by Alex Archer
Blood sprayed.
The monk screamed in pain.
The intruder threw back his head and laughed.
That was enough for Annja. Without a second thought for her own welfare, she sprinted from the doorway, leaped through the nearest arcade and charged the gunman.
The monk on the ground saw her first, his eyes growing wide at the sight of her charging forward, sword held high, and the fear in his face alerted his tormentor that there was something wrong. The other man twisted around, the muzzle of his gun coming up as he tried to line up a shot even before he knew what his target would be.
Annja wasn’t taking any chances. The first swing of her sword slashed his arm just below the elbow, his gun flying free as his arm hung uselessly. Annja used her momentum to spin around and her second strike caught the intruder at the collarbone and drove diagonally down through his neck.
He was dead before he even had the chance to make a sound.
Unfortunately, so, too, was his victim. As Annja knelt down to help the injured monk she found him staring up at her with unseeing eyes. The second bullet must have found the femoral artery, for there was a rapidly expanding pool of blood in the grass around his legs that hadn’t been there moments before.
She reached out and closed the dead monk’s eyes, vowing as she did so not to let any more of his brethren suffer the same fate.
Noise from one side caught her attention. She turned to see several men emerge from the door to the chapterhouse on the far side of the cloister, dragging the abbott between them. To her dismay, one of them looked up and saw her crouched there over the body.
“Hey!” he shouted.
Annja didn’t hang around to hear what he said next. A glance at the entrance to the church a few feet away showed the massive oak doors propped open with what looked to be stacks of hymnals and Annja slipped inside, saying a silent thank-you to whatever enterprising monk had decided a little fresh air might do the old worship center some good as she did.
She stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness and trying to get her bearings. The cathedral, she knew, was shaped like a cross lying on its side. The main section of the church ran east to west and the door she’d entered through put her halfway along the length of the nave. The presbytery containing the altar, as well as the north and south transepts that formed the crossbeam of the cross, were to her right.
She had no doubt the gunmen would follow her, so she quickly ran across the center aisle of the church and hid among the pews of the north transept. From there she could keep an eye on the door and still have room to maneuver if need be. She released her sword into the otherwhere, not wanting to have to worry about it sticking up and giving her away.
Annja had just knelt behind the corner of a pew when three men entered the cathedral through the same doors she had used, guns in hand. The leader glanced around, then sent each of his men along the outer edge of the church while he advanced down the center aisle.
Since the intruders were still dressed in the brown habits they had used to infiltrate the complex, she couldn’t tell anything about them. There were no identifying marks on their clothing, nor did she recognize any of the men, from what little she’d seen of their faces. With what she’d discovered so far, which was practically nothing, she was going to be little use in helping the authorities catch those in charge of masterminding the massacre.
The leader of the gunmen shouted to the others in French, directing them to move in on the far end of the church.
That, of course, would bring them right down on her position. She needed to get out of there and find a way to take one of the gunmen captive. If she could do that, she could get the information she needed about who they were and what they were after. She would then figure out what to do from there.
Annja turned and scurried down the length of the row, staying in a crouch to keep her head from showing above the backs of the pews. Her intent was to sneak around behind the advancing gunmen and use the opportunity to slip back out the door she’d entered.
Unfortunately, fate had other ideas.
She reached the end of the row and stuck her head around the corner, only to discover one of the gunmen coming from the opposite direction, intent on sneaking up on her in a similar fashion.
They saw each other at the exact same moment, but Annja was a split second faster in her response. She swept her hand out and to the side, pinning her opponent’s gun hand against the back of the pew. At the same time she thrust her other hand forward, summoning her sword in the process, intent on running her opponent through.
Some instinct must have saved him at the last second for he twisted to the side and the sword thrust that was intended to skewer him in the chest merely pierced his abdominal area instead. He screamed in pain and reflexively pulled the trigger of his firearm, sending several shots flying down the length of the pew.
While keeping the pressure on the man’s wrist, Annja drew back her sword-bearing arm and, with an adrenaline-fueled thrust, drove the hilt into his chin. The force caused his eyes to roll back in his head and sent him into unconsciousness.
Her opponent might be out of the fight, but the damage had been done. When she poked her head up to get a sense of where the rest of the intruders were, bullets thundered into the wood of the pews around her and she felt a sting of pain as a long sliver of hardwood was blown free and slashed across the side of her cheek. Her quick look had shown her several dark forms making their way down either side of the nave in an effort to box her in.
She couldn’t stay put.
Not if she wanted to live.
She scrambled over the unconscious body of her opponent and then crab-walked down the length of the pew to the other end. From there she looked out over the presbytery, hunting for a way out.
