by G R Matthews
I tried the first door. The inhabitant, someone I didn’t know, lay peacefully in bed. They wouldn’t be getting out of it. A red stain was soaking into the expensive bed sheets and the open-eyed look of surprise on their face would make a chilling death mask. In the next room, the scene was the same. Apparently my unconscious attacker had been making his way down the corridor, killing every and any one he could find. My fist gripped the knife in the tightest of grips as I fought with my conscience. I could go back and repay him for all the lives he’d stolen. That would be justice, of sorts.
It won, but it was a close fight. Worry for Lijuan and Chunhua added weight to my need to move on. He’d be out for a while yet, I could always come back.
Feet slapping on the floor I turned corner after corner. I banged on every door as I went. Some of the rooms were empty, but I found some of Hai San’s employees alive and well. The knife in my hand caused more than a few to take one look and slam the door shut. Multiple clicks indicated their hasty locking. Finally, one person, a young maid who I’d seen around the house, didn’t slam her door in my face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Assassins in the house,” I wheezed out. Adrenalin was coursing through my system. It made thought difficult. “Where is Hai San? Lijuan? Where are their rooms?”
She glanced down at the knife and back up to my face. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open.
“Not me,” I said. “The one that attacked me is down and out in my room. I’ve tried the alarm but nothing works.”
She didn’t speak straight away, but stepped back and looked to the right.
“Can you set it off?”
She shook her head. “It is not working.”
“Then where are their rooms? I need to make sure they’re all right. Tell me,” I pleaded, fighting another temptation, this one to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she gave me the answer I needed. “Tell me then lock your door. Don’t open it for anyone you don’t know and trust.”
She paused, sizing me up again.
“Come on, I brought the girls back safe,” I said and made sure the knife was hidden down by my side.
Another heartbeat of indecision and she told me. I heard her door slam as I took off at a flat out run. The second courtyard, thankfully the closest one, had the family quarters. I flew down the corridors, out of the servants and guest quarters into the courtyard. It was quiet.
Every door was closed and the lights were low. Padding across the stone tile floor, I edged towards the rooms the maid had identified as Hai San’s and the girls. The kiss of my soft soles on the stone, the thud of my heart in my chest and rush of blood in my ears was all I could hear. In my mind, thoughts cascaded like a waterfall into a plunge pool of dread. Churning images of dead girls, bloody limbs, severed throats, gashed flesh and entrails tangling around red washed bodies.
I paused in the middle of the courtyard, took a deep breath and pushed away the dread, the fear, trying to think. There were shadowed areas in the courtyard and I peered into them. Something nagged at me. A feeling. An instinct. There was a sense of wrongness. It was a struggle to dredge up the memory of this courtyard from my previous short visits. I couldn’t shake the feeling and took a renewed grip on the knife, raising it before me.
My hand shook and legs trembled. Fear warred with adrenalin and worry. I should call out. Hai San and girls needed a warning, but I couldn’t breathe properly. In my head the words were clear, written in letters of flame and ash, but they wouldn’t come out of my mouth.
A whisper. A scuff. A twitch of sound. I turned, letting the knife lead the way in a horizontal cut. It was instinct, a reflex and I cut nothing. A thin cord encircled my left wrist and I was yanked off my feet. I hit the ground hard and breath whooshed from my lungs. Scrabbling at the ground I tried to get back to my feet but the cord was pulled again and I fell.
I rolled to the left. My arm was stretched out along the ground and I kept rolling as fast as I could. All the while the cord was tightening and biting into my flesh. I slapped one foot down, kicking at the ground, and tumbled back the other way. My right arm, the one still clutching the knife snaked upwards following my entangled left arm. Still rolling, I brought my hands together and let the cord wrap across the sharp edge of the knife.
It parted under tension and against the thin blade. I was free and heard rushing feet coming from the shadows ahead. No time to look, I gathered my feet under me and with a hopeful push of my bound hands lunged forward, blade tip leading the way.
Warm blood and the feel of soft, yielding flesh came accompanied by a groan. I crashed to my knees, pain sparking up through the bone to my brain. The body collapsed on top of me, driving me back to the stone, elbows bearing the brunt of the pain. A metallic clatter of the knife spinning away counterpointed my yelp of agony.
More feet on stone. I had to move. Staying still was to give up. A moving target is harder to hit. I hoped.
Ignoring the pain in my bruised joints, I heaved the dead weight off me. The body tumbled to the side. I didn’t glance around, that would have slowed me down and I had no desire to see death coming. In fact, I’d much rather see the man with the scythe running away, his bony arse motoring at a speed I could never hope match.
Steps led up to the balcony and the doors to the girl’s rooms. I was leading the assassins towards Chunhua and Lijuan. It didn’t matter a damn that the man had bargained his daughter away. Not now. What mattered was making sure both kids lived through the night. Even if I didn’t. I’d let Tyler down. I hadn’t protected her. I wasn’t going to let these two girls suffer the same fate.
Bruises on my elbows, knees and ribs all making their presence known, I staggered to the top of the stairs and turned to face them. I fought to untangle my hands, the cord falling away.
