once you were all cocky, you were supposed to be taken down a peg or two by them. I suspect that Fist Ryon is personally embarrassed by the way that he ignored what he was told about you and has told this finger to really wipe you out.]

"[Don’t worry. We are anything but cocky. I was just telling with Desrae that we have to be careful; that the next lot won’t be such easy meat.]" I reassured him.

"[OK. Just as long as you know.]

Fist Ryon was standing in the centre of the parade-ground again. "[Join me.]" I heard in my head.

We started walking over to stand near him and as we moved I took the opportunity to evaluate these new opponents.

This new finger looked lean and hard. There were no bearded faces here. All the eyes were wary and very, very aware, and I was sure that we were being evaluated just as closely. Each of the warriors in the finger moved like a velvet coated steel spring; sort of casual movements, but you could see that they were prepared to snap instantly into action at any sign of provocation. I decided right then that the finger leaders we had had for training, including Finger Roberts, must have been away from battle for too long. They didn’t compare to the warriors that I was facing now. They were standing grouped loosely in a square; almost as if there was one tasked with watching each corner. The finger leader, a tall ginger-haired woman, was standing outside the square next to Fist Ryon, and at her back was a flaxen-haired man of about my height.

I started giving instructions to my finger as we arrived, "[Desrae, the flaxen-haired guy is yours, I’ll take the woman. The rest of you pick a corner each. Remember the variations that we have wargamed; I suspect that we will have to try the option that breaks the finger’s unity so that we can defeat them in detail {image/schematic}.]"

"Knuckle Cy Peters, this is Finger Leader Lorraine Jeffry. She leads the veteran finger selected to fight the winners of the battle competition here today. After your win over the last finger, we decided to move directly to a battle between your two fingers. Are you prepared to do this?" Fist Ryon asked.

"Sure Fist." I answered him. I then stuck out my hand "Nice to meet you Lorraine."

"Likewise." Lorraine answered looking slightly startled. She hadn’t been expecting me to greet her. I could see that she was already completely focused and my greeting had thrown her slightly off stride. That was exactly what I was aiming for. Unless I was completely mistaken, Lorraine’s finger was a very tight unit and they would fight that way. I thought that we would need to make every effort that we could to attempt to break that cohesion.

Chapter 17: Combat Competition

As I watched Finger Roberts walk away, I felt a frisson of excitement. I knew that the combat competition wasn’t ‘real’ in the sense that we were fighting real battles, but it was as close as I had been to real combat in a long time. Describing the atavistic thrill to someone who hasn’t experienced it is impossible, but while combat is the most terrible thing that I had ever experienced, at the same time it was the most exciting. When I was honest with myself, the lure of combat was what had drawn me to War World in the first place. I had needed no other reason. I had searched for the adrenaline high in other places; skydiving, base jumping, para-gliding, riding a super-bike insanely fast and various other risky undertakings, but none had provided quite the same level of fear and excitement.

Finger Roberts had explained the rules of engagement to us a few days before, so we knew what to expect. We would essentially be fighting each other full out, but the swords and daggers we were using would be blunted so that the only injuries that we could inflict or sustain would be a lot less serious than could be expected in normal combat. We had already experienced, on an almost daily basis, the ability of our bodies to heal almost any injury, so that wasn’t as much of a worry as it would have been under what were previously normal circumstances.

All around me people were busy warming up. I placed my kit in a pile on the ground and the rest of the finger lined theirs up next to mine. We sat on our kit, ready to watch the action.

Each Finger from the hand was numbered. We were number five, so would go last.

Finger one from our hand moved out into the center of the parade-ground and stood waiting. A few minutes later a finger from one of the other hands moved out to join them. Both fingers had six warriors so I guessed that their finger leaders would be fighting with them. Finger Roberts had discussed this with us and told us that he thought that we had progressed far enough to be able to fight as a unit without him leading us. He had told us that he thought that if he fought with us, there might be some question of where our ability was coming from, whereas if we did it on our own, there would be no doubt that it was our own abilities.