She had a good view of the altar, as well as the rest of the presbytery space behind it. Chapels lined the rounded rear wall, small alcoves with a statue of some saint or another and a kneeler, sometimes two kneelers, in them. Nothing that looked at all promising as an escape route.
She was about to start looking elsewhere when she saw it.
Between the sixth and the seventh chapels, roughly straight back from the altar as seen from the front of the church, was a door.
It was deftly designed, the undecorated surface of the door blending in with the rest of the dark wood that made up the rear wall, and if the light hadn’t reflected off the narrow metal of the sunken handle she might never have seen it.
Where it led, she had no idea.
But anywhere’s preferable to here at the moment, she thought.
Of course, getting there was going to be a bit of a challenge. She would have to expose herself to gunfire from several sources as she dashed up the platform, past the altar and over to the door. If she got there and found the door locked she would be in real trouble.
Of course, if she stayed and did nothing, she’d only be making things easy for them. It wouldn’t take them long to surround her and, when they did, it would be like fish in a barrel.
She had no other options.
Annja mapped out the route in her mind, doing what she could to prepare herself for what was to come, and then counted it down in her head.
One…
Two…
On three, she lunged to her feet and ran.
Her sudden movement must have taken her pursuers by surprise, for she made it up the platform and halfway to the altar before she heard a shout from the somewhere behind her and the gunfire started once more.
The cacophony was deafening, as the acoustics of the cathedral sent the echoes of each gunshot bounding around the interior, filling the space with thunderous applause of a murderous kind. As she flung herself behind the thick protection of the rectangular marble altar in the center of the platform, several bullets whistled past close enough for her to feel the heat of their passage.
No sooner had she reached the safety of the altar than she was scrambling and ch
arging forward again, except this time she had the bulk of the altar between her and her attackers. A hail of bullets slammed into the marble while she scrambled on hands and knees over to the door she’d seen from the other side of the room.
She grabbed the door’s handle and pulled it open, revealing a set of spiral steps leading upward. Choir loft, she thought, though there was no way of knowing for sure. Wherever they led, she’d deal with it. Right now she just wanted to get out of the line of fire!
As if to punctuate her argument, bullets slammed into the door beside her.
Annja dashed up the stairs.
She’d guessed correctly and emerged into the choir loft. What she hadn’t known was that the loft was accessible from the opposite end of the church through the use of two wide walkways and a staircase at the front of the church. As she came up level with the choir loft, several shots ricocheted off the staircase around her, fired by the gunmen running down the walkways in her direction.
With nowhere else to go, Annja continued up the winding staircase, hoping against hope that somewhere above her was a way out.
She emerged into the cupola of the bell tower, an octagonal-shaped room with large arches open to the elements on each side. Beneath her, the staircase rang with the sound of booted feet and the thrumming of the railing under her hands let her know that the gunmen were in hot pursuit. She had only seconds to act before they caught up with her.
With the gunman on her heels and nowhere else to go, Annja took the only course of action available to her. She rushed across the room, clambered through one of the open arches and stepped out onto the roof. A gunshot rang out as she did so, the bullet slamming into the edge of the archway by her left hand, but she knew better than to look back.
The roof stretched out ahead of her, but she could already see several other intruders climbing onto it from the access ladders on the other wing and were she to head in that direction she’d quickly find herself trapped between two groups of gunmen.
A glance in the other direction showed her the edge of the rooftop only a few yards away, overlooking a long drop to the thundering river below.
Footsteps on the ladder told her she had only seconds to make up her mind.
She turned and ran.
The gunmen continued shooting at her, perhaps divining her intent, but she ignored them as best she could, thrusting downward with her legs, pushing for every ounce of speed she could get.
It was going to be close….
As bullets filled the air around her, Annja raced toward the edge of the rooftop and flung herself out into space.
13
The fall was a good couple of hundred feet and Annja knew that in order to survive it she was going to have to control how she entered the water. Crisp and clean was the order of the day. If she was even the slightest bit off center, she’d bounce off the surface just as if it were fashioned of six feet of solid cement.
Her arms and legs pinwheeled for a moment and then gravity took over, hauling her downward. The fall might feel like it was taking forever, but Annja knew she had only a few seconds in which to prepare herself for the impact at the bottom. She brought the image of her sword to mind and did her best to emulate its long, sleek form with her own body, tucking her arms flat against her sides and squeezing her legs together tightly, her toes pointed. From somewhere in the distance came a shout and the echo of a gunshot, but she didn’t have time to think about either right now. She tucked her chin against her chest and hoped for the best.
The collision, when it came, was everything she expected it to be, a bone-jarring crash into the surface of the water followed by a swift plunge toward the bottom. She had no idea how deep the water was and found herself praying that she didn’t run out of room before she bled off all that downward momentum she’d picked up from the drop.
