Chapter 7: My Little Town

It was stuck.

Chloe braced her foot against his chin and gave it another tug. No good; the blade was stuck fast. Curse his thick skull…

She sighed. She liked that knife. She called it Chico.

She hefted the corpse, knife and all, into the dumpster with the others.

It had been an interesting ten minutes, she reflected. She was used to ambushes, of course; they were part and parcel of any assassin's life. This had been the third one today. The first happened less than a kilometre from the safe-house — twenty ninjas disguised as a hedge. ("Damned ninjas," she thought, reflexively.) What was the second? She paused by the mouth of the alley, next to the overturned (flaming) jeep. Flames? Ah, yes, that strange assassin with the flamethrower in the warehouse. Was that before or after she saved the kittens from that collapsing building? "After," she recalled, with a snap of her fingers; she had had her purse when she bought treats for the kitties but not after she jammed it into the passing madman's face during their fight on the overpass. And that was after she knocked out those bank robbers, but not before the bit where she showed a lost child the proper way to skin a cat (1).

Milk runs were always such a hassle.

At least this latest bunch had put some effort into it. Most of the assassins the Soldats sent after her came equipped with a gun, a knife, expertly tailored suits, and crêpe-paper body armour (2). These ones had Kevlar, assault rifles, and an APC.

Something exploded across the street.

"Ah, and a helicopter," she recalled, as part of its rotor assembly whiffed overhead. Now that had been a tricky fight. She had almost wrenched out her shoulder on that one.

She stepped over someone's arm. She was surprised at how calm it was. Other than the crackling flames, the wreckage, the bodies, and the shell casings, the streets were empty and silent. No sirens, no police, no screams — nothing but the dead of night. She recalled that a local arms dealer, a Soldat by the name of Jarvis, had most of the local authorities on his payroll, so that explained the lack of police. The fire department burned down sometime last year. As for the screams, she had read somewhere that the city's inhabitants had once slept through a stampede of elephants (3).

"What a strange place to go shopping," she thought.

She stopped. "Come to think of it," she thought of it, "where the heck am I, anyway?"

She wasn't lost; she knew exactly where she was, and where she was going. But as for the actual locations of those places, well…

That was the problem with living in The Manor, the ancient spiritual headquarters of a shadowy, quasi-religious international order, proverbially referred to as a place "forgotten by time": finding the damned thing on a map. She knew she was close to home, which was somewhere near the Franco-Spanish border, but had no real idea as to her actual location. She had been dispatched to countless nameless, placeless spots like this throughout her life, and had always found her way back home by dead reckoning.

("And walking. Lots of walking," she noted grimly, as she tried to shake a pebble out from under her heel.)

In all the excitement of her training as an assassin, she had never thought to plot all those places out on a map. Not that she trusted maps; the Soldat misinformation department made sure of that (4).

Where was she? Cordova? Cormenia? Definitely a 'cor' in there somewhere.

She shrugged. 'Wherever you go, there you are,' a philosopher once said. She was here, wherever here was, and she had a part to play; that was all that she needed to know. The 'why' and how of it would sort themselves out.

The light changed. She stepped out into the street (after looking both ways). Crossing the meridian, she spotted what appeared to be an extremely rare 1947 50-franc piece in the gutter. She picked it up, and, for wont of anything better to do, flipped it, watching it glint in the starlight.

A black shape. Moonlight off a great blade.

She flung the groceries and herself aside.

The greatsword sang. Stone splintered beneath it.

Hands flashed, hers, striking secret pressure points. She kicked off, flipped and landed on the opposite side of the street, crouched. She drew steel with her right hand, and caught the grocery bag with her left.

The franc pinged off the shattered street, and rolled to a stop. A ribbon of cloth settled next to it. Chloe realized it was from her cloak. She also realized that her hands really, really hurt.

This was because she had tried to punch through steel armour. The man in the street had a full suit of it. It was black, etched with Chinese characters writ in silver and gold, with a great red scorpion painted on the breastplate. The helm had a similar shape, the claws forming the cheek guards and a stinging tail covering the nose. The face within it was made mostly of teeth, with two pudgy eyes squinting out from it.

The maniac with the giant sword stepped out of the small crater he had made on impact. He was, Chloe noted, rather huge.

"Ha ha ha!" he bellowed. He swung his greatsword through a complicated figure-eight. "QUAIL, child! For you face now your DOOM!"

