The boy stood in the dust of the boot-trampled ground, shiny steel sword held inexpertly before him. It was the same sword that the other boys and girls were holding. It was the same sword that the soldiers were holding as they explained how to use it. It was the same sword the boy's father had trained with and it was the same sword the boy would learn to master.

The boy followed every move, took every step. Once he had learned the sword by itself, he learned to use it with a shield. Once he had learned the sword with the shield on the level ground of the training field, he learned to use it on rough terrain. Once he had learned the sword on rough terrain in controlled sparring, he learned to use it in frantic mêlée.

He devoted himself to that sword and he mastered it. Cold steel became his tool, his instrument of choice. Cold steel became his ally, his only friend. Cold steel became his life. With the sword at his side, the boy became a soldier. If there was one thing that could change a boy to a man, it was military training.

If there was one thing that could break a man, it was military campaign. The boy was ready for battle, but was he ready for war?


Introduction - Don't Get Too Used To It!

Another chapter already? Ridiculous! I was going to give myself more time in between updates, just because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up the pace. This chapter came quickly though and hey why wait when it's ready now!

But seriously, don't get too used to it.


Chapter II - Swindling the Swindler

Katya found herself lost deep within the network of streets, alleyways, and buildings that made up the city. The middle of the day was a busy time in any city and Matosinhos was no exception. She had arrived in Portugal a couple days ago and had been making her way across it mostly by foot, stopping to see the sights on the way and get into general mischief, as she is prone to do.

Now she was about as far west as she could walk. She had come all the way from Russia and if she wanted to continue she would have to find a way to cross the ocean—or, otherwise, change her course. She didn't want to backtrack though. She didn't like backtracking. She wanted to see new sights, not old ones. Do new things, visit new places, try new stuff, meet new people.

That last one was important. There were some people that she didn't want to meet again. General mischief tends to get some people upset...

Of course, Katya wasn't going anywhere soon as long as she was lost in the city. This didn't bother her however. It's not like she was in any hurry—she was always on the move, but never in any hurry. There must be plenty of things to do in the city, she had no fear about finding stuff to occupy her time while she figured her plans out.

For that matter, just being in the city was nice. She had spent most of her life in a small village. In a village there weren't very many people and you knew them all. In the city there were too many people to keep track of—she'd never meet even a fraction of them! Who know what kind of interesting folk she might run into?

Katya looked around, trying to see past the people lining the streets, making their way from one place to another. A building nearby had its door open and the sounds of typical ruckus drifted out of it. Seemed like a good candidate. As good as any other at least. Might as well go see what's going on.

She made her way across the street and into the building, which for all the brightness of the day was fairly dim inside. The curtains were drawn over the window and the lights were off, the room being lit by nothing more than whatever sunlight poured in through the doorway and a few candles burning on some of the tables. It set quite the mood.

The building appeared to be a pub or bar of some sort, but the drink counter was surprisingly lonely. All the people in the room were gathered around the back corner, where the commotion was coming from. They all seemed rather interested in whatever was going on. It just reeked of potential entertainment to the curious fourteen-year-old.

Katya moved closer to get a better look. There was a table set up in the corner and behind it sat a young man with a scruffy beard. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, a black bandana tied around his neck, and a smile on his face. On the table in front of him were three ceramic mugs, turned with their unpainted bottoms facing up.

They were playing a game. Katya stood and watched long enough to get a general idea how the game worked. Someone bet money, putting it on the table, and the man behind the table pulled out an equal amount of money to cover the bet. Then he hid a small rubber ball under one of the mugs, moved them around quickly, and challenged the player to guess which mug the ball was under.

Most of the time, the player lost. A few people seemed to get lucky, however, encouraging everyone else to keep trying. Looked like fun, Katya thought. She was running low on cash too, which made this a great opportunity to earn some more.

Pushing her way through the crowd of spectators and players, Katya approached the table. "Hey!" she said, speaking English, the only language she knew other than Russian. "I want to play your game, boy!"

The man behind the table looked up and laughed. "I think you're a little young for this game, kid. Why don't you just watch?" His English was marked with an accent Katya didn't recognize—she wasn't very good with languages.

"Hah!" Katya scoffed. "Don't tell me what I'm old enough to do, I can play your silly little game just fine!" She pulled a handful of bills out from her pocket. "See, I got money."

The man stared at her for a moment with a look of bemusement and then said "I'm going to be honest, I only caught like half of what you just said there, but you know what they say—money is a universal language. If you wanna play, go ahead and place a bet."

