With a momentary pang of what was not quite longing, and not quite fear – but close – he wished that he could have had his shield-brother, Hrothgar, by his side for the oncoming fight. Hrothgar, however, was busy with equally important matters, and should both of them succeed in their separate endeavours, things would then be looking very, very good for the pair of thousand-year-old warriors.
‘Ten opponents,’ Sigurd murmured to the shadows. ‘Ten more lives to add to a tally of thousands … tens of thousands. Ten more nothings. Ten more worthless mortals. Ten more pigs beneath the butcher’s blade.’
He smiled evilly as he rolled up the sleeves of his suit coat, exposing the four gas-loaded ballistic knives strapped to his heavily muscled forearms – forearms crisscrossed with innumerable scars from thousands of battles over ten centuries of warfare and violence. He had been practicing a lot with the ballistic knives in recent days and was now confident in his ability to direct the flying blades with a great degree of accuracy, at least for what they were. Only accurate enough for effective use within a range of a few metres, they would nonetheless suit his purposes here, in this confined space, where silent takedowns would be of the essence.
‘Trust not in men,’ he whispered, ‘trust only in steel. I am the terror in the night…’
He then pulled out the trigger switch and wire from the side of his shirt collar where it had been dangling, and put it in his mouth. Each bite on the trigger button would detonate a pneumatic charge that would shoot out one of the knife blades, all in a sequence he had committed flawlessly to both muscle and mental memory: top right, top left, bottom left, bottom right.
Four silent shots, four lives.
The trench knives he gripped loosely in each other hand would take care of the rest, and if things got really hairy the Desert Eagle would come into play.
He checked his watch. It was time. With a madman’s grin smeared across his scarred face he drew in one last deep breath, and then opened the library door, slipping out into the subtly lit hallway beyond.
The battle had begun.
***
Igor pulled heavily on the hand-rolled cigarette before handing it to Daekwon, who declined and passed it on to the Ukrainian’s younger brother, Stas. The twenty-two-year-old held the smoke in his lungs for a few drawn-out moments, watching how his younger sibling’s sandy blonde dreadlocks dangled over his face as he too dragged on the cigarette, the smoke wisps weaving a lazy trail through the shadows of the balcony, which overlooked the mansion grounds. Igor leaned back against the slatted doors but took care to not put too much weight on the wood, for it protested against this unwanted pressure with an alarmingly loud creak, which echoed up and down the stairwell in the house behind them.
‘The boss doesn’t think we will have trouble,’ Igor grunted as he stroked the forestock of his AK-47, ‘even though the Indian is shaking in his boots about some crazy assassin coming here to ice him and that cripple. We’ve made this some top-secret shit, bro. Even the old KGB wouldn’t have been able to find us here.’
‘Hey man,’ Daekwon said, somewhat riled by the Ukrainian’s dismissive references to ‘the Indian’ and ‘the cripple’, ‘they g-, got names, you know. Lightnin’ Bird an’ P-, Parvati.’ He idly stroked the grip of his Glock Seventeen as he spoke; he had made a habit of doing this in recent times.
Stas, looking somewhat sullen, brushed a stray dreadlock out of his face and pulled on the cigarette once more before handing it back to his older brother.
‘Yeah Igor,’ Stas said, backing Daekwon up. ‘C’mon bro, use their names.’
Igor rolled his eyes as he took the cigarette, and dragged heavily on it before responding to either of them.
‘Okay, I know, I know, but my point still stands. I think Lightning Bird is worrying over nothing. Look at this place! Who’s gonna get in here?’
Daekwon chuckled darkly, his lips curling into a mirthless smile while a coldness crystallised in his eyes.
‘That’s the k-, k-, kinda thinkin’ that’ll get you k-, killed, man. Every damn p-, place we hid, them Huntsmen motherfuckers found us, even in the middle a’ n-, n-, nowhere in the mountains in California. Y’all think they can’t f-, find us here? They gon’ find us, trust me man, they gon’ f-, f-, find us. It ain’t a matter a’ “if”, it’s a matter a’ “when”. They got eyes an’ ears e-, e-, err’where, err’where.’
Stas double-checked his AK-47 again with fidgety fingers, flipping the safety on and off, and then on and off once more.
‘I hope the boss is right, big brother,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t want to have to shoot this thing tonight.’
Igor stared off into the lumpy darkness of the forest beyond the boundary of the property, exhaling a lungful of smoke into the night.
‘Shit, I don’t either.’
Daekwon, his nerves on edge, suddenly stood bolt upright.
‘Hey, did you guys see somethin’ m-, move down there in the bushes?’
‘Where?’ Stas asked.
‘Way down by the f-, f-, fence, in the trees. I think I saw something … or someone. Take a look through the b-, binoculars.’
‘It’s nothing man, I didn’t see nothing down there,’ Igor said. ‘You’re spooked bro, you’re seeing shit that isn’t there.’
‘Just t-, take a look, okay? I’m gon’ head upstairs an’ t-, t-, tell the others to get ready in case some shit’s about to go d-, down. My, whatever you wan’ call it, sixth sense or some sh, shit, is tinglin, an’ I got a real bad f-, feelin’ about this.’
Daekwon turned and headed through the slatted doors,