The two fingers had formed up in formation facing each other. Fist leader Ryon was acting as the referee, and he inspected all the weapons and then told them to begin.

I watched the fight with great interest. It was my first chance to see someone else in action. It was immediately apparent to me that neither of the two fingers had truly bonded as units as they were not fully coordinated. More importantly, they were slow. Both fingers started out the fight with the five ‘novices’ on each side in line abreast with their finger leader standing behind them and coordinating the battle.

Watching the fingers fight made me quite nervous; not that I thought that we would have any trouble though, in fact, quite the opposite!

"[Finger Roberts?] I called.

"[Yes Cy?]"

"[Finger, I think there is going to be trouble. We are going to blow these guys away!]"

"[Yes. Be careful when you fight. Expect the unexpected. OK?]"

"[OK.]"

I mulled over that for a while. Eventually I decided that it meant that once they saw how capable we were, they might throw some curve balls at us. I figured that was OK; I thought we should be able to handle whatever happened one way or another. We had discussed and war-gamed a whole host of scenarios for what could happen to a finger in combat, and we had practised our immediate action drills to counter each scenario.

From the look of the battle going on at the moment, neither finger leader was willing to risk anything out of the ordinary. Maybe they thought it best to just let the two sides get some feeling for fighting against live opponents.

The morning passed slowly, with the various combinations of fingers called up to fight. The system was that the finger that won the battle got to stay in the center and fight the next finger to be sent out, so some fingers were getting to stay out for three or four fights. None stayed for longer that that; mostly because they had lost members who were busy recovering from injuries.

All of a sudden it was our turn up. I walked out onto the parade ground with my finger to a murmur from the spectators as we had no finger leader with us.

When we got to the center, Fist Ryon asked "Are you sure you want to fight without a finger leader?"

"Sure Fist." I replied.

"Are you the knuckle-head?" Fist Ryon asked with a smile.

"Yes Fist. We’re Battle Ready."

As I spoke out loud to Fist Ryon, I directed the rest of the finger to deploy in a ‘2-up, three back’ formation.

Walking onto the parade ground we had moved into the ‘mental zone’ so it wasn’t necessary for me to even think about formulating words or commands, I simply thought about the formation in my head and the finger moved as one to take up position. We were all intensely focused, but at the same time, because of being in the zone, we were all completely relaxed. I could feel my apprehension and the butterflies in my stomach, but they weren’t mine alone. My feelings were reflected and amplified by the other members of the finger, and at the same time they seemed to wash through me and leave me behind; calm and focused. Fist Ryon’s joking tone registered with me but it didn’t distract me from focusing on what was important.

As we moved closer I was evaluating our opponents. Each detail was registered and catalogued. I saw the beards on two members of the finger and marked them as vulnerable. The finger leader I saw had muscles that I thought were a bit too bulky, so I marked him as slow, and possibly too concerned with appearances rather that what was tactically important.

They moved into the same line-abreast formation that most of the fingers had taken up so far that day for their battles and I smiled quietly to myself. I had decided that most of the fingers were thinking of this as if they were in some imaginary extended line of battle, and they were forgetting one of the fundamental principles of warfare: protect your flanks.

In the instant that I heard Fist Ryon give the command to start fighting, we started moving. I was in the center of the three at the back. Desrae was to my left. She dashed in front of me and crouched down. I took three steps then used her as a spring-board to jump straight over the line, twisted in mid air, and landed behind the Finger Leader. The two in the front of the formation attacked the line directly, and Desrae and the person on her right ran around the two flanks and attacked from the sides. It was obvious that this was unexpected. We were fighting as if we were in the meleé and not in the line, and even then we were ‘breaking’ doctrine by not forming a ‘square’. I had felt though that the ‘square’ was only really designed as a defence, and not for the attack.

I focused on my fight with the Finger Leader but I remained aware of how the rest were doing. I had landed facing his back and I immediately ran him through with my sword. He was out of the fight within a few seconds. I then attacked the two warriors who had been in front of him. They were engaged to their front and I was able to disable them both while they were parrying blows from the front. By this time the three others had been taken down by the rest of my finger and we were left standing as the victors. No more then twenty-five seconds had passed from the time we got the command to start the fight.

