The first of the Sabers to reach Jun on the bridge darted forward with a curved fighting knife in each hand, unleashing a flurry of darting stabs and slashes, too fast for Jun to follow with his eyes. One slash caught him across the forearm before he dodged the second instinctively, and luck—or perhaps the Blessed Consort’s protection—came to his aid; the knife wielder leapt forward to finish him off but landed on a rotten bit of board that gave way under his foot.
With a startled yelp, the man’s shoe went through a gap between two wooden planks and stuck fast, momentarily trapping him in place. As he bent forward and yanked his foot free, Jun’s nunchaku came whistling down on his right wrist, sending the knife flying out of his hands, then back up under his chin with a resounding crack, knocking his head backward. The man swayed, making one feeble, half-conscious swipe with his remaining knife, then toppled sideways. Jun shoulder-checked him hard, sending him over the wooden railing of the bridge and tumbling into the river below.
He didn’t pause to watch the knife fighter fall or to see him hit the water. He heard only the faint splash below and, much closer behind him, the sound of a kick connecting with its target and the thud of Yin’s opponent colliding with the ground.
“You idiot, Ling,” Zhang muttered, glancing over the side of the bridge at his fellow Saber now taking a trip down the river. He shouted to the others, “Remember, try to take them alive!”
Good. The bounty notice that Jun had seen in the tracker’s satchel had promised a higher reward for bringing him in alive. That might be the only advantage he had over their assailants. That, and the confines of the bridge—as long as he and Yin kept protecting each other’s backs, they could fight their enemies one or two at a time and avoid being surrounded.
Two more Sabers stepped onto the bridge ahead of Zhang—a mean-looking, flat-faced woman wielding a chain whip and a skinny, mop-haired man wielding a long staff. Jun glanced between them as they paced to either side. They would attack him simultaneously—unless he moved first and threw off their coordination.
With a sharp cry of challenge, he flung a nunchaku strike at the woman on his right. The man on the left reacted, taking advantage of the opening to send the end of his staff shooting toward Jun’s midsection. Jun’s timing had to be perfect; he twisted his body and caught the staff as it shot past, trapping it between his arm and his body. Another twist in the other direction turned the staff into a lever, throwing the man on the other end off-balance and onto his knees.
The chain lashed down across Jun’s shoulders, carving a stinging line of pain across his skin. Metal links flung themselves around his body, pinning his arms to his sides. The bounty hunter grinned triumphantly and yanked, tightening the sharp bite of metal.
The smile fell off her face as Yin Yue hooked the chain on the prongs of his pitchfork hand and wrenched it loose. The bounty hunter blinked, nonplussed by the odd sight. Reflexively, she pulled, trying to tug her weapon free. The chain went taut for a second, until Yin let go, sending the metal links flying toward their owner like a snapped bowstring. The Saber went stumbling backward. The man with the staff regained the grip on his weapon, but before he could fully rise, Jun brought an axe kick down on his shoulder, crumpling him. Two nunchaku blows to the head kept him down.
“Watch out!” Yin exclaimed, pulling Jun aside and pivoting around him, ducking under the swing of an axe blade and slamming a flying kick into the stomach of its wielder.
The dagger tip of Old Man Zhang’s metal cane flew straight for Jun’s chest. Iron Core reflexes alone saved him. Protect the center line! He twisted; his cracked ribs screamed in protest, but the blade scored a shallow gash across his arm instead of perforating his heart. With a bellow, Jun sprang, aiming a kick at Zhang’s weak leg—a feint that caused the gangster to flinch back—before snapping the nunchaku out and catching the man in the jaw with the end of the flail.
The Sabers backed off. Three members of their gang were already down in a matter of seconds—one in the river, two others in an unconscious heap. The chain whip woman and the man with the axe were bent over and grimacing. Zhang had a hand cupped to his jaw. He worked his mouth back and forth and spat out a loose tooth and glob of blood. He looked honestly surprised; it had been a long time, Jun suspected, since anyone had dared to incur the vengeance of the Moon Righteous Sabers by striking Old Man Zhang in the face.
Jun kept his left hand up in a guard, the business end of his nunchaku tucked under his right arm, ready to unleash with a single wrist flick. The back of Yin’s shoulders were pressed against his.
“I’ve come to the decision,” Zhang said with contemplative menace, “that I’m willing to sacrifice two hundred yun in payout for the satisfaction of killing you.”
Yin Yue’s voice was calm with scorn. “You can try.”
Zhang gestured at the lopsided situation: nine remaining fighters against two exhausted, bleeding men trapped on a rotten bridge. “Be realistic. Do you really think you can win?”
