The Desert Spear

got past, so you quit looking down. Reckon I can draw a ripping circle or a heat ward good as you.”
    Shocked, the Painted Man shook his head to clear it. “Sorry. The Warders in the Free Cities treated me the same way when I left the Brook. Forgot how insulting it was.”
    Renna went over to where his gear was stored, pulling a warded knife from a sheath on his saddle. “Here,” she said, coming over to him. “What’s this’un do?” She pointed to the single ward at the tip. “And why’s the rest of the edge just a repeat of this other ward, only rotated? How’s it form a net without connectors?” She turned the weapon over in her hands, running her finger over the dozens of wards on the flat.
    The Painted Man pointed to the tip. “This is a piercing ward, to break the armor. Those on the side are cutting wards, to let the blade slide in once the armor is broken. Cutting wards are self-linking, if you rotate them proper.”
    Renna nodded, her eyes dancing along the lines. “And these?” She pointed to the symbols inside the cutting edge.

    After supper, Jeph hitched his cart, and the whole family climbed in to head to Town Square. Renna rode with the Painted Man, seated behind him on Twilight Dancer.
    They arrived scant minutes before sunset. If the square had been packed the day before, it was near bursting now. Every borough of Tibbet’s Brook was represented in full, man, woman, and child. They filled the street and most of the square, more than a thousand souls in all, succored only by hastily hauled and painted wardstones.
    Everyone looked up when they rode in, ignoring Jeph’s family entirely as they stared at the hooded stranger on his enormous warded stallion, and the girl who rode behind him. The crowd parted as the Painted Man rode through to the center of the square, turning Twilight Dancer back and forth a few times so all could see them. He reached up and pulled his hood down, drawing a collective gasp from the crowd.
    “I came from the Free Cities to teach the good people of Tibbet’s Brook to kill demons!” he shouted. “But so far, I’ve seen no ‘good people.’ Good people do not feed helpless girls to the corelings! Good people do not stand by while someone is cored!” As he spoke, he continued to turn his horse back and forth, meeting as many eyes as possible.
    “She wern’t no helpless girl, Messenger!” Raddock Lawry shouted, coming to the fore of those from Fishing Hole. “She’s a cold killer, and the council voted to have her staked for it.”
    “Ay, they did,” the Painted Man agreed loudly. “And none stood up against them for it.”
    “Folk trust in their Speakers,” Raddock said.
    “That true?” the Painted Man asked the crowd at large. “You folk trust your Speakers?”
    There was a chorus of passionate
Ays
from every section. The folk of Tibbet’s Brook were proud of their boroughs and the surnames they shared.
    The Painted Man nodded. “Then I reckon it’s your Speakers I’ll test.” He leapt down from the horse and, from the harnesses on Twilight Dancer’s saddle, selected ten light spears he stuck point-down to stand quivering in the dirt.
    “Every man or woman of the town council who stands with me and fights tonight, or their heir if they’re killed, will get a battle-warded spear,” he said, raising one of the weapons, “and the secrets of combat warding, so they can make their own.”
    There was a shocked silence as everyone looked to their Speaker.
    “Kin we have some time to think on it?” Mack Pasture asked. “Don’t care to be hasty.”
    “Of course,” the Painted Man said, looking at the sky. “I’d say you have…ten minutes. By this time tomorrow, I intend to be back on the road to the Free Cities.”
    Selia Barren came out of the crowd. “You expect us, the Brook’s elders, to stand in the naked night with naught but them spears?”
    The Painted Man looked at her, still tall and intimidating after all these years. She ’d switched his backside more than once, and always for his own good. The idea of standing up to Selia Barren was more alien to him than staring down a rock demon, but this time it was her that needed a switching.
    “It’s a sight more’n you gave Renna Tanner,” he said.
    “Not all of us voted her out, Messenger,” Selia said.
    The Painted Man shrugged. “You let it happen, all the same.”
    “Ent no one above the law,” Selia said. “When the council voted, we had to put the town first,