Warlords Of Gaikon

Chapter 20

The darkness around them was thick and silent. The heavy damp air caught and held a dozen different ghastly stenches from the garbage pit across the alley. Blade's black silk mask concealed his face from prying eyes, but it couldn't keep out the smell.

No doubt that was why Yezjaro had picked this spot for the rendezvous. No one would voluntarily linger in this reeking alley, not even a Hongshu agent trying to sniff out treason. He would sniff out too many other things and depart in haste.

Footsteps sounded to the left, toward the end of the alley. Blade saw Lady Musura's eyes flicker toward him. They flattened themselves against the flaking brick wall and drew their swords. Both wore black from head to foot, and even their swords had been dulled with soot to avoid reflecting the slightest gleam of light.

The footsteps continued, coming on lightly but fast. Then a figure appeared in the alley, dimly silhouetted against the pale light at the end. It seemed to hear or see something ahead. Then it stopped and spread out black-clad arms. It raised one hand high overhead, crooking the wrist to the left. It dropped the other hand down to its waist and made a V with thumb and forefinger.

That was Yezjaro's recognition signal. Blade and Lady Musura stepped out into the alley and approached the instructor. Like them, he wore only black. All they could see were his eyes. But there was a savage gleam of triumph and anticipation in those eyes. It brightened as he shook hands with both people. Then he turned and beckoned them to follow him.

«The others are already on their way to the first point.»

The «first point» was the entrance to the tunnels that led into the palace. Four men normally guarded it, four men from the households of the principal courtesans. Tonight they were four doomed men.

The three slipped through the dark streets of Deyun, swords sheathed but eyes searching constantly in all directions for any sign of spies or ambush. Blade found himself holding his breath from time to time, listening for the slightest sound. He heard only the soft patter of three sets of sandaled feet on the stones and an occasional snore or rattling shutter from the houses they passed.

What seemed like hours could only have been a few minutes. Then they were crossing a final street, with the walls and roofs of the palace at the far end, and darting into the shelter of another alley. Black-clad shapes lurked in all the corners and doorways along this alley. Yezjaro stepped forward and made his signal again. For a moment the darkness came silently alive with moving ghostly shapes. Then a more solid clump of darkness formed about halfway down the alley, in front of a high wooden gate in the wall.

There was a noble's garden beyond the wall as well as the concealed tunnel entrance with its four guards. Four guards who would have to die silently and swiftly before they could raise any sort of alarm or send any sort of warning.

Here was another call for Lady Musura's wall climbing talents. She quickly scanned the wall up and down, searching through the darkness for hand and footholds. Then she launched herself at the bricks. Once a foot scraped harshly across flaking brick, dislodging a few bits that pattered down into the alley. Everyone froze, hands on weapons. But after a moment it was clear that no one inside had heard. The men in the alley relaxed-as much as they could-while Lady Musura continued her climb.

Then she was on top of the wall, flattening herself there and craning her neck to look down into the garden. From the alley she was visible only as a low dark hump on top of the wall, moving slowly and sinuously. Blade knew she was unslinging a short bow and nocking a silent arrow to it.

Then in a single movement she leaped to her feet and raised her bow. At the same moment Blade and Yezjaro stepped up to the gate and rapped sharply on it with their sheathed short swords. Irritable voices sounded on the other side of the gate, then they heard the clank of a massive iron latch. The gate began to slide open, moving silently in a greased wooden slot. A bearded face under a leather helmet looked sourly out at them. Then startled eyes flared white in the face, and a mouth opened to shout.

The shout never came out. With one flick of his wrist Yezjaro unsheathed the short sword. With another flick he slashed it across the man's throat. Then he lunged forward with his other hand, grabbed the man by the beard, and pulled him forward as he died. His body sagged to the ground, pumping out blood and effectively jamming the gate open.

The first man's fall revealed two more standing behind him. Blade's arm snapped up, and a spear specially shortened for throwing at close quarters flashed through the opening. It took one of the men squarely in the right eye, driving into the brain. He was dead before he struck the ground.

