Brian awoke, befuddled by the lurching darkness, and pretended to be still dreaming. Gradually memory returned. Max had ushered him into the side room and further into an empty storage area. The man had placed a sword in his hand and gestured to a large mirror hanging from the rear wall.
    "How's it feel?" he'd asked.
    Brian felt like an imposter holding a play weapon and said so as he posed, watching his reflection in the odd mirror. Why concave? The glass looked like an oily cloth had been used to wipe it and the surface seemed to shift like the blink of a gigantic eye as he stepped from side to side, swinging the heavy weapon. The muscles in his forearm flexed noticeably with each thrust. Brian thought of the costume and smiled satisfaction. Max handed him a dagger, explaining that though the weapon was wickedly sharp it served the dual purpose as a shield.
    The shopkeeper demonstrated a one-two-three, parry-thrust-slice maneuver and Brian practiced it, intending to show off the move at his next audition. Max corrected him until the ingredients flowed together as smoothly as a White Russian.
    "You're a natural," Max said as he wrapped the scabbard belt around Brian's waist. Another belt followed that held a knife, and a lumpy pouch. "Good luck."
    Brian's initial thought that the stylist meant with the TV program passed as, with a surprisingly firm grip, the older man push him toward the mirror - and through it.

    "Wasn't a mirror," he whispered.
    "Nah, not one," a husky voice answered from the darker darkness to his left. "A door to this hell. Welcome to Atvar, the world at war."
    Still muzzy, his mouth stumbled half formed questions but none escaped as anything approaching coherence.
    "Plenty time for those come dawn. Here." Soft rustlings, and then a nozzle touched his chapped lips. Water - lukewarm and not too fresh but wet - filled his mouth.
    He grabbed at the flask, squeezed the soft sides, wringing out another gulp and then it was empty.
    "That's it, I'm afraid."
    "Thanks," he said, wishing for more. "I'm Brian Quinn Bell."
    "Sen Cade. Good metcha." The voice had an odd cadence and accent. Bostonian or Northern European, he guessed but knew he was wrong. A little like both, and nothing like either.
    His companion pressed something else into his hand. A hilt. A dagger? "Keep guard a bit, whilst I sleep."
    "Guard? Against what?" he asked his unseen ally.
    "Some who would take what little we have and leave us nothing."
    What did he have? He took a quick inventory. The sword digging into his thigh, the clothes on his back, running shoes and the mismatched leather belts holding his scabbard, knife and pouch.
    "How will I know?"
    "Ay-ese, how? Trust none."
    "How about you?"
    A low chuckle reached his ears. "Well, we all need faith in something. You in me, and I in you - for now, at least?"
    The last part was a question and he thought about his answer. If an image of a person could be formed by the sound of a voice, this Sen Cade looked capable. A good friend to have in the dark of a... Dungeon? Ship? Cattle car? The last one felt right and, as if to confirm his guess, a bovine snore rattled from a little ways away.
    Sen Cade. A friend? Or a clever thief? This one hadn't robbed him while he lay helpless and had, likely, fended off those who would have done so.
    "For now, at least," he agreed. Almost immediately, he heard the other's breathing settle into a rhythmic pattern, and almost laughed aloud at the idea that anyone could go to sleep so quickly. A thought crossed his mind. Someone exhausted or sick could.
    How long had Sen Cade guarded him? He felt the stubble on his chin, more than a day's growth, maybe two or three.
    He listened in the darkness, wondering if anyone would attack, and discerned several different breathing patterns. There were others in the transport. Random images invaded the black screen of lightless void. Fleeting impressions of dozens of unknown faces, rough handling, and a solid thud as he'd stumbled into a cavernous hold.
    The thud! He touched his head and winced as his fingertips found a lump. Concussion had chased the first memories of his abduction away, leaving the barest traces of history. Letting his mind idle, he remembered something else. Two moons in a huge indigo sky. Bright trails of unfamiliar stars. The freshest air he'd ever tasted.