Fist Ryon was standing with a gobsmacked expression on his face. The battles so far on the day had all lasted at least five to ten minutes and the injuries had been very limited. We had wiped out this finger in less that a minute, and if it hadn’t been for their ‘enhancements’, they would all have been dead. As it was, most of them would require some assistance to start healing. It seems that the fingers up to then had focused on their drills, and had used the blunted edges of their weapons to engage each other; ignoring the training to go for damage rather than to worry about sword drill and the clashing of swords.

I looked at Fist Ryon and asked "Victory?"

"Yes." he replied softly, then louder, "Yes. Stand back so we can get them some attention."

Chapter 16: Back to base

After an early breakfast on braai leftovers the next morning, we were treated to a new piece of kit. Finger Roberts woke us up as usual and when we gathered outside the barracks, he had a pile of back-packs stacked in front of him.

"Good morning all." Finger Roberts greeted us. "We are going to move back to the main base in combat order. Please get dressed in your chain-mail and load all the rest of your kit into these back-packs. Report march-ready in 30 minutes and I will do a final inspection."

I collected one of the back-packs and tried it on. It was, like all the other kit we had received so far, a brilliant piece of equipment. It was lightweight and obviously strong. The shoulder straps fitted comfortably and the waist strap supported the weight of the pack perfectly just above the hips. I was a little concerned that the pack would constrict my movement, especially when I was running, but a little experimentation showed that while there was a slight reduction my arm’s freedom of movement, it was a lot less than I thought it would be. There was also a very efficient quick-release system for dumping the pack in the case of an ambush.

I returned to the barracks room and started packing the kit from the storage chest into the back-pack. Finger Roberts was there already, and he showed us what and how to pack. The bedding rolled up and attached nicely to the bottom of the pack, and the rest of the items that we had received packed away to leave the pack still half empty. That felt about right to me as I knew from prior experience that the bulk of what I would need to carry would be food and water. That was true even taking into account the possibility of living partially off the land.

We were all outside and waiting before the thirty minutes was up.

"March Ready Finger Leader" I reported formally to Finger Roberts. He had appointed me as an acting Finger Leader. The affectionate term for the position was ‘knuckle’, which generated much hilarity and good-natured teasing from the others. Knuckle-Head was about the mildest of the variations on the term that was used.

"Carry on ‘knuckle’" Finger Roberts now ordered me.

"Formation - Arrow-head, Direction - South-East along the pathway, Speed - best speed, Separation - 50 meters. Move out.’ I gave the order to move according to the formal standardised pattern. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In every army there is an Army Way and the the wrong way. At first it seems confusing and a waste of time, but once you become used to it, it becomes second nature and knowing the format of the various commands it makes it a lot easier to ensure that messages aren’t garbled.

We set out towards the base camp that we had left just over three weeks before and within a few hundred meters we had moved into the mental ‘zone’ and were moving smoothly as a tightly integrated team. We had already learnt the folly of moving on the pathways for tactical reasons as they provided the perfect opportunity for ambush or booby-traps, but in this instance Finger Roberts insisted on it. He had told us that in fact most of the other fingers would be running back in single file, in the same way that we had left the base before, but he felt, and I agreed wholeheartedly, that it was important to start thinking and acting as if we were already operational. Tactical movement reinforced the correct mindset.

* * *

The trip over the five klicks back to the training based took us a lot less time than the outward journey had done. I felt as if we had barely gotten warmed up and we were arriving. Finger Roberts called for a change of formation to a line-ahead and we slowed down to a brisk walk as we came out of the bush and onto the large parade ground. We were not the first finger to arrive; it looked as if there were six or seven fingers there ahead of us. We followed Finger Roberts over to where the other fingers were waiting and he dismissed us with the injunction to remain together and in the area. Finger Roberts then went off to report to Fist Leader Ryon.

