The comet streaked across the black, star-pocked expanse trailing flames.

Nobody saw it. Nobody made a wish. It made a sharp right and took aim at the blue, green and brown ball hanging in the heavens.

It shattered into five pieces when it hit the atmosphere. Each streaked off in a different direction.

If one had been close enough to comet to listen as it shattered, if one's skin was tough enough to withstand the heat or had ears sharp enough to hear anything over the thunder as it broke apart, one might have heard one voice growl a fervent prayer and four others scream at the top of their lungs.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuck!"

THE FIRST FRAGMENT

The village fishermen were sleepily untangling their nets just before dawn when ocean between their boats exploded. Three of their boats were swamped by waves, and they all clutched hard to the rigging to avoid being thrown over. Everybody got wet, but the water was warm as tears. Salt-scented steam rose in a brief fog as the ocean sizzled and a glowing mass sank to the bottom, cooling as it went. A minute later, one of the fisherwomen shouted as her anchor chain tugged and the boat's prow dipped like a bird sipping from a puddle. Something had the chain. Her son, who worked the boat with her, put his mother behind him and grabbed a knife they used to clean fish. He'd always feared its keen edge, but as the chain rattled and the boat bucked he knew it wasn't enough knife for whatever they'd hooked.

A hand burst out of the water and grabbed the edge of the boat. They all watched in shock as a man flopped gasping over the side to lay in the gut-strewn scuppers, struggling weakly with his soaked robes. He was not very tall, but massively built and he coughed through a tangled gray beard. The fisherman handed him a jug of water and he drank greedily.

"Thank you," the stranger whispered. "May the...

He coughed and hacked before continuing.

"Nevermind," he said, his head sinking back, "just thank you."

"You're... welcome?"

"Did you find anybody else?"

"Did you fall out of the sky?"

The robed man paused a moment, then nodded sadly.

"They are not here," he said, stood and kicked his legs free of his wet robes. He drew up his hood and clasped his hands under his chin, muttering under his breath. His hands were gnarled, the knuckles thick and mishapen, nearly one mass.

"He praying?" The fisherwoman's son asked her.

The robed man stood up. "Your kindness will not be forgotten."

Then he dove over the side.

"If that's a mermaid you can keep 'em," The woman's son muttered.

The man swam to shore, dragged himself up the bank and walked into the village, trailing ocean as he went. Dawn broke over the low, slumping buildings. At the far end of the street hurried a man in a dented steel cuirass. He was still buckling it on as he fumbled with an antique pistol and his sword.

"You there, stranger," the guard said, "I'm the sheriff. They told me..."

The large man stood in the center of the road and said nothing.

"Did you really fall out of the sky?" The sheriff asked.

"Do you protect this place?"

"I do," the man said. He was near middle age. His sword and pistol hung in disarray from his belt.

"I need your steel."

"My what?"

"Your sword, your armor and your pistol."

"Maybe you should sit down for a second, stranger."

"You seem like a kind man. I will make this easy as I am able. By way of apology."

"For what?"

The man in the robe walked closer.

"Don't come any closer," the sheriff said and reached for his pistol.

The robed man punched him in the face. As the sheriff fell sputtering the ground, the man gave him a careful look and then hit him a second time, knocking him out. He stripped off the sheriff's steel cuirass and chainmail collar. He took his sword and broke his pistol, putting the metal pieces in the pocket of his robe. He stood up and looked around at the shocked villagers.

"He will recover. I only hit him a little. Is there a metalworker in town?" he called to them.

They didn't answer. Only then did the robed and damp stranger notice the spired building of stones at the edge of the village, so that the other homes seemed to grow away from it like it was the centerpiece of an arch or a crescent. At its spire was a crude wooden symbol, a carving of a harpoon crossed with an oar.

"Is this your place of worship?" The robed man called out. "It is?" He asked the still-unconscious constable at his feet.

"That's the Giving Place," a small voice said with brave and nasal defiance. The robed man looked down to see a small boy. In his little hand was a wooden sword.

"And what do you give there?"

"We give to the sea, the sea gives to us," the little boy intoned, holding his wooden sword in both hands.

"You are brave, little one," the robed man said, "but you cannot fight this war. Not yet. My faith and my fists are bigger."

The little boy backed up a single step, but his eyes were still afire. The man crouched down so that he was on eye level with the little boy.

"But it will not always be so," he rumbled. "Find me then. I will attempt to answer for what happens next."

"What's going to happen?" The little boy asked.

The robed man walked past the little boy, seeming to have forgotten that he ever existed and down a narrow street that led to the doors of their temple to the sea. Nervous villagers peeked from the alleys between the buildings. Some of them held weapons in half-hearted fingers. The robed man from the sky glared at them.

"What I do, I do in the Vigil's name," he intoned, "That you may know he lives! That you believe! That you never forget his name!"

