“No shootout, Larry. No guns.” This was where it would get dicey. I had to appeal to his vanity enough to get him to overcome his caution. “You once told me that you were a pretty good martial artist. Let’s see how good. Just you and me. You win, and we let you go. No more pursuit, no more running battles.”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe you. I don’t think your people are going to simply pack up and go home if I kill you.”
“Think it through, Larry. We’re not talking about an after-school brawl, here. This is it. It ends here. The way I see it, there are a limited number of possible outcomes to this fight. I kill you, or you kill me. If I win, we take my son and leave. At that point, I don’t think you’ll have any further say in the matter.” Larry’s only acknowledgment was a grunt.
“On the other hand,” I continued, “if you win, you won’t have any further use for him. You turn him loose, and my people will let you go.”
“Why should I believe you? What makes you think that they’ll just stand aside and let me leave?”
“They will if you let my son go. He’s the whole reason we’re all here. You took him to get to me.”
“I didn’t take him at all. One of your own people brought him to me!”
“All right,” I conceded the point. “You kept him to get to me, though. And if you kill me, there won’t be any reason to keep him. Let him go, and my people will take him back to Rejas. It’ll be over.”
“It seems to me that either way this goes, you get what you wanted. Your boy goes home.”
“Yes, and either way, you get what you wanted. I won’t be chasing you anymore.”
Larry thought it through. Finally, he yelled back, “All right, Leeland. You have your duel.”
I exhaled my relief. Zach was going to get out of there. That much was certain. Now all I had to worry about was saving my own skin.
“But I stipulate one slight change.” Damn. Now what’s he up to?
“I don’t trust your men to honor your agreement, so I’ll stay right where I am with your son. You will fight my champion instead.”
My mouth suddenly went dry, and I knew then that I had overlooked a flaw in my reasoning.
I was going to have to fight Han.
Chapter 22
Loing de sa terre Roy perdra la bataille,
Prompt eschappe poursuiuy suyuant prins,
Ignare prins soubs la doree maille.
Soubs faint habit amp; l’ennemy surprins.
Far from his land a King will lose the battle,
At once escaped pursued then captured,
Ignorant one taken under the golden mail.
Under false garb amp; the enemy surprised.
Han and I faced each other in the clearing between the tree line and Larry’s makeshift fortress. Larry’s people and mine surrounded the two of us in a loose ring, an uneasy truce holding everyone’s weapons at bay pending the outcome of our fight. To one side, Larry held Zachary, pistol resting lightly against his neck. Despite what I had said earlier, it really did remind me of an after-school brawl.
Megan stood beside me, and we watched as Han stepped forward into the makeshift ring.
“You sure you can take him?”
I looked at the behemoth standing across from me. “No.”
She nodded, taciturn and solemn for the moment. “Do you trust Larry to let Zachary go?”
I laughed. “I don’t trust Larry as far as I could throw him. But when we first ran across Larry’s ambush, back on D-day, he commented on Han’s strict code of honor. And we’ve seen how they’ve argued over the way they treat Zachary. So I’m pretty sure that if I lose, Han will insist that Larry stick to the terms of our agreement. And Han is the only thing holding Larry’s people together.”
Megan nodded. “So if Han wins and Larry tries to go against his word, Han will leave?”
I shrugged. “I’m betting he won’t continue to serve someone that dishonorable.”
She smiled grimly. “And if you kill Han, he’s still the only thing holding Larry’s group together.”
“Yeah. Either way, Larry’s army is finished.” I exhaled slowly, trying to release some of the tension in my shoulders. “You want to wish your old man good luck?”
Megan pursed her lips as if she were trying to figure out what to say. “You know, we’ve been standing here trying to be clinical about what happens if you kill Han, or what happens if Han kills you.” She shook her head. “And I’m trying my best to stay unemotional about it all because I know you don’t need any more pressure right now.”
She stopped as her voice cracked and knuckled away the single tear that fell down her cheek. Then she nodded at where Larry held Zachary. “But that prick over there is responsible in one way or another for killing three people I loved and dozens of my friends. Now we’re standing here talking about what happens if you die, too.” She shook her head again and patted her crossbow absentmindedly. “I’m willing to give your way a chance, but if that doesn’t work I want you to know something.”
She paused a second, then said with complete sincerity, “I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch.”
As she said it, I saw a touch of the madness that had overtaken her for a time after Andrew had been killed, and it pained me to finally accept the fact that it would always be a part of her.
I pulled her to me and hugged her close. “If my way doesn’t work,” I whispered, “I won’t be in any position to object. All I ask is that you get your brother home safely first.”
She nodded, and I stepped away, into the clearing with Han. We approached each other warily and stopped about ten feet apart. He surprised me by bowing as if this were a simple sparring match in a dojo. Not knowing what else to do, I bowed in return. Then, we began to circle one another.
I studied the way he moved, hoping to find some sign of weakness or fault in strategy. The last time I had seen him this close, he had been pounding my abs. Herculean as ever, he had led a hard life since then, which had only served to enhance his already formidable physique.
Lightning fast, he shot a fist toward my face, and the crowd around us erupted into shouts. I parried, only to find it was a ruse. I barely skipped aside in time to save my knee from a crippling kick. Before his foot touched the ground again, Han leapt and spun backward in the air with a speed that belied his size. The heel of his boot grazed my cheek as I scrambled away.
If that kick had connected, it would have been the end of the fight. From the intensity of the shouting, everyone around us knew it as well.
I shook off the close call and saw Han launch himself once more into the air. Sidestepping, I parried another punch. As he passed this time, I jabbed a stiffened thumb beneath his striking arm, into his armpit. Let’s see how you like being on the receiving end. Now it was my turn to attack before he had a chance to regain his footing. I jumped, kicked.
Han spun backward and countered with a spinning back-fist that knocked me ass over teakettle. I panicked as the world swam before my eyes, and I rolled frantically away. Disoriented, I shifted blindly to cover where I thought Han would be coming from, as I scrambled to get my bearings.
My vision cleared in a second that took forever, just in time to see him coming in with a combination of techniques that turned him into a tornado of striking hands and feet. I barely escaped the flurry, gaining an intensely painful welt on my lower ribs-along with a burgeoning enlightenment.
There were an immeasurable number of fighting schools and philosophies, but most could be broken into combinations of a few categories. Strong or flowing, linear or circular, long range, short range, striking, grappling-all of those characteristics helped an experienced martial artist evaluate his opponent. So far, Han had almost exclusively used long-range, circular techniques.