While we were standing and waiting, I realised that there had been a huge change in all of us. Looking around at the others, both in our finger and in the other fingers, I could see that there was not a single fat person. Everyone looked reasonably young, and exceptionally fit. I did notice that there were still lots of faces that carried beards and it make me proud of the fact that our entire finger had faces as smooth as babies’ bums. After my initial body-hair accident, I had decided that it was easier, not to mention more hygienic, to keep myself essentially hairless, and most of the others had followed my example. Desrae had to be different of course. She had gotten rid of all her hair, except what was on her head. She had encouraged the growth there so that her hair now fell to midway down her back. Some of the members of other fingers looked something like the ‘Wild man of Borneo’ with big busy beards and long tangled hair. I noticed that those with the facial hair seemed to be less ‘aware’ than those without, so it reinforced the idea for me that a clean-shaven face was a pretty good indicator of mental control.

Over the next hour or so the rest of the fingers arrived until it looked as if everyone was there. This was confirmed when the Finger Leaders all suddenly walked off to the side and formed up in a little squad of their own, and Fist Ryon walked out to stand in front of us.

There was no need for him to call us to attention. I suspect that the situational awareness that we all had would have been sufficient to make us notice him irrespective of who he might have been, but it was clear to me suddenly how much I had changed from the recruit of a few short weeks before. My mental-map of the area had been automatically updated and I had tagged all the leader-types that I could identify on that map. This was made easier by the fact that all of the leader types seemed to have an extra ‘glow’ to them, and Fist Leader Ryon brighter than the Finger Leaders. Off to one side I had another person with a brighter glow than the Finger Leaders, but not as bright as Fist Ryon, and I was pretty sure that it was Hand Leader Evans whom I had met before.

"[Good Morning ladies and gentlemen]" I heard in my head. It was instantly obvious that this was Fist Ryon talking to us on ‘broad-cast mode’.

"[It is good to see you all back here at the completion of the first phase of your training. I am pleased to be able to tell you that of the original 160 of you, 128 remain with us. The rest have been found unsuitable for one reason or another and have either been returned to their homes, or shifted to assisting with various tasks in support of the Fight. We are going to move without delay into the second phase of your training. Your Finger Leaders have been given the administrative arrangements and will guide you to your Hand training bases. However, before we get to that, we will be evaluating your progress in both individual and finger based skills. This will run as a competition and will enable us to as start getting a better appreciation of the level of your abilities. It will also be the first time that you will be able to exercise the skills that you have learnt as a finger, fighting against another finger. For most of you, the difference will come as a surprise. The two best performing fingers will then get to battle a veteran finger to demonstrate that while you are probably all super-confident, there is a big difference between training and fighting. Carry on Finger Leaders.]"

Finger Roberts came trotting over to us with a huge grin on his face.

"[Whats up Finger?]" I asked him.

"[Oh nothing much,]" grinned Finger Roberts, "[I just placed a huge bet on you guys to one of the two fingers that wins the competition today, and an even larger one on you beating the veteran finger.]"

"[Thanks. No pressure huh?]" I replied with a smile.

"[Nope. I have confidence in you. Now follow me.]

We had already been allocated to Hands and we went to join the other four fingers that made up our hand.

"[Right. Mingle and get to know each other. We have about 10 minutes to get ready. I am going to suggest that you go last.]" Finger Roberts told us and trotted off to meet with the other finger leaders.

Note:

5 warriors = 1 Finger (+ 1 Finger Leader)

5 fingers = 1 Hand = 25 warriors (5 Finger Leaders and 1 Hand Leader) = 31 total

5 Hands = 1 Fist = 125 warriors (25 Finger Leaders, 5 Hand Leaders and 1 Fist Leader) = 156 total

5 Fists = 1 Fight = 625 warriors (125 Finger Leaders, 25 Hand Leaders, 5 Fist Leaders and 1 Fight Leader) = 781 total

Chapter 15: Sword Dance II

The next morning’s routine started out as normal with a run through the forest. This time I entered the meditative state as soon as we started running and monitored the area around me constantly, building up the map-model in my head as we went and checking what I sensed against what I saw. The process was slowly becoming entirely automatic and I found as we ran in various formations that I could shift the mapping to the back burner of my mind. I was slowly integrating this new skill and I started seeing the fruits of it within a few short klicks.

