Sunset found the three of them back by the small fire ring in their own camp. They were worn out.

     "These people have been put through an awful lot," Gander said while staring into the fire. "It's amazing they are in as good a shape as they are."

     "They're good, hardy, peasant folk," Xena said. "They derive their sustenance from the land and the land makes them strong. I should know. I came from a village very much like theirs and it was a good place to grow up and live in: Or at least it was until a warlord's raiding party paid it a little visit"

     "And that," said Gander, "was when you became a warrior or so I've heard."      

     "Yes," Xena said, simply.

     "Well," Gander said, "at least we have supplied these people with the essentials of survival. Now I suppose what we, the three of us, need to do is decide what if anything else we can or should do to help them."

     Xena, and Gabrielle too, had been looking into the glowing embers as though the answers to all problems might be found there. Xena was the first to raise her head and give the Wizard a steady look.

     "I'm open to suggestions," she said in an icy cold voice.

     "Me too," Gabrielle said; her chin up, a fiercely determined look in her eyes.

     "For what it's worth this is what I've been thinking. If we," Gander began slowly, "the three of us, by ourselves, bring this reign of terror to an end ... and I'm pretty sure we could ... that might be good. But eventually we have to be on our way. That will leave these people in the same position they were in when this whole nightmare began for them.      

     "So simply giving them their homes back, though good, would not be as good as helping them to fight for and take back that which is theirs. Then they might have the confidence and strength they need to meet the next threat to what they hold dear. After all what are the odds we, or others like us, will be handy to come to their rescue some time in the future?"

     Xena's face showed clearly she had mixed feelings about what was being proposed.

     "How many of them do you think are fit enough to fight?" Xena asked.

     "Eighty, ... perhaps a hundred of the men," Gander replied thoughtfully. "If we include those of their women folk who are spry enough they would then be close to two hundred strong."

     "How would you use their women?" Xena asked. "I mean it took me some time and no small effort to learn the martial arts."

     "They don't need to wield a sword as expertly as you do Xena," Gander said with a grin. "However I think you will agree that numerous flights of arrows, say sixty or seventy arrows to a flight, will usually cause any foe a lot of grief. So what I was thinking was it might be possible to train them well enough to enable them, shooting all at once, to hit a formation of these black uniformed villains while, hopefully, missing their own men folk."

     "I take it," Xena said, "you can supply the necessary weapons."

     "I can and I will," Gander said, "if you will train these people to use them."

     "I will," Xena said with a quick, affirmative, nod of her head.

     With the subject of their next course of action settled the three of them said good night and went to their beds. The day just past had been a hard one and the days ahead offered more of the same. In a matter of minutes they passed into blissful oblivion.

     The next morning Gander and Xena invited Akress, and any other village elders he might choose, to their camp for breakfast and what amounted to a council of war. After they had finished eating Gander put his suggestions to the old Headman and the rest of the village leadership. Though one or two were less than enthusiastic about taking on the Magician's troops the majority, including Akress, agreed, at least in principle, with what had been proposed.

     When they parted Gander went off to find a private place where he could set up shop, as he put it, and begin to produce the promised arms. Akress and the other village elders headed back to their own camp in the forest to begin the process of organizing their people.

     They had been told to have each of their young men supply themselves with sticks of about the same length as swords and staffs. Until Gander could finish what he had to do to supply the necessary weapons these sticks and staffs would have to suffice for training in the use of swords and spears.

     Xena found there were several village men who had been warriors when they were younger. These Xena took aside to see what they remembered of the use of arms and began giving them instruction in those skills they had either forgotten or become weak in.

     To the uninitiated she seemed unnecessarily demanding, ruthless, even merciless in the training and exercises she put these men through. But those being trained remembered all too well the true face of war. They knew there was nothing she could put them through to equal what they would experience when battle was finally joined for real. So they grit their teeth and kept right on working and learning, or re-learning, all the dirty, vicious, little tricks so necessary to killing a foe before he killed you.

     There was another factor which spurred these men on in their training. They'd been informed, in the beginning, it would be up to them to train and lead the rest of their people in this conflict. These were their friends, neighbors, even their own children, who they would soon be leading in harms way. For that reason if no other they had to be the best they could be. Otherwise their friends and loved ones might suffer and die needlessly. There had already been too much useless suffering and death. There would be no more. This they all vowed quietly to themselves.

     It took Xena a couple of weeks, working from dawn to well past dusk, to bring these men along to the point where she felt they were ready to begin training the others. Then a great deal of the load was taken from her and she was able to stand back and watch as her 'pupils' went to work with groups of fifteen to twenty each.

     Where she saw a weakness or a problem developing she would step in and make the necessary corrections. Otherwise she simply supervised the exercises and training as they proceeded and became more and more arduous.

     Gabrielle too had her part to play. Those of the village children who were considered too young to take part in the anticipated attack on the fortress were not going to be left totally helpless. They were given either quarter staffs or bows which had been proportionately downsized. Though these weapons were not as robust as their adult counterparts they were still heavy and strong enough to do some serious damage. It would be the lot of these youths to take charge of and defend their new settlement against any of the Magician's troops who might, somehow, get through. Gabrielle was given the responsibility of helping to train, and lead, these youngsters.

