“Oh yeah?” Xerxes said. "Well, I love ideas."

“Look down there.” Bel pointed. “It’s a nice little clearing. No rocks or other junk. How about we do some sparring?”

He looked at the clearing, then back at her. “It’s too wet for wrestling,” he said. “And I didn’t bring any training weapons.”

“I did,” she said, holding up the bundle. “I dropped a few minas on some cheap stuff at the shop. Might as well try them out, don’t you think?”

He smiled. “Sure.”

They climbed down the hill, crossed some of the rough terrain, then ended up in the clearing Bel had pointed out earlier. She unwrapped the bundle to reveal four small wooden fighting axes and two wooden staves.

“Axes first?” she said.

“Sure. I haven’t done much training with axes before.”

“Me either. But back in Od, we have a thing called ax dancing, and my uncle taught me a thing or two about it.”

Xerxes folded his cloak, put his hat on top, and put it in a dry spot. Bel did the same, wrapping her cloak around her pack. Then Bel tossed two of the axes to Xerxes.

“Okay,” she said. “In actual combat, you’ll probably never fight with an ax in each hand. Ax dancing is more for performance purposes than anything else. But my uncle said that a lot of the basic moves have combat applications. Let’s start with some of the basic stances.”

After a few minutes, they started testing some moves out on each other.

Xerxes’ mood improved rapidly as his blood started pumping. The weather remained blustery but clear, without so much as a sprinkle of rain.

As had occurred numerous times during the journey north, Xerxes almost couldn’t believe all of this was real. He, who had been born and raised in the slums of the capital city, having never traveled farther than a few leagues from its walls, was now just outside of the Yellow Forest in the far north, sparring with a barbarian girl from Od. It wasn’t a surprise that he, Gandash, and Bel, all of them having recently become Seers, would be assigned to a simple mission like this, officially led by an experienced officer like Captain Ishki. But it didn’t make it any less exciting.

Two hours later, they took a break.

“Should have brought some water,” Xerxes said.

Bel unfolded her cloak and pulled out her pack, within which was a hand-sized canteen. She popped the cork, took a drink, then said, “Here,” and handed it to him.

He drank. “Thanks.”

A flash of motion caught his attention from the top of the hill. Xerxes turned, hoping it would be Gandash. Having calmed down after the workout, he was ready to apologize for his previous outburst.

Instead, the person atop the hill was Gem. Xerxes waved, as did Bel.

Gem returned the wave, then trotted down the hill and toward them.

“Thought you two might be doing something else out ‘ere,” he said, grinning.

“Shut the hell up, Gem,” Xerxes said. Bel is Gandash’s girl, he wanted to add, but that would have been inappropriate.

Bel didn’t say anything, but Xerxes was fairly certain he saw a flush creeping up her neck. Xerxes liked Bel a lot, but didn’t think of her as anything but a friend. And he still held the remote hope that, one day, Gandash would work up the gumption to tell her that he liked her. Xerxes got the feeling Bel knew, and was waiting for his buddy to make the first move. But who knew for sure? Girls were impossible to read most of the time.

Gem looked at the wooden weapons they’d been practicing with. “Axes, eh? Nice.”

Xerxes took another sip of water and then handed the canteen back to Bel. “I take it you didn’t tromp all the way out here to say hi and crack some bad jokes.”

“Smart fellow. Captain Ishki wants everyone back for lunch. Plans to go over some of the details of what’s to come in the next few days.”

Bel wrapped up her weapons, and she and Xerxes put their cloaks back on.

“Did you see Gandash?” Xerxes asked as we started climbing up the hill.

“Yeah, he came back about an hour ago,” Gem answered.

“Oh.”

Cresting the hill, they started down the other side into the town, but before they reached the first of the buildings, someone stepped out of the very same alley Xerxes had come through earlier.

He was a skinny fellow wearing a combination of leather and sturdy fabric that marked him as a woodsman. And he was carrying a short spear.

Even as he stepped into the open, a second man in similar clothing joined him, a knife in his hand.

Gem stopped walking, and Bel and Xerxes followed suit.

“Can I help you?” Gem asked, taking a step forward so that he formed the point of a loose triangle formation with Bel and Xerxes.

The first man to have stepped out spat on the ground.

Another man stepped out of another alley, several paces to the left. And a fourth man appeared to the right. Both had hunting knives in their hands.

Xerxes was suddenly regretting the fact that he’d left his sword back at the tavern. Of course, he had his component pouch, which contained four handfuls of crabnickel powder. As an Asgagu Seer, he could use that powder to cast one spell, Singular Lethality, which would turn his hand into a deadly weapon. But spellcasting wasn’t something a mage did casually. Every spell depleted a mage’s supply of melam by a specific amount. And stockpiling melam was the key to growing as a mage. At lower levels, such as that of Seer, recovering melam after spellcasting wasn’t particularly time-consuming. But the stronger a mage got, the more precious they treated melam, and that carried over into the education given to young mages. Because of that, generally speaking, mages didn’t cast spells except when absolutely necessary.

In any case, a spell wasn’t an option except as a last resort, and Xerxes had no weapon. Given that he had just been training with Bel for a few hours, he knew that she didn’t have a weapon either, other than the wooden ones.

As for Gem, he had a dagger at his belt.

Normally speaking, ordinary people didn’t need to wear weapons on the street in the Kingdom of Isin. What was more, the convoy had been dispatched with the authority of the Mage Parliament. It seemed ludicrous that anyone would try to cause problems for them.

Then again, they were on the fringes of the kingdom, and been sent here to investigate allegations of activities that were outlawed by the Pontifarch. Could it be possible that these people were working for the man they’d been sent to investigate, Master Ligish of Ligish Castle?

“What’s this about?” Gem said, putting his hand on the hilt of his dagger.

A fifth man stepped out, and in that moment, Xerxes realized what was happening.

It was Biru, the burly man from the tavern the night before. His face was swollen, and bruising had set in. But that only seemed to make him more intimidating.

He had his long knife sheathed at his belt again, but in his hands he held a weapon much more formidable than a knife. A bronze sword.