Finally, something resembling an idea to move the plot forward. It's a weak section, I know, and it's also pretty short. But I think I can get from here to the next section, if only I can find the time! No one mentioned this 'having a job thing' was so time consuming.

As before, all Highlander characters and concepts are the property of their owners. Reggie and Featherston are the property of Harry Turtledove. I don't own them and am making no profit on them.

This section is written in a series of journal entries by Reggie and Karolek.

July 3, 1936

Lyskos, Greece

Where to begin. Well, a short explanation of why I'm writing this would probably be in order. I'm an Immortal. We'll get that out of the way right now. Apparently I've been one for about ten years or so, but I'm only getting around to my training now. I always did want to be different.

Karolek says I should start keeping a journal. He claims that sooner or later I'll want to remember all the things I did when I was starting out, but that memory is only finite and I'll forget a lot of stuff. I can't imagine living long enough to forget things I did when I was a grown man, but then I still can't imagine living as long as Karolek or Connor, or the woman whose house we're staying in. I understand all about Immortality, I even believe that it happened to me. But it just doesn't seem real. Like it's all some fantastic dream, and I'll wake up in a hospital somewhere with a concussion from where that Freedom Party goon hit me. And then, of course, I report for combat training and get the piss whaled out of me. That's a pretty good stop to the illusion thing.

I don't see myself doing anything now that I'll really want to remember. Hopefully I'll get better at this fighting thing. Right now I seem to be dying and wrecking a lot of shirts. Karolek wants me to learn to fight with my left hand, since that's stronger. That'd be great, were it not for the fact that I'm right handed. Lately, my days seem to be made up of 'get up, get dressed, go for a run on the beach, do some hand to hand fighting, do some sword fighting, eat dinner, collapse, repeat.' I swear this Russian actually enjoys torturing me.

There's not much to do here. We get newspapers every so often from the town at the other end of the island. I think they're way behind the actual news, since every issue I read is at least two weeks past date. Karolek seems to be waiting for bad news of some kind, though what, I couldn't say. Most of the papers seem to be from the Yank-Hun alliance, so news of what's going on inside the Entente is few and far between. I wonder what it's like in Virginia, now that Featherston is in charge of the whole country. Seems so far away now. I wonder if one day I'll get a chance to strike out against the thug. Probably not anytime soon. I'm barely trusted to go to the end of the island alone.

The Prince doesn't make for great company. Every time I ask why, he brushes me off with some comment about needing to sort things out, or having a lot on his mind. Man knows damn near everything about me, I don't know much about him. Oh, I know the basics. His name is Romanov, he's 400 in change, used to be the Prince of Moscow, fought with Morrell in the war. But I get the feeling there's a lot he's not telling me.

Must go, I hear the siren call of a whupping calling from the front porch. Swords and death, here I come.

Reggie

July 22, 1936

I'm going to kill Connor. I'm quite sure of that. I haven't decided when, exactly, or how, but I will kill him. I'll make it painful, too. Better go back to those old journals of Papa's, he was a first rate bd and is sure to have something good for me to do to the Highlander.

I am not cut out to have a student like this. It's not the physical, though that's certainly coming in its own sweet time. If it wasn't for the fact that I think he might be worse, I'd tell him to go back to his right hand and learn that way. I think I killed him 4 different times, today alone! We'll be here forever at the rate we're going. No, the physical doesn't bother me, it'll come in its own time. It's his personality that makes me want to kill Connor. If it weren't for that damned Highlander, goading me into taking him on as a student, I would have indulged my own reluctance and hunted down Mackenzie or someone else to do it.

The man asks questions, incessantly. And not the good, productive kind, like how to care for a sword or what cities are better than others to live in. No, he wants to know about me, the personal detail type things.

I am not in the mood to tell Reggie that I worked for Ivan the Terrible, that I used to be a headhunter and have killed several Immortals in the name of vengeance alone. And sometimes even less than vengeance. I certainly don't want to tell him what I was like in my mortal days, when I was a crown prince and then a prince, a commander of armies and a generally obnoxious person. My tales of being cast out by my own brother don't exactly fill me with warmth, I can't imagine what he'd take away from them. Yet Reggie persists in asking.

I'm going to kill him. Connor, that is. Maybe Reggie, too. We'll see how far the darkness inside me goes when it finally cuts loose. I know that it will, that much is inevitable. I take my turn with it every so often. After all, I didn't need to join up with the Americans during the last war. I could have gotten out of the country, gone somewhere where there was no fighting. I certainly didn't need to be a sniper if I did fight. And yet, there's some small part of me, something that my father nurtured, that glories in military conflict…that actually enjoys the blood and the death and being the instrument of both. I don't like that part of me, I hate when that part of me is in control. Every so often, it takes over. What if it does while I'm here? Could I really be sucked back into the kind of life I once led? Would I care if I did?

--Karolek

August 17, 1936

Glory be! Today is a day of achievement. I actually managed to land some damaging cuts on Romanov. Granted, in about 5 minutes I was flat on my back with his sword at my neck, him staring at me with those gray eyes. They're really quite frightening in how little they reveal. I never know if he's going to yell at me, kill me, or just play nice. Nevertheless, improvement is improvement. I have faith that some day I may actually be able to leave this little island and go DO things.

