The Duel of Blades in the Palm

Take a detour! That was Brass’s first thought for a solution. But taking a detour would not only cost precious time; more importantly, in this tangled web of routes and the fog of war, no one could guarantee that a detour would avoid running into another enemy blockade.

In the end, Brass gritted his teeth, quickened his pace, and charged directly toward the enemy ahead. As he ran, he kept his body as low as possible, occasionally bracing himself with his hands on the ground to avoid losing his balance and falling. This stealthy posture allowed him to slip between the two groups of Libyan soldiers, miraculously passing unnoticed.

Right now, the Libyan officer in the rear was changing magazines, while the soldiers around him huddled behind barricades, peering out nervously. Up ahead, several soldiers, urged on by a shouting officer, reluctantly crept forward in a crouch.

Now was the perfect chance.

Brass suddenly accelerated. When he was in front of the rear group of soldiers, he dove forward, sliding swiftly beneath their very noses. Bold and alert, he used the one-meter-high barricade to block their line of sight, slipping by with nothing more than a gust of wind in his wake. In this way, he passed between the two entrenched Libyan forces and reached the entrance where two armored vehicles were parked.

Still crouched, Brass lunged forward, bracing himself with his hands and stretching his legs out. His body went taut on the ground, then he rolled sideways along the outside of one armored vehicle, slipping under its chassis and emerging between the two vehicles. But as he stood up, his luck finally ran out: four armed Libyan soldiers were walking straight toward him.

No time for words—life and death would be decided here!

Midway through standing, Brass instantly shifted his angle. With a powerful kick-off from his legs, he shot forward like a cannonball at the lead Libyan soldier. The man didn’t have time to raise his gun to aim; instead, he swung the butt of his assault rifle at Brass’s face.

With a clang, Brass’s oversized recurve knife struck the rifle hard. Thanks to his momentum, the blade knocked the rifle aside, exposing the soldier’s chest. Brass wasted no time; with his other hand, he gripped the back of the knife, twisted his waist, and slashed back along the same path, cutting a gash over a foot long across the soldier’s chest.

The lead soldier clutched his chest and fell. Brass ducked around him, jumped, planted a foot on the armored vehicle’s wheel, and vaulted high into the air.

The three remaining soldiers raised their guns almost simultaneously, aiming at Brass as he hung in the air. But before they could fire, a smaller recurve knife was already buried in the leftmost soldier’s eye socket.

The last two soldiers, seeing this, opened fire wildly without hesitation. In just a second, the rear soldier’s view was blocked by his companion. The bullets of the front soldier only grazed Brass, leaving bloody furrows, but as Brass descended, his blade cleaved through the soldier’s left leg.

Blood spurted from the severed limb like a fountain, but Brass paid it no heed. He shoved the one-legged soldier forward, sending him crashing into the man behind.

With danger closing in, the last soldier abandoned thoughts of his comrade, shoving the stumbling man aside. But before he could draw his rifle back, Brass lunged and drove his knife deep into the man’s abdomen.

To ensure maximum lethality, Brass smashed his forearm down on the back of the blade, opening a ghastly wound from the soldier’s belly to his groin, spilling his intestines onto the ground.

The dying man screamed in agony, while Brass, drained after the fierce fight, slumped against the armored vehicle, gasping for breath. When he reached down, he found bullet-grazes on his waist, belly, and thigh—just a hair’s breadth from death.

Shaking off the fear of dying, Brass straightened, rapped the hilt of his knife hard against the side of the armored vehicle, and shouted in Arabic, “Open the door!” Then, ducking low, he pulled the small recurve knife from the soldier’s face and stepped to the rear side door.

With a squeal, the armored vehicle’s heavy iron door swung open and a helmetless soldier poked out. Brass, hidden at the side, appeared in a flash, slashing down along the edge of the door with his small knife.

With a scream, four fingers were sliced off at the base, bouncing on the ground. Ignoring the carnage, Brass grabbed the wounded soldier and yanked him out. Dropping to one knee, he used his weight to crush the man’s face aside, then deftly sliced open his exposed carotid artery with his knife.

With the exterior guards dealt with, Brass looked into the vehicle, confirming two more enemies: a driver up front and a gunner standing in a harness, firing the turret-mounted machine gun.

There was no turning back now. Brass clamped the small knife in his teeth, rolled into the vehicle on his back, and scrambled spider-like along the handholds to the front, giving the driver no chance to turn. With a single swing of his large recurve knife, he nearly decapitated the man, leaving the head attached by only a strip of flesh.

The driver’s blood sprayed across the ceiling, but at that moment, Brass’s large blade got stuck and wouldn’t come free. Without hesitation, Brass let go, spun around with the small knife, and slashed the gunner’s Achilles tendon.

The gunner instinctively crouched in pain, and Brass, poised, locked his arm around the man’s neck and stabbed him repeatedly in the lower back.

After a savage melee, Brass had single-handedly taken the armored vehicle. Though brief, every step was fraught with danger, leaving Brass utterly spent. He collapsed in the compartment, breathing like a beast.

“These bastards have bones like steel—my precious knife is dull now,” Brass grumbled. He finally managed to wrench his large knife free with a kick, then climbed out through the turret hatch.

Seated atop the vehicle, Brass waved his arm toward the distance, then slid down the sloped hood and jogged toward the other armored vehicle.

The second armored vehicle was not fitted with an ordinary heavy machine gun, but a quad-mounted 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun. It was this monstrous weapon that had forced Hou Rui and his men to scatter, the slightest delay in movement leading to certain death.

He couldn’t use the same trick to open this door. This time, Brass approached from the rear, jammed his small knife into a welded seam, and used it as a foothold to climb quickly onto the roof.

The anti-aircraft gun was still firing sporadically. Brass braced himself against the vibrations, crawled to the gun, and, after a quick look, jammed his recurve knife into the hydraulic guide rail, locking the gun’s movement and preventing it from adjusting aim. Then he lay flat on the roof, minimizing his chances of being spotted, and patiently waited for an opportunity.

Elsewhere on the battlefield, Hou Rui had reached the end of his rope.

All his AK-47 rounds, even those he’d scavenged, were gone. His last grenades had been thrown. Now, all he could do was clutch his rifle and crouch behind a concrete barrier, praying to every god he knew not to get shot. But his prayers went unanswered. As he muttered, a shell landed nearby, shattering the barrier beside him and peppering his body with stone shrapnel.

“Damn it!” His ears were ringing, and he could hear nothing. Even so, he gritted his teeth and scrambled to a new spot; the shelling meant the enemy had spotted him—if he didn’t move, he was dead.

He had barely rolled behind another barrier when bullets started whizzing past, trailing him. Unable to return fire, Hou Rui could only grit his teeth and endure.

After a while, he finally saw Misha and Emma not far off, climbing into an armored vehicle. Just as he thought salvation was at hand and they would come to his aid, the vehicle merely reversed to shield him from infantry bullets for a few seconds before speeding off down the highway and vanishing.

“Bastards! Cowards!” Hou Rui cursed in Chinese, but it was pointless.

He’d have to save himself. Resolute, Hou Rui quickly raised his head, took in his surroundings in a glance, then began retracing his steps, heading back the way he’d come—where the bodies of Libyan soldiers he’d killed lay, along with usable rifles...