A/N: Titwillow Truism #2017: Sometimes, the only way for some people to reach any kind of accord is for them to engage in actual, physical combat.

26.

The scimitar spun out of the Bedine girl's hands once again. In a heartbeat, she had the Kara-Turan's hooked axe at her throat.

The little savage did not seem especially alarmed to have that beastly cleaver so close to her neck. If anything, she stared at the other woman with something close to awe. "How do you do that?" she marvelled.

At that, Ishiko withdrew her weapon, stepping back to allow the other woman to retrieve her scimitar. "Curved swords," she explained shortly. "Inward side's vulnerable, if you can get at it." She tapped the hooked edge of her axe. "This grabs well. Sickles do, too. Watch."

The scimitar flew away again. "Oh," the girl said. She frowned, absent-mindedly snapping her hand to take away the sting. "I think I see."

They squared off again. When next Ishiko's axe snuck past the girl's guard and made a bid to relieve her of her weapon, the girl twisted her wrist to turn her blade to one side.

The axe recoiled, but so did the girl. Her hand spasmed, dropping her sword to the sand. A mewl of pain escaped her lips, and her off-hand cradled the wrist of her sword arm. "Blast," she muttered. Her face reddened. "That was not right, was it?"

"No," Ishiko agreed blandly, and gestured for the girl to pick up her sword again. "But the first step is to see what you did wrong."

"True." The girl shook her wrist out before she reached for her fallen scimitar. "Let us try again," she said briskly.

Ishiko inclined her head and raised her weapon. "Aye."

By the time Schaern had, in his own special way, called on the caravan to start moving ("You've got until the count o' ten to pull your britches up and get these wagons movin', you bunch o' godsdamned lily-livered lick-spigots!"), the little mongoose had managed to retain her grip on her scimitar only once, and to lose it another half a dozen times.

Frustration painted her face, clear as day. "I do not understand," she complained, flexing her bruised fingers. "What am I doing wrong?"

Ishiko seemed to consider that. "Who're you countering?" she asked suddenly.

Frustration gave way to confusion. "What?"

"You're not countering me." The Kara-Turan pointed her axe at the other woman's blade. "You're countering someone who fights with one of those."

The little nitwit's face cleared with understanding. "Oh," she said. "That was my uncle." She shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably. "He taught me."

"Good. Forget him."

The poor little termagant seemed paralyzed somewhere between incipient outrage and confused respect. "I…beg your pardon?"

"You're still fighting like you did with him. To fight me, you need to fight me. Understood?"

The awe was back in the girl's eyes, tinged every so slightly with hero worship. "Spirits. You are right. That is exactly what I was doing." She frowned. "How did you know?"

The Kara-Turan smiled briefly. It was a gesture both fleeting and unnatural, and was rather like watching a chicken attempt to fly. "I know," she said.

The girl stooped to retrieve her scimitar. Halfway there, she hesitated. "May I ask…?"

Ishiko's expression did not change. "Ask."

"Who taught you?"

That thin smile re-appeared. "Life," she said. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, hers was a dark and shuttered place, full of dust and cobwebs and secrets best left undisturbed. Possibly there would be bodies beneath the floorboards. "Tomorrow morning. Be here," she instructed abruptly. Her nod was stiff-necked, and had in it a formality which made it seem one breath away from a bow. "I will teach you to forget."

"I…yes." The girl's awkward half-bow towards her strange new instructor was almost sickeningly deferential. "Thank you."

They parted. The girl brushed past me without a backwards glance – unsurprising, since I was quite invisible. It had seemed prudent to watch this new development unobserved.

Knowledge is power. I had not anticipated that the taciturn old mercenary might choose to take the younger woman under her wing, but perhaps it was not so surprising. They had similarly unfriendly dispositions, and similarly bloodthirsty tendencies.

Now that she had, however, I was finding the experience…educational.

Knowledge is power. Know your enemy's strengths, catalogue their weaknesses. Ishiko was not necessarily my enemy, though she had the potential to be.

The other one, on the other hand, was most certainly my nemesis, and had been so since she had laid her curse on me.

Knowledge is power. And fair play is for fools.