She flicked a knife through his head.

"Urg?" He went cross-eyed. Slowly, like a mighty oak, he toppled over with a crash.

Chloe pocketed the cloth and coin for later, and slung the grocery bag over her shoulder. As she walked away, she wondered how this clanking monstrosity could have possibly snuck up on her as he did. Well, her ears were still ringing from that rocket fire a few minutes ago, she recalled. And it had been a long day — a very long, trying day. "I liked this cloak," she thought, fingering its newly trimmed edge. She could probably fix it. "I think I still have some green thread…"

"Halt!" The voice boomed off the buildings.

She looked back.

A block away, the dead man walked. Ran. Leapt.

He smashed into the pavement not ten feet away. Chloe, she loathed to admit, was impressed.

"You DARE interrupt me when I am talking!" he roared. He pulled the knife from his forehead with a grunt. "You shall pay for that attack, which cost me many brain cells! Now…" He whirled his sword. "Know now the name of your doom! For I am —"

"Lai-Chi Hu, only son of Jintaou Hu, and wielder of the legendary blade Passing Wind?" said Chloe, matter-of-factly.

He staggered, as if struck. "How did you — I mean, YES! And I am your DOOM! HA!"

"Altena save me from fools wearing armour engraved with their family history," she said, after she killed him again.

The Lai clan. She recognized the clan symbol on the breastplate. She wasn't surprised; she had killed their top student. "Come to think of it," she thought of it, "this does explain all the ninja attacks that have been happening lately."

"Damned ninjas," she added, under her breath.

"Strange, though, that they should send someone so foolish to do the job," she thought, as she reached the city park. If she had cared, she would have been insulted. Was this the best the Lai family could muster?

Something tugged at her foot.

Tripwire!

Things clicked in the night. She whirled. A swarm of razor-sharp needles zipped through her cloak. She dove for cover behind a bench.

Something was taped to it. It was small, square, grey, wet, and blinking.

She jumped. Hot force blasted the wind from her lungs as the explosion hurled her through the park's canopy. Reflexively, she bunched up, rolled, and bounced hard off a thick trunk. She rebounded into a defensive stance, back against a tree, head spinning and ears ringing.

"Don't panic don't panic don't panic," she thought, gasping for air. "Breathe, focus." She tried her best. Her ribs ached. Broken? No; chest guard took most of it. Still felt like she'd taken a cinderblock to the stomach. Maybe an elephant? A bucket of grapes?

She shook it off. "Delirium," she noted. "Exhaustion. Concussion? Mission!" She felt for the bag, and then spotted it hanging from a branch 20 meters away. "Safe."

Her eyes darted about. "Who? How many? Where?"

Movement!

She threw. The blade met flesh. Someone yelped. "A woman?" she thought.

Click.

A bolt snicked past her ear and thudded into the tree. "Made her miss," she noted.

A violet shape burst from a hedge ten meters to her right. She flicked a knife in its direction.

She gasped as the shape caught and hurled it back at her.

Chloe barely had time to dodge it, and the shape was upon her. Iron stabbed from its midst. It skittered off the steel back of her hastily raised gauntlets. She stumbled back from the thing's charge. Desperate twists and parries warded off its strikes.

Her heel struck root. She twisted, grabbed the assassin's thin, muscular arm as it struck, and drove the blade into the trunk. She spun, kicked the back of assassin's head into the tree, drew steel, and jabbed at the base of the spine.

Chink.

"Chain mail!" She cursed, silently, then leapt back as a short sword tried to remove her hands.

"The other one!" This one, a woman, had a wounded arm. Chloe dashed in; she had the advantage up close.

They struck simultaneously, and blocked each other's blows. Knife and sword danced under the stars. Chloe swept at her legs. The woman leapt, and chopped where Chloe was just before she rolled under her. A wild knife toss grazed the woman's thigh.

A ninja-to planted itself millimetres from Chloe's nose. She looked up, just in time to see the first assassin yank her second sword out of the tree.

She swiped at the killer as she spun upright, drawing her second fighting knife in the process.

Two feet planted themselves into her midsection, sending her flying through several small trees. She rolled to her feet.

