Free The Silent Army by James A. Moore Page A

to his side and then the blade kissed the inside of his thigh even as the man smiled, expecting a different sort of touch. He was drunk and he wanted to pay for a woman. She was sober and killed him for his trouble. As he fell back against the wall, she gripped his arms and lowered him gently. The look of surprise was still on his face as the light in his eyes left him. The blade would have killed him in any event, but the toxins guaranteed his silence as he died.
    A member of the City Guard stood nearby, his eyes already bored with dealing with so many people. The air was cooler, but the sheer volume of bodies ensured that everyone stayed warm.
    The man tapped the hilt of his sword as he looked around. He glowered at a thin man who got too close to him and sent him along with a boot to his side. So many like this: a little power and they could not possibly let a person stand their ground. This was preferred. This, the need to express their contempt.
    Swech felt nothing for the man or the guard. Still, she let the thin man live and broke the guard’s neck with a vicious blow to the side of his throat. When he fell, she caught him. He was still alive, but only for a moment.
    Seven deaths in, someone finally noticed her.
    She had been careful, because that was her duty. She was to spread as much panic as she could. Seven bodies lay behind her and even in a crowd as vast as this, that was a lot of death to go unnoticed.
    As a merchant who’d bumped into her slumped and then fell over, bleeding, a woman who’d approached the collection of fine scarves and cloaks the man had to offer saw her pull back the blade and screamed as loudly as anyone Swech had ever met.
    The small blade in her left hand sailed and buried itself in the woman’s cheek, ensuring more screams, more chaos. Most of the poison had long since worn off the blade and it would take at least another minute for the screamer to die. In that time Swech intended to kill as many people as possible.
    The people around her were scattering. They moved away from the screaming woman and away from the table of woven fineries.
    And Swech moved with them, slipping among them and cutting, striking, breaking as she went. A man gurgled out his last as his throat vomited a crimson stain. Next to him a woman let out a scream as Swech broke three of her ribs and shoved her aside.
    People continued to flow like water away from a scalding hot stone, but they were not fast enough. Swech moved with them, her face covered, her body shielded. A man with a dagger tried to stop her and she blocked his strike, broke his wrist and shoved the blade he proffered into his own stomach as he went past. He grunted and fell, the pain a sudden and overwhelming thing that stole his breath. He might well live, but he would suffer greatly.
    Her foot kicked at a kneecap and the leg it belonged to folded the wrong way. As the screaming victim of her kick started to fall, she stepped in close and flipped him to the ground. He collided with three others in the process of collapsing and took them with him.
    Three sharp jabs and the City Guard coming to investigate stepped back and fell to his knees. His throat was punctured, as were his ear and his eye. His sword fell from his hand. Swech leaned down and caught it.
    The sword was well made and properly sharpened. She slashed several people with it and then left it buried in a screaming man’s guts as she moved past.
    The effort was starting to weary her. Her muscles were beginning to protest. The crowd was now panicking, running into each other, shoving others aside rather than moving past them. They were no longer people. They were a mob.
    Swech moved along their edges, not foolish enough to risk being inside the mass of crushing bodies. Where she moved, she struck, cutting, wounding and occasionally killing as she headed for her point of exit.
    Her work was done for the moment. The Inner Wall did not stop access for the people of Canhoon. Not unless the