by G R Matthews
The wound from a hatchet tended to cut to the bone and sometimes beyond. The slash from a sword left a long wound, severing muscle, tendon and veins. Each wound was inflicted close up, in your enemy’s face, and it was rarely a single stab, slash, thrust, hack or cut. In the middle of a fight for your life you just kept cutting until they were no longer capable of fighting back, or breathing, whichever came first.
It wasn’t like the clips shows. Nothing like the old movies where an orphan boy was sent to learn skills from a master and after much hardship faced up to the villain. Along the way there’d be battles and brawls. In each, a single punch or kick might knock an opponent out. The slash of a sword would result in a fountain of fake blood and the over-acted death of an extra. I’d seen a few fights in my time and even more out of the window of this little room. Violence was ugly, unclean, and vicious. There was no great enjoyment to be had in the destruction of a human life. Necessity required it at times. Orders might demand it. But it wasn’t something to revel in and I certainly didn’t look forward to being a victim.
As the first man fell, I stepped forward and swung the heavy hammer down onto the head of the next man into our little room. He’d had his gaze focused on Qiao who was in the act of dropping the crossbow and lifting the twin knives. The impact was marked by a sickening crunch and instead of bouncing back the hammer sunk into the head of the Sio Sam Ong soldier. It would have been quick. Brain death is an almost instantaneous way to go and his had been turned into mush in less than a second.
The two bodies blocked the open door and I stepped back, out of sight and out of stabbing distance. I’d seen more coming up the stairs, three at least, and the one at the back caught my eye. It was the man from the submarine, the assassin who’d tried to kill the girls. A hot surge of anger welled up from my belly and flooded my throat. I held it back with fear and reason. Fear that by running forward I’d be cut down in a heartbeat and reason agreed with that assessment. A peek out and I saw him waving more men forward.
Two soldiers both armed with hatchets and evil grins, rushed the door. I let the first past, Qiao would take him and the second halted at the last moment. My hammer, swung at the spot where his head should have been, missed. Its weight and the lack of the expected resistance carried me forward. Twisting my head to the side, I saw the hatchet begin to fall. I was right in its path and no one short of a superhero from those old graphic novels would have been able to get out of the way. A strange way to die. Hacked apart by a hatchet in a warehouse, in a city that wasn’t mine, in a fight I’d volunteered for. When was I going to learn? It’d better be fucking soon or I’d never have the chance.
And he hit the architrave at the top of the door. His face took on a look of utter shock and surprise. I could have been staring into a mirror at that moment, my expression matching his. He raised his other hand to tug the hatchet free and I kicked him in the fork of his legs, the hammer forgotten in my haste to hurt him before he hurt me. Another kick to his face as he fell to the floor, clutching his bruised balls, finished him off.
There was a cry from behind, followed by a curse, a grunt and strangled scream. I spun in place, raising the hammer as I did so. Qiao was holding her hand over a nasty looking slice in her other arm. The soldier from Sio Sam Ong was using his free hand to try and hold in all the blood and guts that were attempting to pour out of the deep gash in his stomach. I swung right to left and the hammer caved in his ribs, throwing him into a stumble which ended in a crash to the floor. His legs twitched and his chest rose an inch or two, stopped and sank back. Still. Unmoving. Dead. I forgot about him and stepped over to Qiao.
Blood was dripping between her fingers and her remaining knife tumbled from nerveless fingers. She slumped and I caught her, face white, eyes wide and gasping for breath. Shock and blood loss; dual killers. A glance over my shoulder, checking the doorway. Three bodies blocked it. Not totally and any second they’d be pushing up the stairs again. There was nowhere to hide and no way to get Qiao out safely. Worse still, there was nowhere to run to. A desperate leap out of the window was the last thing I wanted to do, but it was the only exit I could see.
“Go,” Qiao gasped out from between bared teeth.
Which kind of made my mind up for me. I switched the strange battle hammer to my other hand, wiped the sweat from my palm and took a renewed grip on the weapon. “Can you still fight?”
“What?” She snapped. “Get the fuck out of here you fucking idiot.”
“I can’t,” I said, sliding towards the door and listening out for sounds on the stairs.
“Why?” she started and caught her breath in a strangled yelp of pain before continuing. “It doesn’t matter why, just do me a favour and leave me alone. Get out.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I answered. “Now either shut up and keep bleeding, or get off your arse and be ready to fight.”
At my feet, the blood from crushed skulls and slashed arteries was puddling its way towards my shoes. There was always a chance that one of our numerous attackers would slip in the gore. Not much of a chance, but I’d take anything right about now. Footsteps on the stairs, lots of them. Rapid and getting closer. Our time was up.
“Get ready,” I said.
“We are dead,” she answered and I heard her grunt as she pushed herself back to her feet. “You do know that, don’t you?”
“Not yet.” I gave her a smile full of a confidence which I didn’t feel.
“Fucking mad,” she said, but she’d slapped a tight bandage around her wounded arm and raised the broad bladed knife in front of her.
“It’s been said before,” and I would be plenty happy if it was said again, many times, especially if I was still around to hear it.