"What do you mean the virgin!?" One of the villagers called.

The robed man growled under his breath. Then he kicked through the door of their place of worship. A moment there was a shriek and the sound of a scuffle and then an elderly man dressed in vestments made of fishing net flew out of the broken door and landed in the mud with a grunt. The villagers helped their sea priest to his feet and listened as the robed stranger had what sounded like a temper tantrum in the little place of worship. There was breaking glass and splintering wood. The villagers began to close in with their clutched marlinspikes and gutting knives and clubs fashioned from mooring pins. There was a crashing noise from inside the building and then a low groan. The robed stranger staggered out. Even his cowled head looked discouraged.

"Mark my words," he said in a somewhat subdued version of his earlier voice, "I will return in the Vigil's name and pull down your false church. I will return when I am whole."

Five of the largest of the villagers stepped forward, weapons in hand. The tallest of their number, a rangy woman with a face harder than the crags of the surrounding cliffs began to swing a length of rusty boat chain decorated with a towing hook.

"When you do, you'd better bring an army stranger, I don't care if you are an angel."

"I'm no angel," the robed stranger says. "And I go to fetch my army now."

"Then you'd better go fast," the woman said and gestured. The crowd parted.

The man in the robe walked through the villager-made corridor and away from them all with the sheriff's armor and sword dangling from his left hand. He walked as the run rose and again as it set, hiding his face beneath his cowl. In the next town he found a blacksmith and paid the man with the last gold in his pocket. The sheriff's steel was melted and reshaped into a series of steel plates and bands affixed to leather straps.

When the blacksmith finished, the man in the robe pushed him protesting out of his own smithy and locked the door. While the man kicked at the heavy wood and yelled to be let back in, the man in the robe took a small chisel and hammer and knelt, praying as he inscribed symbol after symbol into the newly forged steel. Then he slid his hands into the contraptions and tightened the straps. He inspected his gleaming, armored hands and grunted with satisfaction.

"I am whole," he said.

He opened the door, pushed past the hollaring smith and left the town. He followed the road until it forked, then held his face up as if sniffing the air. He could feel them. They were not close. With a nod, he took the righthand fork.

His name was Vice.

THE SECOND FRAGMENT

The tenement collapsed when the comet hit. It was the third night of the festival and fireworks and general drunkenness hid most of the noise and fire. Those who lived nearby rushed to search for survivors.

There was only one.

He dragged himself, coughing and covered in dust, away from the rubble and cleaned his face at a communal pump. He walked the narrow streets between the celebrating citizens, jostled this way and that by their joy, until he found an apothecary's shop. He broke a back window with a paving stone he'd pried out of the street and roamed the shelves and cupboards, ticking his fingers across the labeled jars by the light of a small lamp. He filled the pouches and pockets in his leather coat and apron. He mixed other components and poured the blends into glass vials and stoppered them with corks. Some of those he sealed with wax. He made painkillers and sedatives, acids, flammables and medicines from the book in his memory, far beyond anything this apothecary had ever heard of or seen. He grumbled under his breath at the paucity of the man's inventory.

"They might as well pray."

He visited tavern after tavern, sipping warm beer he didn't want and sour wine he wouldn't use in an emulsion to poison stray cats.

And he watched.

In the seventh tavern he saw four people follow a fifth out the back door. The four returned animated and jerky, their movements snapping like flickering candlelight. He went out the back into the alley behind the tarvern and found a tall, thin man counting coins under a streetlamp.

"I'll have what they did," the alchemist said to him.

The man stopped counting. "No idea what you're talking about."

"What was it? Lizard Crystal? Dark Sip?"

The dealer looked bored. "Go back inside before you piss me off."

"Kyne's Pitch? An amalgum of dern root sap and dried barkleaf?" He held up a stack of silver coins. "I'm a customer, not the authorities."

The dealer cocked his head to one side. "You talk like a scholar. You from the university?"

"Just visiting and I want to try whatever you sold those four. They looked like they were trying to dance a jig on hot, broken glass."

"This ain't brandy, mate."

"At this price? I hope not."

The dealer shrugged and held out a folded packet of paper and took the man's silver coins. The alchemist took the packet, knowing he'd paid four times what it was worth, and stuck his finger inside. He rubbed the powder between his fingertips and touched the finger to his tongue.

"Uh, you're supposed to snort it," the dealer said.

The alchemist smacked his lips and rolled his tongue around his mouth. Then he did take a pinch of the powder and snort it. He cocked his head as a faint rush danced across his bones from his septum to the middle of his spine. The feeling was over in moments. It was a sludgy sort of thing that jangled his nerves like cans on a string. He sipped from a vial. The sedative washed the edge from his skin. Amateurs, he thought.

"Good, right?" The dealer asked with a grin.

