Off Armageddon Reef (15 page)

The short man whirled in shock as the deep, powerful voice shouted from behind him.

He and his men had gotten to within fifty yards of their intended prey. The thick carpet of pine needles had muffled any sound their feet might have made, and the steep-sided gully of a dry, seasonal streambed's twisting course had provided cover for their approach. His two crossbowmen had just settled into firing position, bracing their weapons on the raised lip of the streambed and waiting patiently for the moving Marine lieutenant to clear their line of fire to their target. Not surprisingly, every scrap of the leader's attention at that moment was concentrated on the Charisian crown prince and his three remaining bodyguards.

Which was why he was totally unprepared to see the man charging across that same carpet of pine needles towards him with a drawn sword in his hands.

Lieutenant Falkhan reacted out of instinct and training, not conscious thought. His right hand swept towards the hilt of his sword, but his left reached out simultaneously. It caught Crown Prince Cayleb by the front of his tunic and yanked brutally.

The sudden heave took Cayleb completely by surprise. He unbalanced and went down in an ungainly sprawl…just as a crossbow bolt hissed through the space he'd occupied an instant before.

The same bolt could not have missed Falkhan by more than six inches, and a second bolt slammed into Zhak Dragoner's chest. The corporal crumpled backward without even a scream, and the lieutenant's blade hissed out of its sheath.

Fronz Dymytree tossed aside the lizard spears he'd been holding and snatched out his own cutlass almost as quickly as Falkhan's sword cleared the scabbard. The two surviving Marines, still reacting before conscious thought could catch up with them, moved to place themselves between the prince and the apparent source of the attack.

The assassins' leader just had time to draw his own sword before the interfering madman came bounding down into the dry watercourse towards him.

“Finish the job!” the leader shouted to his second-in-command. “I'll deal with this bastard!”

His subordinate didn't even hesitate. The leader's reputation as a master swordsman was well deserved. It was also one of the reasons he'd been chosen for this mission in the first place, and the second-in-command heaved himself up out of the streambed on the side closest to the Charisians.

“Come on!” he barked.

Falkhan swore viciously as at least ten men seemed to appear out of the very ground. Two of them carried crossbows, but all the rest had drawn swords, and the crossbowmen dropped their ungainly, slow-firing weapons and reached for their own swords.

“Run, Highness!” the lieutenant shouted as he sensed Cayleb bouncing back to his feet behind him.

“Fuck that!” the crown prince spat back, and steel scraped as he drew his own blade.

“God
damn
it, Cayleb,
run!
” Falkhan bellowed, and then the attackers were upon them.

The assassin leader was confident in his own skill, but a faint warning bell rang somewhere inside him as his unexpected opponent's peculiar stance registered. The mysterious newcomer held the hilt of his weapon in both hands, just above eye level, with one foot advanced and his entire body turned at a slight angle.

It was unlike any stance the assassin had ever seen, but he had no time to analyze it. Not before the hovering weapon hissed forward like a steel lightning bolt.

The sheer, blazing speed of the stroke took the assassin by surprise, but he was just as good as his reputation claimed. He managed to interpose his own broadsword, despite his opponent's speed and even though he'd never encountered an attack quite like this one.

It didn't help.

He had one brief instant for his eyes to begin to widen in shocked disbelief as the newcomer's blade sliced cleanly through his own, and then his head leapt from his shoulders.

Ahrnahld Falkhan parried frantically as the first sword came chopping in. Steel jarred on steel with an ugly, anvil-like clang, and he twisted aside as a second blade reached for him. He heard more metal clashing on metal, and swore with silent desperation as he realized Cayleb, instead of running while he and Dymytree tried to slow the assassins, had fallen into formation with them.

Only three things kept the crown prince and either of his Marines alive for the next few seconds. One was the two crossbowmen's need to discard one weapon and draw another, which slowed them and dropped them a little behind the other ten attackers. The second was the fact that all of the assassins coming at them had expected those crosswbows to do the job without any need to engage anyone hand-to-hand. They'd been just as surprised by the mysterious stranger's intervention as Falkhan had been by their own attack, and their rush towards the prince and his bodyguards was a scrambling, unorganized thing. They didn't come in together in a tightly organized attack.

And the third thing was that Cayleb had ignored Falkhan's order to run.

The first assassin to reach the crown prince leapt towards him, sword slashing, only to stumble back with a sobbing scream as Cayleb unleashed a short, powerful lunge. King Haarahld had imported a weapons master from Kyznetzov, in South Harchong, and while the Empire might be decadent, might be corrupt, and was definitely insufferably arrogant, it still boasted some of the finest weapons instructors in the world. Master Domnek was at least as arrogant as any Harchong stereotype, but he was also just as good at his craft as he thought he was…and a relentless taskmaster.

Most Safeholdian swordsmen were trained in the old school, but Cayleb had been taught by someone who recognized that swords had points for a reason. His savage, economic lunge drove a foot of steel through his opponent's chest, and he'd recovered back into a guard position before his victim hit the ground.

A second assassin came hurtling in on the crown prince, only to collapse—this time with little more than a gurgling moan—as Cayleb's second thrust went home at the base of his throat.

Falkhan was too heavily engaged against two other opponents to allow his attention to stray, but he was agonizingly aware that the assassins were concentrating their efforts against Cayleb. The fact that they were was probably the only reason Falkhan and Dymytree were still alive, yet he didn't expect to stay that way for long against three-to-one odds.

But then something new was added.

The assassins' second-in-command heard a scream from behind him and grinned nastily at the evidence that his commander had dealt with the interfering busybody who'd spoiled their ambush. But then he heard a
second
scream, and he backed off a couple of paces from the confusion of blades and bodies around the Charisian prince and his outnumbered bodyguards and turned to look back the way he'd come.

He just had time to take in the crumpled bodies of his two crossbowmen, and then the man who'd killed both of them was upon him in a swirl of steel.

Unlike his late commander, this assassin had no time to register anything peculiar about his opponent's stance. He was too busy dying as the newcomer drove a two-handed thrust straight through his lungs and heart, twisted his wrists, and recovered his blade, all in one graceful movement and without ever breaking stride.