The Slinger came out of the desert in the middle of a dream. The dream had ended and all he knew was that he was following the traitor’s trail. His horse had given up its life trying to get him through the desert and he was too far gone with exhaustion to notice when the hot, shifting sand had ended and the hardened wasteland, beyond, began.

By rights he shouldn’t have survived. He’d entered the desert without water. He had ignored the advice of those who’d helped him. It was a failing that had cost him a horse. He had formed a strange sort of attachment to the animal and he had been kind to it, putting it out of its misery when the moment came. This much he remembered.

Then the dream had began.

His memory focussed on the fragments he needed to complete the job at hand: He remembered that he had been kinder to the horse than he had been to the others. Those who had befriended the blond man, the traitor he was chasing. Those misguided enough to have aided him in his escape.

The Slinger’s clothes, originally black, were now covered in dust. The dust had been caked into mud in places by the sweat of his body to form an encrusted armour of accumulated dirt on the fine silk fabric. Where it rubbed against the skin, the encrusted dirt and caked dust and stiffened fabric had rubbed the skin raw to form open sores.

The flesh beneath glistened red, and a clear yellowish fluid, seeped out of it.

If he felt any discomfort, the Slinger paid no attention to it. His mind was still deep in gaffla, the deep trance-sleep of his ancestors, whose shadows had guided him in his hour of need in the desert, when the demands of his body had at last caught up with him and death was but a step away.

There was a price to be paid for gaffla, he knew, but he didn’t know what form it would take. The payment would not take part until he descended through the spirals, escaped the dream he could not remember and sought to inhabit the world his physical body walked in.

There was the black, leather-bound, hilt of a sword protruding over his left shoulder.

It was a long sword, in a black scabbard, slightly curved and now caked with dirt also.

The steel of the sword had been folded back one thousand times and the blade had been laboriously polished until the spirit of death it conveyed had come upon its surface and the fearful shades of steel that Slingers lived and died by shone on its edge.

There was another sword, slightly shorter, strapped to his waist. These two formed the only visible parts of his arsenal. The only statement he ever needed to make. He carried the two swords. He was a Slinger. Men gave way before him.

The spirals his spirit inhabited shortened and he sensed the physical pain begin. The agony of cells that had been left too long without water. The cries of open sores that had been rubbed raw and lost lymph fluid for too long. The ache of tired muscles that had been pushed beyond their normal limits for far too long.

Mortality.

He took a deep breath and brought the edge of his hood from around his throat to cover his mouth. He adjusted the fit round his head, leaving only his eyes exposed. The only part of his body available to the moisture-draining air surrounding him.

How had he managed to survive?

He braced himself against the rising tide of pain, squinted against the dying rays of the sun and took stock of where his steps had taken him.
It was a town. One of those that habitually sprung up at the edge of the desert to house the descendants of the round eyed strangers who mysteriously appeared from time to time and had no other place left to go.

“Kiyah!” He said to himself. His voice sounded odd to his ears. After the lengthy silence of the desert crossing it’d grown raspy and hard-edged. The vocal chords unused to speaking.

He stopped and let his eyes do the walking for him. There was a short main street, straight as an arrow, and twenty or thirty wooden buildings, closely clustered together.

When faced with the open wilderness of the wasted plain and the encroaching threat of the sand, these people, both Ronin and round-eyes, had huddled together, clustered unnecessarily close as if such proximity could drive the twin ghosts of uncertainty and danger away.

Their box-like dwellings formed two disorderly rows lining the main street, barely a spear’s throw apart. Narrow claustrophobic walkways ran behind and in between them.

There was dry, throat-lining dust everywhere and not a single cobble in sight. The street was lined with rubbish, discarded pieces of used-up twine and old saddle-bags beyond any repair, and there was the feint stench of human excrement emanating from the walkways between the ramshackle houses.

He saw the faded Inn sign above the building in the centre of the town and made straight for it. At each step he was aware of eyes looking at him from behind drawn, half-broken shutters, and he gritted his teeth against the waves of pain that threatened to overcome him and kept his step steady. He was descending the spirals fast now and the pain was almost unbearable.

His memory was almost totally lost, locked within the dream he could not remember. But he had enough presence left to know that he must survive.

His first need was water.

The Inn, when he entered it, was dark.

