by David Drake
Stone sighed. He wore a dark synsilk coverall and a pack with a sleepsack holding that few belongings he owned. He carried no weapons. He stopped and stood staring at the three as they crossed the road toward him. Their movements were considerably more controlled than they had been only a moment earlier.
“What are you doing in our village, ape?”
“Just passing through, Bold Warrior.”
The three came to a halt three meters away.
“Passing through? To where?”
“The eastern border of the Western Province, Warrior.”
“Alone?”
Stone felt the danger that rested in his answer. He could have said that his party was just ahead, that he was expected, but he had given up lying long ago. He was but thirty, a young man, but he had learned that he could not master his Art dealing in anything but truth, no matter what the danger.
“I am alone, Warrior.”
And not just now, but in totality. His family was dead and he was the last of his line. He had nothing but his Art left.
The leader glanced back and forth between his two companions and snapped his teeth together once in a hard click. The other two Khalians edged away from the leader and slowly began to move to encircle Stone.
“Not wise, ape. The night is full of dangers. One could slip on a wet cobblestone and fall, breaking bones. Or step into an unseen hole.”
“I appreciate your concern, Warrior, and I will watch my steps carefully.”
“No, you will not. We do not allow animals to roam the streets of our village.”
The Ieader reached up and pulled one of his knives from its sheath. The steel whispered as it left the hard plastic. The blade glittered in the dim light, catching blue glints from the public house’s neon sign. “Your piss-colored hair will look good on my wall.”
No subtlety here.
Stone took a deep breath. He searched himself for fear. There was only a faint, distant fright. He might die here, carved by this drunken trio, but if that was his fate, then so be it. Death came when it would. They were armed, they were warriors, he was outnumbered, but none of that meant anything. He had nothing left but technique. To fail in that would be the one unforgivable sin.
Because he was close to a building next to the walk, the other two could not get behind him. There was one in front, one to the left, and one to his right. The one in front would lead the attack. The Khalia were tough, they would give no quarter, but only a fool would travel in the country of his enemies without knowing their weak points.
“But I won’t even dirty my claws, ape. My blade will sing its song for you.”
Stone decided to give it one more try.
“Do you not wonder why I am alone?”
The leader paused for a pair of heartbeats. Then, “Because you are an ape and thus stupid.” With that, he stepped in and jabbed, a straight thrust at Stone’s face.
He meant to mutilate before he killed. To inflict torture and make his victim cry out in fear. To feed on the pain. This was a bad mistake.
Stone lashed his arm out in the crossblock, left close, right extended. His slightly bent wrist caught the Khalian at the elbow and wrist, popping the knife loose from his paw. Stone closed his left hand on the thick wrist, imprisoning the attacker’s arm. At the same instant the man snap-kicked, toes bent back, so that the ball of his foot thumped solidly into the nerve plexus just below the Khalian’s sternum. The strike hit just at the point where the clan straps crossed. For the next thirty seconds the Khalian would not be able to breathe.
The man stiffened his body and dropped, concentrating his weight on the Khalian’s arm at the elbow, twisting to his left, and the leader was thrown into the path of the attacker to Stone’s left. The second Khalian cursed and leaped back to avoid his comrade.
A little under two seconds had passed.
The third attacker leaped at Stone’s back, claws extended instinctively to rend, but the man came up from his crouch and thrust his right foot backward in a heel kick. The hard plastic of his boot smashed into the Khalian’s snout with enough force to flip the attacker backward to land on his head. Stone heard the skull crack.
The leader was trying vainly to breathe. Stone still held him in the forearm lock, and the only way the second attacker could move in would be to step on his downed friend, a most unstable platform.
Stone released the leader, pulled the remaining strap knife from its hilt, and stabbed the fallen Khalian between the fourth and fifth ribs at an angle, skewering his heart. He jerked the knife out, stood, and threw it at the remaining attacker’s open mouth.
Coming up on four seconds.
The final Khalian’s reflexes were slowed by whatever he had drunk, but he was still able to bat the knife down. While he was doing that, Stone leaped over the dying leader, dropped to the cobblestones on his butt, and hooked his left foot behind the Khalian’s ankle. He thrust with his right boot at the Khalian’s thigh, jerked with his left foot, and the surprised Khalian went down backward.
Stone rolled up, snatched the knife from the ground, and shoved it into the stunned Khalian’s throat. He buried the long weapon, stopping when the steel hit the cobblestones under the Khalian. The blade’s tip grated against the rock and broke.
Stone danced away and spun, automatically scanning for more attackers.
Seven seconds. Eight–
Stone stared into the night. His heart was thumping too fast and adrenaline was coursing through him. He took two deep breaths and forced his tight shoulders to relax. The street was quiet, none other than the three attackers and himself visible.
He nodded to himself, once. His technique had been good. Not perfect, but good. Two of the three attackers were certainly dying, the other might survive, but this was not his concern. He had instigated nothing, his conscience was clean. The three had called their fates to themselves. It was karma. Theirs to die. His to live.
He took another deep breath, let it out slowly, and moved off into the night.
2.
