Her heel hit him right between belt and crotch. A shot like that, to the hypogastric region, would trip the body's neural circuits, though nowhere so completely as a good solar-plexus or groin shot although more reliably than the latter. Annja also knew that the movies notwithstanding, about one guy in four is invulnerable to a blow to the family jewels. What that said for the male of the species she wasn't sure, but her concern was primarily tactical.

The kick was mainly aimed at blasting his pelvis right out from below his center of ma.s.s. As go the hipbones, so goes everything, she thought. It worked. His body went perfectly horizontal and dropped right down on the hard-packed road shoulder. His chin bounced with a nasty crack. It might've broken, and for that matter she might have cracked his pelvis with the kick. She didn't care. Her concern was not to kill if it wasn't necessary. She hadn't.

She came smartly around, ready for action. She heard the slap of running soles, some crunching in crushed gravel, others like fading applause on asphalt. Their a.s.sailants were fleeing, leaving three of their number lying in Annja's view.

Tex Winston stood nearby brushing grit from various lanky parts of his person. He gave her a grin.

Then he turned away, doubling over and grabbing his knees.

"Tex?" She took a worried step toward him.

He waved her off. "Don't worry," he said, digging with his other hand in a pocket of his jeans. He sounded breathless, constricted, and a slight whistle ran like a thread through his words. "I know better'n to stand like this when I can't breathe. Doesn't help a bit."

He straightened. His shoulders were heaving. He brought something small that flashed white in the streetlight up to his mouth. She heard a hiss, followed by a shuddering inhalation. He stood straight with obvious effort, holding his breath for a long interval. Then he exhaled in a way that made him seem to lose an inch of height, took two deliberate breaths and gave a shaky smile.

"Fighting always gives me asthma," he said. "Good a reason as any to try to avoid it, I reckon."

"Thanks for your help," she said.

"Didn't look like you needed much," he said. "Not many men could've handled themselves half so well, lady, and I've seen some real pros in action."

She forced free a self-deprecating laugh. "They underestimated me because I'm a woman."

"Sure," he said. He bent down, recovered his Stetson, batted it against the f.a.n.n.y of his jeans to get the grit off it.

"I got lucky."

"Anything you say, ma'am." He settled the hat on his short blond hair with a certain care.

She gave up and started examining the casualties. The three she could see were all breathing, which was a relief for reasons she couldn't quite touch at the moment.

"Ms. Creed," Tex Winston said, "one thing's sure you don't believe in fighting fair." He shook his head, but his voice held a note of admiration.

"I don't believe in fighting unnecessarily, unnecessarily," she said. "If it's worth fighting for, it's worth winning." She looked around. So far it didn't seem their ruckus had attracted much attention.

"I wonder why they didn't use guns," she said before she caught herself. From the corner of her eye she saw Tex raise an eyebrow. He said nothing. Pretty eloquently, she thought.

One of the fallen groaned and tried to sit up. He had sandy hair and a pale freckled face, both greenish in the streetlight, and maybe for other reasons, as well. He wore a beard of blood that ran down his throat and blended into his black turtleneck.

"Ooh," he moaned. "You busted my b.l.o.o.d.y teef. teef." He spoke with a distinctive c.o.c.kney accent.

His eyes focused on her as Annja bent down over him. "You bi bi " "

She grabbed the front of his pullover. It was wet and sticky. It still creeped her out a bit, although it was hardly an unfamiliar sensation at this stage of her life. "Don't say it," she snapped, as she hoisted his upper torso off the grit and c.o.c.ked a fist.

He winced and shut up.

"Who sent you?" she asked. "Why?"

He laughed. It was a ghastly b.l.o.o.d.y bubble, a blood spring around jagged yellowish stubs. "Why? Are you b.l.o.o.d.y thick, woman? For the scrolls. And you. What do you think?"

"Who?" she repeated. "Talk."

He laughed again. She c.o.c.ked the fist farther back. He just laughed louder.

Somewhere off in the night a siren began its warble.

"Come on," Tex suggested softly. "The German cops haven't got much sense of humor, you probably know. He's won this round."

Annja looked from Tex back to the Brit thug. She glared down at him. The laughter stopped and his eyes widened.

She let him fall back with a thud.

"Okay," Tex Winston said, his eyes like big blue saucers in the light of the bedside table lamp. "So. You got yourself a magic sword that follows you around in its own little bubble universe."

He essayed a laugh and found it small and shaky.

They sat in his surprisingly modest hotel room outside the village. Annja was crosslegged on his bed, while he sat in a chair by the radiator beneath the window. Each had a can of chilled fruit juice bought from a dispenser. She was glad he hadn't decided to resume drinking beer.