There were several round tables inside, each with four chairs. The town’s menfolk were sitting around them, drinking sake or lukewarm corn-beer and playing a game of Go. Naked torches at each corner threw a dancing, yellow light that made the shadows beneath the men’s eyes appear dark, like dried up blood and the dangerous hunger on their faces, more naked.

The Slinger took all this in at a glance, saw the way the men appraised him, and turned to the lone woman behind the bar.

She was Ronin. One of the outcasts. There were long, earrings with markings worn on each ear. The markings declared her status: Courtesan.
“I want some water,” the Slinger said and there was an expectant heavy silence after his words. Every eye in the Inn was upon him, silently taking in the state of his clothes and the two swords he carried.

The woman brought out a tall, long-stemmed glass and a jug of water. She put both on the bar-top, within easy reach and waited patiently.

Moving slowly, the Slinger took off his hood, shook free his long dark hair. The woman’s eyes widened when she saw his features clearly but he chose to ignore it. His hand reached into one of his pockets and there was the jingle of coins, and he put one on the bar-top. It was silver, stamped with the emperor’s dragon, surrounded by the thirteen Slinger stars. One for each clan.

“I have no change for it,” the woman said and her eyes alternated speculatively from the coin on the bar-top to the Slinger’s face.

The Slinger could see the length of faded scars disappear down the side of the woman’s low-cut dress, twist away over the shoulder.

“Keep it,” he said and poured the water into his glass. He had to restrain himself not to gulp it all down. Even his system would not take kindly to the shock.

There was the scraping of a chair behind him as he slowly brought the glass to his lips and he felt more than saw the studied threat of a man getting up.

The Slinger didn’t turn around. He finished the motion, touched the glass to his lips and said: “Don’t.”

The standing man suddenly hesitated.

The man was tall, a full head taller than the Slinger, and heavyset with eyes whose epicanthic folds spoke of daily battles with the will of the desert. His hand hovered at his waist where the bony handle of a broad-bladed hunting knife protruded.

For a few long seconds nothing happened then, the standing man’s companion, sitting at his table almost imperceptibly shook his head and there was an easing of the tension in the air.

The tall man sat down and looked at the top of the table in front of him. His eyes fixed on the deeply scarred surface. His features knotted.
The Slinger emptied his glass, filled it again and drunk. He repeated this until the jug was empty of water, and then looked around.

He had passed the first test.

The pain, the physical ache of thirst was slowly receding, other needs started surfacing now and he breathed a little more easily. He was fully back in the world his body inhabited and he was tired.

And confused.

He surveyed the scene, taking in the tall man with his head bowed to the table, his weasely-looking companion. The naked hunger he’d seen in the faces of the men the instant he’d entered the Inn was now restrained, but it was still there, simmering, waiting. Waiting for what?

The Slinger turned his black eyes back to the woman, “Is there a room I can have?”

“Not in this town,” she answered looking at him and the huskiness was still there, in her voice. “Perhaps you can try the stable.”

The Slinger allowed a tight smile to play on his face and the woman’s eyes, seeing it, glinted with greed. “Surely there must be a place.”

“You could try my place stranger,” A man behind and to his far right said. “It’s small and a little uncomfortable but-”

“You butt out of this McQuaid! You have a wife and three kids and there’s hardly enough room for you now,” the woman’s eyes flared as she spoke.

The man called McQuaid looked a little uncertain. He was round-eyed with short, oily hair, going prematurely grey and he was unshaven. His mind weighed the advantage of some silver against the longer-term benefits he could lose. He looked away. There were hidden smiles on the faces of some of the other men in the Inn and McQuaid shuffled his feet and glowered into the glass in front of him.

“There could be a place,” the woman said to the Slinger.

“Where?”
“There’s a price involved,” she looked coyly at him.

“Isn’t there always?” the Slinger finished the last of the water in his glass. He now felt hungry and tired. The offer was not without its attraction.

At the back of his mind, through the mists of confusion, he thought of the traitor. He had made it this far, but the man was still ahead of him. It could be that a trap had been laid here for him.

The blond man’s machinations had slowed him down before when he’d got close to him, but he preferred not to think about that now. He had controlled his body too long, made sacrifices that demanded respite and he was impossibly tired and with scant control left. “Where’s this room?” he asked.

There was total silence and the woman smiled, her eyes glittered seductively in the Inn’s dancing torch lights. “Come back in two hours,” she said “closing time.” The Slinger nodded and walked out, his heels hardly made a sound on the Inn’s hard-packed earthen floor.

Behind him, as he left, the Inn exploded into a babble of raised voices.

