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sleeves falling away from her naked arms with every movement. The assassin kicks water into her face, and in response she throws herself to the side, away from his reach. Her clothes cling and swing from her body like wet ropes. Get inside! Old Hawk screams again. Shut up! the attacker hisses, and thrusts at the old man's left. Old Hawk reads the movement for what it is, an all-too-obvious feint, but the heavy rain in his boots and the pounding of drops against his aged eyes slows him for an instant. The attacker follows through, and the sword pierces his chest, once, twice. Now the attacker is holding him, embracing him, and still his sword hand pulls back, stabs, pulls back, stabs, unending. 
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She is on her feet again and screaming sound- lessly, her body moving of its own accord, her father's forms easily recalled, the logical pro- gression of arm in relation to body, momentum, and anchoring legs, but she is in the air, whip- ping her arm out, the knife slashing upwards, finding the fleshy skin under the attacker's armpit, snipping it like pig's entrails, blood appearing in a shocked splotch on the man's tunic, and even as he struggles to maintain the grip of his sword she is completing the move- ment, creating symmetry with the downward stroke, across the man's face, she can feel the nose giving way under her blade, and he is staggering backwards now, his free hand instinctively reaching up towards his ruined  |
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