NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 45: Assailants
Samaya awoke as she heard soft footsteps padding across her roof. Those tiled roofs made it easy to get a grip and move around sneakily if you knew what you were doing. However … these people were not being very sneaky. And no, she was not talking about her own senses. A decently trained assassin would have been able to disguise those footsteps from her. The only reason she could sense Siwang’s or the Emperor’s men was because she was sensitive to their chi.
These, however, were not sneaky enough to be trained assassins. Some sort of martial artist probably. Good enough to go after the average Joe, heck even after lower-class nobles who had little martial training or enough money to hire good martial artists as bodyguards. These footsteps were soft, but audible to her trained ears nonetheless. These ones seemed trained enough for fights on the streets and underground, but not trained enough to be assassins.
That was the only purpose she could think of for anyone with training to be hanging around her residence. Because they certainly were not the Shadow Guards. Those fuckers were quieter than nights when even crickets went silent. Besides, the Shadow Guards rarely followed her or Manu anymore. Most of them had left with the Emperor. The rest of them… she was pretty sure she felt them lurking around the Tianfenggog. Made sense, since the Empress was carrying the heir of the Emperor. None of Siwang’s men would be this conspicuous.
So, that left someone sent after her or her son.
On the one night that she was alone.
She had even sent Ah-Liu away to spend some time with Hua at her brothel. Damn it!
She didn’t move from her position. One of the first lessons she learnt was not letting anyone sneaking up on you know that you knew they were coming. She heard them jump in through the window, doing a total count. Two inside, five outside… a total of seven.
It wouldn’t be hard to get them. But she couldn’t let her guard down. She had been in enough tussles in this world to know that some of these fuckers were relentless and sometimes had some special moves up their sleeves.
Ah-Liu was going to be insufferable about guarding her, wasn’t he?
She heard one of them standing right beside her and pulling the curtain. Thank god all these beds were always pushed up against the wall. She’d have a hard time protecting Manu otherwise.
The sound of something sharp being unsheathed reached her ears. Judging by how short it sounded, it was probably some sort of dagger. She waited for the dagged to come down and soon enough, it did.
Just before the dagger reached her throat, her hand snapped up and caught it by the wrist. Her eyes opened and she only allowed enough time for the surprise to come over the man’s expression, visible only through his eyes due to his covered face, before she pulled out the small knife that she always kept in her sleeve, pulling the man down and drove it straight into the man’s throat, not giving him the time to get over his surprise.
She watched as the light left his eyes, warm blood sliding down the knife and onto her hand.
“Shang! Why are you fucking around?! This is not the time to-”
The man who was a few steps behind the now corpse paused in his angry rant, finally realising what was happening.
Samaya quickly slid her knife out of the man’s throat and kicked his body, sending him flying and crashing into his … comrade? Whatever.
The sound must have alerted those outside since she heard footsteps rushing in. But they were not the only ones that the crash alerted. Samaya felt movement behind her.
“Manu, hide!” She said as she jumped off the bed.
She heard the sheets ruffle and knew that the boy had listened to her. She watched as the man - the one that was alive - pushed the corpse off himself. With a sudden surge of movement, the assailant lunged forward, his fists crackling with chi as he aimed a devastating blow at Samaya’s chest. If that connected, her ribcage would cave in within a millisecond. However, to her senses, it seemed slow. The time had not stopped or slowed down, but her perception had become faster since coming into this world.
She was already in motion, her reflexes honed to perfection in her own world and maximized by the speed she had gained in this one. With a quick sidestep, she evaded his strike, her body moving fluidly as she countered with a lightning-fast kick to his abdomen, sending him reeling backwards with a grunt of pain. She could already hear footsteps approaching, she couldn’t delay.
Pressing on the balls of her feet, she pushed off and shot forward, reaching him within the blink of an eye, her fist already poised for a punch. One uppercut to the jaw usually wouldn’t do much to a man of that stature, especially when delivered by a comparatively slender figure like hers. But she knew how to target with precision and her accelerated speed made it so that her punch landed with a considerable amount of force, which she knew from experience was comparable to their chi enhancement.
She felt the jaw crack above her fist and the force of her punch, combined with the man’s momentum, made the entire body flip backwards, the man going head first into the ground. Well, she should give him a hand, shouldn’t she? She grabbed his neck, her hand grasping onto just the right places in order to have a good grip, and slammed his head into the ground, letting gravity do most of the work for her. She saw his eyes haze over and knew he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.
She straightened and turned just in time for the rest of the assailants to get into the room. Two of them entered through two windows while the rest ran in through the doors. Okay, this … could be a challenge. She preferred not to go against so many head-on. Her expertise lay in sneaking up and taking out her targets. She might not get out of this unscathed.