Three of them, all armed with small axes, hatchets. They were racing towards me from the shadows. A quick inventory check showed I had absolutely nothing to fight them with. I was well and truly fucked. I shouted at them. I screamed and roared.
Behind me, a door opened.
Chapter 44
They paused.
Whoever came out of the door had them worried. I was under no illusion that my upraised fist and the blood dripping down past the waist band of my trousers was in any way scary.
“Step aside, Corin,” Hai San’s voice sounded behind me and a wave of relief washed through me. It could so easily have been one the Sio Sam Ong assassins.
I moved to the left, clearing a space at the head of the stairs. There were three of them and just two of us. Hai San may have thought he could take them all on his own, I knew I couldn’t, but three on two could become on three on one with one swift hack of those hatchets.
He didn’t step up beside me, he walked past. Down the stairs, one at a time, in a deliberate step, placing his weight with care each time. He was dressed in loose fitting trousers and a dark t-shirt with the slogan ‘I Walk the Line’ on the front and ‘Ring of fire’ on the back. I’ve no idea what they meant, but they seemed out of place. I took a lot more notice of the heavy looking sword he carried in one hand. The hilt was black and contrasted with the bright silver length of the blade. Single edged and widening out as it neared the curved point.
He’d have a range advantage over the hatchets. They’d have to get in real close to have any chance at striking him, whereas he could stay back and slice them the moment they ventured into reach. Of course, once he cut at one he was open to the other two and fast as anyone could be, there are limits.
I watched them spread out before him, backing off and widening out their group. A pace or two past the end of the stairs he stopped and brought the sword up before him, one handed, and settled into a stance. Right leg forward and bent at the knee, left leg back and straighter, with his weight balanced towards the rear leg.
The stair creaked under my foot as I stepped down.
“Stay out of this, Corin,” Hai San said, not taking his eyes from thos
e in front.
I took another step down, wincing at the blossoming pain in my ribs. Adrenalin no longer dulled the pain, my body had become used to it and every nerve informed my brain that I really should be paying some attention to all the red stuff I was leaking. By the way, if it wasn’t too much trouble would you see to the bruises on elbows and knees, not forgetting the pain in my wrist from the tight cord, the rest of my body chipped into the conversation.
I came to a halt on the last step. No one had spoken or turned in my direction. They were ignoring me, which in many ways was absolutely fine, but once they finished with Hai San I was sure I’d have their undivided attention. It wasn’t something I looked forward to with any relish.
At some point someone, any one of them, had to make a move. The silence and stillness was almost more painful than my various cuts, bruises and contusions.
The first was too quick to see. One moment nothing. The next, a cry of pain and one of the hatchet men was stumbling away from the fight, arm hanging limply by his side. Blood poured out of the gash in his upper arm and his weapon, hanging from its wrist strap, added weight, pulling the flesh further apart. The man’s face was frozen, shock and pain had taken control of his muscles and decided paralysis was the best option.
Hai San’s sword completed its arc and didn’t stop. He moved forward, into the gap created by the maimed man’s retreat. It was a smooth shift of weight rather than a deliberate step. In the same way a shark glides, with barely a motion of its tail, so Hai San stepped and cut again. This time the blade rose from near his knee to above his shoulder, cutting at the man to his right. The Sio Sam Ong assassin jumped back, throwing a ragged parry with the blade of his hatchet. A clash and ring of metal sounded in the courtyard, bouncing cold off of the stone tiles.
He didn’t stop. Over the blade went, Hai San’s arm leading his body in a spin to face the hatchet man who’d taken the opportunity to advance from the left. The short hafted hatchet descended, all of the assassin’s weight behind it. I staggered down the last step, right hand holding my sliced ribs, knowing I wouldn’t get there in time.
It was a wasted gesture. Hai San’s sword speared out, the sharp tip and thick blade taking the assassin under the armpit. The back of the blade blocked the downward swing and the point of the sword stopped the hatchet wielder in his tracks. His face contorted in a scream which never erupted from his mouth. Instead, a silent cry of blood poured forth.
The leader of the Hai San kept moving, dashing forward, following his sword, and past his victim. The sword and the body were his pivot as he moved, wrenching the blade out, spraying blood across the stone tiles. Twisting again, facing the last man standing.
Three cuts, four seconds, maybe less, one man was dead, another had slumped to the floor watching dumbly as his life blood flowed down the remains of his arm to pool by his feet. The last man, stood still, watching Hai San with fearful eyes. I could see the shake of the hatchet from my position near the steps. Neither moved. The silence, broken only by the drip of blood and ebbing whimpers of the nearly dead, stretched out.
He shouted, the man from Sio Sam Ong, and raised the hatchet above his head. The sound carried all of his anger, rage and fear with it, an exhalation of life that he threw at Hai San. He charged. Ten steps separated the two men and he only made the first three. A bolt, fletched in short red feathers, took the assassin in the throat, the impact staggering him and robbing him of any forward motion. Hai San leaped forward and cut from right to left, sharp edge leading the way. The Sio Sam Ong’s head left his shoulders. More blood fountained, the last desperate pumps of a heart that no longer had a mind to feed with oxygen rich blood. A wet thud and the decapitated head struck the tiled floor, teetered for a moment and rolled over, thankfully facing away from me.
