Call me Sigrun. It's not the name on my birth certificate, but I never use that name. Sigrun was one of the Valkyries, the warrior maidens of Norse mythology, and I like the name. It fits.

"Okay," Yehud said, "Throw twenty more just like that, and we'll call it a day."

I stepped up to the pell. I raised my sword and shield tiredly, and began throwing the combination he'd shown me, striking at head level, dropping my knees, twisting my waist to give power to a second strike at knee level, and then turning that momentum into a second head strike.

I was a member of medieval recreation club called the Society for Creative Anachronism... you can find it on the web, if you're curious... and I was about to turn sixteen. Sixteen was a magical number... it meant I could stop fighting kids with boffer swords, and enter the real tournament lists. I'd be fighting against adults with years of experience, who would hit hard. I'd leave the boffers behind, and take up rattan batons in place of swords. For months, I'd been coming to Yehud's house on Sundays to practice my techniques.

The pell -- a wooden post driven into the dirt, padded with carpet, and marked with red duct tape at knee, waist, and head level -- rang with my blows. I was exhausted, but I took care to run each repetition of the drill properly, making the blows hard and crisp, keeping my shield up and in front of me. When I finished the twentieth, I stepped back, letting sword and shield drop.

"Not bad," Yehud admitted. "Next week, we'll work on stamina. When you can go full-out for a full boxing round, you'll know you've got what it takes to stay in the fight. A tournament fight almost never lasts that long."

I nodded, pulling my hand out of the sword's basket, and flexing it inside my elk hide glove. "My hand still hurts," I admitted.

"Means you're still gripping too tightly," Yehud said. "You have to relax until the moment you strike. Don't keep a death grip on the sword."

I saw Melanie putting her place marker in her book, and getting to her feet. Melanie was my sister, two years older than me, with no interest in fighting. Since one of the conditions mom and dad put on her having a car was that she had to drive me places sometimes, she'd given me a ride, and stayed, pretending to read her book, but really watching Yehud.

Yehud was worth watching, I'll admit. At twenty-five, he was way too old for Melanie. That didn't her from watching when he stripped to the waist and worked at the pell, his muscles rippling under his tanned skin. I would have been irritated, but it kept her from complaining about taking me to pell practice... much.

"All right," Yehud smiled at Melanie. "You can have her back, now." He gave me a sort of sideways hug with one arm, his eyes locked on Melanie. "I'll see you guys next week."

Walking back to the car, I tried to see Melanie the way Yehud did. Generous people describe me as "willowy." She had a nice figure, and she'd got mom's copper-colored hair... on me, it came out sort of pumpkin colored. She had the family's pale skin, without my ugly spray of freckles. Worst, however, was that she knew she was pretty. She was walking that exaggerated walk I hated, that made her skirt sway.

"He's got a fiance," I said, as she pushed the button that opened the trunk of her car.

"A fiance," she said, smiling sweetly, "is not a wife." She looked over to see if he was still watching. To my disgust, he was, leaning on the gate post. She waved, smiling, and quietly said, "I'll get him. You'll see."

I dumped my sword and shield in the trunk, and closed it. "You're jailbait," I reminded her, walking around to the passenger side.

"Yes," she agreed, walking around to the driver's side. "But cute jailbait."

Monday meant Aikido. It's a martial art, from Japan, like Karate. But where Karate is a 'hard' martial art, making use of punches and kicks, Aikido is a 'soft' art, all about redirecting your opponent's attacks. It is also true that Monday meant school, but I had few friends at the Bluegrass Country School for Girls, so I moved through the day without noticing much about it.

November was in the locker room at the dojo when I arrived. "Hey," she said, braiding up her electric blue hair. November is one of the Winter triplets. You can tell them apart by hair color.

"Hey," I said, dropping my gym bag on the wooden bench. I looked at her with a critical eye. "Dye your hair again?"

