by Alex Archer
Annja deflected the swing of his sword and continued to turn, spinning around to bring her left elbow smashing upward toward his face. When she hammered him on the temple, he stumbled backward, dropping his sword in the process. Annja moved in on him, kicking his sword away as she did so. When he turned to run, she slashed her blade across the backs of his knees, cutting his hamstrings and effectively taking him out of the fight.
A knife whistled by her head, taking her attention away from the downed man at her feet. The other man was standing where he’d been originally, but rather than facing her with sword in hand, he was pulling knife after knife from slots on his belt and hurling them at her.
She used her sword to knock them out of the air as she advanced. Just like swatting a fly, she thought. When she reached him, he drew his own sword and put up an inspired defense, but the end result was the same.
Annja shortly found herself standing over his dying form, the blade of her sword slick with the man’s blood.
Annja looked around. Where did the Dragon go?
The notion occurred to her just as the Dragon came running out of the shadows, sword in hand, and almost managed to cut her head off at the shoulders. Only the fact that Annja stumbled over something on the floor kept her from losing her head.
They moved around the interior of the shrine, trading blow after blow. Eventually the battle began to wear on Annja. Where Shizu was fresh, Annja was not. She’d fought to save Roux’s life, and the events in the pond and the effort to deliver CPR afterward had sapped her strength. Her timing was off; her attacks were a split second too slow and getting slower all the while.
Sensing this, the Dragon pressed her attack, driving Annja back. Step after step, blow after blow, Annja could do nothing but retreat. Her sword was heavier than her opponent’s, bulkier, and if this went on for much longer her ability to fight back would be severely hampered by fatigue. At that point, it would be all but over. The Dragon would be able to deliver the coup de grâce whenever she felt like it.
As Annja’s strength ebbed, her doubts began to creep in.
She couldn’t do it, a voice in the back of her head whispered. Who did she think she was, anyway? Joan had been a hero, a true warrior. But her? She was nothing more than a glorified trench digger looking for broken bits of pottery and other garbage. She didn’t deserve to carry Joan’s sword.
Her mind flashed to the first fight between them, the one at Roux’s estate. The Dragon had bested her then and was sure to do so now. What did she have that the Dragon did not?
The answer was at the heart of all she did.
Annja did have faith in her own destiny, in her right to bear the sword.
And that faith was enough to silence the voice of doubt in her head.
The Dragon chose that moment to smile at her, just as she had during their first encounter, as if to say, See? You can’t face me and expect to win.
That little grin, that slight quirk of the mouth, was enough to turn the tide of the battle.
Annja felt a newfound strength pour through her limbs as adrenaline flooded her system, and she used it to her advantage, her blade like a dervish whirling in the dim light.
This time it was the Dragon who was forced back. This time it was the Dragon who came out of the exchange bleeding as the tip of Annja’s sword slashed her skin when she failed to move fast enough.
This time it looked as if it would be the Dragon who lost the battle, and apparently the Dragon thought so, too. She maneuvered her way around the building until she stood in front of the stairs leading back down to ground level.
After delivering a powerful blow, she turned and ran down the stairs.
Annja gave chase.
30
By the time Annja managed to get outside, the Dragon had disappeared into the trees. Annja caught the barest glimpse of her just before she was lost from sight and without hesitation Annja raced to catch up.
There was no path, no easy route, and Annja was forced to push her way through. Branches tore at her, brambles cut her flesh, and when she came out on the other side she was certain she was bleeding from a dozen new wounds. She could imagine she looked quite the sight, covered with cuts and blood and gore-stained clothing.
Annja emerged on a grassy hill above a walkway and once she reached it she realized that it was the continuation of the left-hand path she’d encountered earlier. Since the path was well lit and would provide both her and the Dragon the fastest and most direct escape route, Annja chose to follow it.
Eventually she emerged from the trees and found herself standing near what could only be the Cherry Esplanade.
It was a wide-open area on which seventy-six individual cherry trees had been planted in four identical rows, leaving a wide carpet of green grass in the center. Large spotlights had been set up all around the edges of the esplanade, illuminating it even though the park was closed.
