Verge of Darkness
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Ten years at the Jade Castle, Pagan was no longer a boy but a man.
One early summer's day, Xiang Tse told him and Liang that the Emperor had bestowed the Jade Castle with a great honour. He and his retinue would be staying a night at the castle on the way to the Imperial Family’s summer estates in the south.
The top two floors of the castle were given over to the Emperor and his party. Imperial guardsmen lined the corridor and stood at the bottom of the stairs. Fierce-eyed tall men in emerald helms and breastplates, each armed with a guan dao – a pole mounted wide blade – and two swords. They stared suspiciously at Pagan as he returned to his room next to the stairs.
Sometime in the night, Pagan was woken by a sound in the corridor. Climbing out of his bed, he padded to the door and edged it open.
Peering around the corner, he was alarmed to see the guardsmen down on the floor, clearly dead with blood pooling under their bodies. He sidled along the wall toward the stairs and glimpsed several black-garbed figures making their way up.
He raised his voice in alarm. “Assassins! Assassins!” and ran back to his room for his sword.
As he emerged, Xiang Tse and Liang, naked blades in their hands, appeared in the corridor.
“Assassins,” Pagan gasped, his heart racing. “I don’t know how many. Masked and wearing black. They’ve gone upstairs!”
“Zhaojin!” Xiang Tse hissed, as they pounded up the stairs. “They mustn’t reach the Emperor.” The clash of weapons and men shouting, rang down from the top floor.
As Pagan topped the stairs behind Xiang Tse, a squat powerfully built figure lunged at him. Parrying the thrust, Pagan’s riposte cut open the assassin’s throat, blood geysering onto the nearby wall. Hurdling the prone body, he ducked under a wild slash and plunged his sword into his attacker’s groin. Withdrawing his blade, he swung it in a tight arc, slicing clean through a black-clad ankle. As the killer fell, Liang plunged one of her swords into his belly.
As Pagan fought, a sense of calm fell over him. There was no anxiety, fear or anger. His concentration deepened – it was as if all around him moved in a slow dream-state. He could see, hear, smell and feel everything.
Xiang Tse was fighting with a calm serenity and no wasted motion. A flick there, a thrust there, a cut there, and black-clad killers fell. Liang, twin swords weaving a silvered pattern of death, was all graceful motion, a terrible dance macabre, as assassins fell before her. A sword hacked at her neck from behind. Spinning on her heel, she blocked the cut with her left-hand sword and disembowelled her attacker with her right-hand sword.
It absently occurred to Pagan that no agony-screams came from the Zhaojin as they were cut down.
The large windows lining the corridor exploded inward in a shower of glass, and wood, disgorging more masked assassins. Pagan, Xiang Tse and Liang moved to meet them.
A tall thin figure wielding a pair of kai – short-hafted sickle-like weapons – leapt at Pagan. One kai slashed at his face while the other arced upward toward his groin. The killer was fast and skilled, and a lesser man would have fallen before him. Pagan simply sidestepped and reverse-cut his sword through his neck.
As the thin assassin’s head bounced on the richly embroidered floor-covering, a blade lanced towards Pagan’s back. Swiftly reversing his sword, he plunged it into the belly of the would-be backstabber.
More Imperial guardsmen thundered up the stairs and joined the fray. Outnumbered, the remaining assassins were soon slain.
Pagan looked around. Liang and Xiang Tse were unhurt. Black-clad, and emerald-clad bodies littered the blood-soaked floor. Xiang Tse followed Pagan’s gaze. His beautifully- appointed living quarters, now a charnel house reeking of death. “How am I supposed to clean this mess up?” he muttered.
The captain of the guards, a slightly built man with piercing dark eyes, blood dripping down the side of his face from a shallow cut, approached Xiang Tse. “We thank you for your help, esteemed one,” he said, bowing.
Xiang Tse inclined his head in acknowledgement. “It was my student, Pagan, who alerted us.”
The man's eyes widened as he turned to Pagan and bowed. “We are most grateful. Please don't take this as an insult, but you are highly skilled for a gwai-loh. He held Pagan’s gaze, his dark eyes twinkling. “But then, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, for I saw you fight Chan Ki-Hon. I heard you broke his ribs.”
Pagan returned the bow, noting the tightening of the man's eyes as he mentioned Chan Ki-Hon. “No insult taken, Captain. It was my pleasure to have been of assistance.”
The captain took out a red silk cloth hanging at his belt and dabbed at the wound on his face. “My name is Lohai Chai,” he said, a slight smile playing on his lips. “Now I must report to the Emperor.”
He returned a short while later and approached Xiang Tse, Pagan and Liang. “The Emperor would like to thank all three of you,” he said. Looking at Xiang Tse, he continued. “He would much prefer to thank his great friend and his brave students personally, but it has been a long day, and the events of this night have been most distressing.”
Xiang Tse nodded. “I understand. The important thing is that the assassins failed, and the Emperor is safe.” He looked around, his face grim. “Now I think you and I have some work to do. We have to see to your wounded guardsmen, move the bodies of those who bravely gave their lives for the Emperor, and burn the bodies of the masked vermin.”