Berq watched her quarry as he emerged from the ground-effect car in front of the brothel, bracketed by his two guards.
The quarry was old, sheathed in fat under his graying fur, with platinum dental inlays shining from his upper tusks. He was a rich Khalian merchant, a dealer in poisons, a seducer of kits, a pervert, and, as such, probably no worse than hundreds like him. It was the quarry’s misfortune, however, to have plied his drug trade on Berq’s home world. On Aerie, the planet of the Nedge–called Target by the ruling human off-worlders–the quarry had incurred the notice of one with enough anger and money to engage the Guild With No Nest to do something about him. Unwise in the extreme. It had been three years and some since the contract had been drawn, but the Guild dealt in nothing if not patience.
The slowing GE fans continued to stir the dust next to the outdoor restaurant where Berq sat, thin clouds shining in the early morning light. She was aware of being noticed by the other patrons of the place, for though there were Nedge on many worlds, the bird-folk were still relatively rare on Khalia. Such a thing made her work more difficult, of course, but such things were also part of the job.
The fat Khalian entered the brothel with his guards. Inside, Berq knew, the quarry intended to engage in perverted sex with either an alien female or an immature Khalian kit, those being his two favorites. Berq had paid well for this information. The more an assassin knew about her quarry, the better. Berq was the best off-world operative the Guild could field, her father had been the Master of Assassins until his death, and her mother, dead also, the first female Nedge ever admitted to the Guild With No Nest. She bore her mother’s name and, as such, could not allow herself to dishonor that name, no matter how difficult the assignment. She had no siblings to blot away the stains of failure, no children who would come to finish her task.
And this, she reflected as she sipped at the warm yiba in its cheap plastic cup, was not the most difficult assignment she had ever been given. Th
e quarry was armed and guarded, though that was of no great importance in itself. He was a Panya–her race’s name for the Khalia, it meant “rat”–but she had killed more than a dozen aliens, apes, rats, it did not matter. The special circumstances around this assignment required that the quarry’s end look like an accident, and that was a bit more difficult. Killing was easy with a wand or dart or one’s hands, but making certain that it seemed an accident or natural death sometimes complicated things.
Berq finished the drink and stood. The madam of the brothel was about to offer her new arrival a special treat. Would he care to lie with a female Nedge? And a virgin in the bargain? Certainly he would, for he had acquired the perverse taste for her kind, Berq knew.
Berq went around to the back of the brothel and opened the unguarded locked door with the code provided her by the madam. She waited in the empty office as had been prearranged.
After a few moments the madam arrived, a Panya herself, retired from active sexual service long ago.
“He is ready,” the madam said.
“Good.” She paused, then said, “You have been to my world.” It was not a question.
“Yes. I, ah, worked there when it was occupied by my kind some years ago.”
”And when you were on my world, you heard of the Guild With No Nest.”
“Yes, of course.”
Berq knew these things, but it was important to make certain the Panyan female was sure beyond any doubt. Careless assassins had short careers.
“Then you know there is no place the Guild cannot reach, no nest deep enough; no perch high enough to escape them should they want to ... touch you.
“I–I have heard it so, y-yes.”
“You have been well paid for your efforts here. The humans would not allow you to remain in business if certain information should reach their pale ears. The Khalian in the room waiting for me also has clan, who would take it badly if they knew you had aided me. But more importantly, if ever word should get out as to what happened here this day, the Guild With No Nest would make it a priority to find you and alI connected with you–Father, mother, sons, daughters. Do you understand what this means?”
“Y-y-yes.”
“Then take me to the pervert.”
The madam led Berq down a narrow hall. The floor was an overlay of wood strips, polished and slick, and Berq allowed her eyes to go wide in mock-fear as the madam took her to a doorway flanked by the quarry’s two guards.
“Hold,” one of them ordered.
The two females stopped, and the guards moved to search Berq for weapons. They stripped away her shift, made her remove her boots, and then leered at her nakedness. They slid their paws up and down her body, lingering over her genitals and breasts, laughing softly to each other as they fondled her.
“Nice, the soft feathery skin?”
“It’s all pink on the inside, eh?”
Berq pretended fear. She could easily kill these two, while wrapped in the Amaji trance, without having to use a major kata. But killing the guards would convince anyone with half a brain that their employer had met an unnatural end.
“She’s unarmed. Send her in.”
The quarry lay upon a flat cushion, his normally retracted and hidden sexual member revealed, though it was still flaccid, and his clan straps and knives were tossed onto the floor. He was not a Panya expecting trouble.
The door closed behind Berq.
“Ah, bird-woman! Come to me and let me show you what a real mate can do! Feel the power of a Khalian male!”
“P-p-please, Lord Warrior, d-d-do not make me do this! I have never been with a male, and you are s-so huge!” She pointed at his organ with one hand and pressed the other to her breast.
As she had intended, the fear in her voice and her pose inflamed the quarry. His member went turgid and he rolled from the pad and up, and swaggered toward her. Tell a male of any species his organ was large and he would practically explode with pride.
