Serpent's Lair. Don Pendleton
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broke from the treetops as the man in black raced among the trunks. His pursuers were fueled by a feral rage. The lone warrior reached for the gleaming silver weapon on his belt, but held it in its sheath as he broke through the tree line.
He slowly took out his katana, a long, graceful unveiling of gleaming metal. He walked toward the shore of the stagnant river, his wooden sandals scraping the smoothed river stones and gravel that rose from the edge of the water.
Enemy swordsmen raced to circle him and cut him off, but the man in black didn’t make a run for it. He was in the water, six inches deep, the hem of his hakama soaking through. He spread his legs, keeping the tip of his sword at waist-height, both hands wrapping around the black cords on the handle.
He counted them. Eight men. He breathed deeply, resisting the urge to gulp air after the chase and battle with Zakoji’s guards. Instead, he relaxed.
“You thought that you could bring death to me, intruder?” a voice called out from the tree line.
Zakoji appeared, dressed in black robes, a red serpent embroidered on the left side of his body. It was the Uwibami, a monsterous serpent that snatched men from horseback. It was the symbol of Zakoji’s army.
“I came here seeking work,” the man in black said. “Honest work.”
“There can be no honest work for the henchman of the shogunate. Not the monster who reigns over these lands.”
The man in black was silent. He knew that to survive, he had to be still, to sense his enemies before they even moved. Sensing that brief flash of lethal hostility had saved the warrior more than once.
With the rustle of fabric, the black-clad warrior did a quarter turn, his sword point drawing an arc that went from pointing directly in front of him to sticking out behind him like the tail of some massive scorpion. The attacking swordsman took a second step, but he was already dying before the warrior reversed his blade and sliced it across the cultist’s face.
He dipped the tip of his sword into the water, letting the blood run off the hammered steel.
The circle of seven spread farther apart, to equalize the distance between them, to cut down on the intruder’s ability to escape.
“He sent you. You are no ronin, you are still the shogun’s own second! You came here at his beck and call, seeking to dip your steel in my blood.
The ronin shook his head, but doubted further debate would dissuade Zakoji. He knew Zakoji was a cold-blooded murderer, and his duty stated that he had to act against the savage. He cleared his mind preparing for the attack he knew would start in a heartbeat.
Steel sparked on steel as the first man made his move. The ronin sidestepped, avoiding a second cut from behind as he twirled the sword around, carving through the throat of the first assailant. With a pivot, he brought down his steel, slicing through the arm of the man who lunged at him from behind, the sharp belly of his blade carving through muscle and bone in an effortless movement that dropped the attacker’s sword to the ground.
He dug one foot into the gravel and bowed deeply to twist under a flashing sword. The point of his katana speared the belly of a third man, guts spilling out through the massive rent in his abdomen.
The ronin stood up straight and flicked his sword down, deflecting a chop that lashed at his leg. The blade only snagged the black fabric and exposed the bare leg underneath.
The enemy swordsmen pressed their attack with ferocity. The warrior in black was driven into a defensive fight that he knew he could not win.
Four men were on one side of him. The fifth, though lacking an arm and swiftly losing blood, picked up his blade to continue the struggle for his lord and master. A pang of regret filled the ronin for having to meet such courage with brutal efficiency. It did not stay his sword arm, however. He sidestepped an attack and made a swift downward cut, the stroke striking the shoulder of one swordsman.
The warrior grabbed the man’s sword from his insensate fingers and reversed it, drawing its length across his chest in a deep slash that severed his aorta. Zakoji’s cultist dropped to the stones and moved no more. The four surviving clansmen spread apart to avoid the wounded man’s fate, their blades aimed at the black-clad warrior.
The ronin stepped between them, a sword in each hand, like the claws of a scorpion, awaiting the next wave of attacks.
“You have a chance to live. Turn your back on Zakoji, and I shall not slay you,” he told them. “You fought with courage.”
The one-armed fighter lunged. The black-clad warrior blocked with one sword blade and sliced the man from hip to hip. The stroke stopped the man cold, giving the ronin time to sweep the other sword around to cleave the man’s head cleanly from his shoulders.
He sensed the next attack, but Zakoji’s fighter still managed to open up a scratch from shoulder to hip with the tip of his katana. The ronin reversed one sword blade and pivoted, spearing the attacker just above his kidneys. With a turn, the ronin grabbed the dying man’s sword before he tumbled to the ground, blood leaking among the cobblestones at his feet.
And then there were two.
Two, and Zakoji.
Who knew what skills the self-proclaimed sorcerer possessed, but the ronin bled now. It was a scratch, but it was enough of a distraction to slow him by a heartbeat.
It could mean the difference between life and death against a man of true skill.
The two remaining swordsmen took their positions, one to his left, one to his right, but both staying in front of him, away from the water’s edge.
They waited for him. Eyes searched his, sought out any sign of weakness that they could exploit. One blink, one moment of hesitation, and they would be upon him, their curved blades deep within his flesh. He gave them that blink, and as his eyes opened, he turned sideways. The two men sought the ronin as he faced them head-on, their goal to carve at his arms and sides as they passed him. Instead, he presented himself as a slimmer target, one sword reversed around his back, the other swooped in front of him as Zakoji’s fighters passed him.
The katana he swung behind him glanced off pelvic bone as it parted its way through the side of the man who sought to harm his right side. The man on his left screamed as the black-clad swordsman’s edge sunk deep into his back, lodged between two vertebrae and levered the handle from his grip. Both men fell.
The cult leader walked toward the exhausted warrior, his feet invisible beneath his robe so that he appeared to float, ghostlike. The sword cleared its scabbard with a hard push of his thumb. He leveled the point at the warrior, then down to the earth.
The ronin raised his sword above his head with both hands, arms pressing together in perfect position for a downward stroke. Zakoji didn’t adjust his pose, still keeping his sword-point at ground level.
The ronin thought about the stories that Zakoji had sorcery, of sorts. He used trickery and venom to distill success in the form of a potion.
“Has your courage left you?” Zakoji chided. “Has your will to serve the emperor once again abandoned you, executioner?”
The ronin bristled for a moment at his old title. Each new utterance was like sand ground into an old wound. His cut ached, blood caking at the small of his back, his hatori grown stiff with dried blood. Sweat trickled down his forehead and neck, and each breath parted the slice in his back a little more, pain growing with each inhalation.
The ronin breathed deeply again. He twisted his hands around the corded handle of his blade, screwing up his strength, forcing himself back into the mind set of everything and nothing. The pain went away.
The black-clad swordsman lowered the sword from above his head and leveled the tip at Zakoji’s heart.
It was with sudden fury that the cult leader lunged. The ronin blocked the blade with his own, sparks flew from the impact of metal on metal. The black-clad warrior tried to slip his sword past the other’s defense and stab him, but only clipped the kimono