Reggie

August 19, 1936

This must by my week. Improvement in my sword skills, and now improvement on the human front. In that my teacher actually seems inclined to act like one. He told me the story of how he and Connor met. It's nothing spectacular, but I feel like I've actually won something in his volunteering the information. And I think I'd like to meet this Duncan guy. He sounds like an all right sort, very loyal and just…almost like a character out of some kind of novel or story.

I wonder what Immortal protocol is regarding friends of your teacher. It's probably bad form to challenge them, but I wonder if it keeps them from challenging you. I suppose it depends on how good the friend is. Not like I'd ever go after Connor. The way that Karolek speaks about his skills, I get the feeling he respects the Highlander a fair bit. And even if he didn't, Connor was nice to me when I needed it. I won't go challenging him anytime soon. But I wonder about some of these other people that Karolek mentioned. Erich or Kamani or Mackenzie or Kai.

The thing I still can't quite figure out is why I have this. Why me, a lowly pharmacist's assistant, the son of a bank clerk who never broke Corporal in the army? A cripple who was dumb enough to take on a couple of goons? I haven't got the strength or the brains of most, yet I'm the one that's going to be young forever. Doesn't make any sense. Further proof, I guess, that God has a strange sense of humor.

Reggie

September 1, 1936

Reggie's starting to grow on me. He's tempered a little, not asking quite so many questions as he did when he first got here. He's even starting to show some good sword skills. The hand to hand part is less impressive, but then I always expected that to a degree. I'll take him as far as I can, but he'll never be good. Some people just have to rely on faith and luck.

Having had a chance to talk to him, he's basically a good guy. Seems to be on the right side of things…doesn't have the vibe that John Colby gave off when he tried to kill Kai. At least I don't think so. I'm going off of secondhand information in that respect. He certainly doesn't have the makings of a Grayson or a Kurgan. He's gotta stop thinking with his emotions quite so much, though. The very evidence of that is in the way that he died. A fight over a political poster? Very impractical.

I've offered him an abbreviated version of some events of my life, and told him the full tales of others. I told him all about Sabine, and how I nearly died trying to avenge her murder, hoping to get him to understand that when it comes to the fighting, you can't do it on emotion. Maybe the lesson stuck. I don't know. Time will tell.

The papers have been bad, lately. It seems like nations are faltering all over the world. I read the headlines with one eye to Moscow. Nikolai would have a hard enough challenge holding Russia together if he didn't have a depression to worry about. That, plus Alexsei's continued illness, does not bode well for the family I left behind. War is coming again…I can feel it in the air, almost like a quickening as it starts to take shape. There's an electric charge that I can't quite describe.

I cannot change the world. I learned that lesson many, many years ago. As much as Immortals might like to pretend otherwise, the world does not bend to their will. And so, for the time being, I will sit on Kai's Grecian paradise. I will continue to teach Reggie, and I may even befriend him. And I will read the newspapers, and I will watch the horizon to the north. If the storm clouds should appear, I will be ready.

Karolek

January 1, 1937

50 miles north of Sarajevo

A new year. A new existence. A new scene. I write this from my cramped little cabin on some train headed through Yugoslavia to Moscow. I never thought I would say this, but oh, how I miss Greece. Or more rather, I miss its warmth. There is snow all over the fields as they slide by. And it will only get colder as we continue on towards Moscow. This I have been promised by my increasingly cheerful companion.

It's quite scary, really, to see the change this has wrought in Karolek. It's as if going home has tapped into some heretofore unseen part of his personality – the human part. He doesn't talk much about what his life was like before he was Immortal. Some days I wonder if he remembers much about his mortal life…or if he does and chooses to forget it. What kind of childhood could make a man want to forget it all? My own life as a boy was very…typical. You could say idyllic, if you chose. My dad worked as a bank clerk, made a decent wage. My mother, like most mothers in the CSA, stayed at home with me and my brother Thomas while he was still alive. Scarlet fever, he was 4. I felt pride in being part of the CSA, of having that heritage of beating the USA in two wars, of having strong friends and plenty of Negro labor. Of being a well-bred white man. I was happy enough, served my term in the army, found a decent job as a pharmacist's assistant. Sometimes, when my Russian torturer is not whipping me senseless – as he is still more likely to do than not – I think about my parents. I wonder if they're still alive, if they ever looked for me. If they mourned for me. I know that I'll never be able to see them again if they are alive, but I still would like to know what has become of them.

I'm not entirely sure why we're going to Moscow. I know that Karolek has been reading the papers anxiously over the last few months, though I haven't the faintest idea what he was looking for. When we packed to leave Lyskos, he mentioned something about the tsar and some kind of promise.

I'm more excited about the prospect of this trip, even if it is freezing out there. I wonder what Moscow will look like. I wonder when I'll ever be done with this interminable training. I wonder when I will be able to go and live my own life. I wonder if I can really kill another person, face to face with a sword. I wonder…

Reggie