The next morning, with nothing to eat - we’d eaten the last bit of what Martha had packed me the night before – Rhux set out before first light to hunt. That’s what she’d said anyway. I stayed behind, led the horses to the grassy field next to town, and tied them to some sticks I drove into the ground so they could eat but not run away. It wasn’t much, but they’d make do.

Rhux had taken one of the goblin blades and her sword, which left me with just the blade she had given me. I hoped I didn’t need it. If a bunch of goblins showed up, I’d be dead. I might get one or two, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

It turned out that I didn’t need it because by mid-morning, Rhux returned with a small deer thrown over her shoulder. Its throat had been cut, and she was covered in its blood.

“Help me skin it,” she said.

I did, which consisted of me doing what she told me to do, which was mostly holding the carcass and pulling the loose skin off. Then, she insisted on digging a hole, which she made me do, and with my blade and my hands, I did, then we put the deer’s guts in there and buried it so no monster or animal could smell it.

After we’d skinned it, she put a leg quarter over the fire in our little makeshift living room and left it there to roast.

“Now we work,” she said. It was close to midday, and I was starving.

“That’s not what we’ve been doing?” I said.

“No,” she said. “That was surviving. We have shelter, and now we have food. Now we train.”

I was dog-tired, but Rhux didn’t seem to care.

“You fought well against the goblins, but they’re not great fighters. Their numbers were their advantage,” she said. “I saw you kick and punch very well, but you need training with weapons if we’re going to sneak into the Citadel. Show me what you can do?”

“Okay,” I said. I hoped all those martial arts lessons my mom had taken me to were now about to pay off.

I got into a fighting stance, and we squared off in front of each other. She threw a slow punch, and I blocked it. Then another. And another.

She nodded. So far, so good.

Next, she came at me a little faster, and I blocked her punches. After that round, she said, “Faster.”

She didn’t hold back this time, throwing punches with a speed I had never quite seen before. I blocked as fast as I could, but one got in and caught me lightly on the end of the nose, not enough to do real damage, but enough to make my eyes water.

I pinched the bridge of my nose until the pain subsided.

“Good,” she said. “You’re very good. Now try to punch me.”

I raised my hands in front of my face and threw three quick jabs with my right, then a left hook, then a right uppercut. Rhux slapped my hands away, but I could tell she was surprised by my quickness. I kept the combo going and worked one to her body that got through, then threw a quick right that caught her on the cheek.

She smiled as her cheek started to turn pink under her green skin and raised her hand to signal the sparring was over.

She shook off the punches, and I felt a little bad, but then I remembered she had been going to sell me as a slave, so my sympathy evaporated. I still wasn’t sure I could trust her.

“You’re good,” she said after she’d shaken it off. “I don’t need to see any more hand-to-hand skills. Now we need to work on your skills with a blade. If we want to get out of the Citadel alive, we’ll probably have to kill some people.”

She smiled like she was looking forward to that.

I didn’t want to kill anybody except maybe Michael. And I hoped we could get in and out without being noticed, but that seemed like a long shot. So if someone caught Lucas and Sarah Beth trying to escape, I was sure they wouldn’t take that lying down.

Rhux handed me one of the goblin’s small swords. “Here. This first, then my sword. If we come across a sword, we’ll acquire it for you, but until then, this is what you have.”

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“What do you mean by acquire?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I mean, we’re going to steal the first sword we can unless you have any coins stuffed anywhere.” She flicked her eyebrows up and down. “And since I haven’t seen any yet, there’s only one place you could be hiding them.”

I didn’t have anything hidden there.

“Yeah,” she said. “Didn’t think so. So, it’s this until we find something. A sword is always better than a dagger or…,” she looked at the short blade the goblins had used, “whatever this is. But for now, this will work.”

I held the short sword in my right hand and waved it at her like I was in a kung fu movie, all twirling and spinning. She didn’t look amused. “Stop it. You look stupid.” She moved behind me and pressed her body into mine. She was firm, her skin was slick with sweat, and I could feel her breasts pressing into my back.

She ran her hand down my arm and held my wrist. “Hold it like this.” She pulled my hand higher. “Then… slash it… like this…” She guided my hand into a downward motion.

“Then, when they strike at you…” she brought my hand up in a backhand like she was teaching me how to swing a tennis racket. “Knock their strike away.”