"Not really. Only reason you've got happy customers is because they're low tolerance amateurs. You're using too much dern root sap. And you didn't let it age enough. I'd say two days instead of the full week. "

"Dern what? Mate, that right there's the best Dance in three towns."

"Dance. Interesting. Take me to your boss."

"Far as you're concerned, I am the boss. And I'm telling you to fuck off. I'm busy."

"To busy to make this Dance of yours twice as addictive and potent with half the ingredients?"

"Is that right, schoolboy?"

The alchemist tossed the dealer a small vial. "Sell that to your next customer. I'll be inside."

"What is it?"

"Not Dance."

"How do I know it's safe?"

The alchemist stared at him for several seconds, shook his head and went back inside. He was sipping a brandy he'd stolen from the table of Dance users when the dealer sat down across from him.

"What was in that? They already want more."

"Take me to your boss. I'll make all he can sell and teach him the recipe."

"She. You better hope you can deliver like you say. If you bought that around here, she's gonna want to know everything. And you'd better tell her. C'mon. Lets go see The Spider."

The alchemist rolled his eyes. Just once he wanted to meet a kingpin named Sally, maybe Bill.

While the festival raged for another week, the alchemist mixed a blend of Dance as pure and fast as a neverending fall into a bottomless pit, and just as implacable. His blend did not need to age. It flooded the festival. The Spider cointed the earnings and the glint from the coins matched the glint in her eye, one that told the alchemist she'd wasn't ever going to led this golden goose fly free. But that was okay. The next day he added what he'd made in the apothecary's shop to his cook cauldron after dosing himself with a powerful sedative. He added more coals to the fire beneath the cauldron. As the heat rose, the chemicals blended and a thick smoke boiled out and filled the room. He could see what the gangsters did, monsters dredged from a hundred nights of forgotten nightmares, but with clinical detachment. While they went mad, gibbering and striking at the invisible threats that surrounded them, the alchemist helped himself to their stores of coin and chemicals. He filled a leather bag with gunpowder. He stole vial after vial and filled them with what he needed, using their facilities to do his blending while the town drug dealers went permanently mad.

"I wonder if they have an asylum," he mused as he walked between the flailing dealers, strongarms and sneakthieves of the city as they begged for mercy from gods only they could see. He saw the Spider, a stout woman with short arms and a knife fighter's scar bisecting her face. She stared up at him with unseeing eyes. Drool ran from the corner of her mouth. The alchemist knelt by her side and checked her pulse. It was faint. She was trapped in her own body as the horrors of her mind capered before her staring eyes.

"Interesting. Spider, I'm afraid you've had a stroke," the alchemist muttered. "It seems you have weak veins."

He got up and left, bought passage on a carriage and rode out of the city as dawn broke.

His name was Pitch.

THE THIRD FRAGMENT

Compared to the return, the crater was very peaceful.

She lay at the bottom of it and stared up at the sky with her hands behind her head. The moon was so bright and big that if she stared long enough she almost felt like she was rushing toward it. It was so quiet. Almost as quiet as that place inside her mind that was hers all alone, a space so quiet and hushed it was almost violent in its emptiness.

She sighed, stood up and went to find a war.

But as she walked over hill and dale, all she found were farms and fields. So much was green and lush, the vistas so bucolic, that she wondered if her comet hadn't taken a wrong turn and dumped her straight into some god's heaven. Farmers waved to her from their fields. One shepherd offered to share his lunch, and the invitation didn't come with a suggestive, lecherous glint.

"This place is absurd," she muttered as she walked on. She wasn't going to find a war here unless she started it, and even then it might not evolve past a strongly worded argument. She walked until she came to a good sized town, and was sitting in a tavern with a cup of beer when she heard some men by the counter talking. She left her cup of stale drink on her table.

"Sorry, couldn't help but overhear," she said. "What's this about a shooting competition?"

The men turned, startled. "Lord Dunne always wins. He's the best shot in the canton."

"Who's Lord Dunne?"

"Where are you from, you don't know Lord Dunne?"

"Not here."

"Anyway, where's your gun?"

"Lost over the side," she said, already bored with the conversation.

"Of what? You sailed here?"

"Sort of."

"But the ocean's miles away!"

"It was a river boat."

"River?"

"Nevermind," she said with an aggravated noise that hit both men like a slap. "Where do I find this Lord Dunne?"

"His factor's office is near the town hall," one of the men said in a small voice.

"Great. Thanks. Ah, sorry for snapping at you."

"Oh, that's okay!"

I have got to get out of here before I lose my mind, she thought.

The factor was a pretty young man with long fingers and a pair of glasses that glinted in the lamplight that shone over the ledger. His pen made precise trips back and forth across the page, leaving elegants black scrawls in their wake. There was an antique wheel lock rifle hanging on the wall behind him.

"Yes?" he asked without looking up.

"I hear there's a shooting competition," she said.