"What does that mean, exactly?" he asked. His expression was unreadable by the half light of a table lamp dialed low.

"I was afraid you'd ask me that. I wish I knew. The sword didn't exactly come with an instruction manual."

He sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a lengthy exhalation. "Whoo. Just my luck to get paired with an apprentice superheroine."

She had risked a trip back to her hotel room to collect the scrolls and her personal effects. She had been terrified the gym bag had been stolen. It was the key to Jadzia's safety. Once the bad guys got hold of it, the girl's survival became purely optional.

Tex kept watch outside. When she came out he said n.o.body seemed to be spying on her, and n.o.body followed them back to his own hotel room. She tended to believe him. There was a quiet surety to his words, just as to his actions. She'd decided it was worth the risk to tell him about the sword.

He also acted totally sober. Apparently getting jumped was an effective cure for inebriation. She doubted it would catch on.

"Why show me all this?" he asked.

"I need to trust you."

"You must be pretty desperate."

"Believe me," she said, "I am. And I need you to trust me." She sighed a bit raggedly. "Also, the next time we get into a tight place and if you agree to help me with this, we will, I can pretty much a.s.sure you I might have to use the sword. And if it took you by surprise, the distraction could get you killed."

He looked at her for a few heartbeats in the gloom. His eyebrows slowly rose. "Whooee," he said at length. "You must surely be into something serious."

She told him. She saw no reason not to, and plenty of reason to do so. She did gloss over Jadzia's speculations as to who was after the scrolls, and why.

"Somebody must want those scrolls pretty badly," Tex said, but he didn't press for details.

"Whoever is after us," she said, "obviously has some pretty serious resources."

"And seriously few scruples." He didn't seem particularly alarmed.

"Which makes me wonder all over again " She pushed a lock of hair from her eyes. Despite the fact it was cool in the room she found herself sweating lightly. "Why didn't this bunch use guns?"

"Lots of possible reasons," Tex said. "They may not have had time to get their first team on you here. Even people like the ones who're after you have limits to their resources. They tend to have to fight a lot of brushfires. And anyway, the Germans tend to take things pretty darn seriously. You start flashing suppressed MP-5s, even if they are a local product, they're liable to drop their ant.i.terrorist unit on your head like a big old sledgehammer. No matter who you are, and I seriously mean, no matter. The Germans may go along with all kinds of dodgy stuff in the name of fighting terror, but they're mighty territorial. You go poaching on their turf, and there is no such thing as being too big and bad and influential for them to make an example of you."

Annja realized her eyes had gotten wide.

"Doesn't mean we can get complacent," he said. "If the bad guys feel confident enough, or desperate enough, they'll likely just take their chances. And if they are connected enough and smart and mean enough to do well, what they've done it's not entirely beyond the realm of possibility they can come around and convince the Germans that we're terrorists."

Annja felt as if she'd swallowed a frozen cantaloupe. "Do you think they will?"

He shrugged. "No telling. My gut tells me they won't. For all the noise that gets made about everybody fighting a global war on terror together there's no such thing as a no-questions-asked op like that. German intelligence will have plenty of questions. And they're not boys 'n girls who like to stop before they got themselves some answers. If that wasn't a concern for whoever's after you, frankly, y'all would be dead already. You and this poor little geek kid both. But you need to be aware of the possibility."

He sat back in his chair. "So why didn't you just whip out your magic sword and bisect a few of those yahoos back there?" he asked. "Was it just because they didn't show guns?"

"It's...complicated. I don't have much trouble killing in self-defense. Or in defense of innocence. And it seems to me if I kill somebody who's attacking me or some innocent person, I'm not just saving myself or even the innocent person, but my attacker's next victim, and the one after that. But still " she scrunched her cheeks up under her eyes and shook her head.

"My old tae kwon do instructor used to say it was a misuse of TKD not not to destroy someone who was aggressing against you," Tex said, "for pretty much the same reason. It was part of the student oath we always recited at the beginning of cla.s.s, to never misuse the art." to destroy someone who was aggressing against you," Tex said, "for pretty much the same reason. It was part of the student oath we always recited at the beginning of cla.s.s, to never misuse the art."

He just looked at her. After a moment she sighed and said, "Okay. This is something I have to work out for myself. But I need to take it as it comes to me, I guess. I don't think there are any easy answers."

He looked at her a moment more, though the expression in his blue eyes was unreadable. Then he made a sound down in his throat, which may have been a piece of laughter, and nodded his head once.

"If I'm dealing with somebody who doesn't want it to get too easy to kill people, no matter how good the reason," he said, "reckon I can live with that. Lot easier than the alternative."