The Slinger’s steps took him to the one place in town he knew the blond man would have to visit: The stables. The blond man had a powerful steed and he had taken good care of it throughout the desert crossing, walking rather than riding it.

The Slinger knew that the distance between them was closing and even with the desert behind him, the traitor would not be able to pick up full speed for some time yet.

Maybe, just maybe, there was yet hope.

The stable-master was fat and unshaven. He was the first person in the town the Slinger saw wearing a kimono. It was soiled at the front, as if he’d spent weeks vomiting on it, and as dirt-encrusted as the Slinger’s clothes. Around the stable-master’s thick neck hang a bluestone amulet. The bottom of his kimono was heavy with clumps of dried horse-dung.

The Slinger took all this in at a glance. A wizened old woman dressed in the worn, faded, clothes of a Lady of the Reading sat on a half-barrel outside the stable. Her eyes, milky with cataracts, turned to the direction of the Slinger’s steps.

“A Reading sir, a Reading young sir. Would you like a Reading?”

There was a stench emanating from the entire place.

“Shut up you old crone!” the stable-master said and he swung his foot back aiming a kick at her. Halfway through the swing his shoulder was gripped by the Slinger’s gloved hand, he was pulled off balance and turned around to face the jet-black eyes glistening with the promise of blood.

“Let her be,” the Slinger said and the stable-master’s insolent composure instantly crumpled.

“I’m sorry your Highness! I’m sorry! I didn’t know. I only wanted to please your Highness. Save you the trouble-” he curtsied quickly, head bent towards the filth-covered ground in submission.

“You have displeased me,” the Slinger said and the stable master blanched.

“Your Highness, I-”

“I need a horse. A good one. See that I get it.”

With that the Slinger pushed the fat man away. He stumbled on a stone, caught his balance in time to prevent his body from sprawling in the filth and turned and bowed once more quickly to the Slinger. “Your Highness, thank you. Thank you.” he said, bowing each time and he retreated towards the dark doorway of the stinking stables. “A horse your Highness. Of course, a horse. Thank you, thank you.”

The old woman cackled at the stable-master’s discomfiture. The Slinger looked after where the stable- master had gone with an expressionless look on his face. He had wanted to avoid this happening at all costs.

He had not yet fully recovered from his descent from the spirals and his control on his temper was still lax. The stable-master’s behaviour had angered him beyond his current capacity for restraint. It also had verified his fears. There was no law here. Had not been for some time.

The blond man must have found fertile ground. The Slinger suddenly knew he would have to be on his guard.

“A Reading young sir?”

He turned to the old woman. She had stopped cackling and her sightless eyes were turned his way.

“A Reading madam,” he agreed gravely and there was silence. An unexpected tear appeared at the corner of one ruined eye and slowly trickled down the withered old cheek. She bit her bottom lip to stop it trembling.

“Forgive me young master. It’s been a long- . A Reading then.” Her hands disappeared under her robe and she brought out a copy of The Book. It was bound in leather, scuffed and weathered from much use and the gold leaf that had marked the yin and yang characters on the cover had faded long ago.

She put The Book on her lap, clutched the yarrow stalks in one hand as if to make sure they were all there and then and she began twirling them from one hand to the other. “State your question,” she said and there was a ceremonial officiousness in her voice.

“I have stated it,” the Slinger said.

The wrinkled hands continued their game, the yarrow stalks twirled. Slowly, the hexagram began falling out. It was number eighteen.

The Slinger knew it well. within the haze of his slow mind the words sprang up like flames of fire: Disruption!

The Slinger knelt in the dust in front of it. He could almost hear voices past calling out the Reading: Disruption leads to great success. It is worthwhile crossing great rivers. Three days before, three days after.

He linked the sacred words of the Reading with the associated image he had been taught during the years he’d spent training in the Butokuden, the Great Hall: There is wind under a mountain, disrupted. Cultured people inspire others to develop virtue.

He thought it made some sense. He’d just crossed the desert: A river of sand. It had taken more than three days but time had no meaning in the Oracle’s eyes. He was going to catch the blond man.

“Thank you madam,” he bowed to the old woman and put four silver coins in the palm of her hand and closed the wrinkled fingers round them.

“You’re not of the People,” she said suddenly and he looked up surprised.

“No,”

“You seek somebody.”

“A traitor.”

“Then you know the Oracle. You have been warned. Do not dally here.”

