Sand Red

16

The morning was bright. sunlight streamed in through the broken walls. I lifted myself from the bed, yawning. I had woken up a bit late. I walked out into the bright sunshine. The beds were all empty, the children gone. I found Charlotte and rounded up the older children just returned from hunting with her.

'Come on,' I raised my voice. 'Weapons training.'

They talked among themselves as they assembled. I led them to a secluded stretch.

I turned to face them. 'Your parents are gone,' I began. 'It's unfair. It's wrong. It's animal.' I looked into the hard faces around me. 'But we have to survive.' I paused. 'You have to learn to live and protect yourselves and those you care about.' I paused. 'Raise your siblings in safety, and your children one day. I'm going to teach you to do what your parents did to keep you alive. To hunt, to fight, to find fruit, to steal and trade for water. I will teach you to fight, with your bare hands, with knives, and with guns, in any surroundings you may be thrown into, on an empty stomach or full, alert or sleepless. I can make each and every one of you lethal if you work hard enough.' The faces around me were riveted. 'Shall we begin?'

Sanam nodded her assent, and the others followed.

The children were paired up and I began to teach them how to hold knives of different lengths and observe their opponent.

'In a real fight, circumstances will likely be unfair. You don't have to 'win' every fight. The point of a fight is not to win, but to get safely away. If that requires killing your opponent, you do that. If the situation is dire, you do your best to get away safely. You run if you have to. Whatever happens, you must get out of there with your life. Revenge, morality, and anger are not good reasons to fight. If a fight can be avoided, avoid it. Do what is necessary to stay alive and unhurt.'

The children fought with chilling wrath. They fought desperately, and several low blows were dealt. By noon, Enya and Niger were bleeding, and all were bruised. I indicated they were to assemble.

'You can't hurt each other like this. We need every hand on deck right now. Don't injure your friends. I want civil fights from tomorrow. Is that understood?'

Choruses of 'Yes sir,' and 'Aye' rang through the crowd.

'Now, you have to learn that restraint is a powerful skill when you're fighting. Combat isn't necessarily about who is stronger than the other- that's the way you're treating it. Applying your mind will help you a lot more in a fight than pure strength. You have to treat it as a 

'Class dismissed.'

They began to move slowly away.

I left the field and wandered around the camp in search of the water safe. I still hadn't gotten used to the layout of the new camp and finding places was a game of trial and error. It didn't help that this camp was so damned big.

I found Yul at the safe, sipping from the beaker. He turned at the sound of my footsteps. 'How was training?'

'They're a bunch of fighters. Beat each other up like crap today.'

'We did too.'

I laughed, remembering when the three of us training together under Jordan. 'Remember when you and I weren't speaking to each other and then we beat each other to pulp during training?'

'Jordan had to separate us,' Yul said, grinning as he remembered. He handed me the beaker. I sipped from it while Yul waited for me companionably. 'What're you doing now?' he asked.

'Watch duty, I presume.'

'I'll join you.'

I smiled inside. He was speaking to me. We were friends again. We treaded over to the shed where Alek handed us our loaded rifles. The rifles were a wealth our camp owned. Neither rifles nor bullets were produced anymore and we were under strict orders not to fire unless the job couldn't be done with a knife. Bows and arrows would've been more useful, but we had none of those.