The Desert Spear

hunting knife with a stained blade. The Painted Man’s sharp nostrils caught the scent of dried blood as he recognized Raddock Lawry, the Speaker from Fishing Hole.
    “This ent your affair, Messenger!” Lawry said, pointing the knife at him. “That girl killed my kin, as well as her own da, and we aim to see her cored for it!”
    The Painted Man glanced at Renna in shock, and like a slap in the face it all came back to him. The marriage games she and Beni had wanted to play with him in the hayloft, games they said they learned from watching Ilain with their father. Ilain’s secret, pleading words to Jeph, begging him to take her away. The grunting from Harl’s room deep in the night.
    The memories flooded back, but this time he saw them as a grown man, and not a naïve boy. Horror struck him, followed quickly by anger. He reached out faster than Raddock could react, catching the man’s wrist in a
sharusahk
twist that flipped him to the ground even as the knife came free from his hands.
    The Painted Man held the blade up for all to see. “If Renna Tanner killed her da,” he shouted, “then I tell you, he had it comin’!”
    He moved to cut Renna’s bonds, but several Fishers, led by Garric, charged him with their thin spears. He stuck the bloody knife in the stake and turned to meet them.
    To call it a fight would have been overly kind to the Fishers. They were strong men, but no warriors. The Painted Man was a trained fighter, and stronger than all of them together. It was only by his mercy that none of them were permanently injured when they hit the ground.
    “Ent nobody getting cored while I’m around,” he barked. “I’m taking her, and there ent a corespawned thing you can do about it!”
    There was a thump, and he looked up, his eyes widening in disbelief. Jeorje Watch stood there, looking much as he had the last time the Painted Man had seen him, though that had been over sixteen years gone, and Jeorje in his nineties then.
    “Nothing we can do, may be,” he said, nodding and pointing with his stick, “but reckon we’re not the ones you need to contend with, boy. The Plague take you both!”
    The Painted Man followed the stick and saw he was right. Mist was rising throughout the square, and already some corelings were solidifying. The Fishers on the ground shrieked and scrambled back behind the wards.
    Jeorje Watch had a grim smile on his face, one of righteous satisfaction, but the Painted Man didn’t flinch. Instead he pulled off his hood and met the Southwatch Tender’s eyes.
    “I’ve contended with worse, old man,” he growled, stripping off his robe, as well. The crowd gasped at the sight of his tattooed flesh.
    As always, the first to come were the flame demons. One leapt at Renna, but the Painted Man caught its tail, hurling it across the square. Another pounced at him, but the wards on his skin flared to life and its claws could find no purchase. He caught the coreling’s jaws before it could bite, so it spat fire in his eyes.
    The wards on his face glowed briefly, absorbing the attack and turning it into nothing more than a cool breeze. All the while the wards on his palms glowed more and more fiercely until he crushed the demon’s snout, hurling it aside.
    A wood demon formed next, charging Twilight Dancer, but the stallion reared and trampled it, sparks flying from his warded hooves.
    There was a shriek from above, and the Painted Man pivoted in time to grab the diving wind demon and turn its momentum against it, throwing it hard to the ground and crushing its throat with a stomp of his foot and a thunderclap of magic.
    Two more wood demons came at him, and he kicked the first in the stomach, knocking it back with a blast of magic before grappling with the other. He caught one of its arms in a
sharusahk
hold and pulled with all his strength, tearing the demon’s arm clear off. This he threw at Jeorje Watch, though the limb bounced off the wards of the Southwatch Tender’s circle.
    Three flame demons set upon the crippled wood demon, and soon the wounded coreling was shrieking as it was consumed in flame. The other wood demon recovered and made to come at the Painted Man, but he snarled at it, and the demon kept its distance.
    “It’s the Deliverer!” someone in the crowd cried. Many others echoed his words, some even falling to their knees, but the Painted Man only scowled.
    “Ent here to deliver anyone that would put a girl out in the night!” he roared. He turned