I had promised to try to retrieve Yaung Chang, a talented and respectful grandson, from the clutches of the the White Crane Tong.



Reviewing strategy and skills as I hopped from sampan to sampan boat across Hong Kong harbour left me with the conclusion that a direct approach would be best. Sure, I had received training several worlds back in other cultures, but despite my master’s degree, I doubted that I could out-indirect this Tong, especially when they thought they held all the cards.



So, I would have to educate them.



My cyberware and psi skills were non-functional, but I did seem to be able to use my adrenal gland control to apparently slow time. The waves splashed against the boats in eerie slow motion as I precisely hopped from gunwhale to gunwhale. Never landing in the boat, but only lightly touching down to bounce off the top of the sampan’s low walls, I proceeded.



It was exhilarating behind that cool control brought on by my focus.



Arriving in the City proper, I dodged rickshaws toting Britishers and bicycles with long pig-tailed men that carommed every which way in a mad tangle that seemed moment by moment on the verge of a street filled with trauma patients, and yet other than curses, and a flash of a hand as one particularly annoyed man struck another across the face, it was remarkably unblooded.



I leapt to the roofs, and ran across them because it had been a long time since I had been in such a large city. Larger cities, far larger, have been my home. Recalling my first world that I clearly remember with its multi-billion resident sentients “City Complexes” I compare them, and yet Harpischord CC hardly ever seemed this crowded.



The thief’s path atop the roofs brought me into contact with thieves. I apprehended one in the process of making off with a valuable parrot in a gilded cage. We exchanged blows, and he was very good. His kung fu was of several orders better than most people considered masters. But I had trained under Musashi, and he knew no tricks that I did not. Furthermore, I was a lot stronger than he was.



So we made a deal. He could go free without the bird if he led me to the White Crane Tong’s headquarters. He did this more willingly once he realized I was going to attack them. This would lead to my certain death he was sneeringly sure.



I let him go, and Australian rappelled down into the open, stone-paved square that was the atrium of the Tong’s multi-story building. Guards spotted me, and I bowed to them with my fist in my palm which saved me from being skewered with a half-dozen arrows.



“I would request audience with the Master of the White Crane.” I informed them in my most perfect Mandarin. Using the dialect, and the body language that Her Imperial Radiance had taught me in an alternate 880 B.C. before gifting me with an umbrella(which was a significant honor, really.), I waited for the reply.



The leader of the guards said in a crude form of the language.



“Beat this foreign devil, and throw him out.”



A dozen students with bo sticks came charging out of an archway to do just that. I accelerated myself, and ran at them. It was easy to knock a few sticks pointed my way aside, and then I was among them. A few elbow jabs, tramping on a foot, and throat punch, and I stood yawning on the other side with a bo stick in hand, and five of the dozen laying on the ground.



A sharp command, and four guards leapt over the second floor balcony to land twenty feet below on the stone paving of the square. The students faded back. Oops, this was my first indication that things might not go that well.



They advanced with swords out. A heavy, almost scimitar sort of blade was the chosen weapon for them. Still Musashi had shown that a good quarterstaff could out-do a katana. I was very good with a quarterstaff, even Little John had been impressed.



We fought for ten minutes, and I could have beat them, but I had a guy penned up against a wall, and after jabbing him, I planned to use him as prop to hold my balance while using the pole to do a leap kick backwards.



He ran up the wall about ten feet, and I fell on my face. The flats of their blades came crashing down on me. Ouch.



“Hmmm.” A soft voice said, and remarkably everybody stopped. I looked up, and saw an old man sitting on the edge of the roof. To my left on a balcony, a dangerous looking man in velvet and thread of gold stood watching me get beaten. Behind him loomed a shadowy, and massive figure.



“Why do you offend me by invading my house?” The dangerous man asked in a tone of utmost reasonableness.



“I come for Yaung Chang.” I said past the split lip. The young man in question slipped around the man. Potential glowed about him in a non-visible, but very real sense. This was a boy who would go far in whatever he did.

“At the request of his grandmother.” I added.



The dangerous man sneered, and the boy inquired as to her health. A girl clung to his side.



“Kill him, and send the body to this grandmother.”



Rage flickered in me, and so did a memory. And I wondered to myself. Maybe this was a world where the skills of the body were great? I gave in to the memory out of the darkened span of time in my mind wondering what would happen.



For a second, I rode a dragonship with Olaf as we broke the Vikings of their marauding ways. And then, I was aware of my surroundings once more.

But, in a distant way for nothing mattered more to me than justice and my anger. Berserker anger.



A fist flashed out, and the head of the closer guard bent like a melon, and the sword coming down was caught in my hand. The blood splattered as it sliced open my hand, and I was caught between a growl and a laugh, so I did both as I wrenched the sword from the guard’s hand.



The three guards backed up in fear as I licked the blood off my hand. Stalking forward, I saw the arrows being drawn, and I moved without thought. The sword was flung, and it sliced through a bow, and the archer. Before the arrows were let loose, I grabbed a guard with a sword, and he became a pincushion. His sword sped toward the dangerous man.



For a second, all seemed well. Then the dangerous man knocked the sword aside contemptuously. Growling, I prepared to climb the balcony.



A command from the old man stopped everybody but me in our places. Ripping my fingernails loose, I climbed the stone wall, and then another harsher command shocked me. It was just a word, “Stop.”, but it was uttered with such authority as to penetrate my bestial rage.



The old man and the dangerous man negotiated in a blur of Mandarin which I might not have understood even if I had been sane. In my berserker fury, I was thinking in Old Norse.



So, I halted, hanging on the wall, but I did not like it. I wanted desperately to kill. I dropped loose, and like a caged tiger circled the square with my footsteps falling heavy on the stones. None of the students or guards dared look me in the eye, which was just as well, since I would have killed them by trying to rip them apart.



The deal they negotiated was thus, I would go with the old man for a year, and the boy would go with his parents for that year. At the end, I would fight the White Crane’s chosen champion in a city-wide kumite for custody of the boy and for status between the dangerous man and the old man.



After the old man soothed me back to humanity, I wondered if I should do this.



Part Three next week.

Tadeusz