Mid-afternoon, late summer and the air was thick with the drone of lazy insects and the heavy resinous scent that oozed from the scrubby oil trees that surrounded the clearing. Kihn crouched near the middle. The heat beating down on his shirtless sun blackened back and broad shoulders. Every muscle and sinew in his lean body was tensed as he prepared for the strike. Nothing moved. His concentration was so intense that he had lost all sense of time and neither knew nor cared . . .

Mid-afternoon, late summer and the air was thick with the drone of lazy insects and the heavy resinous scent that oozed from the scrubby oil trees that surrounded the clearing. Kihn crouched near the middle. The heat beating down on his shirtless sun blackened back and broad shoulders. Every muscle and sinew in his lean body was tensed as he prepared for the strike. Nothing moved. His concentration was so intense that he had lost all sense of time and neither knew nor cared . . .