    'Atvar,' Sen Cade had said. The world of war. The other men, blank-faced or frightened, in the queue had been covered with brownish stains. Another odor overwhelmed the stink of old sweat. He'd almost recognized it then, and pinpointed the source now. His fingers were sticky with his own.
    Blood.

    Sometime later, the transport rocked to a halt. Brian expected a door to open, overhead lights to brighten, or a conductor to appear announcing their arrival in wherever-the-hell-they-were but, instead, a guttural whisper broke the sleeper's chorus of snores, sighs, and murmured dream-speech.
    "Cade?"
    Brian waited but his ally only snored, rolled and didn't answer. "Sleeping."
    "You da new man in blue silkies?"
    His running shorts were light blue and made of some silky fabric. "I guess so."
    "You be thinking to watch Cade's back?"
    "Something like that," Brian replied, hearing a rustling movement and the pop of a knuckle. The midnight whisperer was slinking closer under the cover of conversation. But from where?
    "That Cade is a turned one... No be anybody's friend."
    Brian had no idea what was meant by 'turned one', but felt the rough padding beneath him shift. He jabbed the dagger in that general direction, heard a muffled yelp, and felt the point pierce something pliant. The tip jerked but he held on.
    "Move back, Piter," Cade spoke clearly from Brian's side. "I may be turned, but I will turn you too... Inside out."
    Brian heard a sound he didn't recognize, but a glimmer of metal revealed Cade had drawn a sword. Piter heard too, or saw the movement, and retreated as a dark shadow against a dark background. Only then did Brian realize that the night had ended, and the dawn had come.
    Around him, men of all descriptions, sprawled on the floor or, like he and Cade, slept in padded niches along the walls. The clothing varied, like the backlot between separate shoots, but almost everyone was armed. Some had swords and daggers - a few men had two of each. Others slept with axes or maces nestled like lovers in their arms. Across the room, a pack of youths, including two slender twin boys, nursed bruises and cuts - and were mostly without weapons.
    "Hey, Cade. Look." Brian said, indicating the disarmed teenagers with his chin.
    "Ay-ese, I know." The tone was regretful. Had he been chosen instead of them as recipients of protection?
    He glanced at his guardian in the growing gray light seeping in through the high dusty windows. From a grimy face framed by long stringy hair, wide green eyes looked back. Even dressed in full leather gear, the body shape was obvious. Sen Cade was Cyn Cade... Short for Cynthia, no doubt.
    She pushed a stray lock back into her loose braid and revealed an old scar, a line from her temple to her chin, startlingly white in the brown of her tanned skin.

    Any comment was forestalled by a loud rattling. Cade's eyes darted and she vaulted over him, landing on her feet. "Food and water. Grab the skins." She sheathed her sword and drew a dagger from her boot. The compartment was suddenly surging with bodies, staggering toward a pair of pipes.
    Cyn elbowed and, with tiny prods of her dagger, wedged a narrow opening in the crowd. Brian grabbed everything still lying on the bunk and followed. A tan mush churned into a crusty basin and, as quickly as it flowed, hands reached in to scoop it out. Some had bowls or cups, some had pouches, and others simply slurped from their hands.
    The girl grabbed one of the pouches and filled it from the source. A calloused hand attached to hairy arm reached toward her wrist but Brian slapped it away. Cyn grunted wordless thanks and finished filling the food bag.
    She ducked under Brian's arm with a hiss for him to follow. They repeated the process at the other pipe for water, and then ousted a squatter from their bunk.
    The mush was warm, but bland. Cyn, after an apparent internal debate, added a pinch of something from one of the other pouches hanging from her belt. Salt. It helped. Taking turns, they scooped out mouthfuls and the small bag emptied rapidly.
    She patted the salt pouch. "Valuable... Better than gelt."
    Later he realized that her words were his first lesson in survival.