We were running in the arrow-head formation and I rotated to the left point position. I felt as if I was running incredibly fluidly and had to really think about to discover what was different. After a while I realised that I was not crashing through the bush, but rather I seemed to glide through it without interfering with anything. I was running almost silently with very few breaking sticks or branches snapping back into place behind me. I decided that this was a very nice development: fast and silent movement, especially through the bush, was a gem without price in any jungle based combat.

I was shaken from my thoughts by a sudden question in my mind.

"[You hunt?"]

It was S’Alor. I recognised his mental ‘taste’ instantly. This time, probably because I was not expecting him to be a human, I paid more attention to the subtleties of the query, and the underlying feel that I got was that of feline.

"[No. We practice.]" I replied.

"[Why?]"

I thought about the question before answering. As I turned it over in my mind, S’Alor came into range of my mind-mapping and this time he wasn’t hidden from me. I stumbled slightly in shock and then recovered and ran on as I considered the image I had seen and compared it to the image that Finger Roberts had added to his description on the first run we had taken. If I wasn’t mistaken, S’Alor was a Smilodean. One of the predator cats that we had been told to watch out for. The ones that ate humans. There had been no hint that the cat might be sentient. I decided I needed to be careful, as I didn’t know what I was getting into, but at the same time, the over-whelming sense I got from S’Alor was one of curiosity and even friendliness. Not aggression. There was also a sense of things being very simple in S’Alor’s mind. He had even made the point to me the first time he contacted me, pointing out that he thought I was a predator and not prey. it seems he divided the world up into those two camps. In the light of that, I decided to answer him as simply as possible, but to try to ensure that I didn’t scare him off.

"[To make sure we learn how to do it properly.]"

"[You are not a cub. Why do you have to learn this?]"

I had to consider my answer carefully.

"[The lessons I learnt as a cub are not the same lessons that I need to learn here. Finger Roberts {image} is acting as our mother while we are acting as ‘her’ cubs to learn what we need to know.]"

There was a slight pause as S’Alor turned this concept over in his mind.

After a while he asked "[You ‘taste’ like a hunter. I watched in your mind the memories of ‘men-prey’ that you hunted before. {puzzlement}]"

"[I was a soldier/hunter before. That must be what you saw. I was thinking of past fights where I had to kill and comparing them to what I can expect to face in the future.]"

"[You are not the same as most of your litter-mates. They ‘taste’ almost like true cubs. They have not tasted blood; not felt the thrill of claws striking and their prey struggling to get away. Why is this?]"

I was very surprised by this. I thought about it and tried think about it from a cat’s perspective.

"[Maybe it is because they have not killed from up close. They might have used a rifle {image} to kill from a long way away.]"

"[True. I do not know about rifles {image} but that ‘tastes’ similar to what I see in some of their minds. I do see one other. She has also ‘tasted’ blood. She {image/taste} tastes like a mother though.]"

That was a surprise. The image and mental taste that S’Alor shared with me was definitely of Desrae. I still had not had much of an opportunity to find out her motivation for coming to War World and had assumed that it was simply because of the fringe benefit of regaining lost-youth. I had wondered why someone who had not been a soldier was recruited. I resolved to follow up on that because now I was really curious about her history.

"[I don’t know. I will have to ask her.]"

"[I go.]" said S’Alor and he disappeared from my mind and mental mind-map at the same time. As he did so, Finger Rogers called for a breather.

We paused at a stream. Finger Roberts called for the temporary halt, and it took just a gentle reminder that we had to move from our tactical formation (arrow-head) in a dog-leg and then take up our laager positions for all-round defence.

Once we were settled, and Finger Rogers was satisfied with our formation, he asked me "[Cy, what have you been up to?]"