“Has the man I seek been here?”

“I did not see him come, but men like him leave a lingering trail behind. The Oracle sensed it, it spoke to me, told me to come here.”

“Do you know where he’s gone?”

“The Oracle says he’s travelling North, to the mountains.”

The Slinger stood up. His gloved hand went into a pocket and came out with a silver star. It was highly polished, the engraved dragon emblem shone on it. He carefully pinned it to his chest, just over the heart.

There was no point in hiding his identity any more. He had been unmasked. The star of the Slingers shining on his chest spelled out its message clear for all to see: Law reaches everywhere.

“I am in your debt,” he said to the old woman gravely and she waved a dried-up bony hand at him.

She put The Book away. “Be on your guard,” she whispered at his retreating footsteps.

***

The Ronin, woman from the bar moved quietly. She showed him into a dark, musty room. There was the clutter of furniture everywhere. A large bookcase covered in dust, the books obviously unread, a small table, next to a bigger one, chairs.

One side of the room was dominated by a large double bed. Her main place of business.

The woman moved to the bed and started undressing. In the twilight the scars threading their way over her left shoulder and onto her back were invisible.

“No,” the Slinger said stopping her nimble fingers in mid-motion, “I am hungry. First I must eat.”

The woman let out a sigh of impatience but stopped shedding her clothes. Half-undressed, her small breasts bouncing lightly in time with her step, she vanished into a small alcove off the big room. The Slinger heard the clutter of metal pots and presently the smell of red beans and corn cooking reached his nostrils.

He felt his mouth salivating. He was hungry. It made thinking very difficult, this weakness of the body. He had to learn to control it again. His adversary, protected by the spells of attrition he wove, suffered of no such defects and if he was to defeat him he had to rise to similar heights of imperviousness.

As he stood, waiting for his food, looking at the dusty, shabby furniture and pondering what it represented, night fell outside. The woman brought a small candle, on a candle-holder of enriched tin, exquisitely curved.

“No more light,” she said and the Slinger nodded. He looked at the scars on her back.

The deep marks of the scourge.

“What is your name?” he asked as she put a plate of hot food on the big table, a big tumbler of crystal-clear water next to it, a rust coloured earthen jug of sake next to that.

She motioned for him to sit down.

“Letitia,” she answered his question. She met his eyes with no effort to cover herself. Her breasts stood out all proud, their dark nippled tips erect in the chill of the gloom.

Her nakedness was like a challenge to him. The visible scars that announced her punishment for her crimes cried out now for some response.
The Slinger said nothing.

He returned his attention to the plate she’d put in front of him and began to eat in silence. He shovelled the food in efficient, quick bursts of motion as she watched.

He was methodical, chewing each mouthful as if he wanted to extract every last ounce of sustenance from it. Presently he finished what was in front of him and, ignoring the sake, reached for the jug of water. The clear liquid sparkled in the candle’s golden light.

He poured himself a glass and drunk deeply. He then filled it again.

“You were hungry,” Letitia said, watching him still.

The flame of the candle made the shadows jump across her naked upper body. The skin glistened, brown and taut. Her breasts and erect nipples invited further attention.

The Slinger stood up and let his eyed play over her again, more slowly this time.

The expression Letitia saw in them made her shiver. She brought her hands up across her chest the delicate fingers cupping and shielding each breast. Standing there, like this, she looked like an avatar of seduction.

There was an air of wounded vulnerability about her. The atmosphere of captive sexuality was further accentuated by the long, straight, black tresses that came over her shoulders and chest and barely hid the upper slopes of her exquisite breasts. The thin wisps of fabric that still kept her dress up, at her waist completed the picture.

The Slinger seemed to teeter on indecision, his eyes unable to move away from her available body and then, as all restraints he’d tried to put in place were suddenly swept away by fatigue and mad desire, he reached for her, swept her up into his arms and she (playing her role to perfection) let out a cry of surprise at his roughness, mixed with pain, and triumph.

It was a cry she was to repeat many times that night as he lifted her and threw her onto the big, double bed, her body crashed vigourously beneath his own.

His skilled hands already moving on the surface of her skin ready to inflict, in equal measure, pleasure and pain.

***

“Are you really a Star-Slinger?” Letitia looked at the big silver badge pinned to the Slinger’s black tunic. She was dressed in a sheer, silk gown split at the side, to reveal the ripe, smooth line of her thighs. The morning sun filtered through the broken shutters in dust-clogged rays of light and drew the Slinger’s attention to the motes of dust swirling in the musty air of the girl’s room.

