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 Simian. 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 overwhelming 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 learned 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 (arrowhead) 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 Smilodon 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."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"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 its 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 its 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 its 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 too 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 its own right, so you never lose the benefits of fighting with your war brothers.

"Something else that you will experience is 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 its 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 the 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 forefront 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 the 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 bushcraft 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 Smilodon.

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" (from StoriesOnline) for thoughts and comments on weapons and tactics which prompted Finger Roberts to give his little lecture :-) }