"His grace is holding it in four days as you well know."

"Actually, I don't."

The young man looked up. "Ah, I apologize. You are visiting then?"

"Just arrived."

"Well, his grace typically offers a modest prize for first place, but since you are new here I feel I should warn you. His grace always wins. He's the best shot in the five cantons."

"So I hear. I don't have time to enter anyway."

"Then what can I do for you? I don't mean to be rude, but I am very busy."

"How much his grace will pay me not to enter."

The young man looked startled. "I beg your pardon?"

"You manage his grace's business yes? Does that mean you have access to discretionary funds?"

"His grace trusts me to run the day to day, yes."

The woman nodded to the rifle. "Does that work?"

"I would say so. His grace is quite fastidious about his firearms."

"Perfect. What would you say to a wager?"

"Madam, I am not a gifted shot."

"But you know good shooting when you see it. Come with me and I'll show you shooting nobody in this little paradise has even dreamed of."

"Madam, this has been quite diverting, but I am too busy."

"C'mon," she said with a rakish wink, "aren't you just the least bit curious?"

They left the building and walked through the main street of the town. She stopped only long enough to give a group of children a silver coin for one of the shiny marbles they were playing with in the dirt. They climbed the top of a hill just outside town with a crabapple tree on top. She took pulled a thread from her clothes and tied the marble to it and the other end around a low branch. The marble hung glinting in the air. She looked back at the factor and then tapped the marble to send it swinging back and forth before she walked a few dozen feet from it. She checked the old rifle's pan, and pulled back the dog and checked the pyrite. The factor had been right. The flint in it was fresh. She loaded the weapon and charged it. Then poured powder into the pan.

"It's a very old gun," the factor said.

"That doesn't matter," she said with a smile. "You were right, his grace is careful with his weapons."

She lefted the weapon to her shoulder, sighted down the barrel and pulled the trigger. The marble shattered in a shower of sunlight.

"That was very impressive," the factor said.

She reloaded and fired four more times, picking crabapples from the braches by shooting through their stems. She collected two of them and offered one to the factor, who was cleaning his glasses as if a smudge on the lense might explain what he just saw.

"So what's the grand prize for this contest?" She asked.

"Five hundred silver," he said.

"How many years has he held it?"

"Fifteen."

"His grace doesn't want me entering this contest."

"I am sure I cannot speak to his grace's mind."

"Two hundred silver and I leave town without firing another shot."

"You don't have a gun."

"I'm sure one of the neighboring lords would lend me one. They might even pay me for my trouble. Maybe one of them's annoyed enough to see the "best shot in the five cantons" embarrassed."

The factor thought for several moments.

"One hundred and fifty silver."

"Deal," she said and bit into the apple. She spat the piece into the dirt. It was bitter.

She rode a carriage out of town and to the coast. There boarded a ship to a city with a name she recognized. At a gunsmith she bought two long rifles, a pair of sawed down shotguns, two pistols and three derringers. She bought bullets and several small pouches of gunpowder. She bought pig iron bomb shells, slow and fast match.

Her name was Powder.

THE FOURTH FRAGMENT

The highwaymen had been having a very good month after the snowmelt. The crocuses had sprouted, and winter's meager sun gave way to the joyous chill dawns of early spring that promised warm afternoon. The carriage wheels began to turn again. The wagoneers, shipping concerns and wealthy visitors with nothing better to do than call upon each other began to flow and the highway men were there to shear their flock. They were celebrating around the fire in their forest hideout, a collection of canopy-bound dwellings connected by rope-bridges, rough plank walkways and pulley systems. Darn's wife had just given birth and Gow, their chief, raised his glass in a toast, vowing they would all make sure this new, young life wanted for nothing. Darn and his wife named her Gowa after their leader and if there was a sentimental tear in Gow's eye over that gesture, nobody mentioned it.

Then there was a sound like thunder a hundred times over, and half their hideout was set ablaze. A dozen of the highwaymen were killed in the impact, and their celebratory circle was now a smoking crater in the center of the forest crosshatched by fallen, scorched trees. Men and women ran around coughing and screaming. Some were on fire. Most were dead. A stranger with broad shoulders that tapered to a dancer's waist crawled out of the rubble and bodies that had been their celebration and stood up. He coughed and hacked, spat in the dirt and looked around at the chaos.

"Well. That's fucked up," he muttered.

"You! Who are you!"

It was Darn. Tears were streaming down his face and he was looking around at the ruins of the only place he'd ever called home with devasted confusion.

"That's your first question?" the stranger asked.

"Was this your doing!?" Darn screamed, drawing his sword.

"I really don't think you're focusing on the right things," the stranger said and gestured as a woman ran past, screaming and very much on fire. "Like that for example."

"I'm going to kill you."

"You think this is my fault? I wasn't steering it!"

