Something watched him from the woods. Orrock felt it more than saw or heard it, and he was pleased, momentarily, that his old Guar instincts were still active after so long as a monk.

He took another bite of the bread Obos had packed him, gazing into the fire he’d built and pretending his senses had not been alerted. Yes, there was something to his right. Bipedal and alone. A robber of some kind, he presumed. Yet what sort of robber would stalk a Guar, even one in the orange robe of the Hands of Anyi?

The answer occurred to him just as the creature attacked. His years as a monk had dulled some of his instincts after all.

The Agnise came at him in a furious ball of hands and feet, screeching the high-pitched battle cry of all Agnise, the spawn of Guar.

Like all of her race, the Agnise was female; tall, but shorter than a Guar and covered with the same brown hair over her body, though slightly shorter and more coarse than that of a Guar. Two small horns, ranging in size from mere nubs to perhaps a handspan long, jutted from the skulls of all her kind. This one’s, Orrock saw just before she smashed into him, were only about the size his thumbs.

She crashed into his side, expertly avoiding his mighty horns. They went to the ground in a tangle. Orrock roared his anger into her face as the Agnise struggled to use her martial skills to wrestle him to a standstill. Orrock knew what would happen if she succeeded.

Using his sheer bulk, Orrock rolled over on top of the female, trying to use his massive chest to smother her airway. He wouldn’t kill her—that was not the way of battle between the Guar and the Agnise. Forcing her to pass out, however, was entirely acceptable.

The Agnise knew this trick, and bit Orrock hard in the middle of his torso. The monk roared and sprang to his feet. She spun her body in the dirt while twisting, landing on her hands and knees.

Orrock crashed out of her way to the right as the Agnise leaped again, arms outstretched, mouth wide in another shriek. Her leather pants and vest creaked as her bulging muscles flexed—as the spawn of Guar, she and her kind were broad-shouldered and powerful, with ropes of muscle encircling thick bones.

The monk smashed a fist into her face as she reached him. Her nasal cavity released a flood of blood. The Agnise yelped and fell back, automatically covering her nose with her hands.

“You are beaten!” Orrock shouted. “You will not have me this night, Agnise!”

The female recovered quickly, spitting blood from her mouth and growling savagely at him. Blood continued flowing down her dark face, causing her no alarm whatsoever. “I am not beaten, Guar. I am reassessing my angle of attack.”

Frowning, Orrock said, “Your face is crushed!”

She spit again and wiped at her mouth with one hairy forearm. “I do not need my face to take what I need from you.”

“I warn you, Agnise—”

“I am Mohani!” the Agnise declared righteously.

“Your name means nothing to me. Clear out of this place and give me peace.”

Mohani snarled something in the vague shape of a smile. “I have chosen you, Guar. You are the only of your kind I have seen in months since leaving for my heat. Point me to others, and I will consider your request.”

Orrock released an audible sigh, not taking his eyes off her. Mohani lifted her chin proudly, wiping away more blood with the back of one hand. She wore the leathers of all Agnise, brown and supple around her legs and torso, with leather wraps around her feet. Somewhere nearby, Orrock knew, would be the Agnise’s weapon of choice: a long handled hammer with an iron head, forged by minerals mined in the Agnise’s homeland.

He despised her, as all Guar had despised her race for ages. They were parasites and bastards as far as Orrock was concerned. He’d quite forgotten about them during his safe stay with the Brothers.

Orrock picked at his orange robe. “I am a monk, as you can plainly see. I do not know where any other Guar may be.”

Mohani sneered. “A Guar monk? I do not believe you. Remove your robe and let me take what I require.”

Orrock shifted his weight to his rear foot. “Never. You know I will fight you.”

Mohani popped the knuckles on each of her fingers. “I would expect nothing less, Guar.”

“I am Orrock,” the monk said. “And no Guar you have ever encountered.”

“You are the first I have encountered, so your words are meaningless to me. Shall we continue? Your strength pleases me.”

Orrock tried another approach, relaxing his prepared stance by a fraction and lifting one palm. “Mohani. Please. I am a monk with the Brothers of the Hands of Anyi. I am on a mission. I have not the time for this.”

Mohani snorted upward, hacked, and spat a great glob of mucus and blood into the fire where it sizzled angrily. She licked her lips. “Then defrock, and I will take you quickly.”