I grinned and crackled my knuckles. This was going to be fun.

Word spread, and the sparring pair was greeted with a ring of onlookers the very next morning.

This time, I did not bother to conceal my presence. I thought that I might see if I could elicit a reaction from my quarry. I thought that the results might be enlightening.

So far, it seemed to be working, and I was learning all sorts of fascinating things.

For instance, it was obvious that the girl absolutely hated to be the center of attention. As a matter of fact, she detested it, and if not for her innate obstinacy I suspected that she would have loved nothing more to crawl under the nearest rock and hide. Her cheeks were red, her jaw was clenched, and every catcall from the onlookers made her eyes flicker to the sidelines in a self-conscious search for the culprit.

This meant, of course, that Ishiko was pressing the advantage for all that she was worth.

"Eyes forward," she ordered. Her axe snapped out. "Parry." Steel rang against steel. "Good. Again." Metal spun, a dizzying flash that ended in the dirt. "Wrong!"

The D'Tarig onlookers hooted. "Get her, Ishi!" one of them jeered. "Go on, you can take her!"

One of his compatriots cuffed him in the back of the head. "Don't be daft," he said. "Y'seen the right hook that girl's got on her? Y'seen how she damn near broke that stinger's face?"

"Hey, just saying-"

Another spectator spat on the sand. "I've always like losin' on the underdog. My money's on the fat little one," he offered laconically, and threw a few coins in the pool. It had grown to quite a tidy little pile. "Who's in with me?"

His challenge prompted a round of bickering. The air was filled with the merry tinkle of falling money. The pool grew.

The fat little one had turned a truly magnificent shade of scarlet. Her eyes darted to one side, and her lips were doing their damnedest to compress themselves into a fine line, despite being so full that she looked as if she spent her spare time sucking on entire mouthfuls of bees.

Nevertheless, she tried. Oh, how she tried, and how she glared.

I smiled. Oh, how I smiled.

What a delightful people these D'Tarig are. Xanos had obviously gravely misjudged them.

Ishiko clicked her tongue. "Loosen your shoulders," she ordered her student curtly. "You are too rigid."

The little Bedine jerked her eyes back guiltily. "I…yes. S-sorry."

The Kara-Turan snorted. "Don't be sorry," she said grimly. "Be focused."

By the time Schaern had cursed the caravan into a straggling start, the little Bedine had managed to hold on to her scimitar six times out of ten, and lose it spectacularly only another four.

She swiped a lock of sweaty hair out of her eyes, panting. "Better?" she asked her teacher eagerly.

Ishiko paused. "Better," she allowed, at last.

The girl smiled, evidently pleased – until she saw me, quite plainly visible and leaning against one of the wagons. Her smile wilted like a lily in the noonday sun. Her shoulders stiffened.

Then, without so much as a backwards glance, she shoved past me, scowling.

Infuriating little cur. How dare she ignore Xanos like that? Never mind circumspection. She had ignored me. Had I not even been worth an insult? A long and lingering glare? Something?

I snarled, and stalked off in the opposite direction.

That was it. I was going to paint myself purple, stick a flagpole up my arse, and start singing the godsdamned Tethyrian national anthem if that was what it took to win this little contest of wills.

She knew that I was there. Day after day, she knew that I was watching, even as the crowd of onlookers dwindled as they decided that blood was not forthcoming, and a sparring match between two women was only worth waking early for if the women were ravishingly beautiful and completely naked, neither of which was the case here.

The girl's awareness of my presence showed in the irritable set of her shoulders, and the telltale way her eyes snagged mine and her lip curled whenever her parries carried her into a spin and she was obliged to glance my way.

I was annoying her, that much was true. But it was not enough.

She was still ignoring me. And she was getting better. She was getting better. Day after day after day, she improved, her movements growing sharper and more confident and her fumbles growing fewer and fewer. After a tenday, she had even begun landing the occasional hit on her teacher, though those at least remained few and far between. That was the even-more-infuriating part – the fact that, against all odds, against all expectations, she learned. At this rate, Xanos would either have to get her away from Ishiko or hire a godsdamned army to stop her.