The third man turned to dash for the rear of the garden and the tunnel entrance. As he left the shadow of the wall, there was a faint sssh and a louder thuck! of an arrow sinking into flesh. The man gasped, threw up his bands, staggered a few paces, then fell on his face. He landed with a splash in one of the ponds. As the ripples in the pond died away, silence descended on the garden again. The remaining guard was already dead, lying sprawled across the stone slab that concealed the tunnel entrance, one of Lady Musura's arrows in his throat.

All four guards were down, without a single unusual noise to warn anybody. Lady Musura jumped down from the top of the wall, landing feather-light from ten feet up. Yezjaro dragged the first guard's body out of the opening while Blade put his shoulder to the gate and pushed it the rest of the way open.

Doifuzan emerged from the darkness of the alley and looked down at the sprawled bodies. «We are well begun,» he said softly. Blade needed no reminding that these first four victims of the night would only be the first-and most likely by far the easiest.

The tunnel was much darker than the night above, and also damper, smellier, and much dirtier. In many places the roughly mortared stones dripped slime. Elsewhere they were encrusted with centuries of filth. It brushed off at the slightest touch, showering down on the twenty-nine uroi as they passed, powdering and caking their clothes. Blade suspected that if they hadn't already been wearing black, they would have been before they reached the far end of the tunnel.

They moved along at a swift trot, following the light from a single lantern Yezjaro carried in one hand. They moved with drawn swords, except for the six smallest uroi. These were enveloped from neck to ankles in the heavy green canvas cloaks the courtesans wore to protect their silk robes from the filth of the tunnels. These disguised men would be the first out of the tunnel at the end of the journey.

Blade was determined not to spend a single unnecessary minute in the tunnel. In fact, he found himself having to fight not to break from a trot into a run. Once they were loose in Lord Geron's house, it would be hard to keep them from doing a memorable night's work. But if an attack came here in the tunnel, they would be as helpless as kittens in a basket. They would die unsung and unhonored, and those few who heard the tale of the twenty-nine uroi of Lord Tsekuin would call it a tale of foolishly wasted lives.

In fifteen minutes they had reached the point where the tunnel branched. Blade knew they must now be well inside the walls of the Hongshu's palace. But that made no real difference. They were no less helpless against attack in the tunnel now than they had been before.

They did not halt until Yezjaro raised his lantern over his head and waved it three times. In the half-darkness ahead Blade saw a rusty iron ladder rising through the roof of the tunnel. At the base of the ladder was an iron plaque, also red with rust and green with slime. Under the rust and slime, Blade could make out the badge of Lord Geron.

Most of the twenty-nine uroi flattened themselves against the walls of the tunnel, letting the six disguised as courtesans move up to the front. Doifuzan came with them. He and Yezjaro would be going up the ladder first, pretending to be the guards sent from the Warm Gates quarter with this group of ladies. It was a matter of honor for Doifuzan, once the first dabuno of Lord Tsekuin, to be the first man into the house of Lord Geron.

Doifuzan and Yezjaro vanished upward into the darkness at the top of the ladder. The six got ready to follow them. The other uroi tried to make themselves silent and invisible.

Five sharp thumps from above, as Doifuzan knocked on the cover over the shaft. Five more, in a carefully spaced two-one-two pattern. That was the normal recognition signal for this month. Then a clank and grating, squealing noises as someone on the surface pulled the cover aside.

«Six ladies for the service of this house,» said Yezjaro.

«What's this? Six ladies from the Warm Gates? We didn't have any ordered for tonight. It was next week that-«

«You didn't? Then why did we get clear instructions to deliver them here?»

«I don't know. Somebody made a mistake, I guess. But-«

«You're damned right somebody made a mistake. And we're going to find out who.» Clatterings as Yezjaro climbed the rest of the way up to the surface.

«Wait a minute! You can't come up into the house if you're not-!»

«The devil we can't, my friend! I'm not going to keep the ladies down in that stinking bole while you people wake up your superiors and argue.»

Lady Musura took the cue. Her voice was shrill with proptest and indignation, a perfect imitation of a high-priced, temperamental courtesan. «What in Kunkoi's name is going on up there, you fools? If we have to wait here much longer, half of us will fall ill. And none from the Warm Gates will ever come again to the house of Lord Geron!»