"Yeah," she answered, pulling the braid over her shoulder, and looking at it, critically. "I can't seem to get the color I want to stay. It starts off like this, and within a couple of weeks, it fades to teal." She stuck her tongue out a little, showing what she thought of teal.

"Hmm," I said, pulling off my sweater. "I don't know anything about it," I confessed. "If I dyed my hair a wild color, the Nuns at school would reenact the Passion of the Christ, with me in the starring role." I tossed my shirt on the bench, and started digging around in my gym bag for my t-shirt.

"Ooooh," said January, the white-haired triplet, coming out of the bathroom. She'd already changed into her gi. "Flagellation! How fun!"

I found my t-shirt, and stuck my tongue out at January. "I'll whip you sometime, see how much you like it."

"Don't," advised green-haired December, coming out of the bathroom, "unless you want a girlfriend for life."

We laughed, and the Winter triplets made their way out of the locker room, leaving me to finish dressing.

There weren't a lot of girls at our dojo, at least in the afternoon intermediate class. I understand that, across the board, there are more women than men active at dojos, but you wouldn't know it from the after-school crowd at ours. On the mat that afternoon were the Winter triplets, Jenny the quiet girl from our Biology class, and me. And half a dozen boys, but I try to ignore them as much as possible. A lot of times, when people think of martial arts teachers, they think of little Asian men with inscrutable faces. Our sensei was a middle-aged white lady, with dark hair that was starting to go gray, and smile lines. She reminded me of someone's grandmother -- which didn't keep her from being a very, very serious martial artist.

We spent an hour on our lesson, then broke up. One of the things I don't like about our dojo is that it doesn't have showers, so in the locker room, I just stripped and toweled off. "Boy," November said, shaking out her braid and fanning her sweat-damp hair, "Sensei was hard on you today!"

"Not really," I shrugged. "Using me as the demonstrator for techniques is a mark of trust. She trusts me to fall right, and to learn from what she's showing us as she's doing it to me."

"Whatever," January said, pulling a t-shirt over her head. The shirt had the words "I taught your boyfriend that thing you like." She pulled a sweatshirt on over that, and added, "I just know I hate it when she does me that way."

"Says the girl who wanted flagellation, earlier," December noted wryly, zipping up her hoodie.

January stuck her tongue out, and December responded in kind. November just shook her head, and looked at me. "You in for sushi?"

I picked up my wallet, and looked inside. "Mmm. How about Szechuan, instead? They have a student menu, and that's about my budget today." Days when I had aikido, I saved the money my parents gave me for school lunch, and ate with the Winter sisters.

They glanced at each other, doing that silent polling thing, and then November nodded. "Szechuan's good," she agreed. "I like their teriyaki bowl."

We picked up our gym bags, and headed for the door. "Ugh," January said. "Teriyaki from a Chinese place is just not right."

December grinned. "It's for round-eyes like Sigrun," she teased. The Winter sisters were half Japanese. "They don't know any better."

"How do you say 'bite my shiney metal butt' in Japanese?" I asked, laughing.

The Szechuan restaurant we liked to go to had an amazingly creative name... it was called "Szechuan Restaurant." But the food was good, and they had a student-price menu, so we ended up eating there about once a week. I ordered orange chicken, and was eating my egg drop soup, when January sighed. "I wish we didn't have to do this, anymore," she said.

I looked around. "Well, if you'd rather go to sushi..." I started.

"No," December interrupted, "what my lovely sister means is, she wishes we didn't have to go to Aikido anymore."

"And what my beautiful sister means," November said, smiling slightly, "is that we all wish we didn't have to go to Aikido anymore."

"Oh," I said, in a very small voice. "I thought you liked it."

December shrugged. "It's better than a sharp stick in the eye," she admitted.

"But then," November continued the well-worn phrase, "it's amazing how many things are, really."

"We're mostly doing it because our mother doesn't want us to lose touch with our Japaneseness." January made a face. "Japanishness. Jap...."

"The essential quality of being Japanese," December provided.

"Oh," I said, again. "And a martial arts class taught by a white woman who doesn't speak any Japanese beyond the names of techniques accomplishes this... how?"