It did not help that Ishiko appeared to be a better teacher than her antisocial tendencies might have suggested. She was patient, persistent, and had a sharp eye for those minute details which meant the difference between well-fought round and a rout.

There was no bardic flourish or knightly code informing the Kara-Turan's tactics. She applied much the same philosophy to fighting as she did to speaking. Each movement was pared down to the core, each strike calculated to have the greatest effect for the least expenditure of energy. The woman fought with the grim, business-like efficiency of a street fighter.

Or an assassin. She was very quiet, was this Ishiko. Too quiet, and altogether too effective to be a mere mercenary-for-hire. Perhaps she was Ghufran's insurance against my misbehavior. Perhaps she was Ghufran's insurance against Zhentarim spies. Perhaps she was a Zhentarim spy. In any case, Ishiko bore watching.

They squared off again. The little Bedine was the first to strike, launching into a series of tight, exploratory slashes, low-high-low. The haft of Ishiko's axe spun, nearly too fast to see, blocking low-high-low and then lashing out at the younger girl's midsection in a sideways arc.

The girl jumped back and slapped the axe down. Ishiko spun with the blow and came out of it swinging – only to find the other woman's scimitar ready and waiting to shove her axe right back in her face.

They separated, taking several steps back. "Good block," Ishiko observed blandly. Unlike her opponent, she was barely out of breath. Her economical style of fighting obviously paid generous dividends. "Unexpected."

The Bedine made a sour face. "I still cannot get through," she grumbled.

The Kara-Turan shrugged. "Comes with time."

"I hope so."

Her strange teacher studied her. "Frustrated?" she asked neutrally.

The little illiterate made a dismissive gesture. "No matter. The morning is not yet done," she said firmly.

"No," Ishiko agreed. "But you are getting sloppy. Need a change of pace." She rolled her crooked shoulders, scanning the gathered crowd with her cool and fathomless eyes. When her gaze fell on me, her gaze paused. A-ha.

Abruptly, I found myself on the receiving end of a pointing finger. "You," Ishiko said shortly. "Mage. Come here."

I returned her look with one equally as bland. O-ho. I smell a challenge. Of course, who was being challenged - and why - was unclear. No matter. Play coy. See what she wants. "Who, me?" I drawled innocently.

I had cast my pebbles into the pond, hoping for some betraying response, but not a ripple stirred Ishiko's limpid countenance. She gave absolutely nothing away. It was quite impressive. Or terrifying. Possibly both. "Yes. You," she agreed blandly. She turned to Nadiya. "Ever fought a spellcaster?"

The little illiterate's eyes had widened in dawning horror. "No. Oh, no-"

At last, a response! And it was such a satisfying one, too. "What?" I goaded her. "Are you too frightened to confront the mighty Xanos in single combat?"

Her eyes bulged. "Am I-" she spluttered. Her back stiffened. "Why, you…you…"

I bared my teeth at her pleasantly. "I?"

The flush leapt into her cheeks with astonishing alacrity. "I am not afraid of you," she spat. She leveled her sword at me. "Ready your weapon, mage."

To the Abyss with Ishiko's motives for pitting me against the pipsqueak. Hells take rationality and circumspection and bugger them both sideways. The girl wanted a fight? Xanos would give her one.

Deliberately, I rolled up my sleeves and flexed my fingers. Heat gathered at the ends of my fingertips. "Gladly," I replied.

Her first strike darted for my side. There was no real strength behind it. It was a feeler – a test, to see what I might do.

I sidestepped it easily. "Come now," I taunted her. "Xanos is a very large target. Surely you can do better than that."

The girl's nostrils flared. "I would not like to beat you too quickly," she growled, and lunged for my other side.

The swipe of her blade displaced enough air to ripple my sleeve. I stepped aside and watched the scimitar go by with meditative interest. "You missed," I said sweetly. Then I raised a hand. In some wellspring at the heart of my power, a bitter black void yawned, waiting to sap all strength and will. It was always there, waiting for doubt to creep in and despair to settle in its hooks. Those weak of will let it consume them. Xanos, on the other hand, preferred to turn it…outward. "Observe," I instructed clinically. "This is how you do it."