That last threat did the job. None of the guards wanted to be the one responsible for such a disaster.

Blade heard the grumbling and muttering of several confused men talking together, then:

«All right, bring them on up. They can wait out here, though.»

«Very well. Come on up, ladies.»

The disguised uroi scrambled up the ladder, one by one. Blade and Lady Musura stationed themselves one on each side of the ladder and waited, listening.

They heard the «ladies» climb out, one by one, and Doifuzan's voice counting them off, also one by one. «That is all of them.»

Those words were the signal. From the darkness above came a quick series of soft but deadly noises. Swords being drawn, then sheathed again in human bodies. Blood gurgling in the throats of dying men. The thump of bodies falling on soft earth and the crackle as they fell into bushes. A half-choked cry, cut off brutally by a hand clamped over someone's mouth. Scrabbling footsteps-and then a body came hurtling down from the darkness above, to land with a sqump! on the slimy stones at Blade's feet. The man's eyes had rolled up in his head, showing only the whites, and blood was still pumping from a slash under his ribcage. Lady Musura brought her foot down hard on the man's throat. Cartilage crackled and the man heaved and writhed in a final convulsion, then lay still.

«Time to come up,» came Doifuzan's voice from above.

Blade went up the ladder like a cork from a champagne bottle, hardly feeling the iron rungs under his feet. He vaulted out of the shaft and stood with his sword drawn as the rest of the party swarmed up the shaft after him.

Three guards lay dead or dying around the entrance to the shaft. They were apparently all to die in silence. At least the house that loomed beyond the trees at the far end of the garden remained silent and almost dark.

But the alarm would be given sooner or later. Now they had to move faster than ever, storming through a house they did not know, sealing off all escape routes and then combing it room by room and nook by cranny. Speed, speed, speed! If anything could doom Lord Geron, it would be speed!

The six disguised uroi finished stripping off their disguises. Doifuzan looked around, and Blade could see his lips move as he counted off the twenty-eight fighters standing in the darkness around him. So far all the dead had been the enemy's. That wouldn't last much longer, however much luck they had.

Doifuzan raised his hand. Yezjaro threw the lantern down on the ground. It flickered and died. The instructor's voice rang out in the darkness, roaring out defiance to any ears that might be listening.

«Thus shall Lord Geron also go down into the darkness. Those who served Lord Tsekuin-follow me!»

They dashed toward the house, spreading out as they ran. They crashed through bushes and pounded across small bridges, making what seemed to Blade more noise than a herd of stampeding cattle. Before Doifuzan had reached the door, shouts came from inside. Then women started screaming and lights began to flicker behind windows.

Doifuzan was the first to reach the door, Yezjaro close behind him. just as Blade reached the house, someone lit a lantern inside, almost in front of him. He saw two silhouettes dark against the yellow white oiled paper of the window. Reflexes took over. His spear shot forward, stabbing through the heavy paper with a sharp pap and skewering the left-hand figure just above the waist. Fortunately the howl of surprise and agony was a man's. The other silhouette vanished, as blood from the dying man sprayed dark against the window.

Blade drew his sword and hacked a broad triangular opening in the paper. Several men ran up as he did so, and dove through the opening as he stepped back. After that came Lady Musura, both swords drawn, leaping like a gazelle through the window in a single ten-foot bound. Only after that could Blade enter the house.

As his feet hit the mats inside, he heard a smashing and splintering of wood as the door toppled inward. Several of Lord Geron's household dabuni sprang back in front of it. One didn't move fast enough. The falling door caught him and slammed him to the floor. He screamed once, then life and breath went out of him in a gasp as Doifuzan and a dozen attackers came trampling across the door and his body.

The dozen took the little cluster of defenders head-on, crashing into them like a tidal wave. Noise exploded through the room as both sides swung fast and furiously. The defenders were too surprised and too badly outnumbered to think of tactics. The attackers were in too much of a hurry.