Katya smirked. "No, no, no, no, guessing where the ball is at is boring. I move the cups! You guess!" She slapped a ten euro note on the table. "Ten money!"

A couple of the larger looking men in the crowd shared suspicious glances with the young man behind the table and began to make their way forward, but the man quickly shook his head and spoke up. "You wanna move the cups? All righty, let's see whatcha got." He handed the ball to Katya and put down ten euros of his own.

Behind Katya, the crowd was silent with anticipation, eager to see how things turned out. She carefully and deliberately placed the ball under one of the mugs and moved them all around for a bit, as if trying it out. "I do it right?" she asked when she was finished moving the mugs.

"Yeah, yeah, that's good." He pointed the mug in the middle and said "It's under that one." Katya picked it up and, sure enough, the ball was under that one. The man took his money. "Good job, good job, now—"

Katya slapped down another bill. "I get it now, yes, let's do this for real." The man stared at the fifty euro note, shrugged his shoulders, and put down one of his own. Katya moved the cups again...only this time, after moving them around normally for a few seconds, she made a couple of moves so swift her hands became blurs in the process.

The man blinked his eyes a couple of times. He had lost track of the ball but didn't want to admit it. Seeming to come to a decision, he pointed to the mug on the left and, as confidently as before, said "It's that one." Katya picked it up, revealing that it was empty.

"Ah, too bad, too bad," Katya said. "It was under this one!" She picked up the middle mug again and then took the cash. "See, I figured, you wouldn't guess the same one twice, right? I mean—"

"Yeah, yeah," the man said, interrupting her. He put down another fifty euro note. "That was just a fluke. One more time, come on."

"Only fifty money? We did fifty last time, come on, we do more this time." Katya put down a fifty and followed it with a hundred. The man seemed to consider the stakes for a moment and then reluctantly put down a hundred. The crowd began to hiss and hum as everyone whispered their thoughts to each other. Things were livening up.

This time, Katya didn't even try to look innocent about it—she was swindling the swindler and they both knew it. She moved those cups so fast one could swear they saw smoke. The mugs probably became a couple millimeters shorter in the process. When she finished, the crowd once again fell silent. It seemed everyone was holding their breath, waiting for the man to make his decision.

Katya watched with smug satisfaction as the gambler lost his composure in slow motion. His face began to redden, drops of sweat formed on his forehead, he clenched his jaw (biting into the cigarette by incidence). Slowly, he raised his hand and pointed to the middle mug. Speaking through his teeth he said "This one."

Katya picked it up, empty of course. "Hah! Like I would put it under the same one three times. I look stupid to you?"

"You cheat!" he roared. "It's under none of them! You have it in your hand!" He reached out and flipped the other mugs over, causing them to fall onto the floor and shatter. The ball was sitting right there on the table, previously hidden by the mug on the left.

"Huh, you insult me! I play fair-square! Your eyes just too slow for my hands." As if to prove a point, she swiped up the bank notes with a quick flick of her hand before the man could try to steal them back.

Looking at the table where the bills had been, the man angrily roared again and pulled out a long steel knife. "You give those back you cheat! You thief!"

Katya stared at the knife the man was pointing at her and rolled her eyes. "Pff! You think little knife scare me?" She stood up and reached for her bardiche, the crowd suddenly gasping and scattering out of the way as she swung the huge, heavy, crescent-shaped and iron-gray blade of the war axe in a wide and lazy arc around her. She didn't even have to say anything more—the man simply dropped his knife on the table and took a step back.

"It was nice playing the game with you, but I go now!" Katya smiled, put the bardiche back in its place, turned around, and bolted out the door. For a moment the man just stared at the open door but he quickly came to his senses.

Shaking his head he shouted, in French, "What are you waiting for? Go get her!" Five men from the crowd, who had been pretending to be curious bystanders and potential players like everybody else, suddenly broke off and ran after the girl. It took the rest of the crowd a few seconds to realize that those five people were the only ones who had actually ever won a bet in the game and it took another second for them to realize the implications of that.

Of course, by the time they had pieced it all together and worked themselves into a furiously angry froth the conman was nowhere to be found. He had taken the moment of confusion to pack up what earnings he had left and leave.

Meanwhile, laughing while she ran, Katya dashed down the street, turned around a corner, and ducked through the nearest door. She put her face up against the window and waited until she saw the men run past before letting out a sigh and turning to see where she had ended up.

