Chapter 1

I would have been surprised, shocked even, but when, after looking at a host of test results and a brain scan, an oncologist uses the words death and imminent in the same sentence you expect certain things.

Opening my eyes and seeing a beautiful blue sky instead of hospital ceiling tiles was more pleasant than some of the alternatives I imagined.

"Hmm."

I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. Nobody with horns and a pitchfork was standing over me, which qualified as a good thing, but nobody with wings and white robe did either, which qualified as a neutral thing because people with horns and pitchforks might have been fucking with me.

After a while, I noticed something sharp poking me, not pitchfork sharp and in a place where only a very short person with horns could get to. I lifted my right shoulder and searched underneath with my left hand. Finding the sharp thing quickly, I pulled it out and settled back down. I opened an eye to look at the thing, a triangular rock with a point.

I winged it with as much strength as I could muster from a prone position and closed my eye. The rock hit something, which sounded a lot like wood.

A wall, okay; maybe even a nurse; but I could not remember any wood in my hospital room. I lifted my head, opening my eyes I looked in the direction I threw the rock.

Three thin poles, too close to be what the rock hit, stood straight up from the ground. At a distance, I could see a line of trees.

"What the fuck!" I sat up. Too quickly! The area spun for a few seconds; I closed my eyes and relaxed.

Opening my eyes, I looked around.

"Oh, let this be Kansas!"

I was sitting in a clearing; three poles, something on the ground by the poles, and lots and lots and lots of trees (more trees that I had ever seen in my life).

"I am totally fucked."

In the vernacular, there are levels of fucked: husband coming home early and no windows in the bedroom (fucked); the girlfriend announcing a + sign on the pregnancy test after you've opened the dream college's acceptance letter (oh ffffucked!); a dear john letter explaining you weren't the father before a mission into a system of caves serving as the enemy hideout and weapons depot (fucked and fuck you!); oncologist, death, imminent (just fucked... ); city boy's death hallucination being of a fucking forest (fucked, fuck you, and what the fuck!).

Totally fucked was looking down at my legs, and they weren't there-at least, not my legs. The dick, if a penis could be that big and still be a dick, was also not mine (not that I lacked, but you don't poke a three hundred pound lineman in the chest and call him peewee). A quick inventory told the rest of the tale.

I wasn't me.

I was a teenage boy?except I wasn't a teenage boy, I was a grown-ass man with four combat tours and a death march (marriage and divorce).

Teenage boys wanted to be me, not me being a teenage boy!

"OH FUCK NO!" I jumped up, kept jumping up and down, and slapped myself.

I had to stop; the slapping sucked. I learned long before if it didn't involve a woman, fucked and sucked just fucking sucked. I knelt down, looking right to left, left to right, right to left, over and over again.

Putting my hands to my face, I closed my eyes tightly, "Wake up! Wake up! Come on, wake up, asshole!"

Eventually, the mantra got old. I stood up. Scratching my head, I looked around. Scratching the head brought about a new discovery, hair, more hair than I'd allowed since I signed up.

"GrreaT!"

I felt my head up. Luckily, it was not as bad as I thought, on the planet where Mohawk hair isn't as bad as a full head of hair. The good thing about my state of mind was after accepting the whole 'going to die', a mohawk did not rate as something I wanted to deny and isolate, bargain, or be depressed about. (I had not been angry since the death march.)

"I'm either hallucinating, in hell, in heaven, or there are going to be some really unhappy religious people."

While I thought about what to do, I looked around; the poles caught my eye. I moved closer to study them.

I pulled on one of them. It came out easily: not a pole, a throwing lance. I spun it to look at the head: about ten inches, somehow the metal looked like a part of the wood. The pole was long enough to use like a spear, though it was not thick. I tested the weight, shy of a heavy throw. I touched the head; it was smooth but not cold like steel.

I pulled another lance out the ground. It felt natural to hold one in each hand, much too natural.

Crouch. Left thrust high. Slide left. Right extend, grip, right thrust low. Spin the left across the body to parry. Turn, spin the right. Right back thrust.

Too smooth.

I bounced the right lance on the palm of my hand and sighted on a tree. It was not that my body knew how to throw the lance, my mind understood it too. The throw with the left hand was as easy.

I stared at the tree; the first lance struck the spot I sighted on, the second was at three inches to the left. I would not have missed if the first lance had not already struck the intended target.

Nodding slowly, I pulled the last lance out of the ground and walked over to the tree. I had not thrown hard, but the heads were completely sunk into the wood. The lances came out of the tree easy. A quick inspection showed the heads to be unharmed.

I walked to back to my original spot. There was something on the ground next to where the poles had been, and I had no better ideas than to investigate. There were two things, a long bag made of leather and a backpack-looking thing.

The long bag had a flap which I had to untie. Inside the bag were more poles and three knives in sheaths (I recognized the handle of pilot's survival knife). I pulled a pole out; it did not have a head like the three outside the bag. There were seven poles in the bag, none with a lance heads.