‘Maeres, my friend, you can’t be serious?’ Ootana was a specialist with countless knife-bouts notched onto his belt. He’d sliced open half a dozen good knifemen this year already. ‘At least let my fighter train with the hook-knife for a few weeks! He’s from the ice. If it’s not an axe they don’t understand it.’ I tried for humour but Ootana already waited behind the gate, a loose-limbed devil from the farthest shores of Afrique.
