The Dragon’s Mark Read Online Free PDF

as one, blades out and ready to strike from either side.
    Annja waited until they were nearly upon her and then jumped upward with one powerful shove of her muscular legs.
    The swords passed harmlessly beneath her as she somersaulted over their heads, twisting in midair to land behind them, facing their exposed backs. Her sword was already in motion as she landed on catlike feet and she slashed the backs of their legs without a second thought, taking them out of the fight.
    One more…
    She whirled, expecting her final opponent to be closing the distance between them while her attention was elsewhere.
    That wasn’t the case.
    The other man hadn’t moved.
    He stood watching her, his hands held calmly together behind his back, like an instructor evaluating her performance.
    “Who are you and what do you want?” Annja asked and was surprised at the depth of anger she heard in her voice.
    Her opponent said nothing.
    “I’ll give you one last—”
    She never finished the sentence.
    One second her opponent was standing in front of her with both hands behind his back and in the next he was leaping forward, a Japanese katana suddenly appearing in his hands. He lashed out in a vicious strike even before he landed, using his forward momentum to add force to the blow.
    Annja just barely managed to deflect the strike as she brought her sword up, backpedaling as she did to give her some much-needed room, her mind grappling all the while at what she thought she’d just seen.
    One minute his hands were empty and the next…
    Where the hell had that sword come from? It was almost as if he’d conjured the thing out of midair….
    The very notion was unthinkable.
    She didn’t have time to dwell on it as her opponent pushed his attack forward, the ferocity and force of his blows driving her backward across the floor as she sought to defend herself.
    She had faced off against talented swordsmen before, but this guy was in another league. It was all she could do to protect herself from harm as she twisted and turned, keeping her weapon between her body and her opponent’s deadly blade. Several times he managed to get the tip of his weapon past her defenses, leaving minor wounds in its wake. It didn’t take her long to realize that he was toying with her; that, had he chosen to do so, he could have dispatched her more than once during their engagement. In no time at all she found herself backed into a corner, fighting for her life.
    She could see several of the fighters she had already dispatched getting back to their feet and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she was again horribly outnumbered.
    If you’re going to do something, Annja, you’d better do it now, she thought.
    She gave a shout, putting everything she had into it. It distracted her opponent for the split second she needed to duck his current blow and strike out with her own.
    For a moment she thought she’d done it, that she’d punctured his defenses and would score a strike against him, perhaps even a fatal one, but then his weapon came around impossibly fast and caught the hilt of her own. Annja was left watching in dismay as her sword spun out of her hands and away from her, tumbling through the air to clatter against the floor several yards to one side.
    As soon as the sword struck the ground that it vanished into the otherwhere.
    But even as Annja called it to hand once more, she realized that her assailant’s strike was already inside her defenses and time seemed to slow as she caught sight of that shining steel blade arcing toward her.
    The gleaming blade grew in her vision, descending in a lightning-quick strike aimed at her exposed neck. But rather than take her head off at the shoulders, as Annja fully expected it to do, the sword was diverted at the last second so that it merely cut free a lock of her hair.
    For a moment Annja’s gaze met that of her opponent and she could have sworn the other was silently laughing at her. I could have taken you at any