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 curveballs 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 than 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 cataloged. 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 than 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."