"The king would burn women and children?"

"He's a king. Probably. But this isn't his doing. Or mine. I'm really sorry but... Wait, which king?"

Darn lunged at the stranger with his blade in the lead. But the stranger vanished. Darn glanced around and realized he'd lost his sword. A familiar point and edge were sticking out of his chest. He coughed. His chest felt cold.

"Sorcerer," he spat.

"Not really, but since you're dying I'm not gonna argue," the stranger said from behind him.

Darn fell and died. The stranger sighed and looked around.

"Really sorry about this. But I do have to go. Uh... good luck to..." He looked around, but there was almost nobody left. Those able had fled for their lives from the blaze devouring the trees. "Well, to somebody. I guess."

The stranger walked out of the camp and picked his way through the forest until he found a road. He followed that until the walls of a city loomed on the horizon. He passed through the gates without an issue, he had neither cargo nor weapon. He ate in a market and drank a cup of wine. At a notice board he saw a leaflet warning about bandits on the road.

"Don't think you'll have to worry about that anymore," he muttered. "Oh, hello."

Another leaflet was decorated with a pair of stylized, crossed swords. The stranger asked for directions until he stood before a building on a quiet, clean street. From inside came a kind of music he could always dance to. The hall was vast and open. Pillars padded with old straw mattresses held up the ceiling. Several pairs of men and women were fencing with a variety of weapons of both dull metal and wood. At the far end a handsome, middle-aged man looked on and called corrections. The floor was decorated with footwork diagrams. The stranger licked his lips as he looked at the wall behind the instructor. On it hung blades of every sort imaginable. There were slender rapiers and stout cleavers. A falchion with its big-bellied curved tip. A greatsword. Axes. Knives for both dueling and throwing. The instructor noticed his visitor and crossed the floor, stepping elegantly between the cluters of sparring students, their blades sometimes passing no more than a half-inch from his skin. The stranger shivered. There was a tingle in his belly.

"Good morning, sir," the fencing master said. "Are you interested in the art of self-defense?"

The stranger smiled. "No, thanks. I'm quite set there."

"Oh? Has a master walked into my academy?"

The stranger laughed with delight. "I've had many teachers who would disagree."

The fencing master's arrogance was as graceful as his movements and his jawline.

"Then why are you here?"

"I crave a contest."

"I will summon one of my students. I believe that Carn would be happy to oblige you. He's one of my best."

"Care to lay a wager on it?" The stranger said, holding out a small stack of gold coins he'd stolen from a dead highwayman's pocket.

"A duelist?" The fencing master's lip curled. "I've heard of your sort. Killing drunk fools behind taverns for copper. Here we don't profit from blood."

"I'm just a working man."

"I'll not have my students injured by some street fighter's back alley tricks."

"What you call tricks, I call earning a living. But I promise no dirty fighting. Skill against skill alone."

"You don't even have a weapon."

"Hard times. You'll lend me one, won't you?" The stranger said with an abashed grin that he'd had luck with so many times in the past.

The fencing master chuckled. "A charming rogue aren't you?"

"Do you really think so?" The stranger said with a wink.

"I admire your dash, sir. You challenge a master in his own house and ask to borrow a sword in the same breath. I admit, I am intrigued."

"And to put money in your pocket. Let's make it friendly. First blood?"

"Very well. But you won't be fencing with one of my students."

"I was hoping not."

The fencing master cocked his head to one side and pursed his lips. The stranger couldn't take his eyes off the salt and pepper in his beard, or a muscle in the man's neck that stood out like taught rigging. His students cleared a space at the center of the hall and the fencing master beckoned the stranger forward. "Do you have a preference in sword?"

The stranger shrugged. "Whatever's handy."

The fencing master snorted. "Regin," he called and one of his students stepped forward. "Fetch a pair of sabers."

"How fitting," the stranger said with a smile.

"Why is that?"

"I'll tell you later."

Regin brought over two sabers from a tall basket. They were metal, but their edges were dull.

"No," the fencing master said, "fetch sharp ones."

Regin looked started, but obeyed. He took a pair of plain but well-formed blades down from the wall.

"On your guard, sir," the fencing master said once Regin had handed over the weapon to the stranger, who rotated the sword around his wrist and then dropped it.

"Sorry. Bit out of practice, I guess."

The fencing master scowled as he waited for the stranger to pick up the blade.

"I seem to have nicked the edge a bit," the stranger said.

"I am waiting, sir."

"Well, we can't have that," the stranger said and leapt forward with a sweeping overhead cut that the fencing master caught on the roof of his own sword and stepped around. They circled each other, flickering and testing. The weapons made bluring shapes in the air as the stranger spun away from a parry. The students clicked their tongues in disapproval. The stranger moved more like a dancer than a fighter. The fencing master's style was blunt and formal. He moved as little as possible. His style that of a fighter who hadn't stepped outside his academy in many years, his students influencing him as much as he taught them. The stranger caught an oncoming cut on the knucklebow of his sword, a nearly impossible trick, flicked his blade around it and nicked the outside of the fencing master's arm. It was barely more than a paper cut.