We worked on that for a few minutes, and I tried to concentrate on what she was showing me and telling me, but all I could think about was the feel of her smooth hand on my skin and the weight of her pressed into me.

After a few minutes, she took up her sword and faced me, and we moved slowly as we practiced the moves she had shown me. Before long, we began to move faster.

“Good,” she said as I blocked a strike. “Now attack.”

I did. Rhux quickly brought her blade up and knocked my strike away. “Now punch,” she yelled. I threw a left at about half-speed. “Good. Punching and kicking will help open up strikes with the blade.”

We worked on that for a while until sweat was pouring down both of our faces. After a few days of riding a horse, sleeping on the ground, and now training, all without a shower, all I could smell was my stink. Rhux was sweating just as much, and with the dried deer blood still on her body and clothes, wasn’t smelling too good either.

We took a small break to catch our breath. Then she handed me her sword. “Go easy with this, but you need to get a feel for it, too.”

The sword was about three feet long with a long leather-wrapped grip. At the guard, the blade was about three inches wide and narrowed along its length until, at the end, it came to a fine point. The metal gleamed in the sunlight. It didn’t have a single blemish on it.

“This is beautiful,” I said. “Where did you get it?”

Rhux said, “That’s a story for another day. Now…” She stepped behind me again and pressed her body against mine. I was conscious of my stink, but if she noticed, she didn’t let on.

“Swords are different from the shorter blades.” She took both of my wrists into her hands and wrapped them around the grip. “This one has a longer hilt, so you could use two hands.” She pushed my arms up over my head, the sword hanging above us, ready to be brought down in an attack.

She wrapped her fingers around my arms and showed me the attacking motion. Her palms were soft, and her fingers were thin and strong as she squeezed my wrists. I tried not to focus on how she was touching me. I needed to focus on learning how to use the sword.

“You can also use it one-handed.” Still pressed against me tightly, Rhux gripped my wrist and worked my arm for me, showing me how to slash and parry with the longer blade. Her grip tightened on my arm, and she wrapped her other hand around my waist, pressing herself into me harder.

“It’s not just about moving fast,” she said into my ear. “It’s also about opening them up... It’s about recognizing when you need to use speed… or power.”

Were we still talking about the sword lesson? I had no idea.

She showed me move after move, her body pressed into my back, her hands guiding me, pulling and pushing me. I found myself wanting the lesson to last forever. I wanted to feel her against me forever, pressing into me tightly, her body firmly against mine.

But unfortunately, the lesson didn’t last forever.

“Let’s practice,” she said as she let me go and picked up two of the goblin blades that we had been using, one in each hand. “Let’s see what you learned.”

She came at me, slowly at first, letting me see her strikes coming, giving me ample time to block them and get a feel for the sword and how to wield it.

As I blocked her strikes one after the other, she began to move faster, giving me less time between blows to think about what to do next.

Faster and faster, she came at me, her blades swinging high then low. Her sword was getting heavier in my hand as the excursion was beginning to tire me.

I blocked as best I could, but one blow got through, Rhux hitting me with the back of the blade.

“Dodge and move,” she said. “Use your whole body, not just the blade.”

I dodged one of her blows, swung the sword up, and blocked the next. “Good,” she said.

She came at me in a flurry of blows then, landing more than I could block, hitting my on the arms and shoulders until I waved my hands in surrender.

I bent over, out of breath, sweat pouring down my face. Rhux was breathing heavily, too, her massive chest swelling upward with each deep breath she took, her tight abs sucking inward as well.

“That was good,” she said. “You’re pretty good for someone who’s never handled a blade before.”

I shook my head. “You were pounding me at the end.”

She was still breathing hard, sweat rolling down her face and neck, the drops running in little rivulets down between her breasts.

“I’m half-orc, though. I’m stronger and faster than any human man. Even one of your size. I just wanted to really test you at the end, really get your blood pumping. You did okay. But you also learned a lesson. You might hold your own with some humans, but if you face off with an experienced fighter, or an orc, or something even stronger… You need more than speed and skill… You need to run. There’s only so much training I can give you out here, Jack.”

She looked serious when she said it.

“Don’t worry. I’ll remember that. I just want to get my brother and Sarah Beth and get home. I don’t want to fight.”

“You’re probably going to have to, though,” she said. “But we’ll practice more on the way. Let’s call it a day. It’s getting late.”