So there was no maneuvering for position, no complicated footwork, none of the delicate style common in Gaikon swordfighting. Doifuzan himself led the attackers, chopping downward with his sword as crudely and brutally as a butcher beheading a pig. But his stroke smashed down an enemy's guard and bit through the man's collarbone and ribs into his heart.

Some of the other attackers weren't so lucky. Two went down from crude slashes and cuts, writhing on the floor under their comrades' feet, howling and screaming. But four men had no chance against ten who could get around their flanks. Swords fell, then rose red and dripping. The smell of blood filled the room. Then the four defenders were down on the bloody mats, along with another of the attackers. Seven men dead, in less than a minute.

Doifuzan led the survivors off deeper into the house at a dead run. Some of the dabuni who had come in through the window started off after them. All of the attackers were shouting and yelling loudly enough to wake anyone still sleeping in the house.

Blade grabbed one of the dabuni by the collar as he was about to dash off and bellowed in his ear, «Follow me, in Kunkoi's name! We've got to spread out!» He waved a hand off to the right, where a hall led away into the shadows.

As if Blade's gesture had conjured them out of the floor, six armed men appeared in the hall, pounding toward Blade at a dead run. One was carrying a bow. He shot, and the arrow sank deep into the thigh of the dabuno beside Blade. The man gasped, reached down, jerked the arrow out, threw it to the floor, then clamped a hand tightly over the spurting wound. Sword raised, he staggered toward the oncoming men.

Another arrow sank into his stomach. But as the first enemy came within reach, his sword flashed through a deadly arc. The first man's head wobbled on its shoulders, then thumped to the floor. The headless body drove on for a few steps more until it collided with the dying dabuno. Both went down, neither got up.

Before they hit the floor, Blade hurled his spear at the archer. It drove into his chest just below the breastbone. The impact at close range nearly knocked the man off his feet. He staggered, then swung around in a circle. The jutting shaft of the spear got in the way of one of his comrades. As he ducked under it, he was for a moment wide open. That moment was all that Blade needed to step forward and bring his sword down. Steel bit through bone and flesh again, and another headless body hit the floor. Then Blade had to leap back as the three surviving enemies came on.

For a moment things looked bad. He was one against three, and he had only his sword. But the three men had just seen three of their comrades die in less than a minute. No loyalty to Lord Geron could give them the courage to approach Blade too closely. He found it easy to guard against their cautious strokes. But he began to wonder how long this might go on. If more defenders appeared, to take him in the rear…

He had barely finished the thought when he heard something swish through the air. Then a jinai's throwing dart blossomed in the right eye of the center man. He squalled like a wounded panther and plunged forward. On the fringes of his field of vision Blade saw a slim black-clad figure bounding forward to meet the dabuno. Lady Musura dove to come in low, the dabuno seemed to fly into the air, then both crashed to the floor and rolled over and over. They struck against the wall with a crash and Lady Musura bounced to her feet. The dabuno kicked twice and lay still.

Blade flashed a silent smile of greeting to the woman, and turned back to his two remaining opponents. Before he had finished the turn there was only one, as Lady Musura cut in to the left and took out the dabuno there. A quick dart under his sword, a kick to his kneecap, and a knife thrust up under his chin until the point went into his brain-then there was another corpse on the floor.

Blade fended off a cut from his last opponent and smiled again.

«Leave this one for me.»

He saw her nod and step aside to keep a watch down the hall, then he turned his full attention to his opponent. They had room for footwork now, and they went around in a circle three times. Then the dabuno attacked. Blade held his ground, beat the other's sword upward and away from his head, then drove in with a cut that hacked through the other's left arm at a single blow. As the man shifted his sword to his right hand and tried to come at Blade again, Blade's own sword darted first right, then left. As it darted right it smashed the man's sword out of his hand. As it swung left it slashed across the throat, half-severing his head. The dying man fell across his own sword. Blade and Lady Musura stepped over the body and headed down the hall.