The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, their bright pink and purple petals transforming the space into a riot of color. They rustled, like the whisper of a thousand voices, in the cool evening breeze.
In their midst, death awaited her.
The Dragon stood in the center of the grass. In her hand she held the Muramasa blade—the Ten Thousand Cold Nights—that Garin claimed was the dark counterpart to Annja’s own sword. Maybe it was her imagination, but to Annja the steel seemed to gleam with eagerness for the blood that was about to be spilled. The sword and the Dragon expected her to fall.
Annja had no intention of letting that happen.
With a thought her sword materialized in her hand and she stalked forward onto the field, coming to a halt several yards away from her enemy. She could see Shizu almost vibrating with fury. Good, she thought, maybe she’ll make a mistake.
Annja kept her own anger bottled up and locked away behind a wall in her mind. The woman in front of her had almost killed Roux, and had probably taken care of Henshaw, too. She had more than likely broken into her home, chased her through the streets and had endangered her life. But Annja knew she couldn’t think about that now. There was no place in a sword fight for anger—just attack and counterattack, thrust and parry, until only one was left standing on the battlefield.
The Dragon looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Surrender the sword and I shall let you live,” she said.
Annja shook her head but did not say anything in return. She knew the Dragon’s words were meant as a distraction and when she sensed her opponent shift her weight from her rear foot to her front, Annja knew what they were supposed to conceal.
Without another word the Dragon launched herself at Annja, in a spinning whirlwind of an attack, her sword coming around and down toward Annja’s unprotected flesh.
But Annja was no longer standing there, she had moved several feet to the right. She’d seen the shift in weight, had known what it signified, and had reacted by twisting to her right, away from the deadly blade.
The Dragon was on her in an instant, trying to overwhelm her with the sheer ferocity of her attack, using the same tactics she had utilized that night in Paris when they had first crossed blades. Slash and parry, cut and jab. Back and forth they went, neither of them gaining any significant advantage, their blades ringing in the night air.
They broke apart, gaining a momentary respite.
Annja tried circling to her left, watching Shizu closely, searching for some opening in her guard that she might exploit, when the opportunity presented itself.
The Dragon was doing the same, however, and apparently saw one before Annja.
Shizu exploded in movement, her weapon swinging toward Annja’s midsection in a vicious strike, and the assassin was faster than Annja had expected her to be.
Annja dropped the point of her sword and met Shizu’s blade with the edge of her own, channeling the energy of her attacker’s strike away from her and toward the ground instead. She twisted and brought her own weapon around in an arc that was aimed at the Dragon’s midsection.
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br /> But Shizu was gone before the blow landed, dancing out of range on nimble feet.
Back and forth they went, blow after blow, twisting and turning, moving across the grass while cherry blossoms drifted through the air around them, each of them striving to gain the upper hand and deliver the winning blow.
It was Shizu who drew first blood, cutting in beneath Annja’s guard and slashing the tip of her sword across Annja’s shoulder. Blood flowed, staining her jersey, and Shizu grinned in triumph.
“The beginning of the end,” she mocked.
Annja ignored her and the wound, as well. She could tell it wasn’t too deep and she wasn’t in any real danger from it at the moment, though eventually the blood loss would take its toll, she was sure.
She’d just have to redouble her efforts and put an end to this before that happened.
Shizu came at her again and they traded another series of blows, the sound of their swords colliding ringing out across the field. This time, when the Dragon stepped in close, Annja took advantage of the situation and lashed out with her leg, striking the Dragon straight in the chest and causing her to stumble backward.
Annja kept up her forward momentum, driving the Dragon back across the field with a combination of sword fighting and martial-arts moves, throwing out strikes and kicks between sword blows.
Finally the Dragon began to tire and came in with a new overhand blow, trying to end it all.
Seeing it coming out of the corner of her eye, Annja shifted her hold on her weapon and struck out at the hilt of her enemy’s.
Their swords slammed together and the Muramasa blade rang like a crystal bell in the second before it flew out of Shizu’s grasp, tumbling through the air.