November shrugged. "Bluegrass doesn't teach Japanese language classes," she pointed out. "And this is too small a town to have much else." She poked her hot and sour soup with her spoon, and looked at me. "Don't you ever get tired of it?"

"No," I said, smiling. "I go to every class I can. It's fun. I just wish there were a kendo school here."

"I wish," said November, looking at the mural on the wall, "we lived someplace like that. A court someplace, with people in fabulous clothes."

"As long as we're wishing for impossible things," I said, "I wish for a cause. A reason to lift my sword in righteous fury."

"Like the Revolution," suggested January. "It must have been fantastic, being around people who were so serious about the cause of Liberty."

"They met in bars," countered December. "How serious could they have been? 'Pass the pitcher, Ben, and let's talk some more about why we should separate the church and state! Buuuurp!' I mean, really. I wish someone would write a history that let people just be people, instead of building them up into these mythic heroes!"

As she finished her wish, someone grabbed my hair, and yanked, hard. "Ow!" I said. "Let go!" I could hear the others echoing, "Let go!"

And then, things got strange.

In an instant, I was snatched out of Szechuan Restaurant, into a place of total darkness, dragged by my hair into the void. I fell, or was dragged through nothingness. At first, I could see nothing, feel nothing, smell nothing. There was only the pain of the pulling at my hair. Then, I heard a voice, saying something I didn't understand, saying it over and over again. It was a girl's voice. Each time she said it, it changed a little, as if she were an actor trying out different pronunciations of strange words, different emphasis, trying to find just the right way to deliver the line. But it wasn't really like that, either, because I could hear that she was breathing hard, as if the actor were working out on a stair-stepper while practicing her line. I don't know how long I fell. It seemed to drag on forever, and I was thinking about how hard hitting bottom was going to be, wondering if I'd survive it, when I realized it was over.

I was lying on a stone floor, and the pain in my head was gone, along with the voice. I ran a hand over the floor. It was smooth, polished. It felt like marble, and looked like it, too... pure white marble. Above my head was a dome, in which I could dimly identify the sparkle of metal flakes. I sat up, and looked around, discovering that the Winter sisters were there, as well. The room was circular, with green marble statues in pairs scattered at random.

"Ow," said December, slowly getting to her feet.

"No joke," January agreed, rolling to her stomach, and getting to her knees, panting.

"Where are we?" November asked.

No one had an answer. I got to my feet slowly, carefully. I noticed that the white marble was a circle set in the middle of the floor, and that none of the statues stood on it with us. I took a step forward, and found that the edge of the circle was incised with writing I couldn't read, something that looked like Greek, the letters filled with what looked like gold, but I guessed was more likely highly polished brass.

December had taken a step beyond the marble circle, onto the rougher, grey stone of the rest of the floor. Granite, I guessed, though I didn't know a lot about rocks. "Hey," she said, "look at this." Leaning against the base of the closest statue was a sword -- a katana, a Japanese long sword. The scabbard and hilt wrappings were pure white.

"Over here, too," said January. "Only this one's green."

I looked around. "Blue," I said, pointing to another statue, and then, "Oh. Goodness." The fourth sword was different from the others, a complex hilt schiavona. It was in a scabbard of fine, black-lacquered wood, with a belt wrapped around it. I stepped out of the circle, and picked it up, drawing the blade slightly out, glancing at it, and then up at my friends. "It's got a Damascus blade," I said.

"Someone knew who was coming," November said, crossing the room to pick up the blue katana. She lifted a length of blue silk sash from the arm of the statue the sword had been leaning against, and tied it around her waist, before thrusting the sheathed sword through, edge up.

"Look at the statues," December said. I did. At first, they seemed random. They stood in pairs, facing each other. After a moment, I noticed that they were all women, all bore swords of some description, and all had winged helmets. Their dress varied wildly, some in chain shirts, others in what looked like Roman banded armor, and still others in hardly any clothing at all.