"[What do you mean Finger?]" I wasn’t going to volunteer anything until I had had a chance to mull it all over for a while.

"[I can see that there is a huge difference in you. The hair-loss showed me that you have started making progress in the mental control of your body, and I can see that you have already started to apply it to your movement through the bush. What puzzles me though is that I could sense that you were busy communicating with someone during the run and all your comrades weren’t, yet there was no-one that I could sense that was within your range.]"

"[Finger, I was talking to someone. He calls himself S’Alor.]" I deliberately kept the taste/image out of the communication. For some reason I didn’t think it was right to share the fact that S’Alor was a Smilodean with Finger Roberts until or unless he specifically asked me what he was.

"[I find it strange that I cannot sense him. We will discuss this later.]"

We moved out again after a short rest, and eventually returned to our camp.

After lunch, Finger Roberts started us on practicing the sword forms again. There was no connection between the forms and I found it very difficult to adjust to doing each movement separately. I had discovered the "Sword Dance" the evening before, and I wondered why we weren’t taught anything like that. I decided to take the bull by the horns and ask.

"Finger, please could you tell me why we practice each of the sword forms as a single exercise?"

"What do you mean Cy?"

"Well, I was practicing on my own yesterday, and I sort of joined them all together into a series of movements, almost as if I was doing a mock fight. I haven’t studied martial arts at all, but I tried to do something similar to the katas that I have read about."

"Why don’t you show us what you mean?"

"OK."

I spent a few seconds getting myself into the meditative state that I had discovered and started the Sword Dance. As before, I started fairly slowly, then rapidly speeded up until I was going full-blast. After a few minutes, I heard a mental enquiry from Finger Roberts, "[Cy, stop please. Let’s talk about this.]"

I came out of the mental state and stopped. I gave Finger Roberts an enquiring look.

"Where did you learn to do this Cy?" Finger Roberts asked.

I started out just putting the forms together Finger, then I started imagining a series of enemies and used the forms to practice fighting them. I have started calling it a Sword Dance." I answered him.

"Mmm this is something that I haven’t seen before with these weapons. I have had some comrades who have had previous training in Kendo and other martial arts who performed something similar, but I never thought I would see anything like this with our weapons. Do you think that you could teach this to others?"

"I am not sure Finger. I would be happy to try though."

"OK. It is actually very early in your training, so I am a little concerned that you start to do things that turn out to be inappropriate to our fighting style. Let’s discuss some additional things and then we can see whether we can apply your Sword Dance to it. Colourful phrase by the way."

"Thanks Finger."

"Alright, we haven’t started working with the parry dagger yet. Those of you who have studied military history will realise that our choice and combination of weapons and tactics might seem a little strange. We are configured essentially as shock infantry, very similar to the Roman Legions, and yet we have no shields. The use of the parry dagger is also not a normal addition to this configuration. We have been concentrating so far on individual weapons and have barely scratched the surface of the way that you will co-operate as a unit in the battle-line. Most of you have grasped the essentials of the use of the short-sword, and with more drilling in it’s use, you will soon be competent. We rely on mental ‘shields’ to protect us from projectile weapons, but personal shields or bucklers were normally used in the line for individual protection as well as for a weapon to knock your opponent off balance. We introduced the parry dagger for a specific reason. In the first place, the parry-dagger is essentially a short-sword in it’s own right, as it is just over half the length of the sword, so you will find that it is particularly useful when you are up close in the line-of-battle, and in a general meleé it becomes a second sword. When you become competent in it’s use, you will be able to catch an opponent’s sword in the grooves on the back and use that to slow your opponent down, or even, to break his sword. Remember that you, and your opponents, have reflexes and abilities which far outstrip those of the original users of these weapons and tactics, and this makes a big difference to the way that the fighting plays out. Each person in the finger, and in the line, is usually individually extremely skilled. We are not talking about two lines of brutes bashing at each other with pokers. We are also not like the Roman Legion confronting the Picts where the skill and weaponry on the two sides is completely different. We are often very closely matched in abilities and weapons, and we tend to use pretty similar tactics.

