My Library

not concern ourselves. The outer guards will sound the alarm if the enemy attacks by night. My helmet is close to my left hand, as is my shield. Near my right is my kuri, whose cold, sharp point and keen cutting edges have become as much a part of me as the arm that wields it. On one side of me is my friend Cheti, who snores so loudly in his sleep that he awakens the birds. On the other is my friend Dorn, who sleeps like death itself, yet is instantly awake at the whisper of his name … we are but a part of this great host who will, in the morrow, meet and cut our enemy to pieces. We are three. I recall well the day we met on the training ground, many seasons past. Cheti, tall and stumbling, from the high mountains. Dorn, solid as stone, from the great forest, and I, from the flat midlands. Not a word was spoken among us for days as we learned the killing arts. How that changed with our first battle, that moment when we formed a triangle back to back, surrounded by twice our number of yellowhairs! Cheti, calling out such stupid curses at the yellow-hairs that even Dorn was laughing, and laughing gave us fresh energy, so we fought our way out of the trap … then we were three. Through the battles, the wounds, many of both, too many from such as me to count … we are three. They are more to me than my brother, whose face and voice I cannot now bring to mind … more than any woman I have ever known, yet not the same … and the man in that village who asked me about my sons and daughters, and I replied I don’t know my sons and daughters if I have any, they go with a woman and I have no woman, I am of the legion, so I have no woman or sons and daughters to whom I am bonded … just those women I can bed down when we capture a town … there was one, she was warm and did not scream but whispered in my ear and I was as gentle as I could be with her, I might have bonded with her … but we are three and it is different. I would lay down my life for Cheti or Dorn, that they would live instead of me, and I know without their speaking that it is the same with them … I do not understand why this is so, but they are me, I am them, and we are three … CLICK!