Whipped around.
Father, I need you now!
He hadn’t been worth much, that charioteer, but he had taught his daughter how to use a knife.
Taught her very well.
The little dagger flashed across the room and sank hilt deep into the throat of the man standing on the right side of the doorway.
The man’s eyes bulged. He choked blood. Grabbed the hilt. Tried to draw it out. Couldn’t. Sank to his knees. Died.
By the time the man next to him realized what had happened, it was too late. Another knife had sailed across the room.
Not into his throat, however. That knife, not as delicate as her own small dagger, Antonina had aimed at a less chancy target. The heavy butcher knife plunged four inches into the thug’s chest, right into his heart.
Antonina took up the cleaver. The two dead bodies in the doorway would keep off the assailants in the room beyond for a few seconds. Time enough.
She sprang forward, right to the edge of the upended table, and began butchering the men on the other side.
Quite literally. Her knife-strokes were the short, sharp, chopping motions of an experienced butcher dismembering meat. There was no frenzied lunging; no grandiose stabs; no dramatic swings.
Just short, straight, strikes. With the heavy, razor-sharp blade of a cleaver.
Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop.
A nose fell off. The fingers from a hand covering a face. Another nose, and most of an upper lip. An ear and half a cheek.
Back again, quick. Chop. Chop. Chop. More fingers—and a thumb—fell to the floor. A wrist dangled, half-severed. Blood covered a face gashed to the bone.
Back again, quick. The men piled up behind the table were a helpless shrieking mob. Not even that—a pack of sheep, half-paralyzed by third-degree burns and mutilation.
Chop. Chop. Chop.
Now, the strikes were lethal. Hands with severed wrists and amputated fingers could no longer protect necks. Antonina aimed for the carotid arteries and hit two out of three. (The third would die also, a bit more slowly, from a severed jugular.)
Instantly, she was soaked in blood. She leaned into the spurting gore, like a child might lean into a fountain, and struck at the two remaining men behind the table. Both of them—dazed with shock and agony—were trying to crawl away from the nightmare.
One of them worked his way free, with nothing worse than a split shoulder blade. The other collapsed, dead. Antonina had chopped right through the back of his neck, severing the spine.
The sole survivor, screaming with fear and pain, scrambled toward the door on his knees and hands. (One hand, rather. His left hand was fingerless.) The timing, from Antonina’s viewpoint, was perfect. The remaining thugs in the outer room had finally managed to drag aside the two bodies blocking the door. Two of them pushed their way through, only to stumble over the thug crawling toward them.
One of the men kept his balance, staggering against the doorframe. The other tripped and sprawled across the pile of bodies in the middle of the kitchen. He flung out his hands to break his fall and managed to grab the edge of the table.
For a brief instant, the thug stared up at Antonina.
Her face was the last thing he ever saw. Other than the huge blade which descended onto his own face and removed it. The cleaver bit into his forehead and kept going, down and down, driven by Antonina’s fury. The blade peeled off his eyebrows, shredded the eyes, took the nose, both lips, all the chin and a small piece of the chin bone.
Then, Antonina made her first mistake. By now—some thirty seconds into the battle—she was almost berserk with rage. She kicked aside the face flopping onto her foot, drew back the cleaver, and split the man’s head in half. The blow was so ferocious that the blade jammed in the skull.
She tugged at it fiercely. Jerked. Jerked again.
Stuck.
She looked up. The thug leaning against the doorframe stared back at her. For a moment, the man’s eyes were simply wide with shock. His jaw hung loose.
Then, seeing her predicament, he shouted sudden victory and sprang toward her. He circled around the pile of bodies and the upended table, making his way into the rear of the small kitchen.