Bors came to, looking at the sky. His wrists and ankles throbbed and he was tied to a metal pole. He was being carried like a prized hunting trophy. Somewhere ahead of him, Tosh mumbled. Bors looked around to see an ancient enemy, long since thought to have died out.

Green-skinned and bipedal, they snarled and grinned with the malign cunning of their race. Hazak--Saurials. Lizard-like creatures of Mars, the four-armed abominations that had died out well before Bors was born. Hismind was a little fuzzy from the blow to the back of his head, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure how he had gotten here. Then he remembered Tessa’s scream.

“The Hazak!” Bors called out. “Do not fear, Tosh. They are taking us to be eaten.”

“How can I not worry with that kind of information?” Tosh cried.

Bors let out a small laugh. “I will save us.” Already, he worked at the thong that held him. A Hazak stabbed at his arm to make him stop. It growled at him in a perverted form of the True Martian tongue. Still, Bors knew that he had to bide his time.

“How?”

“Working on—”

The same Hazak growled, “No talking,” as it stabbed Bors in the side again, laughing. Bors used the pain to fuel the simmering rage the Soul of the Mother had ignited in him during the battle with the soul eater.

With a roar, he yanked hard on the thong. The pain of the thing biting into his wrists helped to add to his rage and pain, and the blood helped him to slip loose of the bond. The Hazak tried to jab at Bors, but the barbarian grabbed the haft of the spear and pulled it hard. The saurial was not ready for it, and the spear flew from his hand. Bors used the metal tip to cut his legs free first, then dragged down the pole he was attached to, throwing the raid party into disarray. His vision turned red as he attacked the murderous Hazak.

In the midst of the rage, he found the Soul of the Mother, and the singing of rage and blood pounded in his ears. When he came to, he found himself alone with Tosh, both covered in the dark blood of the saurials. Tosh looked a little shocked by what had happened, and Bors’s stomach churned, oddly queasy. “Tosh, are you—”

“No. I’m not. Nothing about this has gone right from the start. I should be in the Crossroads, drinking and trying to make a name for myself. Instead, I’m sometime in the past, I’m filthy, and we’re on an insane quest for a myth!”

Bors let Tosh shout and rant a bit more. When he finally stopped, Bors slapped him on the shoulder. “Done?”

“Going to say I’m being hysterical and a woman?”

“No,” Bors said with a shake of his head. “You’re a soft person who has never had to deal with these things, but this is not some romance. You’ll have to get your hands dirty. We should try and find Tessa.”

“Was she captured?”

“I doubt someone like her could easily get captured.”

Bors instructed Tosh to keep an eye out while he scavenged for anything from the Hazak they could use to get back to Tessa. As he did, he found a small bag that the leader of the raiding party had been carrying. Bors dug through it and found something strange, a small ivory scroll case.

Pulling it open, he found a small, rolled-up piece of parchment. The message was short and to the point. And it made Bors’s blood run cold.

“Kill the robed one pretending to be a male and her bodyguard. You’ll be rewarded.” It was signed Ibn du’Vaul.

The name of Tosh’s House? His father doesn’t make sense? Who else would still call Tosh “her?” It wasn’t Bors’s place to call Tosh anything but a man. He knew others who thought themselves born the wrong gender. He can’t know. Bors ripped the note to shreds and dropped them into the cooling pools of blood. The pieces of parchment soaked up the crimson fluid and were indecipherable.

If I tell him assassins are after him, he’ll believe me. No need to tell him who sent them . . . for now.

* * *

The pair crested a rise an hour later. The grass became a bit lusher, more like what Bors remembered. He shaded his eyes and dropped to the ground, pulling Tosh down as a bolt from a raygun shot through where Tosh’s head was a moment before.

“Who—”

“Saurials,” Bors said as he pushed Tosh behind him, then creeped backwards below the top of the rise. He saw the two bestial men moving toward the rise and sighed. “It seems that they wish for a frontal assault.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Protect you,” Bors said. He gripped the hilt of the Soul of the Mother and the desire to kill welled up inside him more than before. Seeing that Tosh was safe, Bors waited half a heartbeat more and then stood. The two saurials were closer than he anticipated. He let a primal scream tear into the Martian air and ran full tilt at the two adversaries. The scream stunned the two for a moment, enough for Bors to reach a distance where the rayguns would be harder to wield.

