The Vulcan Disaster

Behind me were the sounds of battle. What was going on? I didn’t dare look around. The trouble with my strategy was that this guy was a master with that sword. His swings didn’t expose him to danger. His recoveries were lightning swift. And that martial-arts stance of his — bowlegged, low-slung — offered me nothing to chop at closer than his ankle. Fat chance: the moment I dipped down to slice at his leg he’d behead me with that weed-cutter of his.

His next attack brought the sword down in an overhand slicing action that would have halved me at the part in my hair if it’d hit me. Quick as lightning, it turned into a lateral slash that missed my nose by inches.

I continued to circle, hoping against hope that I could draw him away from her (hoping that she was still alive back there). As I did, he attacked again. His next move came fast and furious as usual — but it had a hole in it somewhere. Don’t ask me where; I didn’t have time to think it out. I just let the adrenalin take over.

His two-handed slash was on the diagonal, sixty degrees from the ground. It wasn’t at me. It was at my feint. And it was right on target for where I’d have been if I hadn’t been faking it.

As it was, I just plain wasn’t there. And the backswing nearly tore his arm off. As he tried to regain control I put Hugo up just under his jaw and sliced, forward and down.

Hugo is like a straight razor on both edges. The cut he made was narrow, but deep. In the dim light I could see the pink vein sticking out of his neck, spurting blood. He dropped the sword; he put his hands to his neck; he fell to his knees, quivering and whimpering helplessly.

I turned to the scene behind me.

Tatiana stood with her back to the wall. Her eyes were not on me. They were on an incredible scene in the middle of the street.

One of the attackers lay dead in the gutter. His guts were out in the street in front of him, and the pavement was slippery with his blood.

That wasn’t what she was looking at.

In the center of the street the man with the trident and the man with the spear had, boxed between them, a little old white-haired man — a Caucasian, and in his sixties at least — armed only with a curious pair of knives. These he held, blades pointing to the sky, to his fore and aft, in a posture of two-way defense; I could see them clearly in the dim light. They were single-edged and massive, like Bowies, only bigger — a foot in length, perhaps two and a half inches wide at the blade. The handles were fitted with knuckle-guards in front, curious up-jutting hooks in the rear.

The old man was smiling serenely, as if the deadly game he was playing were no more lethal than chess. He was inviting their attack.

In a moment I saw why.

The man with the spear lunged forward.

The old man, for a second ignoring the man behind him, moved — not backward, but forward. The twin hooks engaged the thick spear-handle, diverted it from his body, slid swiftly up the wooden shaft. At the handle — the attacker was still lunging forward, confident of skewering the old man on that first rush — the forward knife disengaged from the spear’s wooden base. Its blade ran softly across the attacker’s neck, slicing through the same vein I’d hit on his machete-wielding partner.

The attacker dropped.

At that moment the second spearman — the man with the big, deadly-looking trident — attacked from the old man’s rear.

The old man’s head didn’t even turn. He caught the trident on his rear knife, turned it to the ground, and only then, with a single piercing cry, whirled to swing the lethal blade in his other hand in a wide arc.

The attacker’s head was down, drawn there by the old man’s pinioning of the trident. The blade sliced through his face, cutting it instantly in half. The wounded man screamed; his hands went to his ruined face. He sank to his knees.

Calmly the old man bent over one of the dead men and wiped his knife clean; he’d only soiled one blade. Then he looked up and smiled first at Tatiana, then at me. And he picked up the machete-like sword.

All the others were dead. The man with the ruined face was still kneeling, crying. Blood dripped from between the fingers that pressed the slit surfaces of his face together.

In a single powerful but effortless movement the old man swung the machete high, brought it flashing down... and the faceless man became a headless corpse. The bloody trophy of the brief battle rolled to rest in the gutter. The body slumped forward.

The old man bowed to the bodies. The bow was measured, respectful. I was still in the Orient after all.

“Hello,” he said to me. Then he turned to her, still smiling that same Buddha-like smile. “Tatiana, my dear. How glad I am that I was able to arrive on time.”

Her eyes still full of nameless terror, she melted into his arms. Patting her on the back, the old man turned that same smile on me. “Well,” he said. “You certainly acquitted yourself well tonight. My compliments.”