“Agnise—”

She struck. Like any good warrior, she’d taken advantage of the slight delay in her target’s reflexes as his brain tried to adjust from speaking to defending. Mohani crashed into Orrock, bringing them to the ground again, perilously close to the fire.

Orrock was the stronger, keeping Mohani at arm’s length while on his back. The Agnise was more wild though, her muscular body writhing above him as she sought new angles of attack in the grappling methods learned by all of her sisters. The Guar had yet to find a way to defeat this martial art, though they had tried for centuries. Since the Agnise took what they needed and fled back to their homeland, there was no Agnise for the Guar to practice their defense against.

The monk flexed hard and shoved the Agnise off him and into the fire. He scrambled to his feet as Mohani screeched and bounced out, singed but unburnt. They stared at each other over the rising sparks, breathing hard.

“Go,” Orrock ordered. His baritone thrummed through the trees.

Mohani glared, then grinned. She dusted off her hands and then her pants before dropping cross-legged on top of Orrock’s blanket. “I believe I will stay. A monk cannot deny a hungry creature food.”

Orrock sighed again. This was not the mission he had prayed for.

Mohani watched him set traps in the woods nearby to catch small mammals for dinner. She offered no help, and Orrock asked for none. They passed the time in silence, which was fine with the monk, though doing all the work for a creature he loathed bothered him.

“You could at least be useful and skin these rodents,” Orrock grumbled, pointing at the wild mice he’d caught in his traps.

“I am to be served by a servant of Anyi,” Mohani said. “So serve me, monk.”

Orrock straightened. “Do not spit that word at me, Agnise. I have apprenticed with my brother Obos for ten years and now seek the will of Anyi.”

“The will of Anyi is that you feed me.” Mohani made a great show of licking her lips.

“It is the will of Anyi that all creatures have food.” Sparks rose from the fire as Orrock poked at the base with a stick. “If a creature can feed itself, in this way it shall eat. That is the word of Holy Creator Anyi.”

Mohani grunted and shook her head. “A Guar monk. Though I am young I have never heard of such contradiction.”

“All Guar believe in Anyi,” Orrock said, but the words were automatic, and soft, like a memory. Indeed, the Guar believed; they just believed differently than the Brothers of the Hands of Anyi.

Mohani arched one side of her single thick eyebrow that ran from ear to ear over her eyes. “Indeed they believe. Yet the Guar are barbarians.”

Orrock stabbed the stick into the fire and rose so quickly that the Agnise reared back; not frightened, to be sure, for Agnise did not frighten easily, but startled by the Guar’s sudden movement.

“You know nothing, Agnise. Guard your tongue.” He kicked his last loaf of bread over the fire to land near the Agnise.

Mohani reached for the bread. “Are you not damned? How does a damned Guar become a monk?”

Orrock growled and stabbed skewers into the dead forest mice with much more force than necessary. “Do your people teach you nothing before sending you on your infernal quest?”

He set the mice near the flames, crossed his mighty arms, and stared into the fire. Mohani ripped a chunk of bread from the loaf and stuffed it into her mouth, chewing loudly.

“Yes—the Guar were proselytized by the Brothers of the Hands of Anyi, very long ago,” Orrock said in a low voice, unblinking. “Before then, we were like the Fell—godless and ignorant. When the Brothers of the Hands of Anyi came, the Guar believed their scriptures.”

Mohani laughed aloud, a grating, hiccup of a sound that made Orrock wince. “Those hairless monks converted the mighty Guar? Ha!”

“No. Not converted. Convinced. My people came to believe in their god. At the time, the Brothers preached that all creatures were doomed to eternal torment unless they accepted the grace of Anyi. That was when the Guar were changed. Believing themselves to be unforgiven and damned by this god, they embraced their fate. Or what they thought was their fate. By choice, they became barbarians.”

Mohani stopped eating. “This is the truth?”

“It is.” Orrock bent—not letting the Agnise out of his line of sight to do so—and turned the mice.

“Then how did you come to join the Brothers?”

“Anyi does not say I must entertain you!” Orrock pointed into the forest. “Eat your food and be on your way.”

Mohani shrugged. “That, I will not do. After all, I am here for my ‘infernal quest.’ We may as well be friendly.”

She winked at him.

Orrock growled again, grabbing a skewer and biting into a forest mouse long before it was thoroughly done. Anyi decreed a compassionate love for all living creatures; so he would obey.

Anyi had not, Orrock thought, ever met an Agnise.

# # #

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