So many terrible things had happened to Jun in the span of a short time that Zhang’s question struck him as ridiculous. The sort of thing one would ask a child before a game. Do you think you can win? There was no point in trying to speculate about the future. Nothing he’d imagined about the Guardian’s Tournament had come to pass the way he’d wished for or could’ve predicted. He’d won, but he’d still lost. Winning was no longer important.
He was not the same boy who’d bragged to Old Man Zhang a week ago.
Instead of trying to explain this, Jun merely smiled and pointed a finger straight at Zhang. “Ask yourselves if you can beat Prodigy Yin and the Little Dragon.”
Yin brandished his claw impatiently. “You’re in our way. So move, or fight.”
Everything slowed as the Sabers came from both sides. Jun glimpsed each opponent on the bridge not as they were, but as they would be half a heartbeat later—the man with the axe would shift his weight back to his right foot to heft his weapon; the twitchy, lanky fighter with the dagger would feint to one side, then slide in with his blade held low, aiming for a kidney; the one with a club in his huge ham fists would reach them last but was drawing his shoulder back, ready to knock Jun out with a single massive wallop to the head.
Jun wondered, with some tiny, distant part of his conscious mind, if this was what Sifu Chang saw. The blind flutist had always seemed to know exactly where Jun would be next when they sparred, as if Dragon’s gift gave him not simply a different view of the world as it was now, but as it would be. Dragon’s Breath was not static, it was always flowing. Seeing a person’s inner Breath was like watching a falling drop of water and knowing where it would land.
His body was already reacting, not waiting for a response from his brain—he intercepted the man with the dagger, lunging and shooting his nunchaku straight into the attacker’s face, cracking him between the eyes. As the man reeled, Jun bounced sideways and threw a roundhouse kick into his head, sending him sprawling into the path of the oncoming axe wielder. The Saber with the axe tried to stop his swing as the two gangsters collided; the heavy head of the axe smashed into the floor of the bridge, cracking two planks.
With a bellow, the brawler with the club leapt over the damaged planks and rained blows down on Jun, who staggered, backpedaling, blocking and deflecting the strikes but feeling their impact shudder through his arms and spine. One blow caught him glancingly off the side of the head and everything went muffled for a moment, save for a tinny ringing. Jun threw his shoulder into the man’s chest, jamming up his next blow, and punched the butt end of his nunchaku into the man’s face. As the man dropped his club and clutched his broken nose, Jun swept out his leading leg, sending the bounty hunter sprawling forward.
“Yin!” Jun shouted.
Yin Yue spun and punched the prongs of his claw through the man’s throat as he fell. He shoved the body away; it tumbled over the railing of the bridge and into the river.
Zhang roared in outrage and brought his dagger-ended cane whistling down. The tip ripped through Jun’s shirt, stinging as it parted skin. Another slash followed, scoring a second bloody path across Jun’s chest. Jun felt the wounds without truly feeling them; his mind blurred them together and pushed them into a corner. Zhang was deft with his unconventional weapon—striking with the length of it like a stick, thrusting it like a spear, slashing with the tip like a knife. Jun’s nunchaku was a blur but couldn’t break through the lethal whirlwind. He dropped and lashed out with his feet, scissoring Zhang at the knees and sending him toppling.
Old Man Zhang scrambled to his feet and backed away. The Sabers seethed with frustration but didn’t seem to be in any rush. Their opponents weren’t going anywhere.
Jun pulled himself to his feet, sucking air through clenched teeth. There were too many of them. All the training and resolve that he and Yin possessed could not in the end stand up to sheer odds and the fact that they had been fighting for days. They were bleeding, worn down, low on food and sleep. Even the deepest well of Dragon’s Breath was not an unlimited resource. Jun could feel the fight slipping out of his grasp. His movements were getting slower, less precise, the attacks by Zhang and his compatriots were landing more often. His injuries were piling up and the pain was breaking through his mental wall like floodwater through cracks in a dam. He could smell his own blood, pungent and metallic, could feel it running down his back and chest like sweat, sticking the tattered remains of his shirt to his skin.
He could hear Yin heaving for breath behind him.
This is it. Jun felt no real fear, only anger and regret. He’d been so, so close. The Snake Wall was right there, beckoning to him, a mockery in these final minutes. He would never reach it, just as he would never get a chance to see Ren again, nor to apologize to his father. Jun forced himself upright next to Yin, pinned his unafraid gaze on the nearest foes. All he could do now was go down fighting and deprive General Cobu of the satisfaction of his public execution.
Something was drawing the attention of the Sabers at the rear of the pack. A couple of them were turning around, frowning, their postures tense. Zhang glanced over his shoulder.
A woman was approaching, striding up the path to the bridge as if to cross it.
“Stop!” Zhang shouted to her. “These men are dangerous fugitives and traitors. We, the Moon Righteous Sabers, are bringing them to justice in accordance with the edict of the emperor.”