A moment later, the body followed it to the stone.
“You should not have interfered,” Hai San said, rising out his stance and flicking the long sword, spraying blood across the floor in tiny red raindrops.
“I didn’t,” I said.
“And you should not be facing three on your own,” said a female voice I recognised.
“Chunhua,” Hai San shook his head, “we’ve had this conversation before.”
I turned. The teenager had a crossbow cradled in her arms. A simple affair in black with strings, stock and an absence of a bolt. That was stuck in the neck of the Sio Sam Ong, though whether it was in the bit attached to the body or to the head was not something I wanted to go and investigate at this moment.
“No, you’ve told me,” she answered. “That’s not the same thing.”
He shook his head again. “I didn’t want you to become a killer.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m a protector.”
“I promised your father,” Hai San began.
“And you employ me to look after Lijuan,” she interrupted. “What would happen to her if you died? You cannot face three and expect to come out alive every time. If they had killed you, who would protect Lijuan?”
I raised my hand. It hurt and I grimaced as I said, “Me?”
The look they gave me was not one I’d cherish to the end of time. “There are more of them,” I added.
Chapter 45
“Why did the alarms not sound?” Hai San said, stomping back towards the steps.
“Don’t know,” I answered as he walked by me. “One of the maids in a room near mine tried and couldn’t get it to work.”
Hai San stopped on the second step and turned to look at me. “Why are you here?”
“To warn you and protect the girls,” I answered.
“No. Why are you awake and running round when the rest of the house seems to be still in bed?” he said and I was conscious of the sword in his hands.
I glanced at Chunhua, the spent crossbow still clutched to her chest, and lowered my voice. “A lot are dead, I think. Everyone in the rooms near mine had their throats cut or worse.”
“Why aren’t you dead?”
“I sleep lightly sometimes and something woke me.” I pointed to the still leaking wound along my ribs.
“You are hurt,” Chunhua gasped and fled back into her room. She returned a moment later with a first aid kit and without much care slapped a large sponge over the wound. I tried to stay still as she taped it in place before winding a stretchy bandage around my ribs.
Hai San had left us to it and gone back into his own room emerging a minute or two later dressed for war. An armoured vest, all black panels and straps, covered his chest and the sword was now slung over his back, the hilt protruding over one shoulder. He still wore his loose pants but now there was a sheathed knife attached to a sturdy belt that encircled his waist.
“Can I borrow a gun?” I said, holding out my hand.
“No guns,” he answered.
I glanced at Chunhua who nodded in support of Lijuan’s father.
“Really?” I said.
“Part of the rules,” he said. “Tradition.”
“But they attacked in the night? Before the morning was here.”
He paused. “Strictly speaking, it is morning.”
“It’s the middle of the fucking night,” I shot back.
“It is a few hours past midnight,” he said. “There are no exact proscriptions on the start time for these things.”
“Are there any other rules that you’ve not told me about?”
“Hundreds,” he said, a small smile on his face. “I’ve set the alarms off. My guards are on their way. No one else has reported an attack.”
“How did they get in?” I asked as Hai San descended the stairs.
“I have no idea,” he said. “The guards will be questioned in detail. Yunru has made the first strike. The next must be ours.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to meet my guards and check the rest of the house,” he said in a voice which chilled the air around me.
“Give me a second, I’ll come with you,” I said,
struggling to my feet.
I saw him look me up and down. His expression hinted that he didn’t like what he saw. My face probably looked the same every morning when I looked in the mirror.
“Stay here. You are in no state to fight.”
It was hard to argue with him. My limbs ached and my chest was bound tightly in a bandage that was already starting to turn pink with blood. “I can help.”
“Stay here and protect the girls,” he said without turning back to me. “Thank you for the warning. I will send a doctor or nurse if I can find one.”
“Right,” I mumbled as I sank back to the steps. I wafted a lazy wave towards his back as he left. “Chunhua, you’d best reload that crossbow. It’s going to be a long night.”
I really needed a drink.
# # #
Chunhua and I sat on the courtyard steps, the crossbow propped against the banister primed and stretched, ready to fire. On the stone tiled floor four bodies lay sprawled and unmoving. The scent of blood carried on the wafts of air conditioning. Chunhua had brought blankets out from her room and I’d gone to each corpse and covered them over. It made not staring at them easier. I did liberate two hatchets and had pondered over the cord weapon one of them had used on me. The problem was I had no idea how to use it, so I left it alone.
“Lijuan is all right?” I asked.
“Still asleep,” she answered.
“Kids are like that. They can sleep through the strangest noise, but hear a voice and they’ll be wide awake before you know it.”
“She is curled up under her duvet cuddling her toys,” Chunhua said, shaking her head.
“And how do you feel?”
“I am fine,” she replied, not looking at me.
“You shot a man with a crossbow bolt,” I said.
