Path of the Tiger, стр. 441

Instead of rolling to his left to evade the blow, which would have been the natural and instinctive way to dodge the attack, Zakaria instead dived right, flipping his sword to his left hand as he did. He took the weight of his dive on his right forearm while slashing upward with the sword, and while Hrothgar barely managed to dodge the cut, there was no way he could avoid the follow-up, a quick stab which caught him right in his stomach; a perfectly timed thrust that would have run him through had it not been for his bulletproof vest.

Still, the impact sent him staggering back, and all he could do was to aim a vicious but clumsy diagonal slash at Zakaria as he stumbled, both in order to create some distance between himself and the knight and also to ward off a third and possibly fatal blow from his opponent’s blade.

As an experienced warrior and a grandmaster of combat, though, Hrothgar regained his balance in a mere second and adopted an unorthodox guard, with his battle-axe raised high above his head, angled downward. Zakaria switched his own stance as well, and the two fighters began circling each other with the cautiousness – and the barely contained concomitant ferocity – of rival lions, each well aware of the deadly prowess of his opponent, yet burning with vengeful rage in an eagerness to do battle.

Outside the conference room, at the far end of the broad corridor, Joao, in his buffalo form, and Ranomi, in her rhinoceros form, clashed with a wall-jarring crash. The force of Ranomi’s charge was concentrated in the points of her nasal horns, and with the impact of a hurtling truck she smashed into Joao’s flank. The momentum of her charge managed to lift the bellowing buffalo right up off his feet and slam him into a wall, which crumbled inward. Joao kicked and writhed with mad fury as Ranomi continued to drive her weight into him, and using the half-demolished wall as leverage he pushed his body forward and hooked his horns in a cutting attack aimed at the underside of Ranomi’s throat; if he could slash through her thick hide and hit one of her major veins or arteries the battle would be over very quickly. Ranomi, however, saw the attack coming – despite her already poor eyesight in rhinoceros form being exacerbated by the red-tinged gloom – and she reared up and back on her hind legs to avoid the slashing attack. In a counterattack she lunged forward and slammed her horns into the side of Joao’s neck, the punch of the strike lifting him off his feet.

Njinga, meanwhile, was finally able to breathe again. With a heaving groan she rolled over onto her side and scrambled with weak fingers for her sidearm. As she did, however, the assassin CC-105 pounced. The man’s body was spurting out blood from a number of wounds, and pieces of still-smoking shrapnel jutted obscenely from his flesh, but in his eyes a sheer and single-minded madness blazed: he would not stop fighting the servants of the Evil One until the very last breath of air left his body. Growling animalistically, with blood-thick spittle flying in grisly flecks from between his gritted teeth, he pulled Njinga into a choking jiujitsu lock, exerting extreme pressure on her arm and shoulder joints, which, despite the protection offered by her armoured suit, was putting such strain on her bones and joints that it seemed that her arm would break and her shoulder would be torn out of its socket at any moment. She howled with both pain and fury and writhed madly against the hold as she tried to fight back, locked, as her friends were, in mortal combat with a deadly foe.

***

In the darkness of the elevator shaft, Adriana remained crouched on the precarious ledge where Zakaria had left her. Ranomi had given her a small LED light so that she would not be stuck in complete darkness, but in spite of the beastwalkers’ reassurances, Adriana could not help but feel terrified; panic held her fast in its scaly talons, and it was all she could do to try to breathe through the fear and crushing confusion of the present.

Now, to add to her terror, coming muffled through the walls was the crashing symphony of gunfire. While she could not clearly discern each clattering or booming report, she could feel the vibrations from the sound waves as they rippled through the concrete beneath her bare, injured feet. Behind her back her wrists remained cuffed tight, and as hard as she struggled she could not contort her hands to the point where she could slip out of the cuffs, even as she pushed beyond the threshold of pain in a desperate bid to free herself; the steel was simply too tight around her wrists.

What would happen to her, she wondered? Whatever else did happen, she knew that she would not be going back to her cell; if the Rebels failed and Sigurd and his forces prevailed, she would surely be killed as punishment for her part in the invasion. If the Rebels succeeded and defeated Sigurd, however, she had no idea what they would do with her. In spite of the short time that she had known Ranomi, she felt a genuine kinship with her. Regarding Zakaria, though, she had long since learned not to trust any man. As for his sidekick, the one called Njinga, she felt as scared of her as she was of him; both of them intimidated her with their propensity for violence and their cold, almost mechanical manner of handling things, along with their seemingly unshakeable distrust of her.

Well, the feeling was mutual, she thought bitterly, especially when it came to Zakaria. She knew that men – almost all of them, it would seem – were ruled by two base and primal urges: the urge to fuck, and the urge to fight. She loathed