She paused a second, then said with complete sincerity, “I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch.”
As she said it, I saw a touch of the madness that had overtaken her for a time after Andrew had been killed, and it pained me to finally accept the fact that it would always be a part of her.
I pulled her to me and hugged her close. “If my way doesn’t work,” I whispered, “I won’t be in any position to object. All I ask is that you get your brother home safely first.”
She nodded, and I stepped away, into the clearing with Han. We approached each other warily and stopped about ten feet apart. He surprised me by bowing as if this were a simple sparring match in a dojo. Not knowing what else to do, I bowed in return. Then, we began to circle one another.
I studied the way he moved, hoping to find some sign of weakness or fault in strategy. The last time I had seen him this close, he had been pounding my abs. Herculean as ever, he had led a hard life since then, which had only served to enhance his already formidable physique.
Lightning fast, he shot a fist toward my face, and the crowd around us erupted into shouts. I parried, only to find it was a ruse. I barely skipped aside in time to save my knee from a crippling kick. Before his foot touched the ground again, Han leapt and spun backward in the air with a speed that belied his size. The heel of his boot grazed my cheek as I scrambled away.
If that kick had connected, it would have been the end of the fight. From the intensity of the shouting, everyone around us knew it as well.
I shook off the close call and saw Han launch himself once more into the air. Sidestepping, I parried another punch. As he passed this time, I jabbed a stiffened thumb beneath his striking arm, into his armpit.
Han spun backward and countered with a spinning back-fist that knocked me ass over teakettle. I panicked as the world swam before my eyes, and I rolled frantically away. Disoriented, I shifted blindly to cover where I thought Han would be coming from, as I scrambled to get my bearings.
My vision cleared in a second that took forever, just in time to see him coming in with a combination of techniques that turned him into a tornado of striking hands and feet. I barely escaped the flurry, gaining an intensely painful welt on my lower ribs-along with a burgeoning enlightenment.
There were an immeasurable number of fighting schools and philosophies, but most could be broken into combinations of a few categories. Strong or flowing, linear or circular, long range, short range, striking, grappling-all of those characteristics helped an experienced martial artist evaluate his opponent. So far, Han had almost exclusively used long-range, circular techniques.
I tested the hypothesis. Han spun backward once more, throwing the heel of his foot at my head. Instead of stepping back or to the side, I slid inside the technique and countered with an elbow to the back of his head.
On most people, this would have ended things immediately. Han rolled with the strike and came immediately to his feet, the only indication that I had even connected was a slight shake of his head. While I had apparently done little damage, that tiny victory lent credence to my idea and renewed my confidence.
Han attacked again. I needed to find out if he had any close-range techniques in his arsenal.
He tried to throw another punch, but this was my range, and I stuffed the technique before it could gain any power. Seeing what I was doing, he tried to step back to regain some distance, but I followed and smashed my elbow into his face-once, twice, three times before he staggered backward with a scream of rage and blood streaming from his broken nose.
Eyes widened in pain, the heavyweight still shook it off and attacked again. He was more cautious, more wily. He threw the spinning kick again, but followed with a knee attack, going for the shorter range. But I knew tricks that he simply didn’t have experience with. I raised my own knee, driving it into his inner thigh, and at the same time, elbowed his nose again.
Bellowing in pain, his eyes glazed for a second, and I locked my hands around his neck, drawing him down into my raised knee before he threw me off with another sledgehammer punch to the ribs.
I hissed, feeling the sharp pain of a cracked rib.
Without regard for the pain in my ribs, in fact, almost feeding on it, I jumped at him once more. Again and again, I worked at him, using every opportunity I could get to worry that broken nose. But the pain in my rib began to restrict my breathing, and I found myself rapidly weakening. Simultaneously, each attack on Han’s nose only seemed to drive him into greater fury.
Maddened with the pain I had inflicted on his profusely bleeding nose, he drove forward like a frenzied bull. Gone was the cunning fighting machine. Instead, a man insane with pain and anger pummeled me with clumsy, but incredibly powerful punches.
I blocked and parried, but inevitably he got another one through, connecting with the cracked rib, and I screamed once more, blinking back tears and sweat. I staggered back, threw a blind kick with the toe of my boot and felt it connect with his inner thigh.
He barely slowed, but at least he was limping. He growled and threw another punch. I managed to brush past, trap his wrist, and pull him suddenly toward me. Off balance, he was exposed for the split second I needed to slam an open palm into his left ear, bursting his eardrum.
He howled from the pain. Again, I slipped past him, this time stomping the back of his knee hard enough to collapse the leg. He stumbled, and I punched him in the back of the head, right at the base of the neck.
Han dropped to his knees, and before he could get up again I locked my arms around his neck, pulled up, and twisted the bone of my forearm into the vagus nerve running alongside his carotid artery. Then I held on for dear life.
For three seconds, he heaved like a maddened animal. Five more seconds and his struggles weakened to a barely-felt pawing at my arm. Another five and he hung limply from the crook of my arm. I held for another ten seconds to make sure that he would remain unconscious for a bit longer. Finally, I felt safe enough to let him drop to the ground.
Heaving with exhaustion, I tried to straighten and gasped at the pain, but after a second or two, I managed a deep breath and forced my shoulders back. I tried to hide the throbbing pain that permeated my body as I took a few steps toward Larry. The crowd that had been deafening before was suddenly silent.
One by one, Larry’s men began to lay down their weapons.
“It’s over, Larry,” I told him. “Let my boy go.”
His eyes widened as he watched his troops surrender. Any sane person would have accepted the inevitable at that point.
Larry shot me instead.
No warning threat. No snarl of anger. No precursor at all. He simply pulled his pistol away from Zachary and shot me.
White-hot searing pain, more intense than all the damage Han had just inflicted, knocked me back to the ground. As I fell to the ground, I saw Larry’s head jerk back, a crossbow bolt suddenly buried to the fletching in his left eye. There was no question of his living through that one.
Megan dropped the crossbow and ran toward me.
“I’m all right,” I gasped. “Go get Zach.”
She nodded and ran past me across the clearing to scoop up her sobbing brother. “It’s okay, Zach. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. From my prone position, I saw that Han must have regained consciousness just in time to see Larry’s death. I yelled something at Megan, and she managed to shove Zachary away as the enraged behemoth tackled her. The two of them rolled around on the ground as I fought back the pain and dizziness, trying to get back to my feet.
Time slowed as I strained to brace myself with my hands and nearly fell once more to my face. My left arm didn’t want to cooperate, and blood oozed from a hole in my shoulder. I tried again and made it to my knees. I
