26

Trying to keep her breathing as regular as if she was still asleep, Annja waited. She lay on her right side. The wall with the round-arched window in it was close to the bed behind her. She figured it was unlikely anybody was sneaking up that way.

She had at least three armed intruders in the room with her. Their eyeballs showed as fingernail slices of reflected moonlight above dark masks. Their swords had gently curved blades that widened toward the tips.

Two intruders advanced to her bedside. The third went to the foot. Their soft-slippered feet made only the faintest of sounds. She wasn’t sure what sense had alerted her. Although now she could smell their sweat, acrid with adrenaline.

Wait for it, she commanded herself.

The man who had come up by her shoulders raised his blade above his turban, grasping the hilt in both hands for a beheading stroke.

Strike.

Flinging the sheet off with her left hand she summoned the sword into her right. It sliced through the skin and muscle of the assassin’s belly like a knife through warm butter.

So fast was the cut the swordsman probably felt no pain. Initially. She heard him gasp in surprise.

His sword clanged tip-first off the blue-tiled floor behind him. He began to scream as terminal agony landed on him in an avalanche of pain.

Annja continued the forehand stroke, bending forward with the strong muscles of her back and flat belly. Momentum and the blade’s sharpness buried her sword a hand’s-breadth into the second swordsman’s side, just above his left hipbone.

She caught the hilt with her left hand, then thrust. The man howled as she drove the tip deeper. She felt its point tear through the skin of his lower right back.

It took no more than the strength of her arms and a twist of her shoulder to slice the blade free into the air. The man fell, thrashing and shrieking.

The man at the foot of the bed had fallen back. His mouth was an oval of horrified blackness against the dark face beneath his turban. Annja sprang to her feet. She ran down the bed at him, sword upraised.

The man flung his heavy blade to defend himself against Annja’s downstroke. Steel rang on steel. The man’s sword sounded a second, reverberating musical note as it flew from his hands.

He reeled back. Annja leapt off the end of the bed. She swung her sword around, out, up. Then she slashed downward and right to slash his arm.

He looked down at his bleeding arm. Then he looked at her and wailed in horror.

Annja went to the door and yanked it open. A man dressed in dark silk swung around to face her, sword in hand. His eyes went wide as he beheld a woman a head taller than he, confronting him from the open door with a sword in her hand.

It was the last thing he saw. She ran him through.

From above came shouts, the clash of weapons. Wira, Annja thought. A fresh adrenaline spike flashed like lightning through her blood and across her brain. Pulling the sword free she ran toward the sounds of battle.

Her charge took her up a flight of stairs carpeted in green and gold. A pair of palace guardsmen in tailored khaki battle dress lay facedown by the door to Wira’s chambers in spreading pools of blood. From inside came shouts, the clang of steel on steel.

Hair flying, Annja vaulted the corpses and charged through the door. A pair of men in black silk clothing with green turbans and black cloth wound about their faces stood just inside with their backs to her. With a one-handed slash, diagonally left to right, and a two-hand return cut at the level of Annja’s own shoulders both men went down.

She had already taken in the scene beyond them in a flash—a large bed at the chamber’s far end, its clothes in disarray. The Sultan, bare-chested in brown silk pajama pants, stood his ground with a long scimitarlike blade in his right hand and a cutlasslike sword in his left. Both blades gleamed darkly in the yellow glow from bedside-table lamps, one of which had been upset and lay on the lush-carpeted floor. The young Sultan’s hair, unbound, hung about his shoulders in a dark cascade.

Three figures sprawled about him, their blood seeping into the priceless rugs. A number of others circled in the shadows of the room’s perimeter like a pack of wolves closing on their kill. Annja suddenly widened her eyes and sprinted recklessly forward right through the circling attackers—and straight at the Sultan.

From the corner of his eye Wira had seen the sword flash, saw the two unsuspecting terrorists fall. He turned toward Annja and her own eyes flew wide in amazement.

She ran past him. The assassin who had crept in through the window by the head of the great bed launched himself at the Sultan’s unprotected back, his sword upraised in both hands.

Annja simply pushed her sword out in front of her as she reached the foot of the bed. Descending from his heroic leap, the terrorist fell right onto its tip. It slid through silk and skin and flesh with a deceptively soft crunching sound.

She saw the eyes go huge and round above the black facial wrapping as his momentum carried him down, impaling him on the blade. She grabbed the hilt with both hands, steering it to the right of her rib cage as his weight smashed into her and knocked her back and down. She heard floor tiles crack as the pommel hit.

The black-clad man fell full atop her. The air rushed out of her. The light went out of his astonished, pain-filled eyes as he died.