Chloe shuffled back, trying to keep the two assassins in front of her as they tried to flank her. She was breathing harder than she would have liked. They were pretty good, she noted. Both women, by the looks of it, with the same height and build, too. "Twins?" she wondered. Probably, to judge what she could see of their faces. More messengers from the Lai family, she guessed. But not like the other one. Masks, full night camouflage, blackened blades, no ornamentation, not even a word out of either of them, and every strike a killing blow -- these were true assassins.

Her eyes narrowed. "And ninjas," she noted. "Why does it always have to be ninjas?"

A rush of wind, a storm of blades, and they were upon her. Thrust, jab, parry, twist, dodge, jump, block… the world faded away, save for her hands, her ragged breaths, the endless din of steel, and an ever-tightening circle of certain death.

Chloe realized something:

She was losing.

A stab hissed passed her cheek. A slash nearly eviscerated her. Two pommel-strikes, from opposite directions, struck her ribs. She caught a double chop on her arms. She stumbled, saving her leg from amputation through sheer luck.

She backed into a stout trunk, and gasped. The twins pressed the advantage. She tried to ward them off the blows, but there were too fast, and too many of them.

Two swords sang towards her head. They bit into the wood, criss-crossed over her neck, and pinned her in place. Shocked, she fumbled her knives, and struggled to free herself.

Two needle-sharp spikes stopped millimetres from her eyes. She gasped. The faces of her killers were right next to her. She could see their skin — lily white, spider-webbed with rose black — and hear their breathing — calm and synchronized. She saw in their eyes no pity, no life, nothing; they were dark as space, like pits in their heads. A curious sensation crept over her hands and knees. The life drained out of them, as terror, nature's deadliest poison, flowed into their veins and stole towards her heart.

"Chloe of the Soldats," said the twins. She gasped. The voice was not heard, but felt; a tingle on the back of her neck, like a spider on her spine.

"For the honour of the Lai family…" They stepped back. "You must die!"

They drew back to strike. The clouds parted. Chloe looked up. There was a shadow upon the moon, and it was her death.

And a voice in her head whispered, "You govern death."

Time slowed. Hot blood from her heart thundered in her ears, poured fire into her limbs.

Her hands moved. The air felt thick. She grasped the swords across her neck, pulled, and swung with both arms. Dispassionately, she observed how they warped slightly as they hummed through the air and snipped through the spikes aimed at her head. She dived forward, grabbed her knives, rolled —

Time snapped back with a roar. Literally.

The 303-pound hulk that was Lai-Chi Hu smashed earthwards with a mighty battle cry, his legendary blade splitting the oak trunk from tip to root, his armour-clad feet almost flattening the twins.

"Raaa! Curse you for moving!" he roared.

"Lai-Chi! You fool!" hissed one of the twins.

He was beyond listening (not that he listened). He twisted his hands, and freed his greatsword in a storm of splinters. "Victory to the Lais!" he bellowed. Back and forth his sword swung. Mighty trunks shattered before it. The air churned with splinters, leaves, and a family of squirrels (very angry).

"Stop, you idiot!" yelled one of the twins, smacking him in the face.

"Ur?"

He did.

Leaves pattered softly to the ground. The scent of split wood and sweat lingered. A small log bounced off his head.

"She's getting away, you fool!" said one of the twins.

"Ur?" he said, blinking away testosterone.

Then the squirrels jumped him.

As the ninjas dodged his frantic attempts to slice them in two, a cloaked figure vanished into the woods.

(Footnotes)

1. First, find a cat. Second, prepare the cat by bathing it in warm water, mixed with lavender oil and no-more-tears detergent. Third, dry cat using a soft towel (mind the claws!). Fourth, locate the nearest brick wall. Fifth, bash your skull against wall until all desires to strip the living flesh from a cat are expunged from brain (plus or minus any associated encephalic fluids). Sixth, pet cat. Last, take up a healthy habit, like fork collecting. No, you can't have any, these are mine, mine, mine.

2. "But it worked for Bond!" wailed the Soldat quartermaster, moments before he was fed to a pack of rabid laser bees.

3. An urban myth -- the elephants actually walked in single file, paused for traffic, and wore big fluffy shoes (in compliance with local noise ordinances (5)).

4. She knew, for example, that the actual borders of the European nations fluctuated on a daily basis (depending on power shifts amongst various factions of the Soldats), and that Luxembourg was an optical illusion.

5. Which did not exist.