Meandering River, Ardent Flame
Page 24
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Five men already lay on the ground; dead or unconscious made no difference to him. There were still twenty-five more, and Wong had to deal with them. Silently, he cursed. It was true that he'd taken it upon himself to help the Lian sisters from Bianjing, and also true that he'd come up with the idea of the barge, but he hadn't asked for confrontation. Wong had been through enough of those in his life. If only those guards at the first dock hadn't taken offence and rode to warn the next ones of their coming...
Another bamboo pole was thrust for his face. Wong batted it away lazily with his own. The group meant nothing to him, but if those sisters didn't pole off the boat, he'd have difficulty stopping the guardsmen from swarming the barge, once they tired of watching him. He hadn't wanted to stop the boat, but a flotilla had appeared, to block the fugitives off from the remainder of the channel. Wong almost felt flattered.
“Just drop it, old man,” seethed one of the men. Wong didn't bother replying. He needed his breath. Two poles snaked for his legs simultaneously, but he swept both away, catching them as they crossed, stepping smoothly back with pole raised defensively. A man tried to slip behind him, so Wong, after swinging the pole in an accelerating circle, clapped him soundly across the chest with his staff end. The man splashed noisily off-dock. A quick glimpse behind him showed that the barge still floated in position.
“Go on!” Wong growled at the boat. It'd be pointless for them to wait; Wong had sprang, from boat to dock, in hopes of negotiating passage. Instead, they'd set upon him. All thirty of them. Fortunately, he'd deprived the closest man of a staff early on, and now he used it to fend off the rest.
One man, better equipped than the others, thrust a spear at his chest. Grinning, Wong caught and pulled the spear neck towards himself, unbalancing the man, and at the same time slid his foot along the pole, to sweep off the man's fingers. If Wong had ever favoured a weapon, it was the spear. Wresting it from the man, he flipped and gripped the spear, double-handed, near its base.
Lunging forwards, Wong thrust at the nearest man, his foremost hand twisting the spear tip in rotation as it entered the man's thigh. Without pause, he retracted the spear, and jabbed three times in a wide semi-circle as he fended off three men with dao. The second, having thrown himself back as the spear made for his face, whirled his blade forward as Wong retracted, but the spear was longer, and it twisted out to transfix his foot.
The rest of the company drew back, uncertain, as Wong struggled internally to maintain regular breathing. He inhaled heavily through his nose, willing his chi settle.
A sudden splash made him turn; it was a newly docked boat unloading a single swordsman, blade already drawn. Wong whirled to meet him, spear poised to jab at the face, but the swordsman swept it aside, blade hitting the steel neck of the spear with an ugly grating sound. The spear circled back, and the sword struck it again, this time in a downward cut, shearing off half the wooden pole. It was a cheap spear, for sure, Wong admitted regretfully to himself, as he knocked away one of the thirty who had regained their courage with the shortening of the weapon.
A glint caught his eye from the swordsman's boat, and Wong had just enough time to duck low and avoid a sword cut as a crossbow bolt streaked his scalp. A stab in his shoulder from the sword brought him lower. Fraction of a second more and the sword would return for his head. The sword whistled. A bad cut, thought Wong, even as he rolled to avoid the blade, springing up with a fresh staff from a fallen opponent to meet the sword.
But the blade never came.
Steel met scabbard, and Wong wanted to shout in exasperation as Jiang stepped to parry the blow aside by sword sheath. His eyes flickered quickly to the crossbow man. The guard lay unconscious, or possibly dead, in the boat, crossbow hopefully gone, as Flame climbed over the man to step ashore.
“Draw it,” ordered the swordsman. Jiang moved back, sword still sheathed.
“No.”
She tossed the sword down. Wong bit back the urge to shout. Where had her wits gone? And as if to prove the futility of the gesture, one of the men threw themselves at her, staff whirling down for her head. Jiang avoided it easily, catching the staff by the side and pulling herself towards the man, to strike him in the temple. The rest of the men then threw themselves at her, and Wong swept to meet them, staff in hand.
So it continued, wood striking wood and sometimes body; Jiang acquiring a staff somewhere along the way, and her sister elsewhere in the fighting.
Steel rang on steel, and Wong noticed with annoyance that the younger Lian had drawn the old sword. He hoped that it would stay in one piece; that the ghosts wouldn't break it in vengeance. Wong's grandmother had regaled him with plenty of oral tradition in which a sword's victims came back to wreck havoc on both owner and blade. They never ended well.