"Too bad whoever left the swords didn't leave us any armor to go with it," November commented.

"Yeah," I said, still trying to figure out what was going on.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Dorothy," December said.

"Toto," January corrected.

"You want to be a fuzzy black dog?" December asked. "Okay. As for me, I'd rather be Dorothy Gale. There was a girl who knew how to kick some butt."

I found a door on the outer edge of the room. It was huge, twice my height, and wider than my arms could span. There was a single golden knob, and I turned it, pushing since I couldn't see hinges. I expected it to resist, but it swung open, silently. Outside, there was a forrest. A stone walkway led to what looked like a Roman road. "No," I said, "definitely not Kansas."

Slowly, I took a few steps down the stone walkway, looking around. "Deciduous trees," November pointed out, and I nodded. Trees that dropped their leaves every year meant that it couldn't get too cold here, which was a good thing... I was still wearing my sweatshirt and jeans. I looked around at the Winter sisters, noticing that January had taken her sweatshirt off in the restaurant. She turned towards me, and I glanced at her shirt, only to feel my jaw drop.

"January," I said, "your shirt...."

"What about it?" she asked, and looked down at it, back up at me, and then back down at it before noticing what I had noticed. "Hey... it changed!"

Her sisters turned towards her, frowning slightly, and then nodded. "I can't read it," November agreed. "It looks the same... the design, the font... but it's... nonsense."

I noticed a stone pillar down where the walkway met the road, and walked towards it. "I can read this just fine," I said. There were words carved into the stone, reading "Centris, 450 miles" in one direction, and "Port Eliza, 120 miles" in the other. I read it aloud, looked town the road towards Port Eliza, then turned and looked towards Centris. "If there aren't any closer places to measure distance to, we are in the middle of nowhere."

"Are we sure they measure miles the same as us?" January asked, walking over to join me at the sign. "I mean, if their mile is the same as a kilometer, for instance, this Port Elisa place is only a day or two's walk, right?"

"It is pointless," November called, in her most logical voice, "to speculate without data."

"Thank you, Mr. Spock," December said, sticking her tongue out at her sister.

"Listen," I said, forestalling an argument. There was a crashing in the forest, and a girl ran out on the road. She had black hair, loose and wild around her shoulders, with leaves and bits of twigs stuck in it, and she was dressed in sort of an idealized version of Russian peasant clothes, with a side-closing linen shirt in pale blue, and a pair of black woolen trousers tucked into fur-lined boots. She was looking back over her shoulder, and then looked forward, her eyes widening as she saw us. She changed directions, almost falling over, running towards us.

"What's that about?" asked January, still standing next to me by the road marker. A moment later, her question was answered, as a man mounted on a bird appeared. I gawked at the bird for a moment. It looked like a cross between a red tailed hawk and an ostrich, bigger even than an ostrich, but with the same kind of build. The head was a hawk's, large, with the eyes set forward, and a cruelly hooked beak. Its feathers were edged with metallic gold, making it look like it was wearing some sort of mail. Three more burst out of the forest, each of them bearing a rider, and I looked now at the riders. They wore dark blue clothes, some kind of uniform, with polished steel cuirasses and long, wicked looking spears. They reined in, looking at us.

The one in the lead called, "No witnesses!" They lowered their spear points, and charged at us.

"Get behind me," I called to the strange girl, and swept my sword from the scabbard. I couldn't hear January's sword coming out, but there wasn't time to look. The world narrowed to the man, the bird, and the spear point thundering at me.

"Breathe," I instructed myself. I wished I had a piece of the chewing gum that Yehud would give me, to make sure I kept breathing during a fight. Then the cuirasser was to me, and there was no more time for thought. I brought my sword down on the tip of the lance, forcing it down, into the dirt. He had to choose to release it, or be unseated by the force of his own charge. He chose to release it, which wasn't the outcome I was hoping for. I spun aside, out of the way of his charging mount, ducking as it tried to bite me. "They bite!" I called as a warning to the others.