The beam of red light reflected in the girl's pupils, a split-second before she sagged. Her sword arm trembled and drooped, too weak to hold her guard up. Comprehension followed shortly thereafter. "Coward," she snarled between clenched teeth. She tried to straighten. Her face was pale, or as close to pale as her sun-browned skin could come. "You do not have the strength to win, so you take mine?"

I spread my hands in a shrug. Fire seethed there, and a throbbing pain registered in my temples. It was an effort to draw the heat back, but it would have been even more trying to allow that damned geas to crush my skull into a powder, so… "Irrelevant. Winning is all. The rest can go hang." Then I pointed a finger. Sticky webbing shot up through the sand and wrapped itself around her legs.

The little Bedine looked down. Her eyes narrowed. Then, without a word, she flicked the tip of her scimitar disdainfully at her restraints.

The scimitar's edge was notched and bent, but it sliced through the webbing as if it were nothing but air. A keen edge enchantment, I thought, with some surprise. How annoying.

There was little time to dwell on it, however. She was coming for me again, and she appeared to have regained some of her strength, if the color in her face was any indication. This was problematic. My normal response at this point would be to set her on fire, but that was not a viable solution under the circumstances. Nevermind the unspoken rules of combat in the sparring circle - if I did anything to harm the girl, the geas on me would pop my head like a grape.

Well, then. Time for a change of tactics.

I wore a simple iron band on the third finger of my right hand. I touched it with my thumb, twisting it around my finger, just so...

The shield sprung up before me a heartbeat before her scimitar tried to embed its edge between my ribs. I may have been obliged to do her no violence, but it seemed that my bloodthirsty little malefactress felt no such compunctions.

The blade thumped against thin air.

It was worth a thousand such bruises, however, just to see the look of astonishment on her face as her steel recoiled on her as if she had just hit a wall.

She seemed even more surprised when my hand closed around her still-upraised wrist, and utterly flabbergasted when I yanked her from her feet.

I had never seen a Bedine in full flight before. It was a novel experience. In her dull black robes, she looked rather like an oversized vulture - up until she hit the ground. Then she was more of an indistinct bundle of rapidly tumbling black linen and incoherent rage.

I grinned. "Given up yet?" I called mockingly.

She struggled unsteadily to her feet, breathing hard. "No," she grated, and charged again.

She struck three times in rapid succession, low-high-low. Fortunately, I still had my invisible shield to block with. It was weightless, unlike a physical shield. Like a physical shield, it was more or less tethered to my forearm, so that I had to predict where she would hit in order to move my arm to block her. Unfortunately, each blow weakened my shielding a little further, until the last blow bit into skin and opened up a welling, stinging split.

My opponent saw it and smiled. She backed away, swinging her scimitar to resettle its grip in her hand. There was something altogether too jaunty about that gesture. "First blood," she said smugly. Her eyes sparkled. "Do you yield?"

My lips peeled back from my teeth. "Like Hells."

She shrugged. "'Tis your skin," she said blithely, and advanced again...

…only to come up short.

My nemesis looked down sharply. Lines of webbing had been lashed securely about her wrists, effectively anchoring her to the ground.

She looked up again, and met my smirk with a snarl. "That is it," she erupted, and launched a furious kick at my midsection.

I had just enough presence of mind to duck, which was why her foot planted itself in my abdomen and blasted the breath out of me rather than planting itself rather lower and rendering Xanos a eunuch.

Then, while I was still trying to catch my breath, she lashed out again with a roundhouse kick to the side of my knee.

Sand was not soft. Oh, it looked pillowy and forgiving, that was true, and it felt pleasantly yielding if you held it in your hand, but when it came to falling on to the sandy ground, what one became most aware of was that, in the end, sand was dirt. And dirt belonged to the element of earth, along with other notoriously un-soft things. Like stone golems. And mountains.

Moreover, there was one characteristic which all of these things had in common - namely, that they hurt when you hit them. Especially when you hit them with your face.

An oppressive weight settled onto my back, furthering the overall impression that I had just been hit by an avalanche. A knee lodged itself firmly in my kidneys, proof positive that I needed to work on stabilizing that spell of webbing a little. It had not lasted nearly long enough.

"Yield," came a soprano snarl from somewhere above my head.

