The Warder struggled weakly, but the Par’chin straddled him, pinning him with his knees as he continued to clean the wound.

“Help me!” the Par’chin called in Krasian, but the dal’Sharum only watched in confusion. Jardir felt it, too. These were no simple wounds. Could he not see the man was doomed to life as a cripple if he should survive?

Jardir walked over to the pair. The Par’chin was trying to thread a hooked needle while keeping pressure on the bandages with his elbow. The warrior continued to struggle, making the task impossible.

“Hold him still!” the Par’chin cried, seeing his approach. Jardir ignored him, looking in the warrior’s eyes. The dal’Sharum gave a slight shake of his head.

Jardir plunged his spear into the man’s heart.

The Par’chin shrieked, dropping his needle and launching himself at Jardir. He grabbed Jardir’s robes and shoved him back hard, slamming him against the Maze wall.

“What are you about?” the Par’chin demanded.

All around the ambush point, warriors raised their spears and approached. No man was allowed to lay hands on the First Warrior.

Jardir raised a hand to forestall them, keeping his eyes on the green-lander, who had no idea how close he was to death.

Upon seeing the Par’chin’s eyes, Jardir revised that assessment. Perhaps he did know, and simply didn’t care. Killing the Warder had offended the greenlander beyond reason.

“I am about letting men die with honor, son of Jeph,” Jardir said. “He did not want your help. He did not need it. He had done his duty, and now he is in Heaven.”

“There is no Heaven,” the Par’chin growled. “All you did was murder a man.”

Jardir flexed, breaking the Par’chin’s hold easily. The man had learned sharusahk quickly over the last two years, but he was not yet a match for most dal’Sharum, much less one trained in Sharik Hora. He punched the Par’chin in the jaw, easily ducking his return swing. He twisted the man’s arm behind him and slammed him to the ground.

“Just this once,” he whispered in the Par’chin’s ear, “I will pretend I did not hear you say that. Speak your Northern blasphemies again in Krasia, and your life will be forfeit.”

Keep him close, Inevera had said, but he had failed.

Jardir stood alone atop the wall, watching as the alagai fled the coming sun. The great rock demon, which his men had taken to calling Alagai Ka, paced before the restored gates, but the wards were strong. Soon he, too, would sink back down to Nie’s abyss for another day.

Jardir kept remembering the desperation in the Par’chin’s eyes, the need to save the Warder’s life. Jardir knew he had been right to end it and ensure the man glory over a life as a cripple, but he knew, too, that he had deliberately antagonized the Par’chin in the process.

Among his people, such abject lessons were common, and no man would try to assault his betters for the life of a cripple. But as Jardir had learned again and again, the greenlanders were not like his people, not even the Par’chin. They did not embrace death as part of life. They fought it as hard as any dal’Sharum fought alagai.

There was honor in that, of a sort. The dama were wrong to call the greenlanders savages. Inevera’s command notwithstanding, Jardir liked the Par’chin. The rift between them gnawed at him, and he wondered at how to repair it.

“Thought I’d find you here,” a voice behind him said. Jardir chuckled. The greenlander had a way of appearing when Jardir’s thoughts were turned his way.

The Par’chin stood atop the wall, looking down. He hawked loudly and spit, his phlegm striking the head of the rock demon, twenty feet below. The demon roared at him, and they laughed together as it sank beneath the dunes.

“One day he will lie dead at your feet,” Jardir said, “and Everam’s light will burn his body away.”

“One day,” the Par’chin agreed.

The two men stood quietly for a time, lost in their own thoughts. The greenlander had grown a beard as Jardir had suggested, but the yellow hair on his pale face only made him seem more of an outsider than his bare cheeks had.

“Came to apologize,” the Par’chin said at last. “It’s not my right to judge your ways.”

Jardir nodded. “Nor I yours. You acted in loyalty, and I was wrong to spit upon that. I know you have grown quite close to the Warders since you learned our tongue. They have learned much from you.”

“And I from them,” the Par’chin said. “I meant no insult.”

“It seems our cultures are a natural insult to each other, Par’chin,” Jardir said. “We must resist the urge to take offense, if we are to continue to learn from each other.”

“Thank you,” the Par’chin said. “That means a great deal to me.”

Jardir gave a dismissive wave. “We will speak on it no more, my friend.”

The greenlander nodded and turned to go.

“Do all men in the North believe as you do?” Jardir asked. “That Heaven is not truth?”

The Par’chin shook his head. “The Tenders in the North tell of a Creator who lives in Heaven and gathers the spirits of his faithful there, much as your dama do. Most people believe their words.”

“But you do not,” Jardir said.

“The Tenders also say the corelings are a Plague,” the Par’chin said. “That the sins of man were so great that the Creator sent the demons to punish us.” He shook his head. “I will never believe that. And if the Tenders are wrong about that, what faith should I put in the rest of their words?”

“Then why do you fight, if not for the glory of the Creator?” Jardir asked.

“I don’t need Holy Men to tell me corelings are an evil to be destroyed,” the Par’chin said. “They killed my mother and broke my father. They’ve murdered my friends and neighbors and family. And somewhere out there,” he swept a hand over the horizon, “is a way to destroy them. I will seek until I find it.”

“You are right to doubt these Tenders of yours,” Jardir said. “The alagai are no plague, they are a test.”

“A test?”

“Yes. A test of our loyalty to Everam. A test of our courage and will to fight Nie’s darkness. But you are mistaken, too. The way to their destruction is not out there,” he waved his hand at the horizon dismissively, “it is in here.” He touched a finger to the Par’chin’s heart. “And on the day all men find their hearts and stand united, Nie will not be able to stand against us.”

The Par’chin was silent a long time. “I dream of that day,” he said at last.

“As do I, my friend,” Jardir said. “As do I.”

More than two years after his first visit, Par’chin returned once again. Jardir looked up from chalked slates of battle plans, seeing the man cross the training ground, and felt as if his own brother had returned from a long journey.

“Par’chin!” he called, spreading his arms to embrace him. “Welcome back to the Desert Spear!” He spoke the greenlander’s language fluidly now, though the words still felt ugly on his tongue. “I did not know you had returned. The alagai will quail in fear tonight!”

It was then Jardir noticed the Par’chin came with Abban in tow, though neither he nor Jardir needed the fat khaffit to communicate any longer.

Jardir looked at Abban in disgust. He had grown even fatter since Jardir saw him last, and still draped himself in silk like a Damaji’s favored wife. It was said he dominated trade in the bazaar, due in no small part to his extensive contacts in the North. He was a leech, putting profit above Everam, above honor, and above Krasia.

“What are you doing here among men, khaffit?” he demanded. “I have not summoned you.”

“He’s with me,” the Par’chin said.

“He was with you,” Jardir said pointedly. Abban bowed and scurried off.

“I don’t know why you waste your time with that khaffit, Par’chin,” Jardir spat.

“Where I come from, a man’s worth does not end with lifting the spear,” the Par’chin said.

Jardir laughed. “Where you come from, Par’chin, they do not lift the spear at all!”