The woman did not stop or slow down. As she neared the bridge, she threw back the hood of her traveling cloak, revealing a middle-aged face, oval-shaped with thin lips, hair braided in a long single plait that hung down her back.
Jun gaped in astonishment to see a face he recognized in completely unexpected surroundings. The stranger who’d bet on him in the tournament. Chang’s friend.
What was she doing here?
“Didn’t you hear us? Back away, woman.” One of the Sabers moved to stand in the woman’s way. Without breaking stride, she thrust stiff fingers into the hollow of his throat. He clutched his neck, unable to breathe, and with astonishing swiftness, she struck him in the face with a palm heel strike and followed it with a spinning wheel kick to the face.
Jun blinked. That looked like … Tiger Spirit–style fighting.
The bewildered Sabers turned on the newcomer as she continued advancing. The bounty hunter with the chain whip rushed forward, her weapon a whistling silver blur. The older woman weaved like a snake, evading the spike as it shot past her. She stuck an arm into the path of the whip; the metal links wrapped around her forearm. Instead of pulling, she spun into the weapon, her braid flying like one of the strings on a spinning toy drum. The weapon’s owner stood stupefied for a moment; no one had ever willingly tied themselves up. The surprise lasted only for a second before she was knocked out by a tornado of spinning kicks, three of them thrown in rapid succession. Having one’s arms restrained didn’t stop a good fighter from using her legs.
High-flying spinning kicks were a specialty of the Whirling Leg Sect.
The remaining Sabers gawked. Suddenly, the man with the axe staggered backward, an arrow protruding from the side of his neck. He put a hand up in astonishment, staring in disbelief at the blood on his fingers before collapsing.
“Who’s shooting at us?” Zhang bellowed in rage.
Another arrow flew out of nowhere and struck one of the remaining bounty hunters in the arm, passing right through his biceps and into his armpit. The man shrieked, looking about wildly and turning to run. Yin threw an elbow that connected with the man’s face with a crack.
The woman with the braid was nearly at the bridge. The one Saber left in her path intercepted her with a furious, desperate avalanche of punches, each one of which she blocked or deflected, twisting her body nimbly, protecting her center. With a precise step and a low kick she unbalanced him, sent him stumbling forward, and finished him with a knee to the face.
“Iron Core style,” Yin breathed in astonishment.
Only four Moon Righteous Sabers remained on the bridge. One of them glanced at Old Man Zhang. “Not fucking worth it,” he declared before turning and running for the trees. An arrow caught him in the back as he reached the end of the bridge, pitching him into the path.
A bounty hunter wielding twin butterfly knives hesitated too long deciding whether to attack Jun or the implacable woman striding toward them. Jun didn’t give him a chance to make up his mind; he brought his nunchaku whistling down across the man’s collarbone. The Saber let out a cry as he fell—and Jun staggered from a sudden hard blow to the front of his shoulder.
He looked down in shock at the tip of Zhang’s weapon buried where his left arm joined his torso. The pain arrived a whole second later—a lance of agony down his left side.
In one final, lethal effort, Old Man Zhang had hurled his dagger-tipped cane like a javelin. He’d been aiming to skewer Jun square through the chest but had missed—only narrowly. The gangster’s smug grin flashed at him for a mere moment before the other Saber on the ground surged up in front of Jun and planted a solid side kick in his stomach.
Jun fell against the railing. The rotten wood gave way beneath his weight, the beams snapping like dry toothpicks. Reflexively, he put his hands out, grasping. They closed on air. His heart flew into his throat, abject terror taking hold as his body pitched backward into open air.
“Jun!”
He glimpsed Yin Yue’s horrified face, eyes wide, as he lunged, reaching out to catch Jun’s hand. In his panic, Yin instinctively put out his right arm; he gave a howl of dismay at his fatal mistake. Jun’s fingers closed on one of the fork prongs and slid off the bloody metal.
Air whooshed by, the sky and trees and water below spinning in his vision.
He didn’t hear himself scream.
The fall felt like an eternity, death suspended in a frozen heartbeat.
He blacked out when he hit the water. The shock and cold, however, yanked him back into his body. He couldn’t feel his limbs, couldn’t see anything, couldn’t sense any direction. Rushing water filled his mouth and nose, and he struggled in desperate, mindless terror until, through sheer luck, his head broke through the surface and he gasped a lungful of air before he was tossed under again.
I don’t want to die. Not now, not like this.
Baba! Mama. Sai … I’m sorry.
His body collided with something hard; he grabbed for it without thinking. A broken wooden plank that had fallen from the bridge during the fight, caught on a low forked branch hanging in the water. Jun’s weight dislodged it from the snag; the glutted river tumbled the board and the man clinging to it end over end. The end of the makeshift raft smacked Jun in the chin. Water sloshed over his face and muffled everything, and consciousness fled him.