Gone Tomorrow

past my thigh. I jammed my ass back and my shoulders forward and clubbed her with an overarm left hook. It grazed her eyebrow and then caught her full on the side of the nose.
    She looked astonished. Like most knife fighters she thought it was all about the steel. She forgot that people have two hands.
    She rocked back on her heels and Lila came in from my left. Blade low. Darting, jabbing. Mouth open in an ugly grimace. Concentrating hard. She understood. This was no longer a game. No longer fun. She ducked in, she ducked out, feinting, backing off, always working. For a time we all danced like that. Frantic, breathless, abrupt abbreviated movements, dust and sweat and fear in the air, their eyes locked on my blade, mine switching constantly between theirs.
    Svetlana stepped in. Stepped out. Lila came at me, balanced, up on her toes. I kept my hips back and my shoulders forward. I swung my blade hard for Lila’s face. Huge. Convulsive. Like I was aiming to throw a ball four hundred feet. Lila ducked back. She knew the swing was going to miss, because she was going to make it miss. Svetlana knew it was going to miss, because she trusted Lila.
    I knew it was going to miss, because I planned not to let it hit.
    I stopped the violent maneuver halfway through and reversed direction and aimed a vicious surprise backhand straight at Svetlana. I sliced her forehead. A solid blow. I felt the blade hit bone. A lock of her hair hit her chest. The Benchmade worked exactly the way it should. D2 steel. You could have dropped a ten-dollar bill on it and gotten two fives in exchange. I put a six-inch horizontal gash halfway between Svetlana’s hairline and her eyebrows. Open to the bone.
    She rocked back and stood still.
    No pain. Not yet.
    Forehead cuts are never fatal. But they bleed a lot. Within seconds blood was sheeting down into her eyes. Blinding her. If I had been wearing shoes I could have killed her there and then. Bring her down with a blow to the knees, and then kick her head to pulp. But I wasn’t about to risk the bones in my feet against her fireplug body. Lack of mobility would have killed me just as fast.
    I danced back.
    Lila came straight after me.
    I kept my hips back and dodged the hissing arc of her blade. Left, right. I hit the wall behind me. I timed it and waited until her arm was across her body and turned sideways and shoulder-charged her and bounced her away. I spun onward to where Svetlana was tottering around and trying to wipe the pouring blood from her eyes. I swatted her knife arm away and stepped in and nicked her neck above her collar bone and dodged back out.
    Then Lila cut me.
    She had figured out the reach issue. She was holding her knife in her fingertips way at the end of the handle. She lunged in. Her hair was flying. Her shoulders were hunched forward. She was looking for every half-inch of advantage she could get. She stopped on a stiff front leg and bent low and leaned in and slashed wildly at my stomach.
    And hit it.
    A bad cut. A wild swing, a strong arm, a razor-sharp blade. Very bad. It was a long diagonal slice below my navel and above the waistband of my boxers. No pain. Not yet. Just a brief strange signal from my skin, telling me it was no longer all connected together.
    I paused a beat. Disbelief. Then I did what I always do when someone hurts me. I stepped in, not away. Her momentum had carried her knife beyond my hip. My blade was low. I slashed backhand at her thigh and cut her deep and then pushed off my back foot and hit her in the face with my left fist. Bull’s-eye. A major, stunning blow. She spun away and I barged on toward Svetlana. Her face was a mask of blood. She swung her blade right. Then left. She opened up. I stepped in and slashed down on the inside of her right forearm. I cut her to the bone. Veins, tendons, ligaments. She howled. Not from pain. That would come later. Or not. She howled from fear, because she was done. Her arm was useless. I spun her around with a blow to the shoulder and stabbed her in the kidney. All four inches, with a savage sideways jerk. Safe to do. No ribs in that region. No chance of hitting bone and jamming the blade. Lots of blood flows through the kidneys. All kinds of arteries. Ask any dialysis patient. All of a person’s blood passes through the kidneys many times a day. Pints of it. Gallons of it. Now in Svetlana’s case it was going in and it wasn’t coming back out.
    She went down to her knees. Lila was trying to clear