After a moment Blade remembered to look behind him and see if anyone was following them to guard their rear and if necessary their line of retreat. No one was. He did not stop-there was not time for that. But he swore to himself. Damn those hotheads! They were dashing off as the impulse took them, everybody too bloodthirsty and eager to think clearly. Even Doifuzan didn't seem to care about making sure the house was thoroughly searched and all exits guarded. That was going to leave him and Lady Musura with too damned much work for any two people to handle. But there wasn't anything they could do about it.

They moved on down the hall, checking each room as they passed. A few yards farther on they came to a wide flight of stairs. There seemed to be another, more brightly lit hall at the top. Blade nodded toward the stairs and Lady Musura followed him up. He couldn't help thinking that this was a bloody good way to be ambushed or killed by mistake by your own side, let alone by the enemy! But the second floor had to be cleared, and it looked as though the job was going to be up to them.

The hallway at the top seemed deserted. But Blade wasn't taking any chances. He kicked down the door of each room as he came to it, while Lady Musura covered his back and kept an eye on the hall in both directions.

He found no one, armed or unarmed, alive or dead, in any of the rooms. Some of them must have been living quarters-their floors were covered with sleeping mats. Overturned cups and bottles, scattered sandals, and tumbled blankets showed where some of the rooms had been hastily evacuated.

The thick wooden floor muffled the sounds of the battle that still seemed to be raging below. Blade was beginning to worry. Was everybody in such a blind fury that nobody was going to think of the second floor? That might give Lord Geron a good chance to escape.

They came to a bend where the hall turned at right angles to the left. Thirty feet farther on it came to a dead end. The walls on either side were bare plastered wood, and the floor underfoot was unpolished and scarred. About halfway to the blank end of the hall was a small door in the left-hand wall.

Blade scanned the empty hall so thoroughly that he would have spotted a cockroach if there had been one crawling across the ceiling. He didn't like the silence in this isolated hall. It was unnatural in the middle of a battle. If someone was lying in ambush in that side room…

Then he noticed that there was a faint line at the edge of one of the panels at the far end of the hall. A dark line for most of its length. But about halfway up Blade saw a faint, flickering yellow glow seeping through the crack.

Silently he took Lady Musura by the shoulder with one hand and pointed with the other. She nodded. Then he pointed at the side door. She nodded again and stepped cat-footed down the hall, stalking along until she was directly opposite the door. When she was in position, Blade made his slow, careful way down the last stretch of hall. He felt sweat trickling down his back as he passed the door, and he wished for the hundredth time that he had eyes in the back of his head. By the time he was ten feet from the end of the hall, there was no mistaking it. A light was burning in some concealed compartment behind that panel. Then he was only five feet away-and the lamp went out.

As it did, the door Lady Musura was watching flew open and the room behind it spewed fighting men into the hall. Lady Musura sprang forward. Blade's mouth opened in a shout as he realized she would never survive, wading into a fight against such odds at close quarters.

She was moving fast as she crashed into the five men who were already out in the hall, her swords reaching out to either side. Blade saw the point of her long sword go in under one man's chin, her short sword drive downward into another's groin-and a third man's spear take her in the chest. The point drove into her right breast and came out between her shoulder blades. Her body arched, but one leg shot up and a foot took the spearman in the groin. He howled and staggered, letting go his grip on the spear. Lady Musura slashed him in the back with her long sword. Then a fourth man struck downward, laying her thigh open to the bone. She fell on her back, writhing as the spear twisted itself about inside her.

The forth man had about three seconds to savor his victory. Then Blade's sword split his skull from crown to chin and he collapsed on top of Lady Musura. The fifth man was vanishing down the hall already. Blade turned, saw more dabuni crowding out of the room, and attacked.

It would have been safer for him to stay out in the hall and take the men as they came out, no more than one or two at a time. It would have been safer, but it wouldn't have matched his mood. He was not a cold-blooded professional now, he was a killing machine in a white-hot rage. He sprang through the doorway, landing on the shaft of a spear thrust toward him. The shock pulled the spearman forward. Blade's short sword jabbed up into the man's throat as he toppled down onto it. The man thudded to the floor, jerking the short sword out of Blade's hand. Blade leaped clear of the corpse rolling at his feet and slashed at a man to his right. Flesh and ribs split under Blade's sword and the man crashed backward against the wall, knocking over a lamp. It broke, spilling burning oil down the side of a large crate and onto the mats. The oil also ran onto the fallen man's face. His screams drowned out the crackling of the flames as they ran across the mats and began to climb the wall.