Annja sat cross-legged on the bed of her new room, a few doors down from Tex's, with her laptop open before her. Much of the Past Master Past Master production crew had headed home already, freeing several rooms on the floor of the three-story inn. She had just taken a much-needed and highly restorative shower. She wore a white bathrobe indifferently belted about her and a towel wound around her hair. production crew had headed home already, freeing several rooms on the floor of the three-story inn. She had just taken a much-needed and highly restorative shower. She wore a white bathrobe indifferently belted about her and a towel wound around her hair.

She was checking her e-mail. It was her lifeline, like everybody else's, and more reliable than her cell phone despite the fact coverage was getting near to being truly global. One thing Roux had actually deigned to teach her her life was going to go on, sword or not. As long as she lived she would have the same concerns and bear the same burdens as any everyday person, along with the weight of her destiny.

Her mail rea.s.sured her by its very mundanity.

As she scrolled down her features twisted in brief annoyance. A spam message had escaped her software filters. Worse, it was a blindingly obvious scam, judging from the header, which read, "Your Urgent Attention Required."

"I'm gonna have to check my filters again," she muttered darkly. She poised a finger above the delete key.

And froze.

The sender was Jadzia Jadzia.

"'Dearly beloved, in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ I greet you.'"

Dressed in jeans and his unb.u.t.toned denim cowboy shirt, Tex Winston sat on the edge of his bed reading aloud from the screen of Annja's computer, which sat opened on his knees. Annja knelt on the bed behind him looking over his shoulder. She wore a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her feet were bare.

She was finding it harder than she expected not to think about the rock-ribbed torso shadowed inside the open shirt, even if it wasn't currently in her field of vision. Maybe surviving danger really did bring on a life-affirming response. She was both tired and wired, a combination she knew to be dangerous in all ways, and anyway she hardly knew him, she told herself.

"I am Sakimi Taylor, wife of the recently deposed president of Liberia, Charles Taylor...You must reply within forty-eight hours in order to guarantee delivery of certain materials. Otherwise my daughter, who is a mathematical prodigy of some note, faces death from the Liberian rebels who have captured her."

Tex looked over his shoulder at Annja. "Give the devil his due," he said with half a grin, "this is genius."

"Forgive me if I don't appreciate it too much," Annja said, frowning.

He shook his head. "Sorry. Don't mean to be flip. But this shows some imagination."

"But it might've been caught by my filters," she said. "Plus I almost deleted it unread."

"Well " he shrugged " it worked. And that's pretty much the only real signpost we have in this bad old world. If you're the sort of person who only thinks about results."

She gathered that, while he was good at thinking about results, and getting them, he was no more inclined to think only in terms of them than she was. Unless he's just another clever scammer. Unless he's just another clever scammer.

Yet she had no choice but to trust him.

"What do we do now?" She struggled to keep the fear she felt from showing in her eyes or voice.

Perhaps by happenstance he looked back at the screen. "Go to sleep," he said.

"What?"

"Did you ever know anything to get better 'cause you lost sleep over it? We're gonna need to be frosty these next forty-eight hours. Mighty frosty."

Annja sighed and got up off the bed. "What then?"

He grinned at her. "We are going to need some serious nerdage," he said. He stretched and yawned. "Fortunately, ol'Tex knows just where to find us some."

Chapter 11.

The room was dim and smelled like old socks and mildew. There were pizza boxes strewed about the floor. It was small and crowded with a rumpled, unmade bed and a couple of ratty chairs and racks of electronic equipment of mysterious and ominous purpose.

Nothing says Germany like delivery pizza, Annja thought. But I guess some things are universal.

A young man with a ma.s.s of unruly brown hair streaked blond at the tips was sitting draped across a swivel chair, displaying the dirty soles of his feet. "What we have is somebody most very clever. But not so clever as Liviu," he said.

The single narrow window, if Annja's sense of where they were in the Berlin tenement was correct, opened onto a narrow alley but was stifled with dark curtains. A little wan light from a cloudy late-afternoon Prussian sky filtered in at top and bottom. The rest of the illumination, such as it was, spilled from a thirty-inch LCD computer monitor that must have cost more than everything else in the tiny third-floor walk-up flat together, including the arcane gear, which had the look of salvage.

Behind the boy's narrow back, which was wrapped in a tatty dressing gown, Tex caught Annja's eye and winked. Evidently he did know where to find nerdage.

"Can you trace the IP address?" Tex asked.

"Not as such," Liviu said. His accent sounded as much Russian as Romanian to Annja, making her wonder where he'd learned to speak English.