I looked away from Lorraine at the guy who was watching her back. His eyes were completely flat and I realised that he was dangerous in a different way. There is no-one more dangerous than someone who doesn't care about the consequences, and that is the feeling I got from him.

"[Listen guys, watch out. These guys are doing this in earnest. This is not a game for them,"] I sent to my finger members.

I took a few steps away and rejoined my finger. I noticed that Lorraine and her companion took care not to take their eyes off me as they did the same. Well, at least we had respect from them; now to test just how capable we really were.

Fist Ryon asked “Everyone ready?”

When he had received an affirmative response from Lorraine and I, he gave the command "Fight".

For a few moments no-one moved, then Lorraine's finger shifted into the three-up/two-back formation, with her in the centre. Pretty much what I expected, and for the same reasons that I would have chosen that formation in their place. They had sufficient strength up front to hold off any attack, two in reserve to reinforce the front and to guard their flanks. They were also sufficiently far back that my up-and-over trick from the fight before would not work. They held still, obviously quite happy to initially hold a defensive pose until they had determined what we intended to do.

I shifted my Finger into a two-up formation. We were one short, having only five warriors to their six, so we ended up like the five on a dice, two-up, two back and me in the centre. Geraint was front left and Elaine, now slim, fit and strong, was on the right. They were paired as they had the strong bond between them of lovers and, I suspected, soul-mates. Lian was to my right and Desrae to my left.

“[Advance to contact.]” I ordered.

We moved forward and Elaine and Geraint started dueling with the front three. I watched them for a few seconds. They were both extremely fast and I saw that they were holding their own. Their speed and skill allowed them to fight against the three that they were confronting, but more than that, coordinating two people was definitely easier to do than three. The outside two were also not able to pay one hundred percent attention to the fight as they knew that they could be threatened by Lian and Desrae as they had seen us go around the flanks before and I knew that Lorraine would expect us to try something similar against her. Geraint was left-handed and Elaine right, so that we had swords on the outside and parry daggers on the inside. To start with, they were fighting conventionally; essentially keeping the parry-daggers unused and concentrating on using their swords. I closed up on the line to support the centre with my sword, but they were fighting so well that I was not needed.

It didn't take long though to see that they would be able to hold us like this for as long as they needed and that if I didn't act soon, we would surrender the initiative. I knew that if I allowed Lorraine to dictate the course of the fight, she would soon move to the attack.

“[Ok, ready {image/schematic}. Steady. Steady. Attack!]”

I moved as fast as I was able. The plan was that I would run straight through the centre, throwing my parry-dagger at the man in the middle to get his sword off-line was he tried to deflect the dagger, and try to use that gap to run him through and breach their line. It work better than I had expected. The centre man had just extended himself in a lunge at Elaine when I threw my parry-dagger and it went right past his guard and pierced his chest, he was down and I was through their line and engaging Lorraine in a flash. The momentary surprise that this caused Lorraine worked entirely to our advantage as it caused the rest of her finger to lose focus for the tiniest amount of time, just long enough for Geraint and Elaine to move around their outside opponents to attack the pair in the rear at the same time as Lian and Desrae moved up to take over their battles with the front pair. As Geraint and Elaine made their moves, it pulled their opponents around to the outside to follow them, and created opportunities for Desrae and Lian to put their new opponents down. They quickly joined up to gang up in pairs against the back pair, while I was left fighting Lorraine in the centre. Desrae quickly saw that Geraint was going to be able to handle his opponent without help and turned to help me out, and I needed it.

Lorraine was a brilliant swordsman. I was finding myself hard-pressed to match her, and now that I had thrown away my parry-dagger, I had no way to shield myself. Her watchdog was no slouch either. He was managing to both keep Geraint occupied and assist Lorraine's defence. When Desrae joined me, we were pretty evenly matched. It took Lian and Elaine getting rid of their opponent and moving to join us to finally tip the battle our way, and all of a sudden it was over. The watchdog went down and Lorraine stepped back and out up her sword in an admission of defeat.

It took me a few minutes to wind down from the fight and confirm that everyone in the finger was OK and then I slowly relaxed. It felt as though I had been fighting for hours, but as I found out a bit later it had only been about three or four minutes.

“Hell! Where did you guys come from?” Lorraine asked.

“What do you mean?” I replied, puzzled.

“You are recruits. We were supposed to walk all over you and yet that was one of the hardest fights that I have had in years. I cannot believe you have only been here for three weeks!”

I grinned at her. “That was a hard fight. If we hadn't surprised you, we would have struggled to beat you.”

“You don't understand. We are the best, not just in the War Brothers Fight, but we have been undefeated as a finger for the three years we have been together. Not in any competition within the Fight or in any battle with other fights. Not ever. This is the first time. What has made you guys so good in such a short time?”

“Good training.” I grinned at her.

“Bullshit! There is more to it than that.”

I could see that Lorraine was actually pissed off. She obviously thought that she had been cheated somehow and that we weren't actually recruits.

“Are you from some other Fight?” she confimed my guess.

“No. I was serious about good training. It is just that we discovered a slightly different technique to assist us and it sped up our ability to learn.”

“OK.” I could see she had accepted what I said reluctantly, almost as if she was reserving judgement until she could confirm it for herself.

“I will happily show you what we did and how if you like.”

“Thank You. That would be a very good idea I think.” Fist Ryon interjected. “Let's clean up here then I think we need to get together so that we can talk about this. We need to do a proper debrief.”

I saw that all the Hand Leaders were standing in a group just behind Fist Ryon. They were easy enough to identify as they looked the same to me on my mental map as Hand Evans.

We all helped the downed members of Lorraine's finger to get to the infirmary. It was the first time that I had gotten to see it, so I was very interested in how it looked and worked. It turned out to be a simple barracks room with about thirty beds in it. The warriors who had been wounded had been carried in and laid in the beds where they were given the pretty rough-and-ready first aid that was all that was needed to kick-start their self-healing. I asked about the warriors who had bee n more seriously hurt, such as the Finger Leader I had run through with my sword, and was told that they were handled by the support staff, Malek's cronies, who took them off and sorted out their major wounds before returning them to the infirmary for a short rest before they were able to rejoin their Fingers.

Once we had finished at the infirmary, Finger Roberts told us that we would be fed our lunch, then after lunch we were scheduled for a comprehensive debrief session. I was a bit nervous that it would be more along the lines of an interrogation, but I kept my own council on that.