Daren, that burly, hairy, bear-clan man who was now in charge of training us, handed me one of the native bows. He and the Tobori kid each had six—enough for every man in our unit.

I didn’t take it. “I have a bow.”

Daren barked, “you need to learn this one. Them important assholes was talkin’ that we ought to leave the eupins here when we go out…”

Jame stepped up and soured his face. “I’m not leaving my bow with anyone!”

I pulled mine close to my chest and glared at the man. Malchuk, the Goloagi man with the scar down the center of his face, chuckled and refused one as well. “I don't know what them two said, but that's not a bow—it looks like a big dessicated turd.”

Jame and I laughed. I shouldn't have allowed that; it was the same kind of bow Miyani used.

Oh, she was gorgeous! The Elder of Elders told me she needed to make sure Miyani understood a few things, and that she may choose not to pursue a relationship with me because of it. And I had to be OK with that if she did.

My heart stabbed me from within at the thought, despite being now closer to talking with her than I'd been that morning.

Who was I kidding? I didn't know anything about her. What interested me was her sweet face and her sublime, muscular arse. Ahmi was right; how could I appreciate anything about who she was as a person when neither of us spoke the other's language? I probably should have deferred to common sense, but instead thinking about her made my dick hard.

Malchuk refused to take one of the native bows. Daren stood staring at the man holding it out for him, but instead Malchuk displayed the Imperial standard-issue longbow he'd brought with him. “I'm good.”

Daren cleared his throat and answered in Goloagi, “today we learn the ways of the enemy.”

Faren took his bow and studied it as if he’d never seen a weapon before. Ales tried pulling at the string a little, then winced at the pain of his wound. Rock took his and pulled the string back, peering at Northstar with one eye open as he took aim with an imaginary arrow, then snapped the string hard. Northstar ignored him, standing at attention and holding it at his side.

Malchuk sucked his teeth and continued to refuse, while Jame and I joined him.

Then Daren walked over to the Tobori kid and took the rest of the bows from him save one. The kid then drew back an arrow and placed it into a dummy dead-center without taking a second to aim.

I hadn't thought he had muscles enough to draw the thing.

Jame clapped his hands slowly and spoke with absolute boredom. “He hit a target scarcely twenty yards out. So impressive. So impressive. We should all celebrate. Yay.”

Malchuk grinned and joined in slow applause. I clapped with the same lack of enthusiasm, “so amazing. Truly.”

While Malchuk laughed, Jezi glanced between the three of us. “Can you with bow this you do?”

Jame sucked his teeth and grinned, then took one. He nocked an arrow and gave a nod to the Tobori kid. “What’s your name again?”

“Jezi.”

“Jezi?”

The kid nodded. Then Jame loosed. His arrow flew off to the right and twisted around to land in the grass beyond the dummy. Jezi smirked but Jame excused himself, “the balance is completely screwed!”

Then Jezi took the bow from him and drew another arrow, and again without bothering to aim, placed another arrow in the dummy close enough to the other that the shafts touched. “Seems fine to me.”

Malchuk and I glanced at one another and laughed, then we each took one. My shot fell short and buried in the grass at the dummy’s foot. Malchuk slapped my shoulder, then sent an arrow sailing above the dummy to the far end of the practice yard.

Daren’s voice, like sandpaper, scraped my ears as we all lined up. “These bows are not like what you’re used to. They’re waterproof. One time we set up an ambush by hiding in a pool of mud—only our eyes we kept above the water. When them fools came by, we lifted our bows out of the mud and took all them shits out. Mud everywhere. All over the wood, dripping down the string, all over the arrow, all up in the fletching, and they shoot just fine. These bows don’t get good range. Top shooters maybe sixty-seventy yards on a good day, but that’s about it. But they’re tough, rugged, and they thrive on abuse and neglect…”

Rock fired an arrow that took a sharp left-hand turn and fell short.

