Chapter 18

As I stood there thinking I found myself slipping into something that best could be described as another state, while in it I suddenly could see some kind of colors seeping out from the people surrounding us. It was that same feeling of double vision as I had had when creating those houses but in a somewhat milder form. I soon understood that the colors had a relation to peoples emotions and feelings, there were specifically two people that worried me, both standing at the side of the crowd that now surrounded us. They both gave of an emotional stench not unlike carrion, and their colors flickering were red and black. They seemed to me as human dynamos gearing up for some awesome task.

I started to put myself between them and Tamara when they suddenly made their moves. Both tried to attack us simultaneously, coming from two directions. Hadn't it been for my foreknowledge we would have been taken by complete surprise by them. As it was I had just enough forewarning to throw myself at Tamara, and by doing a fast fall forward at the same time as I grabbed her, forcing her with me, I got us both out of range from their knifes. I now had made a full turn, so being on my feet again I now turned to deal with the foremost attacker. A part of my military training had been working abroad in Hungary. They had a very specialized force of people that were expected to deal with terrorists and what the government broadly chose to call 'wet work'. They had developed what they themselves perceived as being a scientific system of attack and defense.

That included assassination and as I used to be a martial arts freak I had slowly come to know some of them, and even gotten myself invited to train with them. I had never used any of that stuff though, and had someone asked me that morning if I ever would, I would have assured them that no, under no circumstances. In fact I nowadays pretty much saw myself as a follower of Tao, and that kind of training I had put on a shelf long ago. Somehow though, I just couldn't stop myself reacting when seeing that first guy coming at me. To be able to successfully take a person with a knife you have to understand that you will be cut, the thing you have to do to keep alive, is to hurt him real bad before he gets the chance to cut you some more. To try to just defend yourself will inevitably end up with you dead either from loss of blood or by him hitting some vital spot on your body.

So I made a triangle with my arms, a little like what you do when you prepare to dive, meeting him head on using the wedge of my arms to deflect his knife. I then continued my hands going up, very close to his body, allowing them to glide up his face pushing him of balance backwards by his nose and head. I now had a classic triangle formed by his head and my palms situated on top of his cranium. I then reversed the movement of my hands on both sides back down and forward directing his body towards me, at all times very near to him. Then I finished him off with a sharp jerk upwards hitting his nose pressing the bone of his nose inside his brain while using the leverage of my other hand to stabilize the back of his head. This technique, if you know the angles, will kill.

It is a very fast way as you never lose contact with him and you work against his head allowing pressure more than hitting to do your work. The movements you create against his body will make him lose control of his arms momentarily. You will most probably not see it in any normal training, as it is a specific killing technique not to be mixed with martial arts fighting. He was nerve dead before he touched the floor, I tried to steer his body in the path of that other guy who had chosen to bypass me for Tamara. As he stumbled over his partner's body I made a fall forward again, but this time moving around in the air, allowing both my heels to whip against his upper chest and more specifically going for his collarbones. This technique allowed me to stop him without having to move into his path, also, the attack would now come from above instead of straight at him.

To say that I choose it knowingly though, nah, that would have been a lie. In fact it was a crazy move and nothing I would have contemplated if sane. But everything was happening so fast now, at the same time as I felt as if I was standing still moving through syrup. I heard the sound of his collarbones cracking under my heel, by trying to break his collarbones I wanted the jagged ends to cut into the arteries and veins around his neck thereby creating a major blood loss leading to shock and him passing out in a matter of seconds. In any case it would effectively stop him from using his arms. All of this, from the first assailant to the last, took me somewhere around ten seconds so by the time I was finished, the others just had gotten time enough to start to understand that someone was trying to kill their Princess.