I turned my head to one side and spat out a mouthful of sand. "Go to the Abyss," I said, indistinctly.

Her response was immediate, and involved grabbing me by my still-bleeding forearm and gently but meaningfully twisting my arm behind my back. "No," she said flatly.

I spasmed in pain. "Hellfire, woman!" I roared. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"No," she said grimly. "Just to win." Then she twisted my arm a little further behind my back. I thought that I felt something in the joint begin to give, and tried to remember the last time someone had managed to put Xanos in such a position. Nothing like this had happened since…since…well, since I was thirteen and had accidentally set a stable on fire. In my defense, the farmer who owned it had not expected an adolescent half-orc to be lurking in his hay loft, and had been trying to impale me on his pitchfork at the time.

My little nemesis interrupted my thoughts by shifting her weight to my other kidney. "Now do you yield?" she demanded.

I tried to concentrate. She did not seem to be holding my wrist with her sword hand. She did not need that hand to fight. A slight burn would not impair her. It might not even need to burn. I would let slip just enough fire to startle her, no more-

Heat pulsed beneath my skin. The tension in my temples eased, just for a moment. There.

The girl's shriek when the fire flared against her hand was nothing to the noise she made when I took advantage of her distraction and heaved her off of me. It was a cross between a feral yell and, in defiance of her usual excruciating politeness, the bitten-off beginnings of a curse.

I staggered to my feet in time to see the girl pushing herself into a crouch, wiping her mouth with a shaking hand. Her lower lip was bloodied, and she appeared to have lost her weapon in the fall. It lay several feet away from her.

I crossed the sand to stand in front of the dazed little Bedine. Deliberately, I placed one boot on top of her fallen blade. "You are disarmed," I growled. "Give up."

She looked up at me through a fall of tangled, sweaty hair. "Never," she vowed, and barreled into my legs.

The sand was no softer the second time around, and the little mongoose no less vicious.

I was a mage. I was a rational, intelligent man. I had no need for weapons. I had magic at my disposal, and would not stoop to brawling bare-handed with a woman who was less than half my-

A well-placed punch cracked across my jaw. My head snapped back. Oh, Hells with it, I thought viciously, and threw a punch of my own. She rolled out of the way just in time.

We brawled back and forth across the sand, tumbling and grappling and spitting and cursing. I tried to throw her. She did something to my elbow which made it buckle, and went for my throat. I shoved her away. She snarled and hauled me back by the collar. I broke her grip and tried to restrain her hands to keep her from gouging out my eyeballs, only to narrowly avoid another spirited attempt to geld me.

Eventually, we fetched up against the wheel of a wagon. We paused there, panting. Somehow, I had ended up on top, with one arm across her neck. "Yield, damn you!" I roared.

She smiled. A fresh trickle of blood ran from her split lip. "Look down," she said breathlessly.

Belatedly, I felt a pricking against my belly. I looked down. The dagger she was holding looked very familiar. "Shit," I swore. "Where did you get that?"

Her smile widened. I had never seen the grave little creature smile like that before. It came as no surprise that she would only do so while threatening to gut me with my own damned knife. "From your boot."

I blinked. "How-"

"When I tackled you the first time."

Clever girl. "Ah," I said. I returned her smile. "In that case, look further down."

She obeyed. It was her turn to blink. "That is my belt knife," she said stupidly.

I did not remove it. Gut and gut alike, that was what Xanos always said. "Yes."

"When did you get your hands on that?"

"While you were busy trying to gouge my eyes out."

"Oh." She was silent for a moment. "Truce?" she offered.

I stared at her. This close, I could nearly count the individual lashes that shadowed her sloe eyes. I could also see the prominent bump in the bridge of that large, hawkish nose of hers. Nature, I saw, had been no kinder to her in that regard than it had been to Xanos. "Drop your - my - weapon first," I countered.

Her eyes narrowed. "No. Yours first."

"Hah! You expect me to trust you?"

"And you expect me to trust you?"

I considered that. Then I grinned. "Fair enough," I admitted sagely. "On the count of three, then."

"Good. I will do the counting-"

"Are you sure you can count that high? Perhaps Xanos should do it."