The stranger leapt out of range and pointed with the tip of his weapon.

"Red there," he said. He was barely breathing hard. The fencing master, his lungs moving like bellows, squinted at his shirt.

"Right you are, sir. Well fought."

"To you as well."

"I'll fetch your gold."

"I'd rather you fetch some wine."

The fencing master grinned and several of the students laughed.

The master's students departed shortly after, leaving just he and the stranger sitting at a table near the back of the academy sharing the last of a bottle of wine.

"I must say, your style is unlike any I've encountered," the fencing master said, pouring out the last of a full-bodied red. "Who taught you?"

"Be faster to mention who didn't. But no names you would recognize, many of them are dead, sad to say. On one battlefield or another."

"Are you a soldier? In whose army?"

"Whoever's paying."

"You're a mercenary?"

"I'm a lover of life, sir. A poet. An adventurer and admirer of the world's delights," he said with wink. "But a man has to eat. I hope I haven't cost you any esteem among your students."

The fencing master shook his head with a wry grin. "I would have preferred to be the victor of our little contest, but it provides a good lesson to them. To be cautious. That there is always somebody better. And that," he said with a sigh, "age catches up with us all."

"You're not so old," the stanger said and leaned forward placing his hand on the fencing master's knee.

The man looked down. "What are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious?" the stranger said, sliding his chair closer until their knees were nearly touching. "I am sure there's much I could still stand to learn."

The fencing master stepped back with outrage. "What you're suggesting is disgusting."

"Oh, come now. I've no problem being the lock to your key if that's the issue."

"Moreover it is illegal. I could have you hanged."

"Hanged? What kind of backwards shithole is this?"

"I'll have satisfaction from you, sir."

"Now we're talking! You had me there for a minute."

"At dawn," the fencing master said and stood up, looking down his nose at the stranger.

"Oh, you're fucking kidding!" the stranger said. "Calm down. A simple no is just fine. It happens. Though I admit it doesn't happen often."

"At dawn, sir. The field outside town. You passed it on your way to the north gate."

"Look, can we not just forget about this?"

"I will not. Now get out."

"I'm keeping the sword," the stranger said, standing up. "Since you're going to act like a virgin whose ass I just pinched."

"You won't be so flip when we're crossing blades for true."

"I can promise you I will be. Drove my instructors nuts."

"On a real field your back alley tricks won't save you."

The stranger thought about all the back alleys he'd fought in over the years and thought the fencing master had spent too much time in his own academy. He dropped his charm and his dash, and said in a cold voice:

"At dawn then."

The fencing master slept poorly that night in his study on the ground floor of his home to avoid disturbing or worrying his wife. It had been many years since his last duel. The house was quiet and he fetched water from the pump in back. He had just carried it back into the kitchen when he heard feet coming down the stairs.

"Is that you, my love? I am sorry if I woke you."

The stranger walked through the doorway of the kitchen, still buckling his trousers with his sword under his arm.

"Good morning," the stranger said.

"What are you doing in my house?" the fencing master said.

"You really should fuck your wife before a duel. I mean, what if it's the last time?"

"My wife..."

"Oh, don't worry. I took care of that. Is there coffee?"

The fencing master dropped the basin. it shattered. Water spread along the floor until it was nearly touching the stranger's boots.

"Shhh. You're going to wake her up. She's sleeping so peacefully. You should see her. She has the most adorable little smi..."

"You violated my wife."

"Violated? What do you take me for? She's a lovely woman. We met while she was tending the roses outside your door. Going forward I might suggest spending just a little less time with your students polishing their swordplay and a little more at home, polishing yours, if you know what I mean. I mean, all I had to do was complement those roses and..."

"The field. Now," the fencing master grated and grabbed his sword and belt from the kitchen table.

"Do you want to walk together?"

"What?"

"Might be a little awkward, but I can tell you about this thing your wife likes."

"I am going to kill you."

"So that's a no to coffee?"

The fencing master drew his blade and lunged across the room with a howl, swinging for the stranger's neck. But the stranger was gone. The fencing master felt a hand on the back of his head and then saw the heavy kitchen table rushing at his face. His world went black.

The stranger looked down at the unconscious man, "Really would be too much to kill you on top of everything else. Plus, I think it would make your wife sad. Despite her indiscretion, she really does seem to love you."

He trussed the fencing master's legs and dragged him into his study, where he laid him out along the couch on which he'd spent the night. He took off one of the man's shoes and then his sock, and shoved it into the man's mouth. "Who knows, your wife might like finding you this way, since you're so tightly wrapped anyway. Maybe I've just expanded your marriage!"