Lying in bed, eyeing her, the Slinger faintly nodded his answer to her question. He seemed lost in concentration.

“Then you must have come after the blond man on the pale horse. The one who was here before you,”

The Slinger looked up, “Did you sleep with him too?”

“No. I would have liked to, but he had no money. Nothing to give me but advice,” she laughed. “He held court in the Inn. He gave everyone advice and he blessed the farmers laying down the new crop and the two pregnant women. And then he left. Didn’t even stay a day.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Two days before you came. Maybe three.” she looked to see what his reaction would be to her deliberate vagueness.

The Slinger remained impassive. Only three days, he thought. Three days. That’s all the lead he had. He thought of the words of the Oracle: Three days before, three days after. Three days after what? The desert crossing had slowed the blond man down and he must be getting desperate. Whatever magical powers he possessed, the crossing of distances seemed to weaken him. Every time the Slinger got nearer he felt his confidence in the sufficiency of his own abilities grow.

I can defeat him, the Slinger thought to himself. I can defeat him, I can defeat him, I can defeat him. It was his own personal mantra. The thought had sustained him in the difficult times when Time had changed for him, just before the desert crossing and the dream had claimed him. The shadows of his ancestors had assisted him even then, had shown him the way out of the murkiness he’d found himself caught up in. But he had lost so much much. There was so much to reclaim.

He stood up and reached for his clothes.

“You must pay,” Letitia said and the Slinger smiled. From a pocket of his tunic he took out two silver coins and placed them on the small side table by the bed, balanced one on top of the other.

“That’s not enough.”

“It is, for now.”

The Slinger dressed quickly, all visible traces of fatigue gone from his movements, and went outside.

The townsfolk avoided him. There was a loaded silence every time his eyes met theirs and they quickly looked away and hurried past him.
He could sympathise with the resentment, even understand it. Here he was, a Star-Slinger, and he wasn’t even of the People. Whatever else his star and swords announced to the world, his round eyes told a different story.

Be it as it may, he had no time to make converts now. The night’s abundant lovemaking and the deep sleep he’d drifted in had stripped the inertia induced by the desert crossing from his body. He felt ready to move again.

He asked a young man chopping cord wood at the back of one of the ramshackle houses where he could find the Lady of the Reading and the young man looked shifty and scratched his head and said he didn’t know.

The Slinger pretended to believe him.

He left the dusty streets behind and skirted the town and the pathetic fields of crop. The stunted corn and beanstalks lay wilting under the harsh sun, this close to the desert, no produce had much chance of healthy fruition unless a lot of water was provided for it and even then, the soil was too thin and too badly eroded to sustain any kind of farming for long.

With his customary patience the Slinger spent long hours examining the iron-hard earth, to the North of the town: the road the blond man had taken.

He picked up the faint traces of the now familiar horseshoe imprints quickly and he followed them for an hour, until they faded. The blond man was using his spells again, like he had done in the desert. The Slinger knew that before long the blond man would tire and the traces would appear again. It puzzled him that the blond man went to such lengths to cover his tracks.

Ever since he had followed him, the blond man’s route had been unwavering. The traces pointed due North before they vanished.
The Slinger returned to the town.

He thought that the town must have a name and he looked carefully for it but could not find it posted anywhere. He spent the rest of the day in Letitia’s room, above the Inn, listening to the muffled sound of voices that floated up to him and the occasional burst of coarse laughter.

Once he thought that he heard female screams but he ignored them and the sound stopped and did not repeat itself.

Whatever damage the desert had done to him was fading fast. He decided to buy a horse as soon as possible and leave the town. He’d been here for two days already and he could feel his sense of unease grow like an itch under his skin.

At night Letitia cooked a plate of the red beans that seemed to be the staple diet here and then, later, gave him her body to use again. This time she asked no money for it and when the morning light bled through the shutters again, the Slinger woke to find her clinging to him, her head on his chest, her long black hair wound round his neck, like a noose.

Letitia didn’t open the Inn that day and she took off the earrings marking her as available. “You are more than enough at the moment, they’ll have to manage without me,” she’d said as explanation and the Slinger had only looked at her in expressionless silence.

He wasn’t sure he understood all that was happening to him but he felt the urgency to leave intensify in his breast. The words of the Oracle troubled him and he thought perhaps he should consult the Lady of the Reading again.