Daren continued his lecture. “... They’re unbreakable. Had a guy got into an argument with an alligator over who was going to keep his foot, pried the beasts’s mouth open with his bow, then shot the thing. They don’t need oil, and they don’t need to be unstrung. Also take a look right here…”

At the end, there was a metal bracket buried into the wood. Daren pulled a long, curved, double-edged knife from his belt, slid the hilt into the bracket, and gave it a turn until it clicked. “... it doubles as a melee weapon.”

Miyani had a knife just like it hanging from her belt. It was hard for me to imagine if I’d have noticed her absolutely flawless physique had she dressed any differently. I think so; she was so built. Whatever tiredness I’d had from hanging in the sling was overridden by the thought of her luscious body in my hands. I wanted to feel her. Touch her. Stand in front of her and gaze into that sublime face, rest my hands on her hips, then lean down and kiss her lips.

If only.

What if she didn’t want to?

I felt a hand slap my arm, and Ales looked at me, “you paying attention, man?”

Daren handed me one of those knives and showed me how to slide the hilt into the bracket. Rock had his ready and was swinging it around, practicing thrusting it in the air a little too close for some, and several men backed away from him.

Jame, Malchuk, and I had each taken several shots with the Na’uhui bows before we were able to consistently place our arrows. We then tried with the knives in the brackets throwing off the balance.

Jame’s arrow flew up and sailed far beyond the practice dummy. “These bows are shit, man.”

He glanced at me. I tried to undershoot, only for my arrow to fly off to the right and fall short. “It… doesn’t have the same physics.”

Malchuk grinned. Jame chuckled, “nice euphemism!”

As for everyone else, Ales tried and missed a small handful of shots before his injury forced him to sit out the rest of training. Faren took about fifty shots and didn’t hit any of them.

Rock managed to hit the target twice out of a hundred shots. Jame and I each missed the first several rounds before finding our rhythms, and by the end of practice we were both able to consistently hit the target where we wanted to, with and without the knife fixed. Gino’s arm got tired after about forty shots. Borel mocked him for that, only for his arm to get tired ten shots later. Renou struggled with pulling back the string, and wasn’t able to get a single shot off that day. Jezi took the bow he’d grown up with and hit every single shot without breaking a sweat.

The day wore down. We loitered about discussing what we should do with the evening, and Faren slapped my shoulder with a big smile. “She’s back for you, man.”

My heart slammed against the inside of my chest in anticipation. I’d hoped. I’d dreamed, and I doubted, and here she was. Borel smirked at me and then shifted his eyes off to his right. I turned.

It wasn’t Miyani.

It was Tani, the woman I’d met in the church. She stood, naked as all the others and handsome enough in her own right. She smiled wide as I came up to her and handed me a small, white paper box with a pink kiss imprinted on the outside.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“What’s this?”

She pushed it towards me. “Gift I at you,” she said.

I shook my hands in front of her, “I can’t. Really…”

“Uh… yes,” she nodded. “You can.”

That made me laugh a little, but I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea. “No, really. I can’t.”

“Take you,” she pursed her lips and continued to smile at me. “Because steal my son money that gift I at you. Take you. Please.”

“You don’t owe me anything. Truly. It’s fine.”

“No,” she insisted. “Take you eh… the gift.”

That's when I felt a thick, heavy arm over my shoulder. It was Borel. “He absolutely accepts the gift. Thank you so much!”

I turned to him incredulously. “Really?”

He pointed at the package. “She even kissed it for you, man. Let us not be ungrateful!”

It felt weird, but I took the box and opened it. Inside was a garment of fine, ivory-colored silk with gold thread embroidery depicting a spider straddling continents with a mountain range beneath its body.

“Hot you,” Tani nodded with a big smile. “Now com-for-ta-ble, yes?”

Ales poked me in the side. “You should try it on.”

Gino added with a big smile of his own, while his eyes passed up and down Tani several times over. “Yeah, man. Don’t you want to be comfortable?”