     When she wasn't involved in working with the village children, which was normally in the evening, she was asked to join Akress and the village elders, along with Xena and Gander. Sometimes these meetings would take place in the villager's camp and, sometimes, they would gather around the small fire ring at her own camp site. At either location her function remained the same.

     Drawing from her memory, stories of battles, great and small, she recounted these for Xena, Gander, Akress, and the others. In turn they would pick these accounts to pieces to see if there were any lessons to be learned: Lessons they could apply to any plans they might develop for themselves.

     Days became a week and the weeks followed each other in rapid succession. A great deal of progress was made but there remained much more to do. From the start time had not been a friend. Now they began to fear it as an enemy. For some three weeks the Magician's black guards had refrained from coming up the track from the valley floor and while they thanked the gods for their good luck, so far, all knew it wouldn't last.

     As Gander was able to produce the promised weapons and more of the dispossessed villagers received arms there was a corresponding increase in their overall confidence. But Xena warned all concerned they were not yet ready for a head on confrontation with the Magician's soldiers. However the time was quickly approaching, Xena said, when they might begin to cause a little, selective, havoc of their own for Kuhlamann.

     Xena had found that Akress was no braggart. Though a bit rusty at first Akress soon demonstrated he was a better than average archer and the sword Gander gave Akress had impressed him. In appearance it was nothing special but the quality of its blade and its balance were superb.

     In several practice matches Xena learned whatever the older man might have lost in speed and power he made up for with subtle skill and cunning. He showed he knew more than one way to turn an opponents brute force against him with very lethal effect; employing tactical traps with which he very nearly caught her on a number of occasions. While her superior agility and some of her unique offensive and defensive moves gave her the edge the 'old' man quickly proved he could make chopped liver out of the average man- at-arms.

     Some of the children with whom Gabrielle was working came up with a surprise of their own. These were the young shepherds who's responsibility had been to care for the village's flocks. For one reason or another some of them couldn't get the hang of using either staff or bow. But the speed, power, and accuracy with which they could hurl stones with their slings was quite impressive. When Gabrielle told Gander of this new, potential, offensive possibility it didn't take the Wizard long to come up with an even more lethal variation on the same theme.

     In a day or so he had produced new slings; slightly longer with reinforced pouches. The projectiles he made, for use with the new slings, were enough to give even Xena and Akress a cold chill down their spine. These were small, iron, balls a little over an inch in diameter from which many small, thin, pointed spikes sprouted in all directions.

     Once in the hands of the young shepherds it wasn't long before they became as proficient with the new slings and missiles as they had been with their old ones. Sections of tree trunks were sawed off and set up as targets for these youngsters and the impact of their spiked missiles could be heard for some distance. So deeply did these projectiles imbed themselves in the targets the youngsters needed small thin iron rods to pry them from the wood. That these would stop a man, dead in his tracks, there was no doubt at all.

     As the days passed the younger village women began to show promise as archers. While none of them were able to hit a small target at range they could put all of their shots within a circular area, measuring ten cubits across, at a considerable range. This meant they could break an enemy charge or sow his defences with confusion, terror, and death. After all the suffering and nightmarish horror they and their families had been put through these women yearned, they lusted, for the opportunity to pay their tormentors back in their own kind.

     Even the elderly and those still recuperating from wounds or illness had something to offer. Over the first few weeks since the villagers had been able to obtain decent tools with which to work they had begun to replace their first crude shelters with better, more permanent, structures. It had also dawned on them that their position enabled them to control the pass through the mountains.

     While it was not the only way into or out of the region it was still an important route for commerce and communications. With these things in mind the village elders decided to make any approach to their new settlement an extremely disagreeable affair for any but their own people.

     With the majority of the young and able bodied already engaged in either defense, or hunting to provide meat for the people, those who were unable to take part in either of these activities went to work preparing a large number of ugly surprises along the natural approaches leading to their new village. Snares, deadfalls, pits of various sizes and depths, their bottoms filled with sharpened stakes.

     Given the nature of the enemy which might soon come against them there was no trick too foul nor trap to vicious for the elderly or disabled villagers to derive pleasure from preparing for them. Yes these cruel devices could pose an equal threat to the unwary village child but they were essential to their over-all defense. So the very young were kept together under close supervision while all others were carefully shown the location and nature of each deadly trap.

     When they were through with their murderous undertaking they were reasonably certain of two things: Whatever their number the Magician's troops would be decimated in the course of their approach. Additionally any element of surprise would be gone long before they came in sight of the settlement.

     What was more those black clad fiends who made it as far as the settlement would find themselves on the receiving end of a very hot reception. These evil caricatures of human beings had given no quarter in their attack on the villagers and by all the gods the villagers would serve them the same.

     On the second day of the third week a small, ten man, patrol of the Magician's troops gave the villagers their first opportunity to test their metal. An outpost had been established in a position where the dirt track leading up to the pass could be kept under observation. The black uniformed soldiers had been spotted while they were still more than a league away and a runner had been sent to warn those waiting in ambush of the enemy's approach.