I heard December shouting obscenities, but couldn't take my attention off the one I was fighting. He'd drawn his sword, and wheeled his mount. He dug his heels in, spurring the bird, and charged again. I found myself wishing for a shield, but if wishes were Porsches, beggars would drive. I ducked again, rolling to his offside. I had to get him off the bird. As it struck at me with one of its taloned feet, I struck back. It was an awkward, off balance strike, but I cut deep into the back of its leg. It screamed, tried to dance away, fell. The rider was skilled. He kicked his feet out of the stirrups, rolled, came up on his feet with his sword in his hand.

This, however, was the kind of fight I had been training for, those long months at Yehud's. I advanced, warily, my sword in high guard position. He edged to my left, and I followed, circling with him. His sword flashed out, probing, and I blocked it, and then followed with the combo Yehud had drilled into my head. I slashed at his head, dropped my knees, slashed at his thigh, and then straightened again, coming back to his head. He blocked the first cut at his head, but the cut at his thigh bit deep. He screamed and fell, and the second cut at his head whistled cleanly over. I stepped back, amazed at the smell, and the noise, and the blood. He writhed on the ground, his sword dropped, trying to staunch the blood pouring from his leg. I realized I hadn't cut the leg entirely off, but I seemed to have cut about halfway through. I felt my gorge rising, but couldn't take time to be sick.

I looked around, and saw November still fighting. She'd brought her opponent's bird down, but the man himself was still on his feet. I ran towards them, screaming to get his attention, but he didn't look around. He struck, and November blocked with her katana. She was holding it in both hands, but she looked scared. She wasn't taking any offensive action, just defending, and that was a quick way to lose a sword fight. I'd just learned what losing a sword fight meant, in this place. I didn't hold back... I slammed the point of my sword into his unprotected back, felt the tip hit something hard. I yanked back. He was turning towards me, and I cut sideways at his neck, slicing deep, and red arterial blood poured out. I withdrew the sword, gave it the flick, the chiburi sensei had taught us, clearing blood from the blade. I spun, looking for another opponent.

December was standing over hers, hacking his still form repeatedly with her katana, shouting obscenities. January was vomiting into a bush, her opponent a stilled heap as well. The strange girl had produced a knife, and was rising from the body of the first man I'd brought down, a strangely satisfied look on her face.

"Oh, god," said November, in a small, shocked voice. "What have we done?"

My legs were shaking, and I felt like vomiting myself. "One girl, perused by four armed men," I answered November. "I hope I never have to ask myself which side of that fight I want to be on."

I walked towards December. "December," I called, and then again, more loudly, "December! It's over. You..." I paused, not wanting to point out that she'd killed a man. "You did it. You won. You can stop, now." December stumbled back, keeping hold of her sword with one hand, while she threw the other up, wiping her forehead on the short sleeve of her shirt. She was still swearing, and I wasn't sure she was hearing me, so I said, "December?"

"Just leave me alone for a minute," she answered.

I nodded, and went over to January. "You all right?" I asked, not looking where she'd been sick, for fear it'd push me over the edge into vomiting, too.

"No," she answered, "but I will be. Just... just give me a minute, okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "Take your time." I looked around, and spotted the strange girl again. She was gawking at all of us with her mouth open. I walked towards her. It was time to find out why we'd just killed four men. "Hello," I said. As I got closer, I realized that, despite the girl's black hair, she had very pale skin, and shockingly blue eyes. She was about our age, and very, very pretty. She was also short. I'm tall for a girl, five-ten. The Winter sisters come about to my eyebrows. This girl might have been as tall as my collarbone.

She dropped to her knees, and spread her hands. "Holy lady," she said, "have mercy on me for calling you!"

"Stand up," I said, gesturing with the hand that wasn't holding my sword. "What's this about calling us?" I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and turned to look. It was just November, coming towards me, looking like she wasn't sure what to do with her sword.

