"Cy, I contacted Hand Leader Evans this morning when you managed to communicate with me using your mind. I will leave you to speak to him." Finger Leader Roberts told me once the others had left us alone. "If you will excuse me Hand Leader?"

"Certainly." Hand Leader Evan replied. "Nice to meet you Cy." He shook my hand. "Walk with me." He turned and walked away. I scurried to catch up and matched my pace to his.

"Do you have any idea why I wanted to speak to you?" Hand Evans asked me.

"At a guess I would think it is because I was a little early for me to get the mental communication thing right?"

"Yes, well, that's why your Finger Leader contacted me at first, but that was just for information. Early use of mind powers is a marker of higher than normal potential, and we like to watch such people as they are potential leaders. That would have been fairly normal. The real reason I am here is because in your second attempt to communicate, it seems that two other members of your finger heard you."

"I did notice that it seemed to be a little different at the time." I was puzzled about what made this so important.

"[Cy]" I heard in my head.

"Yes Hand Leader" I replied.

"[Mental communication please?]"

"[Yes Hand Leader]" I tried again.

"[Do you find that difficult to do?]"

"[No. The first time took some real concentration. Now it seems entirely natural. I have been listening to Finger Roberts all morning, and I think that his use of Mental Comms has made it feel almost normal for me now.]"

"[All right. Try to send a message Finger Roberts and me at the same time.]"

"[Do you hear me?]" I called in my head, trying to feel the mental taste of both Finger Roberts and Hand Evan at the same time.

"[Yes Cy, I hear you.]" It felt like a double echo. Both replied almost simultaneously but I had no trouble keeping their replies separate in my mind.

"Ok Cy. Thank you. I have seen enough for now. I will leave you to return to your training. I just want you to know that the ability you have demonstrated is very unusual so early in training and if everything else works out, then it indicates that you have the potential to rise very far in terms of leadership. I look forward to watching how things turn out for you. Thank you for your time." With that, Hand Evans turned and walked away.

I headed back to rejoin the others.

As I got back to the others, I realised that I hadn't had an opportunity yet to ask about shaving, so I approached Finger Roberts and asked him what I should do.

"I think everyone should hear this." Finger Roberts said. "Gather round, please. Ok, this is a little early in the program, but I want to explain something to you. Cy has just asked me how he can shave. That leads us to another aspect of the processing. As you have experienced, there are changes that have happened to your bodies since you woke up which have been stimulated by exercise. This has been pretty much involuntary. It is also possible to direct the changes deliberately. The first test of this ability and control is with body hair. All of you will be growing your hair until you learn to control the change simply by willing it. While the men have beards, everyone who sees them knows that they haven't gained this ability. You will notice that a lot of the veterans have large and fancy mustaches. There are two reasons for this: one is that it demonstrates control and the other is based on history. Napoleon's veterans were recognised by their mustaches. For the women, it is a little more difficult, although hair on the legs is often the indicator."

"Does that ability extend to other things?" I asked.

"Yes. The start is facial hair. Once you have that under control, then I will teach you how to extend that to other things. You can change almost any physical aspect of yourself if you have sufficient skill." he replied. "Now, enough of that, today we are going to concentrate on a few more grappling holds: the neck and waist holds and the headlock."

Finger Roberts went through the process of demonstrating each hold in turn, and we spent a number of hours practicing these holds and the techniques for breaking them.

Lunch-time arrived eventually, and we discovered to our delight that we had been provided with fresh bread-rolls and sliced meat, so it involved very little preparation.

After I had eaten my lunch, I decided that I wanted to tackle the water-heating issue. I approached Finger Roberts and explained my concept based on what we called a "Donkey" which was a field water-heater made out of a 40-gallon drum. Essentially the principle was very simple, the drum was placed over a fire and it had a source of water that filled it. The hot water would rise to the top and pour out of a hole in the drum, while cold water took the place of the hot.

Finger Roberts complimented me on the idea but explained that water heating was also one of the mental "magic" tricks that we would learn, and bathing in cold water was a major incentive to develop the skills.

Once everyone had finished eating, Finger Roberts instructed us to fetch our training swords. We returned to muster in front of him very quickly and he started explaining how we would be learning to use our swords.

"The first thing that you need to know," he began, "is that you work together as a team. We carry no shields. The warrior next to you is your shield. The principle of battle for you is extremely simple. You concentrate on striking the warrior in front of you to disable or wound him, and if you do so aggressively enough, you will put him on the back-foot and beat him before you need to worry about defence. We will teach you both attack and defence however as they compliment each other, but the focus is on teamwork.

"Our basic Finger formations are based on the concept of three up and down. The standard formation is to have three warriors in the line fighting and three directly behind them in reserve. The Finger Leader fights with the Finger in this formation. There are a number of variations of this, where we can put more upfront and less in reserve, or vice versa, depending on a number of factors. For example, if we have to fight in an enclosed space, then we might want only two to fight upfront. This also allows for better husbanding of our strength as the reserve warriors can be swapped out. If we are required to cover a wider front, we can put four warriors upfront and have only two in reserve. We also have formations where we are all paired up and we swap and protect our buddy in the line.

"What we are going to do for the next while is learn the standard formations and drill in them; how to get into formation; how to change formation from one to another; how to replace each other in the line and what to do in various situations when one of you gets struck down and we have to react to reinforce the line. We will also practice the relief in the line; advancing to contact and breaking contact. There is no more square-bashing for the sake of pretty parades. Here drilling returns to its roots where it is a means to exercise control over formations in the midst of battle."

And that is what we did. We drilled for the rest of that day in the various formations. Finger Roberts drove us mercilessly through endless variations of the formations. He interspersed periods of formation drill with the various grappling holds and blocks. By the end of the day I was bone tired and collapsed into bed at the earliest opportunity.