Annja hadn’t expected the maneuver to work. The Dragon was shocked. She turned her head to watch the blade go flying from her.
Afraid that Shizu would simply call her weapon back again, just as Annja regularly did with her own sword, she didn’t hesitate but drove home a short, sharp thrust.
Looking the other way, the Dragon never even saw it coming.
The broadsword entered Shizu’s body between the third and fourth ribs and exited out the back just to the right of her spine.
Annja released her sword and stepped back.
The Dragon tottered for a moment and then sank slowly to her knees, her bloody hands searching for and finding the hilt of Annja’s weapon but without the strength to pull it free.
“How did you take the sword from me?”
Her eyes glazed over and she crumpled to the ground.
The Dragon was dead.
And with her death Annja’s sword, which just a moment before had been shoved horizontally through the Dragon’s body, vanished back into the otherwhere, ready for the next time Annja would need it.
Annja knew she should have felt satisfaction at the end result, but all she could think about was that final question.
She didn’t understand. She knew instinctively that the Dragon had not been talking about her own weapon, but about how Annja’s sword had vanished right out of the Dragon’s very hands. And that didn’t make any sense.
How could the Dragon not know about the sword’s ability to vanish and reappear at will? Surely the weapon the Dragon carried had been able to do the same?
Annja looked across the field, expecting the Dragon’s weapon to have vanished the minute its wielder died, only to find it right where it had fallen, jammed point first into the earth about ten feet away.
For a long moment, Annja couldn’t look away.
The sword was still there.
Her thoughts churning at the implications, Annja climbed to her feet and cautiously approached it.
The sword was as she remembered it, right down to the etching of the dragon on the surface of the blade just below the hilt. Even now the etching seemed to be snarling in defiance.
Reaching out, afraid of what might happen should she touch it but needing to know nonetheless, she wrapped her hand around the hilt.
Nothing happened.
Where she expected to feel something from the blade, some sense of its bloody history and evil reputation, she felt nothing.
It was just a sword.
An inert piece of metal.
While it might have historical value, there was nothing otherwise special about the weapon.
Garin and Roux had been wrong.
Priceless historical artifact it might be, but that was all. The only mystical sword Annja knew of was the one she carried.
Epilogue
From the shadows beyond the rows of cherry trees at the edge of the esplanade, Garin Braden watched the woman he had selected and trained specifically for this day, for this very battle, fall beneath the point of Annja’s sword.
This was not the way things were supposed to end.
No longer content to leave the sword, and hence his future, in the hands of anyone other than himself, Garin had carefully planned and orchestrated events for years to arrive at this point in time. Originally created to eliminate Roux, the training of his beautiful assassin had been redirected when Annja had reunited the pieces of Joan’s shattered sword, irrevocably changing the status quo. Garin had adapted, however, and modified his goals. His intent to steal the sword for himself and eliminate both his former mentor and his mentor’s new protégé had seemed flawless, but apparently he’d done something that he kept telling himself, and even the Dragon, not to do.
He’d underestimated Annja Creed.
Both she and Roux still lived, while the blood of Garin’s carefully groomed champion pooled upon the ground at Annja’s feet beneath the beauty of the cherry blossoms.
How poetic, he thought in disgust.
To add insult to injury, he’d even let that bastard Henshaw live. His two shots had been true, but when he’d checked the body he’d discovered that Henshaw had been wearing a protective vest; he was unconscious rather than dead. All Garin had to do to eliminate a future threat was put one more bullet through the man’s skull, but the previous shot had ruined his silencer and he hadn’t wanted to alert Annja that her partner was in trouble.
He’d let the man live and might someday regret it.
No matter, he thought.
There will be another time, another opportunity.
He was sure of it.
Just as he was sure that he and Annja Creed would one day face each other over that sword.
And on that day, Garin Braden intended to come out on top.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6626-5
THE DRAGON’S MARK
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Joe Nassise for his contribution to this work.
Copyright © 2010 by Worldwide Library.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapte
r 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue