The Dragon’s Mark

by Alex Archer

“Henshaw?” she asked, doing what she could to keep the look of concern off her face. She was supposed to be alone and didn’t want to jeopardize the meeting.

  There was no reply.

  By that time the Dragon was too close for Annja to take a chance with another message. She’d just have to hope that he’d heard.

  It wasn’t an auspicious beginning.

  The Dragon stopped about ten feet away from Annja and the two women looked each other over. Gone was the slightly over-the-top fan from the other day. Annja could see that in her place was a stone-cold killer with dead-flat eyes. She was dressed in loosely fitting dark clothing that Annja knew had been chosen not just to allow for ease of movement but also to hide her amid the shadows that were settling all around them now. The hilt of a sword rose up over the edge of one shoulder.

  “Where’s Roux?” Annja asked, leaning to the side to look past the Dragon, as if he might be waiting back there in the darkness from which she had emerged.

  Shizu laughed. “He’s here. You’ll be reunited with him in a moment. Where’s the sword?”

  Knowing that only one of them was going to make it out of this encounter alive, Annja didn’t care about the Dragon seeing the truth and so she reached into the otherwhere and drew forth the sword.

  One moment her hand was empty and the next it was filled with the hilt of an ancient broadsword, the tip of the blade pointed directly at the Dragon’s throat.

  Shizu’s face showed surprise, though it was masked very quickly.

  Annja had seen it, though, and she wondered about it. Did the Dragon’s sword operate differently? Is that why she wore it openly on her back rather than letting it rest in the otherwhere? Or was it all just a trick to throw her off the track, to lull her into making a mistake?

  The Dragon made a strange flicking motion with her hand and suddenly there was a pistol in it. She pointed it at Annja.

  “Put the sword down on the ground.”

  Annja stood resolute. “No, not until I know where Roux is.”

  “I told you, he’s nearby. You’ll see him soon enough.” The pistol rose slightly, until the barrel was level with her face. “It would be a shame to mess up those pretty features,” Shizu said.

  Annja clicked her tongue twice, one of the pre-arranged signals she and Henshaw had come up with for when they were in the thick of things. This particular one meant that he was to put a warning shot right across her bow, to show the Dragon that she wasn’t the only one with arms and support.

  Nothing happened.

  She did it again.

  Click, click.

  Still nothing.

  Apparently she was on her own.

  Annja suddenly felt very inadequate for the situation she faced.

  The Dragon chambered a round into the barrel of the pistol. “I said, put the sword down.”

  Not seeing any other alternative, Annja did as she was told.

  As she prepared for the sword to leave her hand she had a momentary flash of panic. She didn’t know what it was that made the sword bond to her in the first place, nor did she know what it took for it to remain in this world. She had always assumed that it would stay in her possession until she died, but here she was voluntarily relinquishing it to another. Would the sword pass on to its new owner as a result? Would it abandon her in the mistaken belief that she was abandoning it?

  Easy, Annja, she told herself. The sword will understand. Have faith.

  At this point, that was all she had left—faith.

  She put the sword on the ground and willed it to remain and not vanish into the otherwhere.

  “Now, move over there,” the Dragon said, pointing with the barrel of the gun to where a screen in the side of the pavilion had been pulled back, revealing a small balcony overlooking the lake.

  Slowly Annja did as she was told. She never took her gaze off the Dragon. If this was going to be it, she wanted to meet death with her eyes open and spit into the face of her adversary. While she watched her enemy, she also continued concentrating on keeping the sword in the here and now; having it disappear into the otherwhere would probably earn her a bullet in the head.

  The Dragon kept her distance as she circled toward where the sword rested on the ground. By the time Annja reached the balcony, the Dragon was standing over the sword. She bent over, slid it into a cloth sheath that she’d produced from somewhere on her person and slung the entire package over her back, next to her own weapon.

  “We had a deal,” Annja said. “The sword for Roux.”

  For a moment Annja thought the Dragon was just going to run off, but then she realized the woman was enjoying this. Whatever was about to happen, it would probably not be pleasant for Roux or Annja.

  “Look to your left,” Shizu said. “Do you see the line tied to the railing?”

  Annja looked that way and then quickly back again. “Yes, I see it.” It was a narrow piece of fishing line, nearly invisible in the fading sunlight, tied off at the railing and disappearing out into the pond.

  “Untie it and pull on it,” the Dragon said.

  Annja eyed her warily but made no move toward the line.

  The gun swiveled in her direction again. “I said, pull on it.”

  Annja didn’t see that she had a choice, so she stepped closer and began to work at the knot. While she did so, she tried reaching out to Henshaw again.

  “Are you out there?” she whispered.

  She heard nothing but static.

  When the line was finally untied, she gave it a good yank. Behind her, out on the water, something splashed.

  “Reel it in,” Shizu ordered.

  Again, Annja did as she was told, but this time a cold sense of foreboding was stealing across her body. Something had gone very wrong; it seemed likely that both Henshaw and Roux were already dead, which left her alone to escape the Dragon’s clutches.

  It only took a few seconds to reel in the line and when she did she discovered that it was attached to a long hollow reed that resembled nothing so much as a wet piece of narrow bamboo. As she stared at it, something began to churn and splash at the base of the floating Torii marker in the middle of the lake.

  “I promised I’d deliver Roux alive and unharmed,” the Dragon said, with a vicious smile. “I always keep my promises. It’s just too bad that you’re the one who just took his air hose out of his mouth. Old guy like that, he probably won’t last two minutes.”

  As Annja made the connection between the long narrow reed in her hand and the churning commotion in the middle of the pond, her mind screamed at her to act before it was too late.

  She backed up, took three running steps and dove over the railing into the lake, all thought of the Dragon forgotten. She struck the water in a shallow dive and let her momentum carry her along as far as it could before she surfaced and swam toward the floating torii with hard strokes of her arms and legs. The cold water sucked the heat from her limbs and her wet clothing threatened to drag her down, but she knew she had only minutes to save Roux from drowning so she fought her way forward.

  Behind her, unnoticed by all but the gun-toting watcher on the ridge above, the Dragon walked briskly out of the pavilion.

  As she drew closer to the floating signpost, Annja ducked below the surface. The torii wasn’t actually floating, she discovered, but was held in place by a long shaft that was sunk several feet into the muck-covered bottom of the pond.

  Roux was tied to that shaft.

  He was flailing, trying desperately to get himself free. Air bubbles streamed away from him as he fought to hold his breath and his eyes were wide with the sense of impending death. Annja couldn’t even be sure if he saw her, nor did she have time to find out.

  She surfaced, grabbed another lungful of air and then shot back down to help Roux.

  Up close she discovered she’d been wrong; Roux wasn’t tied to the shaft.

  He was chained.

  A shiny steel chain was attached to the pole and then wrapped around his bo
dy several times, securing him in place. It was all held together by a thick, brass lock.

  There was no way she could pick that lock in the time she had, nor could she smash it open with anything at hand. She was going to have to focus her efforts on the chain and hope for the best. But when she tried to pull the long loops away from Roux’s body enough for him to slip free, she found they were wrapped too tightly to budge even an inch.

  Roux continued to thrash frantically beside her and one of his feet lashed out, connecting with her thigh, sending a wave of numbness shooting down its length, but she ignored the injury and swam in close against the shaft. She held on to the chain with her left, opened her hand and summoned her sword.

  She felt the solid weight of it against her palm. She jammed the blade down between the first loop of the chain and the pole itself and then pulled against it with all her strength.

  For a moment she thought it wouldn’t work, that she wouldn’t be able to get enough torque, but she was surprised when the link snapped quickly.

  Annja wanted to shout for joy, despite being several feet underwater, but she knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She still had several more lengths to go before it would be loose enough to free Roux.

  She shot for the surface, filled her lungs with another gulp of cool spring air, and then dove back down. Annja could see that Roux had stopped struggling; he was just hanging there in the chains, his mouth open and filled with water.

  Annja had run out of time.

  She wasn’t ready yet to give up the fight, however.

  She repeated what she had done before, sliding the sword between the pole and the links of chain. Planting her feet against the pole, she hauled down on the sword with all of her might.

  As if in answer to her prayer, several links of chain parted and Roux’s body began to slip downward toward the bottom of the pond.

  Annja dropped her sword and grabbed for him before he could drift out of reach. Hugging him to her, she kicked for the surface.

  Below her, the sword flickered and was gone.

  29

  With her arms wrapped around his chest from behind and his head resting in the crook between her shoulder and neck, Annja struggled to get Roux to shore. The minute she stopped kicking with her feet, their combined weight would start to drag them down and she’d have to heave him upward with her arms to keep his head from going under again. It was tough, tiring work. Eventually her feet found the bottom and she stood, relieving her back of some of the burden. She dragged him up and onto the shore and laid him flat on the ground.

  He was a mess. His face had been severely beaten and the right side was so swollen that his eye was barely visible. The fingers on one hand were broken and it felt as though his shoulder was dislocated, as well, though whether that happened before he went into the water or when struggling against the chains that bound him, Annja didn’t know.

  It had taken so long to get him across the pond and out of the water that she feared for the worst. Would CPR even work after this long? If she did get his heart beating again, would his brain be damaged by the lack of oxygen it had sustained? What was the longest someone could go without oxygen, anyway?

  She didn’t know and, as usual, it was the lack of knowledge that scared her the most. Things did not look good. Still, she would give it her best. She wasn’t one to quit before she even began.

  She rolled him on his side to let some of the water drain out of his lungs and then set to work. It had been a while since she’d had any formal CPR training, so she quickly found herself repeating the steps aloud to be sure she didn’t miss anything.

  “Tilt the head, pinch the nose and breathe.”

  His lips were cold and hard beneath her own. She could taste the brackishness of the pond water.

  “Check for air.”

  She put her ear in front of his nose, hoping for an exhale.

  Nothing.

  “Hands on the chest. Pump one, two, three, four,” Annja continued the count to fifteen.

  Nothing.

  “Come on, old man.”

  She went back to breathing again.

