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what are you planning on doing this
afternoon?” Vladimir asked. “I was wondering if you wanted to hang out.”
    “I don’t think so, Vladimir,” Senndra
responded curtly. “Not right now.”
    “Then how about later?” he asked.
    “I don’t think so,” Senndra answered. She
spun on her heels and marched away from him to her dorm. She didn’t look back
until she reached the safety of her room. She opened the door and stepped
inside and was met at once by the smiling face of her roommate, Rita. She was a
pretty girl, with blond hair that hung down to her waist and blue eyes that
seemed to attract every male cadet on the campus.
    “What happened today?” she asked as she
examined Senndra’s bandage.
    “Just a scratch from sword fighting,”
Senndra answered. “Nothing to worry about.”
    “You couldn't have at least waited until
the last one healed?” Rita asked. “So, what has you so perturbed?”
    “Who else…Vladimir,” Senndra responded,
disgust in her voice. She unstrapped her sword from her hip and threw it onto
the top bunk. “One would think he could take a hint, but every time I turn
around, I’m tripping over him.”
    “Vladimir isn’t nearly as bad as you make
him out to be,” Rita said. She sat on the lower bunk, but kept her gaze on
Senndra. “I think he’s lonely and is just trying to make a friend. I mean, you remember
what that’s like, right? It was only what, two years ago that you ended up
here?”
    “Yeah, the same year that Daddy died,”
Senndra sighed. “I was only fourteen then, and it was really scary coming here.
I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but thank you for being my friend.”
    “All I’m saying is that you could try
being a little nicer to him,” Rita said. She climbed out of the bed. “Anyway,
lunch is in ten minutes, so we need to head up to the mess hall.”
    Senndra rose and followed Rita out of the
room.
    ******
    Josiah grasped the javelin in his left
hand and held it in front of him with the tip pointing at the ground. He eyed
the target carefully and gauged its distance. This was the farthest one yet,
with a distance of possibly fifty yards. That, combined with the fact that the
target wasn’t much bigger than a human torso, made this a very hard throw. The
sun beat down on Josiah, causing sweat to drip down into his eyes and blur his
vision. With a swipe of his hand, he wiped the sweat off his face and gauged
the distance to the target again. At the signal from his instructor, Josiah
pulled the javelin back and prepared to throw it. He kept his eyes on the small
black circle that represented the center of the target, and when the call was given, he heaved his javelin. The spear shot through
the air with only a shallow arc, and Josiah held his breath as it covered the
fifty yards . It hit the bottom right corner of the
target with a splintering of wood.
    “Not too bad,” Josiah told himself. He glanced at the other cadets'
targets and saw that half of the javelins hadn’t even reached them. Of the ones
that had flown far enough, all but two had hit their targets, mostly on the
outer edges. The call to retrieve the javelins was given, and the cadets
advanced down the range, chattering as they went.
    “Nice shot, Josiah,”
called the cadet who was two stations to Josiah’s left.
    “Thanks, Cirro,” Josiah responded, “but it
really wasn’t all that good. It barely hit the target at all.”
    “At least it made it far enough,” Cirro
said. “Mine was way too short, probably by fifteen feet.”
    Josiah shrugged and walked the rest of the
way to his target. The javelin was more than four inches from the nearest edge
and had hit with enough force to sink in at
least six inches. Josiah braced his foot on the target, grabbed the shaft of
his spear, and pulled the weapon from where it had lodged. Shifting his grip to
the middle of the javelin, he rested it on his shoulder .
He quickly walked back to the line that he had thrown from and