They reached the top of the stairs and tried to barge into the room. The first obstacle was the haft of the hatchet stuck in the top of the door frame. They’d have to duck past that. After that there were the bodies of their friends littering the floor. They’d have to watch their feet. It all added up to a slim chance which was a thousand times better than no chance.
The first one round the corner stumbled over a body but still managed to parry the swing of my hammer. He regained his balance before I reverse my swing, but not before Qiao lunged past me and shoved six inches of thick steel in his belly. It took a lot out of her and she fell to the floor alongside her victim.
A second soldier of Sio Sam Ong stumbled through the door, but I couldn’t reach him past the pile of bodies and the leaking Qiao. I settled for an underhand throw of my hammer which struck him the chest. There was a crack and a whoosh of breath from the Sio Sam Ong man. He stumbled back into the man following and they both went down.
“You threw away your weapon,” Qiao looked up at me from the pile of past lives. Her face was losing colour and her eyes unfocused.
“Yeah, well,” I shook my head, “I couldn’t reach him.”
The two men were blocking the stairs and giving us a few seconds of respite as they tried to find their feet. I reached into my waistband retrieving the small package I’d stuffed there before the battle got underway.
“No one is coming to rescue us,” she breathed, her voice fading.
“Then we’ll have to do it ourselves,” I answered, grabbing her good arm and dragging her back away from the door.
“Unarmed?” Her eyes were closing.
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said, and the ratchet of the slide caused her eyes to fly open.
“You are not allowed to use that,” she said.
“No,” I corrected, “you’re not.”
Chapter 51
Hai San was a traditionalist but he wasn’t stupid. There’d been guns in the armoury alongside the traditional weapons of his homeland and it hadn’t been too hard to pilfer a handgun and some ammunition.
I may lack common sense, but I’m not stupid either. If someone comes at you with a fist, use a knife. They have a knife, you hold a sword. Attacked by a sword, shoot them. And so on.
It was military mantra, almost. Attack with overwhelming force and much bigger guns.
“Stay there,” I said, needlessly it seemed as Qiao’s eyes had closed and she appeared to be unconscious. She was breathing, a skin tight under-suit doesn’t hide much. Bloody was dripping from the patched wound, but more slowly than before. She still had a chance.
Through the door I saw a hand reach out and grab the ankle of one of the fallen, dragging the body back and out of the way. They were clearing the path. Confident in their numbers again they needed an entry point which didn’t put them at a disadvantage. I thumbed the safety off, rested my trigger finger alongside the guard and sighted at the open doorway.
It was heavy in my hand, cold metal and a plastic grip, with the certain knowledge that it was a weapon designed to kill. The magazine held fifteen rounds of brass jacketed lead and had been built for a different age. Most projectile weapons these days used compressed gas to fire a bullet at subsonic speeds, nothing that would penetrate the hull of a Box, dome or anything else that could cause the instant death of the shooter, the target and the ten thousand others who lived there. This gun wasn’t one of those. I’d seen them on clips, both the documentaries and the fictions about old wars.
My hand shook. I’ve never liked guns, usually because the thought of having one pointed at me was not an image I wanted to dwell upon. Another body was pulled back, out of the way, leaving a smeared trail of blood, bone and brain. I focused on the open space, judging where they’d come from, where their chests would be. Never aim for the head, my sergeant had shouted at us during training, its small, you’ll miss and they won’t. A deep breath to push down the fear that had been edging its way past the adrenalin which had swamped my body during the brief spurts of violence.
They came. Twin knives, just like Qiao’s, leading the Sio Sam Ong round the doorway and into my sights. I squeezed the trigger, twice. Two deafeningly loud explosions shook the window, the walls and threatened to burst my eardrums.
“Holy fucking fuck,” I think I said. Those were the words my brain commanded my throat and mouth to enunciate. I felt the air leave my body and my lips move, I just couldn’t hear anything.
And my arm hurt. The gun had not just bucked in my hand, it had tried to leap from it towards the ceiling. I gripped it in two hands and brought it back on target.
The target was on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He wasn’t going to move again.
I got up, out of my crouch and started towards the door, gun leading the way. There would be, I hoped, an element of surprise. My feet slipped a little on the blood covered metal, but I stayed on my feet and swung round the door out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. All around the warehouse, the fighting had come to a standstill. No one moved. No hatchets hacked, no swords sliced and no knives killed anyone in that brief second as I emerged and sighted again, the three dots lining up along the barrel.
Two shots. Another of the Sio Sam Ong fighters, the one nearest the top dropped his hatchet and raised a hand to his chest before falling backwards into those behind.
And there was panic on the stairs and renewed fighting below. Sounds filtered back through my ears. Screams and the clash of weapons, the rush of feet on the stairs and expletive filled demands to get out of the way.
I didn’t rush. I was calm. The gun gave power, instilled confidence. My world contracted into a tunnel framed by the iron sights. My back against the rail, I started down the stairs. I was willing to let them run, to feel the fear. Especially the assassin, the one who’d threatened me, Lijuan and Chunhua. I wanted him to know what it was like.