As the men crowded around me to gawk at the gift, Tani took a step back and bowed her head. Then she pointed to me, then herself. “Eh… again, time. Talk I with you. Alone. Yes?”

“Uh…” I shrugged. “OK?”

She smiled, then turned around and walked off while the men all gazed at her back side. She was very attractive, but she wasn’t Miyani. And while Gino slapped my chest and grinned at me, I had to pull my eyes away.

“Gods!” Borel shook the shock from his head. “Where the hell did you find that one?”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “I left a tithe in the church, her son took it, and she felt bad about it so she wanted to make it up to me.”

“Bullshit!” Borel chuckled.

Gino added, “and you know that’s bullshit!”

I scratched my head. “It’s a different culture here. She said…”

Jame interrupted with a sly nod, “how much did the kid take?”

“Four kren.”

Half the men snorted and laughed at that. Faren passed his droopy eyes over the loincloth she’d given me. “Do you have any idea how much this cost?”

“Well…”

A young woman’s voice came from beside us, “it was very expensive.”

We all turned. Before us stood the face we’d seen on the road down from the pass, the one who’d sold us the mosquito ward.

“BITCH!” Borel shouted, pointing an accusing finger at her.

She looked as though she was about to say something else, when Jame, Gino, and Renou all pulled in towards her with apprehension. Gino shook his head and lay a hand on my shoulder, leaning in, “fucking witch, man!”

Ranía didn’t break her calm appearance but tilted her head slightly and smiled at Borel as he lurched towards her. Rock and Malchuk stepped up, holding their hands out to block them.

Ranía grinned wide at Rock and cooed, “geyu’u nu-udy mdati…. Sam shamara-du-u fe!”

Rock’s eyes bulged and he turned to glare at her.

Borel then pointed at her, “you need to go to fucking hell, bitch!”

I stepped up between them, “what happened, man?” I then turned to face Ranía, who smiled wide at me.

Gino came up to me and stretched out his arm to point at her. “She spoke Massi’s death, man. Looked him dead in the eye, told him he won’t survive his first day at Carthia.”

Before I could turn and face her, Ranía answered in Herali with a light accent. “No one can predict the future. I saw the road he traveled, and I knew where it led.”

Rock squinted his face and looked at Northstar, who shrugged. She repeated the same thing in their language before facing me directly. She pointed towards the gate. “If I take that road through the pass and head north for about a week, where will I end up?”

I shrugged. “Ulum?”

“Are you predicting the future, or do you simply know where the road leads?” She then faced Borel directly. “I meant to warn him. You were there; you saw for yourself.”

Borel shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I tried several times to warn him, but he interrupted me at every opportunity.”

Jame stepped closer to her with his chest high. “You could have insisted your point!”

“Why would I?”

Gino opened his hands in confusion, but before he could get his question out, she answered him. “I know my words have value. If you don’t value them, it’s not my responsibility what happens to you.”

The four men from Kyoen glanced at one another. Gino shook his head. “No. No… I don’t buy it.” He turned to face me, then back to her. “You called that shit way too close. There’s no way.”

She glanced up and down over him and answered. “I know what Carthia is. Do you?”

While Gino reeled from the question, Ranía turned and walked away. Rock followed her with his eyes, barely able to stop drooling, but other than that, I was the only one who ran after her. “Ranía!”

She kept walking.

“Ranía!” I said again as she turned to the side of the outer wall opposite the main building where we first saw Ahmi and the princess standing next to the Imperial Voice. She glanced behind at me but then kept walking. No faster, and no slower.

“Ranía!” I said again. “I need to talk to you!”

She kept walking, again peeking over her shoulder. I couldn’t tell what game she was playing until I’d followed her completely out the front gate and a good hundred-fifty yards from the moat. There, she stopped and turned to face me. She had on a white robe of a tunic that scarcely covered her legs and did nothing to hide her voluminous curves. Other than that she was barefoot, and her long, dark-green hair cascaded in heavy curls down her back. She smiled and gazed up at me with her emerald-green eyes. “This is a good place to talk.”

