Lexine nodded, her green eyes twinkling. “I know I can take you.”
“We’ll see about that!” Pat slammed her kickstand down and climbed from her Triumph.
“What are you doing?” Cardew asked her.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Pat retorted.
“Terza said we’re to make it quick,” Cardew said.
“I’ll make it quick,” Pat promised. She smiled and slowly drew her sword.
“Cut Lex to ribbons!” urged the woman with the Bulldog.
“Don’t worry,” Pat said. “I will.”
Lexine moved to her right, keeping her eyes on that sword. It had a 30-inch double-edged blade and a large hilt, and it had been especially crafted for Pat by one of the blacksmiths.
Pat, confident in her ability and the superior reach of her weapon, walked directly toward the redhead. “I’m going to take your head back to Terza as a gift.”
“Come and get it,” Lexine said, baiting her adversary.
Pat charged, swinging her sword in a wide arc.
Lexine quickly ducked and dodged to her right, avoiding the gleaming sword.
Pat swung again, drawing nearer, aiming an overhead swipe at Lexine’s head.
Lexine parried the sword with her survival knife, the blades clanging as they struck.
The blonde brought her sword around again.
Lexine managed to deflect the blade with her knife as she deftly slide aside, darting to the left.
“Lexine!” Mira cried in alarm.
Without warning, before Lexine could fathom her intent, Pat turned and took three steps, her arms upraised, the sword clasped with the blade upright, only a foot from Mira.
“No!” Lexine shouted.
Mira, too terrified to react, flinched as the sword flashed downward.
Lexine, shocked to her core, saw the sword cleave Mira’s face, splitting it from the forehead to the chin.
Mira stiffened and gurgled as Pat withdrew her blade. A crimson flood poured from the wound as Mira sagged to the ground.
“No!” Enraged, Lexine leaped at the blonde. She stabbed and slashed in a frenzied fury, but Pat was able to block or counter every blow. Heedless of her safety, Lexine pressed her attack. She forced the blonde to retreat several paces. Eager to bury her knife in Pat’s chest, she gambled on a desperate lunge.
Pat easily sidestepped.
Lexine felt her right foot catch in one of the deep cracks in the road and she stumbled forward, unable to regain her balance. Her left knee smashed onto the asphalt. She frantically struggled to rise, to confront her foe, fearing Pat would plunge the sword into her exposed back.
But nothing happened.
Lexine rose and turned, her knife at the ready.
Pat was only three feet away, but she wasn’t looking at Lexine. Neither were Cardew or the other two women.
What in the world? Astonished, Lexine glanced in the direction they were staring, to the west. That’s when she saw him.
The stranger. Calmly standing in the middle of the road, not ten feet away, he was a wiry, diminutive man dressed in black. His features were handsomely Oriental, his eyes and hair dark. A long, black scabbard was clutched in his left hand.
Lexine had never seen a man like this newcomer. There was an unusual quality about the man, a visible air of supreme self-confidence combined with a palpable aura of inner strength. His expression exhibited an inherent honesty and fearlessness. Lexine experienced a stirring deep within her, a reaction to the stranger’s mere presence. Unlike the servile men in the Leather Knights, she intuitively sensed that here, at last, was a real man.
Cardew was the first to recover his voice. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his right hand inching toward his Browning Auto Pistol.
“I am called Rikki,” the newcomer replied in a soft, low voice.
“Where did you come from?” Cardew angrily demanded, scanning the vegetation on both sides of the road.
“My body came from my mother’s womb,” the stranger said quietly.
“My spirit came from the Eternal Source of all life.”
Lexine almost laughed at the ludicrous contours on Cardew’s face as his mouth dropped open in amazement.
Pat walked toward the newcomer, cautiously extending her sword. “Cut the crap, jerk! We want some answers and we want them now!”
“I have supplied the proper answers,” the stranger stated.
“Maybe we should take this bozo back to Terza,” Cardew suggested nervously.
“I am not going anywhere?” the man in black said.
“Wanna bet?” Pat countered.
“I do not gamble,” the newcomer told her.
“Is this guy for real?” asked the woman with the Bulldog. Her right hand was resting on the revolver.
Pat stopped a yard from the stranger. “We want to know where you came from,” she reiterated, “and we want to know right now.”
Lexine saw the man in black gaze at Pat. Surprisingly, Pat backed up a step—surprising because Lexine had never seen Pat back down from anyone or anything.
The newcomer shifted his attention to Lexine. “I do not understand the reason for your conflict, but I do not believe four against one are honorable odds. Would you care for my assistance?”
Pat moved forward again before Lexine could respond. “Who the hell do you think you are? This is a private matter.”
The man in black locked his dark eyes on Pat. “Not any more,” he said, accenting each word.
Something seemed to snap inside of Pat. “Damn you!” she bellowed, and aimed a swipe at the stranger.
Lexine could scarcely believe what transpired next. In her 23 years she had participated in dozens of fights and witnessed dozens more, savage engagements, life-or-death exchanges conducted by men and women skilled in the many arts of combat. She had seen swordsmen and swordswomen of consummate proficiency. But not one of them had come close to matching the lightning speed of the man in black.
The stranger called Rikki twisted slightly, and his right hand was a streak as he drew his sword. The stroke was impossible to see; one moment he was drawing his sword, and in the next instant Pat had frozen in her tracks, her head flopping backward, nearly decapitated, a shred of skin and her upper spinal column all that remained of her neck.
Cardew and the other two women went for their weapons.
Lexine saw the man in black drop his scabbard, his left hand reaching behind his back and emerging with an odd metal star clasped in his fingers. His left arm swept up and out.
The biker on Lexine’s right was drawing the Bulldog, the revolver clear of its shoulder holster and leveling when the metal star arced across the intervening space and embedded itself in her forehead. The woman with the Bulldog jerked in her seat, her eyes widening in disbelief. She gasped and began to slide to the ground.
The third woman biker was drawing her sword when the man in black took two rapid steps and plunged his blade into her throat.
Lexine abruptly realized they were still in danger and spun to confront Cardew.
The Harley roared to life even as Lexine turned, and before she could reach him Cardew gunned his bike and executed a tight U-turn, heading east, his motorcycle accelerating rapidly. Within seconds, he passed over the crest of the low hill and vanished.
“Now we know who the real wimp is,” Lexine said aloud. She stared sadly at Mira, then looked at the three other dead women lying sprawled on the highway.
The man in black wiped his sword clean on Pat’s vest, then crossed to the woman with the Bulldog. He leaned over and extracted his metal star from her forehead, wiping it on the woman’s leather pants.
“What is that thing?” Lexine asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The stranger slid the star into a brown pouch attached to his belt, positioned in the small of his back. “It is called a shuriken,” he informed her.