So be it.

They didn’t give her time to think, never mind formulate a plan. No sooner had she taken it all in, then they were upon her, the first three rushing forward while the other two closed up ranks in front of their commander.

It was almost as if they had been waiting for her.

The lead swordsman was quicker than the other two, eager for the chance to confront her. As he came forward she sized him up, her mind processing a hundred tiny details in the space of an eye blink, from the position of the sword in his hands to the angle of his hips to the length of his stride.

She moved to meet him.

He struck as soon as he was in range, intending to overpower her with his strength and speed. The tip of his sword came slashing in at her side, then rose at the last second in an attempt to reach her neck.

Annja brought her own sword up in her standard two-handed grip, parried his blow and, using his momentum against him, jammed an elbow into his face as his speed prevented him from stopping in time.

There was an audible crack, blood spurted from the intruder’s nose and he dropped to the floor.

Annja kept going, moving in on the other two.

They were a bit more cautious than their comrade, splitting up and moving to either side as she continued forward. Annja knew they intended to force her to confront one of them and allow the other to strike at her exposed back, so she didn’t hesitate, choosing instead to rush the one closest to her.

Sword met sword, the blows ringing in the air, as they flew through a flurry of exchanges. From the corner of her eye Annja could see the other intruder getting ready to make a strike, so when her current foe used a horizontal strike to parry her blow, she went with the motion, pivoting on one foot and driving the other directly into her attacker’s gut, knocking him to the floor.

Even as he was falling backward, Annja was continuing the turn and bringing her sword around in a sweeping arc, taking the third attacker’s blow along its length and letting it slide harmlessly to the side. She let her momentum carry her into a full three-hundred-sixty-degree turn, swiveling sharply around to smack the intruder on the side of the skull with the flat of her blade.

He went down without a sound.

Three down, three to go, she thought.

Gunfire sounded from downstairs, indicating that Roux and the others had encountered the enemy themselves, but Annja couldn’t worry about them right now; she had her hands full.

Seeing how well their comrades had done against her, the two attackers now facing her chose a different strategy. With a sudden shout they rushed her as one, blades out and ready to strike from either side.

Annja waited until they were nearly upon her and then jumped upward with one powerful shove of her muscular legs.

The swords passed harmlessly beneath her as she somersaulted over their heads, twisting in midair to land behind them, facing their exposed backs. Her sword was already in motion as she landed on catlike feet and she slashed the backs of their legs without a second thought, taking them out of the fight.

One more…

She whirled, expecting her final opponent to be closing the distance between them while her attention was elsewhere.

That wasn’t the case.

The other man hadn’t moved.

He stood watching her, his hands held calmly together behind his back, like an instructor evaluating her performance.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Annja asked and was surprised at the depth of anger she heard in her voice.

Her opponent said nothing.

“I’ll give you one last—”

She never finished the sentence.

One second her opponent was standing in front of her with both hands behind his back and in the next he was leaping forward, a Japanese katanasuddenly appearing in his hands. He lashed out in a vicious strike even before he landed, using his forward momentum to add force to the blow.

Annja just barely managed to deflect the strike as she brought her sword up, backpedaling as she did to give her some much-needed room, her mind grappling all the while at what she thought she’d just seen.

One minute his hands were empty and the next…

Where the hell had that sword come from? It was almost as if he’d conjured the thing out of midair….

The very notion was unthinkable.

She didn’t have time to dwell on it as her opponent pushed his attack forward, the ferocity and force of his blows driving her backward across the floor as she sought to defend herself.

She had faced off against talented swordsmen before, but this guy was in another league. It was all she could do to protect herself from harm as she twisted and turned, keeping her weapon between her body and her opponent’s deadly blade. Several times he managed to get the tip of his weapon past her defenses, leaving minor wounds in its wake. It didn’t take her long to realize that he was toying with her; that, had he chosen to do so, he could have dispatched her more than once during their engagement. In no time at all she found herself backed into a corner, fighting for her life.

She could see several of the fighters she had already dispatched getting back to their feet and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she was again horribly outnumbered.

If you’re going to do something, Annja, you’d better do it now, she thought.

She gave a shout, putting everything she had into it. It distracted her opponent for the split second she needed to duck his current blow and strike out with her own.

For a moment she thought she’d done it, that she’d punctured his defenses and would score a strike against him, perhaps even a fatal one, but then his weapon came around impossibly fast and caught the hilt of her own. Annja was left watching in dismay as her sword spun out of her hands and away from her, tumbling through the air to clatter against the floor several yards to one side.

As soon as the sword struck the ground that it vanished into the otherwhere.

But even as Annja called it to hand once more, she realized that her assailant’s strike was already inside her defenses and time seemed to slow as she caught sight of that shining steel blade arcing toward her.

The gleaming blade grew in her vision, descending in a lightning-quick strike aimed at her exposed neck. But rather than take her head off at the shoulders, as Annja fully expected it to do, the sword was diverted at the last second so that it merely cut free a lock of her hair.

For a moment Annja’s gaze met that of her opponent and she could have sworn the other was silently laughing at her. I could have taken you at any time, those eyes said. And for the first time since taking up Joan’s sword, Annja felt outclassed.

Then Garin was looming in the doorway, pistols in hand, and gunfire filled the room. He mercilessly cut down those Annja had been unwilling to slay only moments before, their bodies twisting and jerking like marionettes as the bullets thundered into them. He was firing with both hands, so he wasn’t as accurate as usual and a few stray shots whined in Annja’s direction, forcing her to dive to the floor to avoid being hit.

When she looked up again, her attacker had turned from her and was already halfway across the room, headed for an open casement window that she had failed to notice when she’d first arrived.

So that’s how they got inside, she thought. And apparently that’s how they intended to get out again. But not if she could help it.

“Garin! The window!” she shouted.

Garin spun in her direction and brought his arms up, the guns roaring in the small confines of the room. Bullets split the air and slammed into the area all around the window, but Annja’s attacker managed to slip through the opening without being hit.

Annja wasn’t ready to let him get away that easily.