At noon Letitia made the bed. She changed into a sheer peach coloured gown and waited for him to join her. From a pocket of his clothes, the Slinger produced a folded map, made of soft leather, and spread it open on the bed.

“You’re leaving,” Letitia said and her voice was flat and colourless. There was nothing the Slinger could say to her. He undressed slowly, his eyes scanning the map while he was doing so, looking at the patch representing the large tract of desert he’d just come across. There were tiny dots with names scrawled beside them, marking the edges of the desert: border towns.

“What’s the name of this town?” the Slinger asked.

“It doesn’t have one. It’s just the town,” Letitia shrugged her pretty shoulders and the Slinger snorted in unfeigned disgust. Ronin, he thought, savages, what could you expect?

He was out of his clothes now and the sight of his body, lean and smooth, with hard, clearly defined muscle moving just beneath the skin, aroused Letitia’s passion.

On hands and knees, the top of her gown falling open to give him a generous view of her pointed breasts, she moved across the bed, reaching for him. “Who needs names?” she purred. Her words were followed by a slight creak outside the door, wooden planks shifting under sudden weight.

It was all the warning the Slinger needed. He was used to deciphering noises. His training had left nothing to chance.

He turned round just as the flimsy wooden door was kicked open and the tall man he’d encountered in the Inn when he first entered the town, rushed in. He was clutching his knife in both hands, arms held high overhead and his mouth was open in a noiseless scream.

The other man, the round-eyes: McQuaid, was right behind him, an old muzzle-loader held across his chest.

The Slinger fell back on the bed on the face of the heavier man’s charge. He caught the double handed blow on crossed wrists, twisted them in a sharp scissor motion and watched the knife clatter to the floor as the big man’s wrist bones broke with a brittle crack.

In the same motion the Slinger shoved the man’s body aside, placing it halfway between the armed McQuaid and himself.

McQuaid had the gun ready now and was bringing it up to bear when the Slinger kicked out. The ball of his foot caught the gun-barrel and pushed it up towards the ceiling where it harmlessly discharged its load. Before McQuaid could recover from the instinctive blink of the gun-blast, the Slinger was upon him.

With a movement that was almost graceful he brought the edge of his rigid palm against McQuaid’s collar-bone. Letitia let out a choked cry and brought her hands to her mouth as she heard the sharp crack of the bone breaking.

McQuaid fell to his knees with a groan. He dropped the gun on the floor. His left arm hang down useless. His right hand clutched the shoulder where the bone had broken. Spittle lined his lips and he was suddenly very pale.

The Slinger looked at McQuaid, pointed to the tall man who was sitting on the floor hugging his shattered wrists to his big body and rocking back and forth in shock.

There was a vacant look in the big man’s eyes and his mouth emitted a moaning that reminded the Slinger of water buffalos mating. “Get him out of here,” he said and McQuaid scrambled to obey, his ashen face screwed up with pain.

The door shut behind them. The hole in the roof and the smell of gunpowder were the only signs of their having been there. The Slinger picked up the big, heavy gun. Its barrel was still hot. He propped it up against the wall, by the door.

“You didn’t have to hurt them,” Letitia pouted at him. Her face was uncertain. “They were only jealous. They can no longer afford-”
She never finished her sentence.

With a blurred motion the Slinger reached out and ripped the sheer gown from her body.

The adrenalin charge of the fight made his every nerve-end tingle and he was already massively erect. Without a word he threw her on the bed forced her legs apart and violently plunged himself into her. He felt his mind consumed by a mindless anger that only barely matched the fire of lust that gripped his body.

Her cries of passion were the most satisfying sounds he’d heard for a long time.

Afterwards, she watched him as he dressed. There was a clinking as he put on his tunic and she perked up.

The Slinger frowned, checked something on the inside of it and fastened a loop. “You’ve been through this,” he said and she gave him her pouty look in reply. He moved the tunic from side to side satisfied that there was no clinking, this time.

“What are they? Those strange looking stars?”

“They are not your concern,” the Slinger said.

He turned to leave. His back was to her and she sat up on the bed, totally nude and said to him: “The blond man said that you’d have them. He warned us about you,”

The Slinger stopped and slowly turned. What he heard in her voice was disappointment, anger and sorrow mixed with fear. He recognized his mistake now in allowing his body to entrap him like this. The woman’s presence had taken the edge off his faculties. He’d made too many mistakes already and he was as much to blame for this as the effect of the desert. The Oracle had spoken of three days. This was the third. He was going to take no more chances, he decided, he had to go. Had to go now.