"Some people have tried to use other weapons such as maces or axes and we have taught them the error of that pretty quickly. Those weapons are just to unwieldy in the tight confines of the line-of-battle, especially when you consider the ability of the finger to work so closely together, and the space needed to wield them is just not available which slows them down and makes them vulnerable to the sword. In a traditional meleé they would be very effective weapons against soldiers without shields, but remember that even in a meleé, you will fight as a finger, not as individuals. Think of it as the old infantry square. On the breakdown of the line, each finger becomes a fighting unit in it’s own right, so you never lose the benefits of fighting with your war brothers.

"Something else that you will experience in the intense bonding that happens within a finger. Some of you have experienced close relationships before, either from being married or even with comrades-in-arms. All of those relationships pale into insignificance when compared to the bonds you will develop with the members of your finger. That’s why we talk about ourselves as war brothers. This is something that has to be experienced though; no amount of explanation will prepare you for it.

I listened to Finger Roberts explaining about the weapons and tactics, and while it made complete sense to me, I figured that I would have to experience it for myself before I really believed it. Unfortunately, the way my mind works is that when I hear something, I immediately start to either question it’s validity or try to figure out some way of countering it, and my experiences commanding modern Zulu soldiers started to play on my mind. I wondered idly whether an impi with long-shields and stabbing assegais wouldn’t provide more of a threat to the tactics that Finger Roberts had described than what he thought. It seemed that there was a huge European bias to doctrine that seemed to assume that it was the only valid one. From watching the Zulu soldiers playing at stick-fighting, I figured that they had skills that would translate pretty well to the two-handed sword fighting that Finger Roberts had mentioned. I had also played around with them with recreating some of Chaka’s tactics of the head and horns of the bull formation as well as the use of the long-shield and the stabbing assegai. I thought that they might well be able to disrupt or defeat the short-sword line. I decided to keep my mouth shut though as I was, in this situation, still a neophyte.

"OK. With that in mind, will you see if you can show us the Sword Dance CY?"

"Sure. It started for me in the mental preparation. I tried to do the thing where you empty your mind, but failed dismally at that. What I then discovered was that if I allowed everything to flow through me as I tried to sense everything around me, it dropped me into a meditative state. The first thing I did was to create a mind-map of my surroundings, and from there I moved on to focus my attention on various things. That led me to putting the Sword Dance together. Let me try something if you don’t mind; let’s see if I can communicate what I experienced mentally to see if that makes things easier to explain."

I closed my eyes and entered the meditative state, then reached out tentatively to connect to all the rest one by one. I started out with Finger Roberts, then Desrae and then added the rest. Once I could ‘taste’ them all in my mind, I sent them all {images} of what I meant. They all lined up in a row in line with me and I started going slowly through the sword forms. As I did so, I showed them in my mind what I was doing. The first person to grasp it was Finger Roberts. It only took a few seconds for him to match up to me and then it seemed as if my awareness of him and his actions flared up to be in the fore-front of my brain, before subsiding below the level of conscious awareness. I could still ‘taste’ him there, but it was an awareness similar to that of being aware that your hand is at the end of your arm somewhere; not something I had to make a conscious effort to do.

I concentrated on Desrae next. She felt as though she was flailing around in the dark.

"[Just forget about thinking about anything consciously Des. Let it come to you, don’t reach out for it.]" I told her.

"[I’m trying Cy. It’s difficult. I can ‘taste’ what you mean, but I can’t quite grasp it.]" Desrae answered.

"[Think about it as if it was looking with your eyes. Your eyes accept the light that comes into them. You don’t have to reach out to see.]"

I could feel a sudden change in the way Desrae was doing things and heard an excited "[I think I’ve got it!]" from her.

"[That’s it. Now narrow your focus to the individual movements of your body. Concentrate on them one by one, like this {image/taste}.]"

As Desrae thought about each part of her body involved in the movements, I ‘tasted’ them as an extension of mine. I sent her {images} of my movement, overlaid on hers and she worked slowly on making the {images} from me match the movements she was making.