I looked around. Two half-naked women herded goats further down by the sugar fields while another tended to a trio of large bison.

Ranía’s face was serene. For someone just accused of witchcraft, I’d have thought her more distraught. “The wide-open field prevents anyone from getting close. It’s far enough from the wall that no one can hear us, but still within a bowshot should something happen.”

“Wow,” I said. “So… yes.”

“You said you needed to talk to me.”

“Right,” I straightened up. “So. I wanted to tell you about my friend, Davod.”

“I spoke with him earlier today.”

“Oh! You did…”

She laughed lightly, “I find him sexually attractive.”

I lifted my brow, unable to grasp at something to answer that with.

“I believe a relationship with him would be long bouts of crippling depression separated by short bursts of pleasure, and I’m not in the mood for that right now.”

“Well,” I grasped at some kind of response that could fit that explanation, then grinned as I found one. “No one can predict the future.”

“I see the road you travel,” she smirked, gazing at me.

That shook me. That shook me way more than it should have. I didn’t want to ask. Daenma teaches that one should avoid… certain things, and I got a feeling that this might be one of them, but I asked anyway. “Will I be dead in a day, or something?”

Ranía let out a light chortle and smiled some more. “There’s a scout; her name is Teyumi. Her enemies call her The Ghost. She’s… she struggles with human friendships.”

Then she turned and walked off towards the forest, but I followed her. “Uh… OK, so maybe there’s a way you could be just a little more cryptic? Because I almost understood something there.”

She laughed and kept walking. “I wouldn’t want to be caught out here when that gate closes if I were you!”

“What about you?” I kept walking.

“I’m not you!” she said.

I stopped, choosing to take the warning, yet unable to believe the conversation was over. It made no sense.

I came back towards the gate trying to wrap my head around the fact that that was the entirety of our conversation. I then woke from the dizzying haze of thoughts she’d left me with long enough to remember the twenty-foot alligator who sat beside the entrance. The creature wobbled its head and yawned its massive jaws open for a moment, then settled back down. I walked around the same way as before but watched closely, unsure if it was about to decide it was hungry.

Inside, the men hadn’t dispersed. Instead, they were talking to another woman. This one was the same color as Tani, but while Tani wore her white hair long, this one had a pixie cut, a white bat’s wing tattoo on her shoulder, and the most glorious, muscular arse I’d ever seen only half covered by a cotton loincloth.

No. I couldn’t look at her like that. I had to focus on what the relationship meant, and try to ignore her small yet firm-looking breasts naked and open before me God, she was something else.

Her eyes lit up and she smiled, stepping close as I approached. The men all gathered around. She looked among them for a second before turning to face me with an effusive smile. “Cadeb uv Gath. I gifff at you!”

Then she held out her hands and offered me a pendant.

“Let’s see!” Gino snuck in close. Borel leaned in, Rock got down to get a good look at it, Renou stood and looked, while Northstar, several inches taller than the others, watched from behind them all.

I took it and raised it up to look for myself. It was a soft, leather strap long enough to go around my neck, and dangling from it was something dark and round.

Rock looked up at her. “What is?”

“Is that…” Jame leaned in close and studied it. He seemed reluctant to touch it. “It’s an ear.”

Borel laughed. “What?”

I held it close to my eyes. The skin was dark, and at the wound where it had been carved from its owner, salt crystals had mingled with black, crusted blood. Dangling from the necklace was a human ear for a pendant.

Borel laughed out loud and came over to slap Gino’s shoulder. “Gods! You were right about him! I didn’t understand before, but gods I see it now! Come on, all you ɣowi, let’s allow these lovebirds some privacy,” he mocked. Then everyone followed as he went off.

Miyani stood facing me with a big smile.