Thankfully, the river was deep and she felt herself slowing down before she struck the bottom. This presented her with a new set of difficulties, however, for no sooner had her downward momentum slowed that she felt the tug of the current trying to pull her along in its wake. Realizing the danger she was in, she began clawing her way toward the surface, driving herself upward with powerful kicks of her long legs.
But for every foot she rose upward, the river carried her two feet sideways and it wasn’t long before she began to feel herself tiring. Her lungs protested her treatment of them, as well, demanding fresh oxygen, but to open her mouth at this depth meant a sure death by drowning, so she clamped her mouth shut and fought for the surface as hard as she could.
The churning water kept her from being able to feel the natural buoyancy of her body and kept her from trying to open her eyes underwater, worried as she was about all the natural debris rushing along in the current with her.
Was she struggling so hard because she was headed for the bottom rather than climbing toward the surface? How could she tell?
The thought nearly paralyzed her, the fear it evoked overwhelming in its intensity. The animal side of her brain began screaming at her, telling her she was going in the wrong direction and that she was going to die if she didn’t do something about it now, and it took all of her concentration to force that monster back into the mental closet it had suddenly lurched out of. She fought to think clearly, rationally, but her burning lungs were demanding she take another breath and she felt her lips peeling back as her body disobeyed the commands her brain was giving it…
Annja broke through to the surface of the water with a tremendous gasp, surprised to feel the cool mountain air filling her lungs like a miracle from above. Her relief was short-lived, however, for the rush of the water swept over her head and forced her back underwater seconds later.
This time, though, she was prepared for it, her fear now firmly in check, and so she was able to swiftly fight her way back to the surface and keep her head above water as she sought a way out of the predicament her wild jump had gotten her into.
Looking around, she discovered that she was being swept downstream even faster than she’d thought. She was already quite far from where she’d entered the water and even as she looked back the way she had come she was carried around a bend in the river and the monastery was lost from view. Perhaps even more disconcerting, however, was her realization that the water itself was shockingly cold, so much so that staying in it for too long was not an option.
If I don’t do something, I’m either going to freeze to death or get swept all the way to the English Channel.
The right bank was closer, so with grim determination she turned toward it and began swimming perpendicular to the current, trying to make her way across. Thankfully, the river was reasonably free of jutting rocks and she didn’t have to worry about being slammed against them as she was swept along.
It was hard going, the current fighting her for every inch of progress and the cold leeching the energy from her limbs, but she didn’t have any choice but to continue pushing forward. Bit by bit, the shore drew closer, until at last she felt the river bottom beneath the soles of her shoes. After another ten minutes of grueling effort she broke free of the current and emerged into shallower depths at the river’s edge.
She dragged herself out of the water and up onto the shore, rolling onto her back and doing what she could to catch her breath after the ordeal she’d just been through. She didn’t lay there long, though, for once out of the water the coolness of the mountain air cut through her wet clothes like an Arctic wind and she quickly found herself shivering on the riverbank despite the afternoon sun above.
Annja knew that if she didn’t get out of her wet clothing soon she’d be in serious danger of hypothermia, especially once the sun went down.
I’ve got to get moving, she thought.
She climbed to her feet, only to have a bolt of pain shoot up her left ankle. It hurt enough that she promptly sat back down and gave it a look. She could move it in a slow circle, so she knew it wasn’t broken, and with her shoe on it didn’t seem to be overly swollen, b
ut it was definitely tender to the touch and was already turning a deep shade of bluish black.
I must have twisted it when I hit the water, she thought.
She could see the road through the trees about a dozen yards away and knew she had to head in that direction. She was miles away from even the smallest town and didn’t remember passing a single house or homestead during the final part of her drive. The chances of a random motorist headed in the direction she was going were pretty slim, which meant she was going to have to make her way back up the mountain to the monastery on foot.
At least there she could find some dry clothes, check to see if there were any survivors and even call for help, if no one had done so already.
All she had to do was walk a couple of miles, uphill, on a sprained ankle.
14
Annja’s pace was even slower than she thought it would be. Her injured ankle bore her weight, but just barely, and she was forced to limp along at a pace made all the more frustrating by the fact that she knew there were people at the facility above who needed her help.
She spent the entire journey in a state of tension, listening for the sound of an engine, worried that the attackers would find her alone on the road after leaving the monastery above. She was constantly checking the undergrowth on either side of the road, picking out potential hiding places that she could reach quickly and with a minimum of fuss should the sound of an approaching vehicle reach her ears, but in the end she didn’t need any of them; not a single vehicle passed her going in either direction.
That meant the attackers had probably done what they had come to do and had left the monastery behind while she was still trying to save herself from the river’s current.