It took some time, but it suddenly clicked and she flared up and subsided in my mind in a similar way to Finger Roberts.

Now I had some experience teaching someone else, I reached out to all the others at the same time and guided them through it in the same way. One by one they all got it and after a while it felt as though I was one person with six bodies, all moving through the forms in perfect sync.

Once I had achieved this, I started putting the forms together into the Sword Dance I had developed and on each iteration I ramped up the speed until we reached a level that I thought was the best we could do, at least for now. It must have looked surreal; the six of us moving in perfect harmony and with blinding speed.

As we progressed, I found I could pull more forms for the sword and movements from Finger Roberts; including a lot that were more advanced that he had not taught us yet and I started including those in the dance. I simply pulled the {images} from his mind as he offered them, and passed them on to the rest of the finger. I could feel that we were moving way beyond what was simply instruction into the area of battle experience as the textbook forms were slightly modified by what Finger Roberts had learnt in battle. It occurred to me that this was a process of rapid learning of real experience that would prove to be beyond price when translated into battlefield experience. Somewhere during this process, Finger Roberts started guiding me to {images} of the forms for the parry-dagger used in conjunction with the short-sword and I passed this on too.

Eventually I could feel that we were reaching our limits. I could feel the fatigue of the others, just as clearly as I could feel it in my own body, so I started slowing down and eventually stopped.

As I emerged from the meditative state, there was a pause where all six of us were dead quiet and just looked at each other. Desrae broke the moment with a heartfelt exclamation of "Wow. That was awesome!" I couldn’t have agreed with her more.

"Cy, that was incredible. By my estimation, we have been busy for close to three hours, but we have whipped through at least three weeks worth of instruction, never mind the fact that the way that what we just did translates to muscle memory, it means that we have achieved what normally requires many hours of repetitive drill." exclaimed Finger Roberts. "I am going to report this up the chain of command, but I suspect I won’t be believed. I think that the proof of how effective this will be will be shown when we get to practice against other fingers. I suspect that we will blow them away. What is interesting Cy, is that you were essentially acting as Finger Leader during your "Sword Dance" and that is not supposed to be possible without a lot more training and experience."

We took a bit of a break and then continued with training. Finger Roberts did tell me later that he had reported what we had achieved and had been politely dismissed, so he was looking forward to seeing us put this to use. Over the next three weeks, Finger Roberts went over the theory of everything we were supposed to cover during normal lectures, then we would do the practical part in the meditative state of the Sword Dance. We continued with our morning runs, although the whole finger slowly developed the ability to apply the meditative state to the way that they moved through the bush until we would move extremely fast and with almost perfect balance. We started playing war games with some of us being attackers and others being defenders, and if we listened just with our ears, the movement was almost perfectly silent; almost indistinguishable from the natural sounds of the forest.

We started applying the Sword Dance state to combat practice as well when we fought against each other. Watching combinations of the others in this state was frightening. They were moving so fast and with such precision that it was difficult for me to believe that I was also capable of doing that.

We also got the opportunity to practice our bush-craft skills; tracking animals and each other; eating what we found in the bush; making shelters and camping out at night. S’Alor contacted me a few times during this period, but Finger Roberts never mentioned it again so I never got to tell him that he was actually a Smilodean.

At the end of the three week period, Finger Roberts told us that the first collaborative training would start the next day. We were to rejoin the Hand to train as complete Fingers in combat against others and to start working towards coordinating with other fingers so that we could fight as a Hand in the Battle-Line. We were looking forward to this as we felt that we had progressed as far as we could in isolation. Finger Roberts warned us though that he didn’t think that things would go smoothly as our level of readiness was a lot higher than was normal, which meant that he thought that we would blow the other recruit fingers away in finger-on-finger combat training. He thought we might even beat a veteran finger.

We cleaned up around the camp and had a last braai. It was with mixed feelings that I thought that we would be leaving this camp.

{Thanks to "Echomadrid" for thoughts and comments on weapons and tactics which prompted Finger Roberts to give his little lecture :-) }