     Having accomplished this he was sent on to take word to the rest of the people in the settlement. Upon hearing the news Xena and Akress mounted Argo and Gander once again transformed himself and took flight.

     While Gander, as expected, arrived at the ambush site first Xena and Akress arrived not long after him. Those on guard had already taken positions at a sharp bend in the path. The trap was set up in a sort of "L" shape with the short leg running across and blocking the track itself while the longer leg covered the flank. At this point the forest ran right down to the path giving them excellent cover and concealment.

     When the Magician's troops approached they were heard before they were seen. The sound of their measured tread told the ambushers that the soldiers were, as usual, coming up the track in a close order formation. Well good. That suited the young archers just fine.

     Xena, Akress, and Gander were content for the moment to just watch as the trap slammed shut. As the enemy marched around the bend in the path they were greeted with a flight of a half dozen arrows. As they tried to turn and run they received another flight of arrows, at nearly point blank range, from their flank. In less than a minute it was over. The entire patrol lay crumpled, in bloody pools, dead in the path; their bodies sprouting arrows like quills on a porcupine.

     Leaving the cover of the forest the three of them joined a number of the young villagers on the path and double checked the corpses to be sure none were playing possum. In the process of doing this Xena took one of their swords from its scabbard to examine it. What she saw chilled her. This weapon was as Akress had described them. Pommel, grip, guard and blade were all black; blacker than a grave at midnight. The only bright metal to be seen was and extremely narrow band, running along both edges, from the guard to the point.

     Comparing the black weapon's size to her own sword there was no great difference but for some reason the enemy weapon felt lighter and better balanced in her hand.

     "Look at this," she said as she walked over to the Wizard. "I've never seen a sword of this size that weighs so little."

     As Gander turned to face her she saw a flash of recognition in the Wizard's eyes. Taking the weapon from her he held it up before him, his expression grim. For a number of heart beats he remained silent; contemplating not just the sword but what it portended. It became apparent to her that Gander found the weapon to be deeply significant and terribly sinister.

     "I dare say you haven't seen a sword like this Xena." Gander said. "Nor have I for that matter; at least not for a hundred and twenty five years I haven't. Its metallurgy and the manner in which it was crafted are quite inferior to the blade it was copied from. However it was a sword very much like this, in appearance, which left me lame."

     Xena was stunned by the implication of what Gander had just said.

     "You can't mean...."

     "No." Gander said in reply to Xena's half spoken question. "Were my one time friend within a thousand leagues of me I would know it. So no. He remains far removed from where we stand here. But this ... thing ... tells me we still have a problem much more serious than I had originally thought."

     "What do you mean?" Xena asked.

     "I mean, Xena, our little Magician friend is no Magician at all. This .. handsome .. young fellow, this Kuhlamann, is truly possessed of the 'Dubious Gift' but his mind and heart are black with evil. At the very least he is a Sorcerer's apprentice, if not a Sorcerer in his own right; and this ... thing ... makes me more than willing to bet my old nemeses was his Master.

     "Then this sword has some sort of power?" Xena asked.

     "Not really." Gander said. "At best it is a mediocre imitation of the original although that doesn't make it a poor weapon in ordinary terms.

     "I think we had best find out just how good these swords of theirs are," Gander said, turning to Akress who had been listening to their conversation.

     As he had done only a few weeks before, with Xena, he held the black blade of the weapon straight out and told Akress to draw his own sword and strike it with all his might. When Akress complied there was a bell-like ring and while his blade was none the worse for wear a tiny notch had appeared in the edge of the enemy weapon.

     "Well," said Gander, "I suppose this tells us just about all we need to know. On the other hand, though they are inferior, we may find a use for these things."

     In a flash Xena knew what the Wizard was thinking.

     "You know, Gander," she said, "for someone who has never been much more than an observer of warfare you sure do have a sneaky mind."

     Gander was grinning from ear to ear.

     "Oh I can dream up a dirty trick or two when the occasion arises," he said.

     Facing Akress Xena suggested he have the bodies stripped completely and have the uniforms, weapons, and armor taken back to the village. Though she knew it would be an unpleasant task she asked that he have the village women wash and clean everything and mend, as best they could, the rents in the uniforms made by the arrows.

     As for the bodies; they were to be taken as far as possible from the ambush site and disposed of in such a way that no one was ever likely to find them. Of equal importance; several of the young men were told to go and get a number of leafy branches with which to sweep the path completely clean. No sign of the bloody ambush could be left behind. Then Gander thought of something else.

     "Xena, not that their companions are likely to be all that thorough but, what say we get some more of the villagers, ten should do nicely, and have them put the soldier's boots on. Then have them form up like the soldiers were and march back down the path a ways. Once they are a few leagues from here they can simply step off the path where they aren't likely to leave prints."

     "Not bad," said Xena with a grin. "That way it will look like the whole patrol just disappeared into thin air."

     Gander chuckled a bit. "It never hurts to sow a bit of confusion in the enemy ranks," he said.