Annja’s blood was so supercharged with adrenaline that even having the air forced from her lungs could not slow her down. She drew her knees up beneath the man on her chest. He was dead weight, but he was small and wiry. She had six inches and a good twenty pounds on him.

She got her bare soles against his chest. The silk squished unpleasantly. She drove upward with all the strength of her long, lean-muscled legs. The corpse was driven right up the straight length of her blade and off to fall to one side. She felt a flash like a burn along her right shin and realized she’d cut herself on the sword.

She paid no mind. Arching her back she jackknifed herself to her feet. As her hair flew up in a cloud about her head, shot through with red highlights from the faint light, she saw a man charging in from her left.

She spun to face him, flinging up her sword. His blade clanged against the flat of hers. His eyes blazed with fury.

She whipped her shin up between his legs. The kick lifted him up onto his toes. The angry eyes bugged out. She whipped her blade free and cut him down as he bent over himself.

Glancing back over her left shoulder Annja saw two men rushing at Wira. He swung the terrorist’s sword he held in his left hand up counterclockwise, knocking aside the weapon hacking at his head. His own sword slashed downward right to left across the masked face.

The second would-be assassin rushed forward, a step behind his comrade. Wira pulled the sword held in his right hand to his right across his body as his left-hand blade rang against the sword the black-clad man was swinging in an overhand stroke. He guided the cutlass down and to his right, pivoting his hips clockwise.

His right-hand sword swung up and chopped down. It split the black turban and the skull beneath. The man dropped to his knees and toppled to the side.

The nocturnal killers fell back to regroup. Wira glanced back over his bare shoulder at Annja. He showed her a somewhat manic grin.

“You do have unlooked-for talents, Ms. Creed,” he said.

They were still outnumbered seven to two by the black-swathed swordsmen. “I’ve got this side,” she said tersely.

Back-to-back they fought as the assassins darted in, tried to strike. Annja chopped down to cut through a blade slashing at her side. The swordsman fell over backward to avoid her counterattack. It worked—she didn’t dare break away from the young Sultan for fear of being surrounded. The fallen assassin kicked himself backward. Then he caught up a sword dropped by one of his fellows who no longer had a need for it and rejoined the fray. But cautiously, this time, Annja noted. He was hanging around the edges as if awaiting an opening.

She heard steel ring behind her. Wira grunted. A man screamed. She dared not look behind as two men lunged for her, one from her left, the other coming around to the side of the bed to attack from as far to her right as he could.

She parried a slash from the man to her left, shaving a slice from the belly of his blade but failing to sever it. The man to her right thrust at her vulnerable side. Anticipating his attack she was already wheeling toward him. She parried with the flat of her sword, blade down. The cutlass slid just past her hip.

Cat-quick, the man drew back his sword. Annja sensed more than saw the attacker to her left moving on her again. She pivoted, whipping up the point of her sword, stepping into her assailant and thrusting.

She caught him with arm upraised, the sword slid into his belly. The man screamed but brought his arm forward and down in a desperate hack at Annja’s skull. She caught him right beneath the elbow of his sword arm with her left hand. Then stepping back with her right foot she torqued her hips sharply clockwise again, using her assailant’s own momentum to hurl him past her by his arm and the three feet of steel thrust through his stomach. He slammed into his partner as that man attacked. Annja ripped her sword free as the two men fell in a tangle.

Another assassin charged. She turned and engaged him in a crashing, ringing exchange of cuts.

The door, which apparently one of the intruders had shut, flew open. Annja looked toward it even as she fenced with her foe. Men in battle dress burst in. They carried MP-5 machine pistols.

The uniformed men shouted in Malay. Annja parried high. Then she released her sword and front-kicked her opponent in the chest. He staggered back. The sword vanished into thin air.

The palace guardsmen opened fire. Their guns were shatteringly loud in the bedchamber. The man Annja had kicked backward was chopped down. The assassins still on their feet died.

The man who had fallen under his skewered comrade threw the body off him, leapt up and tried to bolt to the open window. As he reached it bursts of gunfire plucked at the back of his black silk blouse. He threw up his hands at the impacts. Then he toppled forward, out the window, to fall screaming to the lawn three stories below.

A guardsman ran to the window to look out after him. Others came crowding in through the door. Some moved swiftly to examine the fallen assassins. Others stopped to stare openmouthed at Annja.

“What?” she said.

“Look at yourself,” Wira said, sounding amused.

Annja stood in a T-shirt and underwear, her long legs fully exposed. She was covered in blood.

She looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Well,” she said, “it’s the latest fashion.”