The stranger went through the fencing master's pockets and took out the key to his academy. He left the house, stopped to pluck a single rose and tuck it in the collar of his coat, then he traced his steps back to the academy to properly arm himself.

His name was Saber.

THE FIFTH FRAGMENT

The steer was eating grass and staring off into space, thinking long thoughts. He was sort of a loner, and the ranchers who looked after them always had a harder time getting him back into the paddock for the night to protect him from rustlers and poachers. He was more stubborn than the rest, and his returns to the enclosure at night were always met with lots of c'mon, stupid, lets go, as the ranchers were forced to go even further to round him up and eventually get him through the same gate the other cattle streamed through out of dusk-bound habit.

But he wasn't stupid.

He was probably the smartest of all the ranchers' herd. Which is why he so often ranged far, preferring the company of his own thoughts.

It was also why he was the sole casualty when a comet fell out of the sky one day and turned the deepest thought of his life into a crater.

The woman who stood up out of the smoking dent in the earth, wondering why the air smelled so strongly of roast beef, was nearly seven feet tall and thickly built. She squinted in the bright sunlight. Then she looked down and saw a leg with a hoof at the end.

"Oh," she said.

There was an uneasy tugging in her gut. She climbed out of the crater and walked until four men on horseback rode into her path.

"You see it?" One of them asked.

"See what?" she asked. She was nearly on eye level with the man on horseback, and the four looked at her with a slight apprehension, though she carried no weapon.

"The comet!" the rancher said. "Did you see that comet fall out of the sky?"

"I heard something," she lied, "but I didn't see a comet."

"Wim," the lead rancher said, "go check it out."

The large woman looked at the other three ranchers, then made as if to walk through them.

"Wait," one of them said, "where's your horse?"

"Lost."

"You can't just leave."

"And yet," she said as she pushed past his horse.

"No, I mean, there's nothing around for miles. It'll take you an age to walk to the nearest town."

"Oh, that can't."

"You can ride with us. We'll take you back to the ranch. The boss'll know what to do."

Wim, the rancher who'd gone to look for the comet returned shortly. "Bad news."

"What? You find it?" The lead rancher said.

"Yeah. There's a big crater out near the edge of the grazelands. George is dead."

"The comet hit George?"

"Looks like it. Only a leg left. It's got our brand."

"Damn."

"Guess we won't be having the chase him back into the pen at the end of the day anymore. Wim, let this lady get up behind you. We're gonna take her to see the boss."

Wim's horse eyed the large woman with what might have been apprehension and sighed heavily as she climbed up behind Wim and settled herself behind the saddle. She towered over him.

"Is the ranch far?" she asked.

"Just a few minutes ride," Wim said, but as he nudged the horse into a walk, it whinnied plaintively as if to say it would feel like hours. The rolling hills passed them in gentle green curves, and a breeze gave some relief from the heat. The house they reached was a sprawling, single story building of wood and stone. It was surrounded by miles of fencing and several dogs frisked and barked around the horses' hooves as they rode through the main gate and dismounted by the front steps that led to a raparound porch.

"Vart!" One of the ranchers called as they walked up the steps and into the shade of the eaves.

A short, slender man wearing a pair of thin eye glasses entered the main room of the house and gave the tall woman standing over his men a startled look.

"You find where it fell?"

"Found the crater. George is at the bottom of it. What's left of him."

Vart rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, we're taking them in tomorrow anyway. Saves him wandering during the run."

"Lost money though."

"Wolf was gonna get him one day anyway, way he ranged. Ma'am, what can I do for you?"

"We found her out near the crater," Wim said. "Just walking."

"Lady can probably speak for herself," Vart said. Wim shut his mouth with a click. "Ma'am?"

"How close is the nearest town?" she asked.

"Three days if you're riding. You planning to walk? Long and hot, and you don't seem to have any supplies."

"Wolves got my horse several miles from here," she lied, "I was thrown clear, and they chased her off. All my gear was tied to the saddle."

"Damn," Vart said, "you're lucky to be alive."

The woman nodded.

"Well," Vart said, "we're driving the herd into town tomorrow. Guess we can see clear to giving you a ride."

"I appreciate that. I can pay a little."

Vart waved his hand away. "Won't hear of it. You'll eat with us and bunk with the men tonight. Ordinarily I'd have you stay in the house, men being the rowdy sort and all, but somehow I don't think you'll have a problem."

The woman looked around at the ranchers who'd found her. "No. And thank you."

Dinner was a chorus of wet chewing until the men had finished eating and then the gentle rumble of sated conversation. The woman was silent throughout, as if she were the only one in the room. Later, she drifted off to sleep on her own bunk surrounded by ranch hands, largely ignored save for the occasional nervous glance. She tried to ignore the tugging feeling in her stomach. She'd follow it when she could.