    "Gelt?" he asked.
    She fingered another mouthful in and nodded. "Cache, curry, monola. You know, money." She watched him until he nodded understanding.
    The water was clean and cool. No taste of chlorine or chemicals. Brian froze mid- gulp, wondering about contagious diseases. He examined his cruddy hands, flecked with dried blood and the pasty food. Cade was dirty, he was worse. She, seemingly, didn't care - but he did. Suddenly, very much.
    "Is this safe?" he asked. She paused, mid-chew, with eyebrows curled in puzzlement before, abruptly, laughing.
    "It isn't the food or water that'll kill you, Brian Quinn Bell. Or the dirt." She glanced around the hold and laughed again. "That's what swords are for." His head, previously bewildered by his surroundings, his company, and her identity, filled with questions but he couldn't sort them into any semblance of a logical order. So he blurted out an obvious observation.
    "You're a girl."
    "Ay-ese," she agreed. She turned the pouch inside out and, after offering it to him, licked it clean.
    "I mean, the only girl."
    She glanced around the room with a nod. "The only one here, ay-ese, not the only woman on this world." She leaned closer, blushed red, and whispered, "Most prefer the warriors to the war."
    "Whores, do you mean?" Brian asked. Cyn averted her eyes and the blush crept further up her face.
    "Ay-ese." She burped and sighed.
    Brian thought of another more pressing question but considering her embarrassment when talking about prostitutes was reluctant to ask. He tried a couple of different ways to phrase it while Cade grew restless.
    "Fugging-A. I gotta piss," she said, jumping to her feet. Brian laughed.
    "What?" she asked, bundling her various belongings.
    "You blush when you talk about sex," he said, watching the red flame in her cheeks, "but not when you talk about pissing."
    She gave him a strange look, as if he were the odd one. "They are different. You do know that, ay-ese?" Stifling an answer and a laugh, Brian nodded.
    Having gathered her stuff, she regarded it a moment. "I'd hate to lose it."
    "I'll guard it until you come back."
    She shook her head. "Nah, you'll guard me."
    The girl jumped to the edge of the platform and announced loudly. "This bed and its contents belong to me. Do any of you challenge that?"
    One of the men with two swords gave her an appraising once over. "I'll trade you a dagger for an hour with your woman," he shouted at Brian.
    With a gutsy cry, Cyn somersaulted from her perch and came up under the man's chin with her knife. "I am Cynda Cade. I belong to no man, but the contents of that place are mine. I will fight to keep them. Do you understand?"
    He nodded but, as she turned away, drew a blade. Brian's warning died in his throat as an arrow imbedded in the man's sleeve and pinned his hand to the wall. Across the room, a willowy man with a crossbow fitted another dart to his weapon and leveled it at the other swordsmen near Cyn.
    "That bed and its contents belong to Cade. Are there any who challenge?" he said. No one said anything and, by and by, the noise level returned to normal as everyone resumed previous occupations. The challenger pried the arrow from the wall and one of his comrades dressed the scratch on his wrist.
    Cade and the archer exchanged a nod. The girl motioned to Brian and headed for a corner. A standpipe and a hole waited. She gestured at him to turn away.
    "Stand there and keep them back." He did as instructed, hearing the unmistakable sounds of her necessity behind him. No one approached but a few eyes shifted. When finished she murmured, "I'd kill for toilet paper." Then she left him to attend to his own needs alone. Apparently only girls needed guardians while pissing.
    The bunk was as they'd left it, and the archer had evicted the occupants of the next cot. He and another archer sat together playing a game with stones and tiny bones. Offhanded introductions were tossed into the air without regard for where the information might land or what impact it might make on the receiver.
    They all knew Cyn from her earlier outburst and, it seemed, by reputation. She jerked her thumb at Brian and with indifference, feigned, real, or calculated, for his given name said, "B.Q." With her strange accent 'B.Q.' became 'Baycoo' from then on.