They closed in on her, their attacks coming in a relentless barrage. They were not holding back, that was for sure. They had their weapons aiming for her jugular. Had she not trained like hell with those fucking monsters Siwang had thrown at her, she would have been shish kebab by now, even with her enhanced speed. Thankfully, her five years of training and missions came in handy. She moved with a speed and agility that seemed nearly supernatural. She danced between the blades and fists, her movements a blur as she deflected their strikes with precise blocks and counters while trying to formulate a strategy to deal with all of them alone.
It was at times like these that she fell back to her training with her mentor.
When in doubt, use them against themselves
Okay, they were coming from front and back, the front one had his sword aimed at her chest. She dodged to the empty side and, instead of moving away, grabbed his wrist. A split-second glance from the corner of her eyes told her that the other man had his sword raised, leaving his front completely defenceless. She pulled the front assailant’s wrist, turning to the side, letting his own strength and momentum carry him and his sword past her right into the other man’s gut.
The sound of another sword swishing through the air behind her was enough to make her let go and duck out of its way, sliding beneath it in a flash. The blade that would have sliced through her shoulder in one swipe now slivered the wrist she’d just been holding. The man let out a guttural scream that echoed off the walls. He dropped to his knees and so did the man who had his gut pierced.
The third man, who had just sliced his friend’s wrist, stumbled forward as he lost his balance. If she’d had her knife, she would have driven it straight into his carotid artery. But she lost it sometime during the fight. She settled for a quick chop to his neck instead, enforced by her speed, knocking him out effectively.
Okay. Two more. She could do this-
She felt a burst of condensed energy crackling through the air as it hurtled toward the woman with deadly force. She immediately tried to speed out of the way. But her assailant was a little too close and she had realized it a little too late. Even though the attack itself flew past her, the raw force of it slammed into her side and sent her flying back. She slammed into the table where they usually had their food, the chi blast slamming into it along with her, shattering it into pieces that went flying in every direction. She let out a strangled scream as she felt some of the splinters - shards, really - embedding themselves into her back and side… some of them even got into the underside of her arms.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! Fucking ranged attacks. She hated those. It was one of those cards up the sleeves that she was talking about. She knew some martial artists could do ranged attacks. She knew it took a considerable amount of both talent and training to be able to do those. She also knew that they took a lot out of martial artists. Even Siwang couldn’t do more than half a dozen in a day without feeling tired. And something that could make that monster feel tired was … something she didn’t want to deal with.
She looked up. Whoever it was had to be a young man. He had the talent but not the training. She could tell by the lack of precision and the way the boy was panting, sweat soaking his face coverings, swaying slightly on his feet. The final man was standing a few steps behind him, sword in hand.
Fuck, if only she’d been able to avoid it. She would have easily been able to snap his neck. She ignored the pain radiating through her body and pushed off the ground to get up.
“Mama!”
Her eyes widened as Manu’s voice reached her ears. Horrified, she turned, only to find Manu scrambling out from under the bed, running towards her.
“Manu, no!”
She could see it, the movements incredibly slow to her, as the fifth man grabbed him by his collar and pulled him back, pressing a sword to his neck. Her heart jumped to her throat, panic and rage surging through her at the same time.
“Let him go!” She screamed, like a fucking civilian, but she wasn’t thinking straight.
“Ah ah ah,” the man’s deep voice had a tone of mockery in it. He pressed the sword just a bit harder, and Samaya could see the thin line of blood forming as it pierced his skin. “Don’t move or I will slice this boy’s throat ear to ear.
She froze in place, clenching her teeth. She could almost see the smirk forming beneath that mask of his. “You have wreaked enough havoc on us. It’s our turn.”
He tilted his head towards his only remaining partner. “Ning, kill the bitch!”
The man in front of her raised his sword.
Think, think, think, think, think!
With her instinct and training in overdrive, she grabbed the largest shard she could find beside her. She didn’t bother guarding herself with it. Instead, she pulled back and threw it as fast as she could at the man holding Manu hostage, bracing herself for the pain that was sure to come from the sword about to pierce her.
The splinter went right into the man’s eye and out his skull, before embedding itself in the wall behind him, now soaked in blood. But the sword… never pierced her. It reached her shoulder but then paused as if the man in front of him had lost all strength. The moment of pause seemed to stretch an eternity.
The man fell to the ground, the sword sliding against the skin of her shoulder and making a small shallow cut as the man lost his grip, finally clattering onto the ground right beside its owner.
Samaya finally saw the knife protruding from the back of the man’s skull and then looked up, her tensed shoulder finally relaxing as she saw who her saviour was. She slumped against the ground, whispering the name with relief.
“Han Qin.”