  Tears streamed down her face as she worked, afraid that for once she hadn’t been good enough, hadn’t been quick enough.

  “Pump one, two, three…”

  Roux couldn’t die like this. Not drowned while chained to a pole in a public park. Not sacrificed so that someone else could be the new bearer of Joan’s sword. Not because she had failed him when he needed her most.

  “Breathe.”

  She was crying so hard that she couldn’t even see. Not that she needed to. Her whole world had devolved down to three simple activities.

  Breathe.

  Pump.

  Check for air.

  “Don’t die on me, Roux. Not yet.”

  In a way she was surprised at the depths of her grief. Roux could be an infuriating, stubborn, old-fashioned pain in the butt, but he was also her friend and her mentor and until now she really hadn’t understood what he meant to her.

  She pumped harder.

  “Breathe, damn you!” she said.

  As if in response, Roux suddenly convulsed, coughing up what looked to her to be half the water in the pond behind them.

  She quickly rolled him on his side and pounded his back, helping him evacuate the water from his lungs. He gasped for breath several times and then settled into a more normal rhythm.

  After a moment, he opened his eyes and blinked up at her.

  As always, he was direct and to the point.

  “Did you kill her?” he croaked.

  “Not yet,” she said, and the cold gleam of justice danced in her eyes. It wasn’t a question of if, but simply a question of when. She would not let this go unpunished.

  Roux went through another fit of coughing, then said, “I heard them talking. Before they…”

  He waved his hands vaguely at the water and Annja understood. Before they tried to drown me, he was saying. Continuing, he said, “The shrine is the rendezvous.”

  “The one behind us here in the woods?”

  He nodded, then turned his head and spent a few minutes spitting up more pond water.

  When he had cleared his throat and realized she was still there, watching him, he asked, “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  Annja nearly laughed. Save him from drowning, drag him out of a lake, pound on his chest until he starts breathing again and he wants to be critical of her choice in priorities?

  “You sure you’ll be all right?” she asked.

  “Fine,” he said, and then retched up more pond water.

  She reached for him but he waved her off. In between coughs, he said, “Go. She has to be stopped.”

  He was right.

  Annja went.

  The sun had set while she had been in the water with Roux and it was fully dark. The old-fashioned street lamps that lined the walkways had come on with the growing dark and now lit the path with a soft light. Yet despite their ambience, the calm, tranquil feeling she’d experienced earlier was gone, replaced by a sense of imbalance, a disruption in the flow, as if the landscape around her was reacting to the events playing out upon its surface.

  She followed the path a short distance until she came to a fork in the road. A little sign stood nearby, with an arrow pointing down each arm of the fork. The first was directed to the right and the word Shrine had been etched into its surface. The second pointed farther along in the direction she’d been traveling and read, Esplanade.

  Annja chose the right-hand fork.

  It didn’t take her long to spot the small structure set back in its own nook amid the white pines. It was made from wood and had a green tiled roof that made it seem as if the structure itself had simply grown out of the ground rather than having been built by human hands.

  Leaving the pathway, Annja crept through the trees until she had a clear view of the front of the shrine. Four steps led up to the entrance. Beside the steps was a pair of stone foxes
, symbols of Inari, god of the harvest. The Dragon was nowhere to be seen.

  Annja moved forward.

  When she reached the side of the shrine, she stopped and listened. She could hear the Dragon’s voice from inside the structure, though she couldn’t make out what was being said.

  It didn’t really matter though, she’d found what she was looking for.

  Annja walked to the front of the building, calmly climbed the steps and entered through the front door.

  The interior of the shrine was lit by an entire wall of candles. By their light Annja could see the Dragon speaking to two men dressed in the uniforms of the park maintenance crew.

  As one, they turned to look at her.

  “You can’t have the sword,” Annja said, looking directly at Shizu.

  The Dragon laughed. “Do you think you can take it from me?”

  Annja smiled, and by the way the two men stepped back upon seeing it, she knew she had conveyed her intent clearly enough. “Oh, I think so,” she said.

  Reaching into the otherwhere, she summoned her weapon.

  The Dragon’s eyes fell on the sword and then on the wrapped bundle she had set aside several minutes before. Annja could almost see her playing it back in her mind, wondering how Annja could have managed to regain possession of the sword when it had been in the Dragon’s custody since she’d left the pavilion.

  Chew on that one a bit, Annja thought, and now it was her turn to laugh.

  Fury seized Shizu in its iron grip. “Kill her!” she screamed, even as she drew her own sword with a lightning quick maneuver.

  The men were already in motion, rushing toward Annja with their own weapons drawn.

  She didn’t wait for them to reach her, but moved to intercept instead. She was done running; it was time to stand and fight.

  She would avenge what they had done to Roux and most likely Henshaw, as well.

  She met the first of the Dragon’s henchmen in the center of the room. She knew right away he was no match for her; he held his blade poorly and relied on his brute strength to get him through. He came forward with clumsy, overhand attacks that Annja had no problem avoiding. Annja gave back a little ground, forcing him to move closer to keep her in range, and when he followed she made her move.