    A brown-skinned man, with a wild shock of ink black hair and the flat features that Brian associated with Eskimos, approached with a shallow plate of water. He grunted at Cyn, who hesitated, nodded, and lay back on the thin mattress. She folded up her vest. A wide umber stain encircled a ragged hole in her grubby shirt. The front closed with a series of ties and she undid two and then, reluctantly, a third. The Eskimo guy lifted the shirttails apart, carefully avoiding exposing more of her than absolutely necessary, and removed some bloody scraps of cloth. Brian craned his neck to see a ragged-looking wound in the curve of her waist. Her skin, where not red and irritated, was pale - untouched by sunshine, at least recently.
    Cyn looked away while the man dabbed. She caught Brian's eye and snarled. He averted his face, realizing that even revealing that small portion of her torso embarrassed her a great deal. His gaze violated her modesty.
    "Flesh wound," he said, trying to mitigate his mostly innocent trespass as simple medical curiosity.
    The silent medic shrugged as he finished his ministrations. Cade hurried to tie the closures and yanked down her vest.
    Kennen, the archer, commented from the next bunk, "The Atvar healers would leave less scarring."
    "I don't want them to touch me," Cyn whispered. "They have done quite enough." She rubbed a small scar at the base of her throat. The archer had a similar scar... As did the medic. Brian touched his own neck, expecting what he found, but still shocked by the knowledge of the tender nick there.
    Things had been done to him, too. After he fell through the mirror, before he wound up on this transport, the Atvar healers had touched him, too. Visions of steel cages, like suet baskets, flitted through his mind. Held firmly motionless, prodded, injected, and then garroted until he choked. A final sharp pinch in his neck ended the examination. At no time did he get the impression that the handlers were concerned with his health. It was like a customs search on a flight from Tehran.

    Finished with Cyn, the guy grunted at Brian, gesturing at his head. Brian suppressed an urge to cringe when the medic used a straight razor to shave away his hair.
    He chuckled without amusement. Cyn, engaged in some form of maintenance on her weapons, flashed him green-eyed incomprehension. "It was my last haircut that got me into this fucking mess."
    The Eskimo made a choking sound - his laughter - and Brian saw the reason for his wordlessness. A fleshy twisted mass writhed where a tongue should have been. Brian did cringe then, and jumped away. The veneer of his calm parted and his terror, carefully repressed, burbled out in hoarse guttural bleats. No one looked at him as he slammed his shoulders and fists on the metal-sheathed wall and butted his forehead against the corner where the bunk joined it.
    Fear passed into rage. How dare anyone interrupt his well-planned life? Why him? Why now? What right? What could he have done differently? He remembered his initial uneasiness in the hair salon. Why hadn't he dashed out when the receptionist had been so rude? How had he been so stupid? He railed against the how's and why's, furious, frightened, and already grieving for the life he knew was impossibly changed.
    Spent, he slumped to the floor and ignored the mute medic as he dabbed something antiseptic on the cuts - old and new. That the medicine burned like hell only seemed fitting.

    The day passed as Brian sat wallowing in his despair. The shadows changed and the sensation of movement began again. Round 'em up and head 'em out. "Where the hell are we?" Brian finally asked. "How are we here? Why are we here?"
    Cade stopped stropping her dagger's edge. "Atvar. The uber-mirror. To fight. To die."
    The archer, Kennen, said, "Not helpful, milady, and not entirely true."
    Cynda harrumphed and turned her back. Brian wasn't fooled. She listened as she resumed her task.
    The archer sighed. "The Lords of Atvar like to play war. To save their skins, the Atvarians designed a portal to other places and import warriors to play the Lords' game. Whether we live or die is not as important as how well - how excitingly - we perform."
    "Why do you fight? Just quit."
    Cade snorted but didn't say anything.