In the morning as they prepared to leave, she assumed she'd have to ride double again but Vart told her he needed every spare hand to keep the cattle together. Instead he rode with her on the bench of a wagon. After she'd sat down, he handed across a shotgun.

"Hand it to me quick if we run into rustlers."

She broke open the barrel to check the load and closed it again, and laid it across her lap.

"If you drive, I'll shoot," she said.

"Should have guessed. Soldier?

"Once."

"Not much of a talker, are you?"

"When I have to."

"We're gonna get along just fine."

They rode in silence over the rolling terrain until they reached a dirt road. It grew busier once the town appeared on the horizon, but the herd was given primacy in the traffic, other people cleared to the sides to let it pass. The ranchers knew their business and not one steer strayed from formation as they drove them into an enclosure just outside the cluster of low buildings that made up the town. She stepped down with Vart when he stopped the carriage.

"We'll go into town in a bit, but for now I have to see to my herd."

"I understand."

"It's time for slaughter. We'll finish that up in a few days. Don't know your plans, but maybe you can grab a ride with one of the teamsters that'll take the meat and the skins on from here."

She nodded.

Vart nodded and walked into the main building of the holding area. His ranchers milled around filling their pipes to smoke and talking in low voices about not much of anything. Vart came out of the house a moment later and walked up to her.

"So, I think I might have gotten you a lift with the teamsters," he said.

"My thanks."

"But their slaughter crew is down a couple of men. I'm gonna volunteer a couple of mine to help. They hate the work, bless 'em. It's a dirty job. They tell me it'll be a week before the teamsters set out."

"A week is a long time," she said.

"Sorry, but there's no avoiding it, looks like. Unless you want to walk. Take you twice as long if you do."

She frowned and stared at the road.

"Unless..."

"Unless what?" she asked.

"Don't suppose you know how to swing a maul?"

He led the woman into the enclosure. On the far side was another gate. She could smell the blood when they were more than a dozen feet away. Past the gate their boots sank into a muddy slurry of blood and dirt. There was a steer chained up, its eyes rolling nervously at the humans. To one side was a large hammer with a steel head. She walked over to the massive tool and lifted it easily. The steer watched her approach with fear from one large, rolling eye. Without breaking stride, she swung the hammer over hand and brained the animal. After it dropped a ranch hand ran over and checked it.

"It's dead," he said with awe, "killed it in one blow."

Vart walked over to her. "Usually, that's just the stun before we bleed them out."

She shrugged. "That bad?"

"Not remotely," Vart said, "if you can do that consistently they're going to be very happy."

"Not a problem."

Vart nodded and went to speak with the manager.

She worked in the slaughteryard that day and the next one, standing alongside the other workers and braining lowing steer from dawn to dusk. The smell of blood drove the animals into nervous frenzy. She retired exhausted at the end of the first day. At the end of the second, the abbatoir manager came out and shook her hand. It vanished inside hers.

"Be happy to get you a ride into the next town," he said, "you can get on with your journey from there."

"How far to the coast?" she asked.

The manager squinted as he thought. "About two hundred miles from the next town to the river. You can get a ride on a barge from there to the coast."

"Thanks."

"I should be thanking you. This job normally takes another full day," he handed her a clinking pouch. "Normally, teamsters sell those passenger spots on the wagon, but seeing as you saved us a day, you ride for free."

"Thank you."

"We'll spend the night here. Get started at dawn."

She nodded and walked into town. At the general store she bought one of the mauls she'd been swinging for the last two days and asked the proprietor if there was a blacksmith in town.

"We've got one. Mostly he works with tack. What do you need fixed?"

She hefted the maul she'd just purchased.

"But that's brand new!"

"Just need a modification or two. Which way to the smith?"

The ferrier nodded as she spoke, only a little startled at what she was asking for.

"Not gonna work for cattle," he muttered, "too messy."

"It's not for cows."

"I see."

When she walked out to the wagon the next day, the maul she'd bought had there spikes jutting from one end of the hammer's head. The haft had been covered in leather and the end capped with a nasty spike. The wagon driver gave the brutal weapon only a single glance as she climbed up onto the seat.

"Hope you're not looking to find work around here with that thing."

"No. It's not for cows."

The man nodded and snapped the reins. The woman leaned back and sighed, her hands gently resting on the haft of the maul. Within a few moments the rocking of the wagon had put her to sleep.

Her name was Dagger.

*

Each of the five followed the calling in their breasts not unlike homing pigeons.

At a crossroads of four shipping routes near the coast of a continent none of them bothered to remember the name of, the five came together in the center of the tavern and stood for several moments, basking in their proximity.

"It's good to see you," Dagger said, and held up a paper she'd torn from a clumsily printed newspaper in a nearby town. It was an advertisement.

"I found us a job," she said.

They were the Armory.