“What sort of warnings?”

“He held court in the Inn. Told us of evils to come. He said there’s growing violence and the world is in the grip of Disruption. He said there will be an end to our time of idyl and warned that the devil will come walking out of the desert bearing the star and that devil must be punished!”

“I must go.”

It was already too late. As he had feared he’d stayed too long. Visibly shaken, the Slinger opened the door, stepped out into the blazing sunlight, descended the steps that led to the dusty street below, surveying it all the while for visible signs of danger.

Seeing how her words had affected him Letitia gathered the bedsheets around her naked body. Trailing them on the dusty wooden floor she followed him to the open doorway.

“He spoke of corrupt Lawmakers. Do you hear? Corrupt!” she shouted at his back and the Slinger stared straight ahead and made for the stables. The street was totally empty.

And still her voice followed him, shrill with emotion. “He gave us a sign. He said the desert shall lead our fight against corruption. The desert shall take you! You devil-spawn! The desert shall punish you!”

Presently there was the sound of muffled, hysterical, weeping, receding with each step he took. The Slinger approached the stables, alert for trouble, his eyes squinting against the pitiless glare thrown up by the white street-dust. He wished he’d paid greater heed to the words of the Oracle now and left before the three days were up, but the Oracle had strange notions of time. It did not reckon days by the standard of humans and his body had been weakened beyond control.

He figured he’d paid the price for gaffla. His only hope now was that the price was not his life.

There was the creaking of a door somewhere in front of him and the Slinger stopped.

The stable master appeared out of the deep shade of the stables, a fat woman as broad as she was tall and dressed in dirty black hovered close behind him.

The stable-master still wore the filthy kimono.

“Is my horse ready?” the Slinger asked.

The stable-master looked at the woman and seemed to draw courage from her presence. He turned to face the Slinger. There was a flash of movement behind them and a young child with a dirt-encrusted face ran from the stable. It dodged past the fat woman and between the stable master’s legs and stood to one side. It leaned against the far barn wall and stared openly at the Slinger.

The child could not have been more than twelve, though it was short for its age. It pointed at the Slinger with a dirt-encrusted finger and yelled: “Devil!”

The woman brought both her hands to touch the centre of her forehead. She held a bluestone amulet firmly in them. Her gaze was riveted on the Slinger and her lips moved fervently in silent prayer.

“Devil!” repeated the child.

“There’ll be no horse for you here,” the stable-master found the courage to say at last but his voice was unsteady. The Slinger put his hand on the hilt of his sword. The short one, worn at his waist.

“All the horses are gone. They escaped this morning,” said the stable-master quickly. “The stable’s empty,” he took a step back and moved aside to gesture at the open stable door. Impenetrable darkness reigned beyond the door. All was silent. “Look for yourself if you like,” the stable-master said and the Slinger felt sick, deep inside himself.

Was this to be the traitor’s trap? Was he to be given no chance to escape it?

Keeping his eyes on the stable door and the three people in front of him the Slinger started moving backwards. One step at a time.

He’d almost rounded the corner, made it into the dirt path that led across the main street from where he could reach Letitia’s Inn when the little boy cried out: “The desert! The desert! The desert is coming for him!”

Its dirty finger pointed over the Slinger’s left shoulder, at an angle aimed at the sky.

The Slinger turned.

There was a towering funnel of spinning hot air, darkening fast, moving towards them. An unearthly wail rose from it and where it hovered, just off the ground, from the gaps between the houses the Slinger could see a cloud of dust and sand that swirled and turned and glowing particles moved in and out of it.

It was almost upon them.

The Slinger heard the heavy footfall behind him and turned just in time to avoid the pitchfork aimed at him, held by the stable-master. His left hand shot out, followed the momentum of his body and the stiff edge of his palm caught the fat man on the throat, beneath the droop of his pendulous chin.

There was the crumpling sound of cartilage and the stable-master went down, a terrible gurgling issued from his lips. The Slinger turned, looked for a place to run to, but it was too late.

Howling devilishly the tornado tore through the town, cutting two smaller buildings to the left of the Inn in half. It fed on loose planks of wood and broken glass and anything it could find, arming itself, and as it crossed the main street, the blond man’s trap was finally sprung.