"One more smart remark out of you, mage, and I will stab you, truce or no truce."

"Promises, promises."

"Shut up." She took a breath. "Now. One…"

The girl was sitting by herself, as always, on the very edge of the circle of firelight.

It was a risky place to sit. Anything might sneak up and try to attack her, there. Stingers. Bandits. A horde of the restless undead.

Poor, unsuspecting bastards, all of them. They had no idea what they were in for. I had bruises on my bruises. My arm still throbbed. I had a dim memory of her grabbing it and rubbing sand in my wound. I was almost certain she had done it just to hear me scream.

I grinned to myself, and stopped to study her. She was hunched forward miserably, her arms wrapped around her middle and a morose expression on her face. No doubt she was thinking of her tribe, and the probable outcome of her search - failure and death, if she was lucky. Torture and servitude, if she was not.

Most reasonable people would have given in to the inevitable and given this entire quest up as impossible, were they in her position.

Never say impossible. Hah! Had I done so, I would still be roaming the wilds, half-mad with starvation and living in terror of that moment's inattention which would be all it would take to accidentally immolate myself - and to most likely take a few square miles of forest and a dozen or so innocent bystanders with me.

I snorted. No, I thought darkly. She has only taken one innocent bystander with her.

Oh, quit yer bellyachin' and just do what ye came to do, boy, Drogan's voice spoke up irritably. Let's be fair. She's earned it.

I scowled. Oh, very well, I conceded grudgingly. Besides, in the eventuality that this curse could not be lifted, a few reinforcements would not be unwelcome.

Assuming, of course, that she could keep her brothers from beheading me on sight. Knowing how the Bedine were about their women's honor, I did not think they would take kindly to seeing her in the company of a half-orc. Everyone knew that half-orcs, given half a chance, would ravage any innocent woman in their company from sunup to sundown. I did not think that pointing to the various injuries she had given me would persuade them that I was in more danger from her than she was from me. Some convictions could not be shaken, even with hard evidence.

She looked up as I approached, her eyes as wide and startled as a doe's. The mouse is back again, I see, I mused. I wondered what would happen if I were to bait her. Would the mongoose come back out to play, or would the mouse simply squeak and dart back into her hole?

Alas, I did not have the chance to find out. At the sight of my face, the woman gasped. "Sweet spirits!" she blurted. "What happened to your eye?"

I stopped and crossed my arms over my chest, cocking an eyebrow at her. "You are the one who blackened it," I pointed out mildly. "You should know."

She flushed. One of her cheeks was painted in bruise colors, and her lower lip was swollen. "I...I apologize. I did not think I had hit you so hard," she mumbled. Awkwardly, she cleared her throat, avoiding my eyes. "I...w-was there something you wanted?"

I looked at her for a moment longer. "Yes," I said curtly, and sat. Unhurriedly, I busied myself with unrolling parchment, smoothing it over my knee, and setting up inkpot and quill. That done, I looked up, my eyes scanning our immediate surrounds for any potential eavesdroppers. There were none. Then, and only then, did I pick up my quill.

Delicately, I cradled the instrument between my forefinger and thumb and fixed the little woman with an impatient stare. "Speak," I commanded.

She goggled at me. "W-what?"

Irritation prickled along my spine. "Have you been struck deaf, girl?" I snapped. I waved the quill at her imperiously. "You wished Xanos to write a missive on your behalf. Well, spit it out. I do not have all day."

Comprehension dawned in her eyes. Still, they sparked with more than a little annoyance. "I have a name, you know."

"So you do." My voice was bland.

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Would you like a second black eye to match the first?" she challenged archly.

"That depends. Would you like me to set your hair on fire?"

Like a bird startled from a bush, a reluctant giggle escaped her. "No, thank you," she demurred politely. Then she grimaced. "My head hurts enough as it is."

"Your head? Have you seen what you did to my arm?"

She snorted. "You deserved it," she said, without an ounce of sympathy. Then, gingerly, she gathered her robes around her and inched closer, just enough to lower her voice and still be heard. "Very well. Just let me think on what to say...a-ha! I have it."

Then, softly, her voice pitched for my ears alone, Nadiya began to speak.