Polemos smashed Rufus a good one, the round house connecting nicely with his jaw and sending him flying across the sand to land in a heap. It wasn’t the first time. But he wasn’t bothered by that as much as the fact that it didn’t really hurt. Not much more than an ordinary bump anyway. That bothered him. He was being hit so hard and so often that he should be lying in an emergency room. But for some reason it didn’t seem to hurt him as much any more. And it wasn’t just a lack of pain either. He wasn’t being injured. But that wasn’t what bothered Polemos. “Better, but still you let your guard down. Remember. Block and punch, block and punch.” The big man came over and offered him a hand up, and as usual Rufus took it. He wasn’t really upset by being hit by him. At first it had scared him. He’d thought he was going to die. But as the days had gone by, long days of training until his arms felt like limp spaghetti and his breath was coming in gasps, and the sweat was pouring down over more sweat, soaking his clothes and the sand, and he reached complete exhaustion, it had simply become a part of his routine.