Ignoring the terrible wind and the sand and dust and the deadly debris that flew through the air, the townsfolk swarmed out of their houses, armed with knives and axes and rocks and thick logs of wood. Men and women and children, both round-eyes and of the People, formed a tight knot, and they all closed in, on the Slinger.

The Slinger drew his long sword and cartwheeled his body away from them, twirling in a blurred motion of black-covered flesh and shining steel and one of the bolder ones rushed in to strike him, trying to intercept the spinning body, and the Slinger lashed out.

The sword cut through the soft flesh and bone and arteries and severed the man’s head from his body, so that it flew in a bright red arc through the air and rolled away from him and stopped at the feet of the advancing mob, the eyes caught open and staring still.

The wind howled behind them then and they all screamed with madness. The blond man’s power and the strange spell of the desert, strong now in them.

The Slinger had gained some distance now. Had put a good space between himself and the mob. He knelt and his hands reached inside a fold of his jacket and he pulled out two of the four pointed stars Letitia had admired, the points sharpened and glistening wickedly and his hands were a blur as he flung them at the moving mass of bodies and a woman went down, one of the stars firmly embedded in the edge of an eye, and a man stumbled and fell, clutching his throat.

They threw things at him now, stones and wood and the wind was about them and glass swirled through the air and the Slinger drew out two long slender blades and sent them into the massed bodies and two more people fell and others tripped over them.

A long piece of glass carried by the wind cut across the back of his thigh and the pain made him grunt with surprise and momentarily stop and a stone caught him on the side of the head and he felt blood well out of the cut. He isolated the sense of pain and as he did so his clothes were tugged by the howling wind and sand and dirt obscured his vision and made breathing difficult.

In desperation he threw one last blade into the mass of bodies and somebody went down, clutching his chest and then they had closed the gap and were suddenly all around him, within easy killing distance.

The Slinger drew the shorter sword and met them as he’d been trained, a blade in each hand and he was a fury of motion, a demon of steel. He whirled in the midst of them and his blades reached out and flicked, picking hands off female arms, slashing across haggard, drawn faces with mad, glazed eyes, cutting a wide swath through them.

He moved across the street and they followed him still, maddened hyenas worrying a lion, leaving dead bodies to mark the trail behind, and the Slinger facing them, both hands moving blurringly fast began to retreat up the steps of Letitia’s Inn.

The double doors behind him swung open and McQuaid came out holding a knife, right arm up in the air, his left arm in a sling, and the Slinger twisted his body sideways and his long sword suddenly thrust backwards and impaled him. McQuaid died without making a sound.

It was the first thrust he’d been forced to make, but it was enough. It slowed him down as he pulled the sword out and it gave them time to close in on him. A child clung to his legs, its whole weight on his knees and he stumbled and fell.

He let go of the long sword, slipped out a knife and began stubbing about him, twisting and rolling his body on the floor to make it harder for them to find their mark.
Writhing like this, he rolled into the Inn, twisting between the tables and chairs, with all of them following.

An old woman fell heavily on top of him and he stabbed her in the back of the neck, withdrew his blade quickly to pierce the breast of a boy that was coming at him with a stone held high in one small hand.

There was the burning of pain as somebody pushed a sliver of glass into him, in his left arm, and he turned and stabbed the young girl that had done it, in the throat, under the chin, pushing his blade up into her brain.

There were too many of them. Their blood flowed freely but they still kept coming, howling, throwing themselves on his knife. He kicked out with both feet now, lashing out, and felt the bone-crushing impact as the heels of his boots connected with somebody’s chest and he once more rolled away from the melee of bodies, towards his long sword and somebody called out his name.

It surprised him long enough, to receive a knife thrust in the back, high on the left shoulder-blade. It was the deepest wound he suffered and the pain spasmed his body, whipped him into a new frenzy and he jack-knifed, his right leg swept out the legs from under his assailant, a young man in his early twenties, and his left arm wrapped itself under his chin, pushing the head back as he fell, to expose the carotid, which he severed with a flash-like motion.

He paused to bend down and pick up his sword and then he fled, through the door. The bodies and blood and the confusion he’d created slowed down the mad mob behind him and outside Letitia was dragging two horses, her long black hair whipped about by the wind, her eyes screwed tight and a hand held up to shield them from the sand and the dust.

“Get on!” she shouted and he vaulted on the saddle and under cover of the dust they rode out of the town, leaving the wailing wind to die out behind them and the surviving townsfolk to recover from their craze and bury the dead.

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