    The other archer, Ben, answered, "They thought of that. If you don't fight, you are punished. If you fight and win, you are rewarded." He touched a scar in his throat. "They know when you sleep, or are awake. They know..."
    "If you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake," a stranger's voice intruded. The newcomer was a black guy with tattoos on his cheeks. "And I thought my barro was bad."
    "Other places?" Brian asked, "Aren't we all from Earth?"
    A big man, shaved bald - the re-growth was not much more than sandpaper - but with a bushy carrot red mustache and well-trimmed goatee, sitting on the floor between the niches, answered, "Aye, laddie, but not t'same one."
    Emerging from his despair, Brian had noticed a subtle shifting had occurred during the day, as the men chose their comrades. Would these confederations last beyond the opening of the hatch at their destination, or were they only temporary alliances of convenience?
    That they all carried weapons confirmed Keenen's theory of why they were here. Sharp, serviceable weapons meant an expectation that there would be a use for them. Him against whom? No doubt, whichever 'Whom' he met up with would be more familiar with the intricacies of swordsmanship than him. He glanced down at his sword, wondering why he wasn't more frightened and settled on lingering shock or a partial concussion to explain his growing serenity.
    "They created doors to other possible Earths. Easier than space travel, cheaper, quicker, and no problem with communication if they only steal Anglese speaking people," Cyn spoke with her eyes on her dagger's blade. "This is Earth, too. One conquered by aliens. The Atvar are human, but not the Lords."
    "We don'na know that for sure," the red-haired man, Arish, said.
    "I do."
    Her certainty was enough to make Arish subside but Brian said, "The stars are all wrong, though. The constellations are strange." Something else bothered him more. "Earth doesn't have two moons."
    The others looked at him with various expressions.
    "Mine did," Ben murmured. "Both smaller than Atvar's."
    Kennen snorted, "And mine had none. A moon is just an asteroid or minor planet captured by Earth's gravity."
    "I cog about parallel Earths, but why would the stars skew-up?" asked Terrell, the black guy.
    Cyn sheathed her dagger and pulled out her sword, examining the point and the cutting edges. "Anything that happens could have not happened too."
    Kennen nodded. "Simplified, but true. The linear theory of multiple universes hypothesizes that everything that could have happened did and all lines of possibility have existed in separate universes from the beginning. The branching theory claims that the parallel universes are created as time goes on, new ones created as certain events force a divergence."
    "So if I boog a left instead of right, I've made a new universe?" Terrell asked.
    Kennen shrugged, "If, in that decision, you've started a cascade of events that impact world events, I guess." He grinned. "Are you that important?"
    "But if that could make a new universe, won't our disappearances do that too?" Brian asked. He felt, rather than saw, Cyn look at him.
    "Probably," Kennen said, turning back to his stones and bones.
    Cyn whispered, "Giving the Atvarans more worlds to shanghai." Brian looked at her, and she hitched her head, beckoning him back on the bunk. "Come on. I'll show you how to sharpen your blades." Not certain if he wanted to learn that, or anything regarding a warrior's craft, Brian complied.
    "Why should I care?" he grunted, fumbling in his pouch to find a whetstone and other various and, thus far, mysterious items within. He spat on the stone when she mimed the instruction.
    "When it comes to it, Baycoo, you will prefer to fight than die. You might do well to be prepared," Cyn said. She put her hands over his and showed him the angle and pressure that transformed the already sharp blade into a gleaming edge.

    While working, he took stock of the other transportees. Five dozens, give or take, of men (and one woman) lolled about the compartment. Some slept, some worked on blades or arrows, others played various games, and a few gathered in tight circles whispering and plotting.
    Though Cyn noticed his every mistake, Brian saw her eyes scan around continually, aware of each movement and sound. When one man, part of the group at the far side of the room stood, her chin went up a notch. Though she never stared directly toward him, Brian got the impression that she watched the man as he stretched and preened. Her shoulders tensed and she shifted onto her knees.