“I won’t hurt you, bird-woman. I know your kind. Come, I’ll teach you pleasure–!”
She lashed out with her foot and connected with his now-rigid member. He opened his mouth and grunted with the pain. Normally protected, the Panyan sexual member was exquisitely tender when exposed, Berq knew. She had made it her business to know.
She danced behind the injured quarry, wrapped her arm around his thick neck, and applied a choke hold. Her arms looked thin and weak next to his flesh, but that was deceptive. A trained Nedge assassin had great strength.
Before the quarry could do more than blink in fear and wonder, Berq had shut off the oxygenated blood flowing to his brain. He realized his danger and reached for the encircling arm, claws extended, but Berq hooked one foot around his leg and heel-kicked his scrotum, smashing again the now-limp sexual member.
He tried to reach for himself and to retract the injured part, but his time was up. He fell, unconscious.
Berq continued the choke held.
Presently, the quarry died.
She dragged the corpse to the pad, lay on her back, and pulled him on top of her. She wrapped her bare legs around his fat hips, took a deep breath, and screamed, a high, fearful sound.
Nothing happened.
No doubt the guards had heard such things before.
“Help! He’s hurt! Help!”
That brought them.
Both guards ran to their master. They rolled him off of Berq, cursing all the while. It took only a moment for them to determine that he was dead. There were no marks of violence, save the battered sexual organ, at which both guards carefully avoided staring, since peering at another male’s unsheathed member was an ingrained racial taboo among the Panya. Berq knew this, too.
“What happened?” one of them demanded, grabbing her arm.
“He–he was–we were–he stopped and moaned and grabbed at his chest!”
The guards looked at each other.
“Damn,” one of them said. “Shit.”
“There are worse ways to go. He was old. Let’s get him out of here. He has clan in the city, better that he died there, at home, than here.”
“What about her?”
“She’s an off-world bird-whore. She won’t say anything, will you?”
“N-n-no!”
“I didn’t think so. Come on. Let’s move him.”
As they dragged the dead quarry out of the room, Berq allowed herself a small smile.
3.
In the temple Imani sat cross-footed, back straight, meditating. Thoughts kept intruding, the sense of impending something beating at his calm with frantic wings. Dark days had come to Khalia, and darker days lay ahead. It took no master of ladju kasi to know this.
The stone under him had warmed from his fur, but the temple itself was cool under the pounding summer sun; cool and quiet and dark. The students were in the courtyard, practicing attack-and-defense set patterns or formal dances under the senior student’s watchful eyes arid nostrils. All was calm and as it should be to the casual observer, but Imani knew that was not so. He was old, had seen many things in his life, and had finally achieved a kind of self-peace that allowed him to be content. In his youth he had been a firebrand, burning with desire to prove himself, to utilize the rare and arcane fighting arts he had learned. He had killed with his paws, many times, over real or imagined insults. He had gone to war and used his skills with weapons to good effect there. As a young and swaggering Khalian, he had been one to fear, one whose path it was better not to cross.
It had taken age and wisdom before he had finally understood that the best martial artist never had to use his skills. Simply by being in a place, he could diffuse anger, could thwart an attack by no more than his presence. Not an easy task, but not one to shirk because it was difficult. In the learning of it, he had outlived all his old enemies. And his friends, as well. The surviving members of his clan were mostly great-grandkits, most of whom he had never even met. He had survived much longer than even he had expected.
&n
bsp; Imani sighed. His meditation was not going well. He could not keep his mind clear. Whatever disaster buzzing around before it lit was causing a ripple in the Flow that could not be ignored.
The old Khalian stood. His cold joints protested, but obeyed as always. He came up in a single, smooth motion, so that in one instant he was seated, in the next he was standing, and there seemed to be no transition. Naturally, he was no longer as fast as he had been as a young Khalian. He had compensated for this by honing himself so that he was efficient, that he wasted no energy on any move. The term ladju kasi meant literally “fast paws,” but he had learned that there were different kinds of speed. No matter how quickly a Khalian could snap a death swipe, it was useless if it did not hit the target.
Time for practice.
In the spring-chamber, Imani touched the controls that cocked the attack mechanisms. The room was small, as it must be, and the fourteen attacks when reset were invisible once they withdrew into the wooden walls, floor, and ceiling. Essentially no more than thick blocks of polished wood on springs with timers, the attacks were a test reserved for instructors. The timers and sequences scrambled each time, and the order of the fourteen was therefore almost random. There was no place safe in the chamber, at least two of the strikers could reach every part. The trick was to block or dodge the attacks in the right sequence. A miss was worth a bad bruise, a broken limb, or, when set at full power, death itself.
Imani took a deep breath and stepped on the trigger plate. He would have from three to nine seconds before the first striker. He expanded his awareness, listening for the telltale hum of the striker about to release. Whoever had polished the scratches from the hardwood had done a good job, the strikers blended perfectly into the patterned wood, making it almost impossible to see exactly where they were. Imani had spent long hours as a student polishing the damned things himself, and after years of that and further years of defending the chamber, he knew exactly where the fourteen were even if he could not see them–
Hum!