"My father gave me the ring," the strange girl said. "And taught me the incantation. He said it was only to be used at direst need. I... was scared, I didn't know what to do, so I... I twisted the ring, and I said the incantation... I said it a lot." She looked around. "Is that why there are four of you? The stories always say two come."

"I don't know," I said. "Let's see this ring?"

She held up her hand. On her middle finger was a ring of rose gold, which had runes of some sort engraved into it. The runes were glowing bright blue. "It didn't used to glow like that," she admitted. "When my father first gave it to me, you could hardly see the writing."

"That looks like the writing inside the chapel," November said.

I nodded, remembering the writing around the edges of the circle we'd arrived in. I turned away from the girl, looking at December, who'd sunk to her knees, not facing her felled opponent, and at January, still leaning against the bush where she'd been sick. "Are there more of these guys?" I asked, turning back to the girl.

"We rode out from Centris with a platoon," she said.

November shook her head. "How many in a platoon?"

"A score and five, holy lady," the girl answered.

"Knock it off with the holy lady stuff," November said, sounding embarrassed. "I'm November." She nodded towards me. "This is Sigrun."

"Anna," the girl said.

"Charmed, I'm sure," I said. "So there're still twenty-one of these guys, somewhere? Any chance they'll come after their buddies?"

"At the cottage," Anna said. "Or at least, that's where they were this morning. They may be riding sweep looking for me in some other direction."

"All right," I said. "Then our first order of business is to get the bodies out of sight." I shook my head. "I wish we had time to bury them, but we don't. We also need to find an intact jacket... December's going to need it, later. And see if they're carrying any currency. We may need that, later, too."

November was staring at me, wide-eyed. "Sigrun," she said, "this isn't a D&D game! We can't just loot the corpses!"

"This isn't one of your fantasy role playing games, Heather," November said, emphasizing my birth name. "You can't just loot the corpses!"

"You think I don't realize how real this is?" I asked, quietly. "I just killed two men. One of whom, may I note, was trying to kill you at the time." I shook my head. "This is as real as it gets. We're stranded far from home, with no currency, no food, no water, no camping gear. We have a military organization that will start chasing us as soon as they realize we've killed four of their soldiers. Yes, November, I get it; this is real. And the dead don't need things anymore. We do. So start looking at corpses, and figuring out what they have that we need, because I swear, we do need it."

November looked at me for a long moment, without saying anything, and then nodded. She turned away, going to search the man who'd been attacking her. I turned back to Anna. "Why were these men after you?"

Anna bit her lip, and looked away, then looked back at me. "I am the daughter of Emperor Peter."

"Uh-huh," I said, moving towards my first opponent. "And who's he, when he's at home?" Anna was silent. I looked over my shoulder at her. "Really," I said. "I'm not pulling your leg. Pretend that my friends and I know absolutely nothing about anything, no matter how obvious you think it is. Who's Emperor Peter, other than your father?"

"Peter the Fourth, Emperor of All Civilized Lands," Anna said, and I could hear the capital letters in her recitation. "These men were part of the palace guard. My older brother Nick, my younger sister Janet, and I rode out to the cottage from Centris last week, on a month's holiday. We brought staff, and a platoon of the guard. This morning, before dawn, my maid woke me, and said she'd heard fighting. I was able to get out of the house, but..." she ground to a halt.

I squatted next to the remains of the man I'd killed. His jacket was in good shape, other than having been drenched in blood when his throat was cut. I started unbuttoning it, giving Anna time to recover her composure.

"I was in the woods. I looked back. They dragged Janet out into the courtyard. She was screaming. They... did such things...."

"Yeah," I said. "I get the picture." I shook my head, and the last of my regret over killing these men vanished. I pulled the jacket off, and felt the pockets. "And Nick?"

"I don't know," Anna confessed. "But I fear the worst."

I nodded, tossing a pouch of tobacco and a pipe on the ground. I kept the box of matches. A small pouch of coins was in another pocket. I dumped them in my hand and had a look. They were rounded polygons of three or six sides, with milled edges. The triangular coin had a motif of running horses, and seemed to be made of brass; the hexagonal coin had a throne, and was made from something that looked like silver, but probably wasn't.