    Looking for trouble, looking like trouble coming, the man swaggered toward the cluster of young men that Brian had labeled 'the lost boys'. Among the half dozen youths, none was armed with more than a dagger; most had nothing but the clothes they wore. The twins had gravitated with the other less daring souls, tentatively laying claim to a patch of bare floor undesirably near the toilet.
    The troublemaker loomed at the periphery of the pitiful band and said, "One of your asses is mine."
    The youths froze, except for their eyes, which darted wildly from one to another. One of the twins said, "Fuck off, Conan." Brian gave the boy credit for balls if not brains.
    'Conan' grabbed the front of his thin tee shirt - the ripping sound filled the air with menace - and hissed, "You'll do, spunky." The boy swung at his attacker until a wickedly brutal backhand to his face quelled him. He fell limply, only twitches in his feet and feeble gestures with his hands confirmed that he retained some consciousness.
    The other twin launched from his place as the big man lifted his brother and was promptly tucked in the crook of a muscular elbow. 'Conan' manhandled both teens back to his comrades who grinned and hooted. One of them grabbed the livelier one, laughing as he whispered something in the twin's ear and groped at the waistband of his victim's jeans. The boy doubled his efforts to escape, his muted fear peeped and squealed.
    "Squirms nice, hain't?" Conan remarked. "Never fucked twins."
    "And you won't this time either, buttfugger," Cyn said, surprising everyone - even Brian - by her sudden appearance within the tableau. "You'll wait for the good-time girls at camp, make bunkies with a willing charlie-boy, or wank your own meat limp, just like everyone else."
    Conan snorted, rubbed his bandaged wrist, and tossed his burden down. "I'll have your meat, instead." Holding Cade's green contemptuous gaze with a surly superior attitude of his own, he unsheathed his sword. The others of his group followed, one holding a knife to the other boy's throat.
    The hairs rose on the back of his neck and Brian felt electric energy pulse from his companions as each rose and targeted one of Conan's partners. How they decided, instantly and without words he didn't know, or why he'd singled out out one who picked him in return. His hand, palm moist with nervous sweat, alighted on the hilt of his sword. Part of him wondered what in the hell he thought he could do with the weapon since he barely had a clue as to which end was which. Another part of him, the one that liked the way his blood raced and his scrotum tightened, had already made the leap from spectator to participant and scrutinized, unafraid but cautious, his chosen adversary for weakness.
    The big man, without glancing at the opposed lines, acknowledged the standoff. "You 'n me, bitch." He pointed his sword at the boys. "You win, you can have the kittens. I win, we get them - and you." He tapped his sword on his scabbard.
    Cyn mirrored the action, and she nodded. "Deal. Have at."
    They engaged at some silent signal and the clash was nothing like the sound in movies, both less real and more businesslike. There were no wasted flourishes or fancy footwork, just swing, duck, turn and jab. The fighters grunted and hissed with their efforts, clearly unable and unwilling to engage in clever Hollywood-esque banter or verbal repartee. One blow followed the next, the swish followed by a clang as contact was made with the other sword, or the metal crossbeams of the floor.
    Her sword was shorter and more slender than her enemy's and Brian wondered if that was an advantage or disadvantage until a man in Conan's group shouted, "Blood. First blood."
    Cyn had squatted and, as Conan committed his swing, lunged within his guard. She reached up with her dagger and slashed his sword arm. His sleeve gaped and the cleanly sliced edges curled as blood soaked them. She jumped away as her opponent stared at his wound. He raised his arm to swing again but Cyn whacked his ribs with the flat side of her sword. With a grunt of pain, 'Conan' clutched his chest and gasped for air, doubled-over. He dropped his weapons and held his palms open for a moment until Cade lowered hers.
    Cyn closed her eyes, her face rippling with emotions that Brian didn't recognize. She took a deep breath, and wiped her dagger on the well-stained hem of her shirt. She turned away and sheathed her blades.