I sighed inwardly, while carefully keeping my face calm and composed. It seemed like every time I brought someone new in, they had to fight me, to see if I was fit to lead them. To test themselves against me, preferably in full view of everyone else. Everyone always wants to know if the legendary gunslinger really is as fast as his legend. And I was getting pretty damned tired of it. If Molly had been there, she would have snorted loudly and said Men! Why don’t you both just get them out and measure them? in a loud and carrying voice.

But Molly wasn’t there. She was off wandering the grounds again, communing with her inner self. Whoever or whatever that might be these days.

“Of course,” Giles said easily, “if you’re too tired, Eddie, or don’t feel up to it, I’d quite understand. And so would everyone else.”

“That’s quite enough of that,” the Matriarch said briskly. She rose smartly up from her shooting stick, leaving it standing there looking just a little lost and abandoned. She advanced on the startled Giles, fixing him with her cold stare. “I don’t know how they run things in your time, Giles Deathstalker, but we don’t choose our leaders through right of challenge. We’re all warriors here. You have to be far more than just a fighter to lead the Droods. But if you’re really so desperate for a duel, I’ll oblige you.”

“You?” said Giles, not even bothering to hide his surprise. And then he smiled condescendingly at her.

“Oh no,” I said quietly. “Don’t smile.”

“I’m sure you were quite the warrior woman, in your day,” said Giles, and Martha cut him off right there.

“I am the Drood Matriarch,” she said, every word chipped out of ice. “And any Drood is a match for some jumped-up future mercenary.”

Giles raised one hand in a conciliatory gesture. Martha grabbed his arm, spun him around into an arm lock, and then slammed him face-first down onto the grass. He hit hard enough to force a groan out of him. And then she kicked him so hard in the ribs that people twenty feet away winced. Giles scrambled away from her and rose quickly to his feet. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He started to say something, and then broke off as Martha advanced purposefully. He took up a standard defensive pose, and a hell of a lot of good it did him. Martha beat the crap out of him, parrying his increasingly desperate blows with casual skill, threw him this way and that, and made the whole thing look easy. All of it without ever once having to armour up.