Squeezing the trigger and aiming low, I dropped another of the soldiers. I didn’t want to kill everyone, anyone if it could be helped now. I’d protect myself and Qiao, but I wasn’t stupid. Sometimes the only way to save your own life is stop the other person from carrying on with the rest of theirs. Another loud crack, a waft of smoke from the barrel, and another wounded enemy.
There he was. Running hard towards a stack of crates. The threatener, the frightener of little girls, I raised the handgun and snapped off three rounds at him. All missed, but the crate wouldn’t be causing me any trouble. I saw him skid around the corner as I reached the bottom of the stairs. My feet flew across the warehouse floor, chasing him around the corner and straight into a punch.
I couldn’t stop. I saw it coming. Tried to raise a hand to guard my face. Tried to twist out of the way. Tried to turn the gun his way. I didn’t manage any of them and star’s exploded in my eyes as my legs turned to jelly.
The gun clattered to the floor and I heard it scrape its way into the distance. My breath came in short gasps as I desperately tried to banish the blur from my eyes and scrabble to my feet.
I heard the crack before I felt it. One of my ribs, maybe more, gave way before his kick. I collapsed back to the floor. Each breath a painful exercise in staying alive.
“You should have stayed out of it,” the assassin’s voice said, “but my brother said you wouldn’t.”
Brother? Who cared? Keep talking. Give me a second to get a decent lungful of air.
“Really?” I wheezed.
“You’ve met him,” he said and I saw him move, kicking out again. This time I got my arm in the way. It still hurt and there would be one hell of a bruise on my bicep if I lived through this. If I didn’t at least the coroner would be able to match the swelling to a shoe print. “Bojing. He doesn’t like you.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” I gasped out, casting my gaze around for the gun.
“Yunru and he will be glad to see you.” He punctuated the statement with another kick.
“Can’t wait.” There it was, under the pallet a few feet away. Out of reach. At least, now my mind was catching up with my mouth, he didn’t want to kill me. Damage me almost beyond recognition, but not kill. I was a trophy. Something he could display before his boss and brother. I tried to stand. Got to my knees before his fist crashed into my face. Rolling with the punch I fell to the floor, a little bit closer than last time.
This was no way to move, but it was the best I had. Take a beating for the chance to get the gun. A balancing act. I didn’t want to die before I killed him but, as a tonne of waste barge workers can tell you, a single punch is enough to kill. Bar fights and the beatings on the dark streets of home were the perfect training. I knew how to get beaten up.
“Are we meeting for dinner?” I looked up at him, blood dribbling from my split lip, and tried to smile. He swung his foot again and I took the blow in my arched back, falling forward and another metre closer to the gun. Just out of reach. One more time, maybe, hopefully.
“He said you were an insufferable arsehole,” he said, stepping closer, as I pulled myself back to my knees.
“When it comes to arseholes, he’d know,” I said and braced myself for the punch.
I wasn’t disappointed. It came fast and low, a hook from the right intending to knock my head somewhere very far away to the left. I ducked my chin and shied away a little. His knuckles caught me above my ear and I heard a sharp crack. For a moment, as I fell and as the darkness of unconsciousness reached out its tendrils to embrace me, I thought it was my head he’d broken. I bounced off the floor, awake and alive enough to get a hand between my face and the hard surface.
“Fucking hell,” he shouted and his pain brought me back around, the tendrils faded into the background.
Looking up, I saw him cradle his hand to his chest. Two of the fingers were pointing at odd angles. Broken knuckles or dislocated fingers. A small measure of revenge for beating the shit out of me.
Under my fingertips the metal was smooth and the plastic grip dimpled, but the gun was warmer than I remembered it. I dragged it from beneath the pallet, peered through eyes that only got this bad after the sixth whiskey, aimed and fired. Six pulls on the trigger. Each explosion of smoke, flame and lead hammered into my skull. The darkness reached for me and I let it take me.
My eyes closed as the as
sassin fell, blood already discolouring his clothes.
Chapter 52
“You insulted our traditions,” he shouted at me, which I felt was slightly unfair and inappropriate. Hospitals are supposed to be quiet places of healing.
“I stayed alive,” I answered, my throat dry and raspy. I looked down at the IV needle stuck in my arm and the pristine white blanket covering my body. The patch over my broken ribs was tight and pinched at the skin, but the doctors told me it was doing its job.
Hai San shook his head. “That’s not the point. There are rules.”
“Stupid rules,” I replied. “Can you pass me the water?”
He lifted the glass with its clear straw from the side table and passed it over. “They work to keep the conflicts from escalating into full scale war.”
“Really? What’s the difference between a crossbow,” I nodded across to the Qiao who was comatose, wrapped in bandages, full of tubes, in the next bed, “and a gun? She could shoot further and more accurately than my handgun.”
“My gun,” he corrected.
“Yeah, well,” I took a sip of water, letting it wet my throat and soak into the patch of sandpaper the medics seemed to have installed without my consent, “sorry about that. If I hadn’t had it with me, Qiao would be dead and so would I.”
“People die,” Hai San said with no change of expression. “I should not have let you help.”
“You won?” I didn’t recall the end of the battle in the warehouse. I’d been too busy bleeding and being unconscious.
