Excerpt: Pirates and Ninjas: A Love Story

He stared at her. He could not do anything else. His whole body was frozen. After everything he had seen in this war, he knew he was dead. He could not run. He could not fight. He could not beg. All he could do was stand there and accept his fate.

Willing himself not to, he began to take in the appearance of his attacker. The dark uniform of the assassins was familiar but the shape of the body certainly was not.

"Ya-you're a woman?"

She let out an agitated grunt at his exclamation that instantly halted any other words. "I'm the one who's going to a kill you."

Jared shut his eyes waiting for it to happen, hoping it would be quick and clean. He did not look favorably on being disemboweled; something that would lead, ultimately, to a long and uncomfortable death. Unbidden thoughts swarmed to his mind, images of Reggie, the Captain, his parents, even King Robert. At the last, he could not suppress a laugh.

"You mock me? You want death now?"

Jared's eyes snapped open still laughing. If he was going to die, he might as well try and enjoy it. "Sorry about the outburst miss. Ya can go ahead and be killin' me now."

"I don't need your permission!" Anger flared up now behind her fierce gaze that came through the eye slit of her mask.

"Of course, I just figured you'd prefer I make this easy and cooperate. Or you can give me my sword back and we can try this duel thing from the beginning. I got lucky once, who's to say that it can't happen again, eh?"

Tearing off her mask she grabbed his sword from the tree he had plunged it into and tossed it back to him. He barely caught it, fumbling for a moment, almost cutting himself as he stared at her face. She let out another derisive laugh. "Now you will see me clearly and armed as I kill you."

Try to recover he let out a laugh and flourished the sword almost dropping it again. Pressing on with false bravado as he tried to wipe the astounded look off of his face, "And they say ya are all a bunch of barbarians. I've seen nothin' but nicety and courtesy since I've gotten here."

She paused and stared at his gaze that had altered just moments ago. She hesitated. After all this time, after all this training, she could not raise her sword, and he could not raise his.