Bors was struck in the arm by one red ray, the other going wide. In a flash, he sliced his long blade in a wide arcing slash, cutting down both saurials in one cleave. The smaller one lost his head in the savage cut. Bors looked down at the remains of the two, his right arm throbbing in pain from the burn of the ray. He looked over his shoulder at his charge and grumbled, “It’s safe.”

“I figured it was safe after the blood splatter,” Tosh said, wiping at a small spot of blood on his cheek.

Bors shook his head. Why the Makers decided to cast my lot in with this one . . .

“You chose this, bearer,” the voice in his head said.

I know.

“Then press forward. And I must feed.”

“I don’t like this.” He tried to keep Tosh distracted as he “dropped” his sword point into the felled saurial. He was disgusted that the Soul of the Mother needed to drink blood, but she was more than a sword, and he was her bearer, not her elder.

“What isn’t to like? We have sand and grass. We have . . . more sand and grass. It’s a paradise,” Tosh said with a sneer.

Bors let out a sigh. “This job is too dangerous for us both.”

“And?” Tosh asked, giving Bors a sour look.

Bors pointedly looked Tosh up and down. “You will not survive.”

“That’s why you’re around. You’re here to help keep me alive.” Tosh placed his hands on his hips. “That was why the Grifter put us together for his little treasure hunt.”

Bors shook his head. Time to end this farce. “Listen girl, you—”

“I’m a man,” Tosh said, trying to deepen his voice. “You, yourself—”

“I don’t care, but you weren’t born a man,” Bors said.

Tosh was silent. Finally, in a voice close to cracking, he asked, “How did you know?”

“Your scent,” Bors said, touching the side of his nose. “There was something different about you. And whatever happened with the soul eater, when we faced it, I saw what you were.”

“So, you think I’m too weak? That because I was born female—”

Bors shook his head. “By Von, no. No. It’s too dangerous since these damn Hazak sent assassins after us, and I can’t watch my back and yours for the normal dangers and assassins.”

“What do you know about assassins?”

“It’s what I would do.” Bors said nothing of the letter he’d found. Better to leave that until we are safe . . . safer.

The two were quiet for a moment. Tosh leaned against the wall. “I prefer to be referred to as a man.”

Bors nodded. He had known others of his tribe that preferred a different gender. It wasn’t like the “civilized”world. There were some hang-ups he could never understand that more “civilized” ones had. “One of my best friends was born male and preferred to be treated like a woman, Dala.”

Tosh’s eyes narrowed. “Did she take anything?”

“There are herbs and draughts. It wouldn’t be impossible for the shamans to help one speed these changes along. They ‘know of the old ways,’ say the shamans.”

“Did the tribe care?” Tosh asked, a little sheepishly, his eyes sliding away from Bors.

“The tribe cared about the tribe. As long as Dala pulled her weight doing what she was told to do, she was part of the tribe.”

Tosh gave a small laugh. “Sounds like the tribe is a bit better than some of the Known Worlds.”

Bors shrugged. “Doubtful. There are places for all people, Tosh. You think you’re a man, then you will be treated like one.” Bors took the sword that he hadn’t cleaned yet and wiped some of the cooling, congealing green blood from it with his thumb. “Come closer.”

Tosh sneered. “Why? You’re going to make me lick it or something?”

“Do it,” Bors said, a bit more sternly. Tosh moved forward. Bors touched Tosh’s high forehead and dragged his fingers over to the right, then back to the center, then to the left, then down the bridge of Tosh’s nose to make a ‘T’. “You are now honorary tribe of the Hidden Hills. Welcome.”

“What was that for?” Tosh asked, his hand not quite touching the blood on his forehead, his voice tight. Bors assumed he was disgusted by what had happened.

“You are now tribe. Now, I will protect you as tribe,” Bors said with a smile.

“You weren’t before?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Bors gave a chuckle. “Being tribe and protecting a person from being stupid are different things. Normally, I get paid one way or the other if you die. If you die as tribe because of something I did or didn’t do? That is indefensible.”Bors touched Tosh’s shoulder. “Understand, brother?” He asked with a reassuring squeeze of Tosh’s shoulder.

Tosh raised an eyebrow. “I’m your brother now?” He sounded surprised.

“All members of tribe are brother or sister. Or elder.” Bors said with a big grin.

“Sounds uncomplicated,” Tosh said with a small smile, looking away.

“It is,” Bors said. After cleaning the blood off, he sheathed the Soul of the Mother. “Are you ready to go find Tessa?”

Tosh gripped the raygun tighter. “Yes.”