"You won't get rich stealing from dead soldiers," December said. She tossed another small pouch of coins on the ground beside my feet.

I indicated the jacket. "That's in one piece," I said, "if we can find someplace to wash it, it'll keep you warm tonight."

December made a face, and left the jacket lying, but nodded her understanding.

"Hey, look at this," called November. I looked around, noticing that January seemed to have recovered, and was searching through saddlebags on the fourth... bird... thing... and that November had spilled the contents of her guy's saddlebags on the ground. She was coming over, carrying a thin book. She handed it to me, and I had a look. It was a strange size, to my eyes... maybe five inches wide, by ten inches tall... roughly printed and bound with what looked like wax paper. Printed on the front cover, in what looked to be the same impressed type as the interior pages, were the words "A Guide to White Magics for the Army Healer."

"Huh," I said, flipping through it. I held the cover up for Anna to see. "Is this for real?" I asked. "You've got healers in your Army who use some sort of magic?"

"You think we're barbarians?" Anna asked, starting to puff up.

"No," I said, "I think my friends and I don't know anything about where we are, and we need to learn the rules as quickly as possible, so we don't get terminally surprised."

Anna's brow furrowed. "Terminally surprised?" she asked.

"Dead," supplied December.

I tossed the book back to November. "Keep it," I suggested. "See if you can figure out any of it."

Anna walked over to look at the man who'd owned the book. She bent, and pulled a ring off his finger. "Here," she said, "it's a healer's signet. It will amplify the effect of the white magic."

"A magic ring?" November said, walking over to accept it. "Hey, why not." She slipped the ring on her index finger, watched it, then slipped it on her little finger, and then back to the index. "And," she reported, "sure enough, it resizes itself."

I grinned, and turned my attention to the saddlebags on the mount closest to me. I found a canteen and a map. I unfolded the map, studying it. It was printed, with "Imperial Survey" in the bottom right corner.

"What's the plan, oh fearless leader?" December asked.

"We need to go to this cottage of Anna's," I said.

"What?" asked January, sounding shocked. "That's where the other soldiers are!"

"It's where the other soldiers might be," I corrected. "And it's the last place Nick and Janet were seen. We need to know if they're dead. You heard what Anna said... you want to think you're leaving a girl to that?"

January came over, cleaning her sword on a rag she'd found in a saddlebag. "What are we going to do when we get there?" she asked. "I hope you have a better plan than 'Hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle!'"

"I don't have a plan at the moment," I confessed. I found the sword cleaning kit in the saddlebag I was searching, and sprinkled some oil on my blade, as well, before taking the rag to it.

"So, what?" asked December. "You're making this up as you go along?"

"Pretty much," I agreed. "I figure we go, we reconnoiter, we make our plan from there." I gave the blade of the sword another wipe with the rag, and then sheathed it. "All of which is based on getting there. Anna, can you find your way back, without taking the same trail you took when coming here?"

"Yes," she said.

"You sound certain," I observed. "Are you?"

"My family has vacationed in these woods since I was an infant. I have played in them all my life. I can take you back to the cottage on the road or off it, by the route I took getting here, or another."

"She did find the chapel while running in a panic," November noted, and I nodded.

I took a look around the battlefield, and shook my head. "Cavalry on birds," I said, and January grinned at me. I shook my head again, and turned to Anna. "Lay on, MacDuff," I said. "And devil take him who first cries 'hold, it is enough!'"

Anna looked at me, blankly. "What?"

"It's her long-winded way of saying show us the way," November clarified. "MacBeth, act five."

"Oh," Anna said. She shook her head. "You really are from someplace else, aren't you?" She turned, and headed into the woods.

That wraps up the second scene. If you've read this, and have something to say, or would just like to say that you've read it, and you like it or don't like it, or whatever it is you have to say, please drop me a PM and let me know!