It looked like another pub, only a lot friendlier than the last one. Brighter too. Less crowded. "Hi!" she said to the patrons of the restaurant, raising her hand in greeting. Realizing she had spoken in her native tongue, she tried to remember what the local word was. "Olá!"

Katya couldn't help but notice that there seemed to be a boy about her age sitting at the counter. What a relief from all these boring adults! He was wearing a nifty green wool coat with two rows of shiny silver buttons, both undone (no surprise, in such warm weather) and blue trousers. Under his coat he seemed to be wearing more belts than necessary—the one around his waist carried, of all things, a sword.

She walked over to the counter and sat down in the stool next to the boy. "Olá!" she repeated, then waved her arm at the bartender. He said something she didn't understand and she just pointed at the boy's plate and said, in English, "That!" She wasn't sure what "that" was, but it was covered in cheese and it came with a side of fries and that was good enough for her.

"Hey!" she said to the boy, trying to get him to talk. "What's up!"

The boy just looked up at her, mumbled "Nothing much," and stuck another bite of food into his mouth. What a boring kid! What would she have to do to make him talk?

It was then that Katya noticed the hat sitting on the counter. One of those hats with the brim folded up so it forms three points. It had a bundle of red ribbon on one side. "This your hat?" she asked, grabbing it before he had a chance to say anything. She stuck it on her head, positioning it so that the ball of ribbon was on the front. "Very nice!" she said. The boy kept quiet.

Katya ordered a soda, getting the boy to help translate to the bartender for her, and soon her meal arrived. Although she tried once again to start up a conversation, the boy refused to say much. He finished his meal before she was even halfway done with hers and prepared to leave.

That was when Katya heard the tiny little voice for the first time, coming from somewhere just above her. She looked up and saw nothing and then looked over to the boy to see if he knew what had happened. Suddenly, she felt something move on her head and an object dropped down in front of her vision.

Before she even had time to register what she'd seen, the hat was on the other side of the room, the stool she was sitting on was on its side on the floor, and she was covering her mouth and hoping no one had heard the beginning of that scream she almost let out. She couldn't stand little creepy crawly things but...was that a tiny little person?

Turns out it was a fairy, her name was Capitã Fernanda, and she could speak Russian. She also introduced the boy, as Navegador Noé. The fairy managed to get the boy talking more than Katya had seen so far, albeit mostly in Portuguese. At least things were finally starting to get interesting.

While Fernanda and Noé were arguing over something, one of the conman's cronies burst into the room and spotted Katya. Quickly looking for a route of escape, the only thing she could come up with was the kitchen. Certainly there would be a service entrance back there? But it would be such a shame to run off right when she had made new friends. She doubted the boy, shy as he was, would follow if she asked him to. However...

Putting her devious plan into action, Katya snatched the hat right off of Noé's head and flew over the counter. He'd have to follow her now! She ran through the kitchen, knocking over several pots and pans full of delicious smelling food (whoops, that was too bad) and made her way out the back door.

"Hey, where are we going?" the tiny little voice said, speaking Russian. Katya stopped for a moment, waiting in the alley behind the restaurant. She had forgotten about the fairy in the hat.

"I don't know," Katya responded. "Just away from here." Noé finally caught up and asked for his hat back, but around the same time the big sailor came around from the other side. Laughing, Katya said "You want it? Come get it!" in English and then took off down the street.

"You know," said the tiny little voice again, "I have a place we could go!" Following Fernanda's instructions, Katya wound down the street, down to the waterfront, onto the pier, and onto the fairy's ship. Fernanda, apparently being the captain of the ship, permitted Noé to board but left the other guy on the pier.

Then, the gangplank moved, all by itself. As if with magic, it pulled itself up onto the deck and left Katya quite mystified. First fairies, then magic? Actually, that seemed fairly logical.

The boy, having finally caught up to her, took his hat back from her head. She let him have it and then said to him, in English, "Cool ship! You know, I've never actually been on one before." Then she started exploring. There seemed to be a lot of wood and a lot of ropes. She tried climbing one of the ropes.

Before she had made it very far Fernanda started talking, in English. "So, why was that guy chasing you anyway?"

Katya gave up on the rope and with a smile said "Well, let me explain." And so she did.


Notes - A Logical Turn of Events

Ehhh...personally I don't like this chapter as much as the previous one. I'm hoping it gets better after this, once things start happening but...well who knows, maybe it's all downhill from here!

Stay tuned to find out!