Those were the last details Blade remembered for a while. Not a very long while-no more than a minute or two. But it didn't take very long for a man in Blade's mood to kill six more men with a Gaikon sword.

When Blade's head cleared, he realized that the room was filled with smoke and that a good part of the floor matting and one wall were on fire. Eight bodies lay around him in a semicircle, all gashed or gutted or missing arms, legs, or heads. His sword was red and slippery with blood from point to hilt, and so was his sword arm.

He backed hastily out into the hall. As he did so, he heard a noise to his left. He whirled and saw someone in a dirty brown robe struggling with the panel at the end of the hall. Whoever it was was obviously trying to get back into the compartment that lay behind the panel.

Blade knew he couldn't cover the distance before the panel closed on the man. But at his feet sprawled the bodies of Lady Musura's victims. Blade bent, grabbed one by an ankle, and swung him hard and high. At exactly the right moment he let go. The body sailed through the air and crashed into the brown-robed man, smashing him against the panel and knocking his legs out from under him. Half-stunned, the man rolled on the floor, trying to fumble a knife out of his sash. Blade charged down the hall, kicked the knife out of the man's hand, then grabbed him by the collar and jerked him to his feet. A thin, dark face, the right side covered with half-healed red scars, stared at Blade. The eyes widened in appalled recognition, and the mouth opened to scream.

It was Lord Geron.

Blade shoved the Hongshu's second chancellor back against the wall as hard as he could. The bare skull smashed into the wood and Lord Geron slumped down, unconscious. With his prisoner immobilized for the time being, Blade turned to Lady Musura.

She was dead-must have been dead for several minutes now. Her contorted, bloodless face and sightless eyes stared upward at Blade. He bent down and gently pressed the eyelids closed.

There was a knife in her hand, and Blade knew what she must have been planning to do with it. When the jinai died, they often tried to slash their faces so that no one would recognize them. But it did not matter now whether or not anyone recognized Lady Musura. She had died with her face intact, and Blade found himself glad of that. She had found very little joy in a life of hard service, with a hard death at the end of it.

The quick footsteps of a number of men sounded on the stairs. Again Blade spun around, to see Doifuzan, Yezjaro, and five or six others trot around the bend in the hall. They stopped as they saw Blade standing over Lady Musura, the bodies around him, and the smoke billowing out of the room. Then Yezjaro's eyes traveled beyond Blade-and widened in delighted astonishment as they fell on Lord Geron. The instructor looked at Doifuzan.

«I concede the honor to you, First Dabuno.»

Doifuzan shook his head. «I think both of us should concede it to Blade. Without his aid, it might have taken us five long years or more to bring our plans to completion. He found a way for us here. And it seems to have been his skill and his sword that in the end took the man we sought. Blade, I doubt if we shall live long enough to do you the honor you deserve. But we can at least do this.»

«Indeed, you speak the truth. Blade, the honor of striking down Lord Geron shall be yours.»

Blade bowed mechanically, turned, and drew his sword. The battle-fury had left him and he felt drained, half-sick, and he wished only to get the business over with. Lord Geron was still unconscious when Blade's sword slashed down through his scrawny neck, and his head rolled across the floor.

«I hope he knew who was in his house, and why,» said Doifuzan as he bent to pick up the head and place it in a linen sack.

Blade smiled grimly. «He recognized me, I know.»

«Good. Then he has enough knowledge to take with him to Kunkoi.» Doifuzan finished tying the neck of the sack and stood up. «I think we would do well to leave here at once. The Hongshu's soldiers may enter the garden at any time, and the house itself seems doomed.» A crash from within the storeroom punctuated his remarks. The crackle and boom of the flames became fiercer, and the yellow brown smoke rolled more thickly out into the hall.

«Come, brothers. Let us be off.» Doifuzan turned and led them away down the hall toward the stairs.