Chapter 2 Dangerous Encounters

The wet squirrel climbed up the branch with a pinecone in its mouth; its little black-bean eyes surveyed the lower part of the tree in bewilderment and, in a moment, lost interest and buried its head in a nibble of pinecones, the husks falling from mid-air, and striking the lurkers under the fence squarely on the head.

The gun in her hand tightened, and Windsor swept her eyes up and strolled down again.

A drizzle fell from the obscure sky; the rain-soaked uniform was heavy and uncomfortable, but it did not affect the hand that held the gun. With eyes as steady as her breath, the woman who carried out the military orders had been a very different person from the traveler who had stepped down from the stagecoach.

This is the slum area within the city of Vaal City, where a succession of dilapidated short houses fill the view, curtains too dirty to see the color of the curtains hang within the frames of the windows with peeling paint, rusted iron bars are exposed on the walls, and sewage-strewn piles of garbage cover the ground, in which people are often rummaging for things.

Smoke still rose from the city hall set on fire by the insurgents in the distance, and the rain cast a light veil over the dirty, smelly, messy surroundings, blurring everything. Shots rang out from time to time from the tumbled ruins, the vanguard exchanging fire with the insurgents, and a whistle sounded ten feet away as the standby squads moved.

The neighborhood inhabitants had taken refuge in their houses after the announcement, and the whole area was quiet. Closest to her was a young soldier, his grip on the gun a novice, his nervous face eager to take risks and make a difference. She'd heard him introduce himself solicitously when she'd picked up her equipment, having reported for duty only a week before her.

The ghetto is the dead center of the city and a giant dump filled with all kinds of rags.

The military search was slow and inefficient. She was on full alert with the drenched uniform plastered to her body, the cold and wetness not pleasant, brushing back her drooping frontal hair.

The feeling of danger flashed suddenly, and she rolled quickly as bullets whizzed past between her ears, several bullet wounds embedding themselves in the ground. Her teammates returned fire, and after a fierce exchange of fire, the infiltrator who had exposed his hiding place fled in a heavy rain of bullets. One of the soldiers chased after him, but within a few steps, he was hit by a cold shot and stumbled, with a large puddle of blood seeping out of his chest. According to the wounded part of his body, there was no hope for him.

Enemies who were armed and knew the terrain well were challenging to deal with, and the limited field of vision and unguarded cold shots split the squad in all directions. The young soldier on his flank was lured into a corner alley, and Windsor gave a dark sigh and chased after him.

There was indeed an ambush in the alley; a bullet hit the inexperienced recruit in the shoulder, and he fell to the ground moaning in pain; a seventeen or eighteen-year-old boy dragged the wounded captive to the end of the alley, and two or three others jumped down from the wall to assist, one of them went to pick up the dropped gun before he touched the handle of the gun suddenly the back of his head ached, and he fainted to death immediately.

On the left side, the man saw his companion suddenly fall to the ground but did not hear the sound of guns; he went forward to help, only to see a blood-stained stone on the ground; he just raised his head, and another piece of stone flew through the air, he hastened to avoid, but not yet stood still a pain in the back of the head, darkness in front of my eyes.

The remaining one at the end of the alley heard the sound of turning back only to find that two companions had been knocked down; a uniformed figure stood aside, and he immediately raised his gun, not waiting to pull the trigger, saw a pair of cold green eyes, followed by a punch fell on the abdomen, head knocked on the freezing mud.

Taking down three of her enemies, Windsor cautiously poked along the end of the alley and heard a suppressed grunt of misery outside a dilapidated old house.

It was an ordinary Imperial residence, an old house divided into two rooms, the outer room used for guests and the inner room for sleeping quarters, and the teenager was cautious enough to place the torture in the more secluded inner room, where Windsor picked at the window slit to peer in.

The badly wounded captive was not bound, and the teenager pressed ferociously for information about the army, stabbing and poking the captive in the shoulder for a slightly slower answer; the poor soldier bled all over the place, his voice hoarse from the pain.

With the narrow window inaccessible and the location not conducive to aiming, Windsor's gaze paused at the right hand of her enemy's gun, assessed the situation of the wounded man, and finally picked the window bolt loose, aimed at a rusted iron barrel more than ten meters away, and hurled a rock.

A thumping crash close at hand startled the chamber.

The teenager dropped his captive and left the inner room, going to the door to discreetly check it out. The window was quietly opened a hair's breadth, and with a light toss, an object arced and fell to the captive's side.

The desperate soldier's eyes were suddenly opened wide, and a gun appeared in his dim vision; without time to wonder where it had come from, he looked round and, probing his uninjured arm, grasped it and hid the gun at his side.

Windsor watched the teenager walk back through the door and waited patiently for a few moments, soon hearing a sharp gunshot, and after waiting a few more moments for no movement, she dived in silently.

The captured soldier had no new wounds except in his shoulder; the gun had fallen out of his hand, and the excessive loss of blood, combined with the shock of the shot, had thrown him into a deep coma.

The teenager leaning against the corner of the room breathed raggedly, blood oozing from his drenched ribs, his trembling hand still gripping the gun. "I can't believe it's a woman ......"

The situation formed a stalemate standoff; the other man was a freshly minted child, and Windsor didn't want to shoot. "I have no intention of killing anyone; I just want to bring back my teammates."

"Even if I'm going to die, I'll bring my back." Wriggling his pale lips, the teenager's dripping blood pooled into a small berth on the ground. "You and him ...... just ...... right."

"Perhaps you should dress the wound." Windsor reminded.

"And then you sneak in while you're bandaged?" Hatred surfaced on the teenager's boyish face, his gaze a little lax, and he laughed nervously. "It's not that easy to get me killed; I even hit a nobleman in the leg with a Molotov cocktail this morning; he was so ridiculously on fire that he was scared out of his mind. They deserve to go to hell, and so do you; you're the nobles' lackeys ...... It's a shame I failed, or maybe I could ......"

Despite his stiff upper lip, the teenager wished to live, only as the blood kept flowing, he was shaking more and more, and in a while, he would pass out from blood loss without any external force.

Windsor glanced at the soldier who had also lost blood badly, if she dragged on any longer both of them would die.

"Maybe you're not afraid to die, but I don't want to die together." She sighed.

"Coward!" The teenager sneered and spat, welling up with contempt. "How could the army have a cowardly, incompetent woman like you."

"I'm out, please don't shoot-" With a show of weakness, Windsor dropped her gun.

The teenager's spirits slackened, and he was just about to fire when she lunged closer and slapped the gun away.

Windsor effortlessly bundled up her weakened captive and, in the process, tore a sheet to strangle the wound between his ribs.

"Shameless bitch, lowlife-" the teenager cracked.

Windsor pulled a cloth to block out all the vile words without indulging, stuffing the teenager so close to being breathless that he could only manifest his anger with spiteful eyes.

The soldier's breathing was feeble, and the lack of medication allowed only a simple bandage to be applied; Windsor pressed the bandage tightly, raised her eyes to see the bundled-up boy staring very oddly as if gloating, and with a sudden chill in her heart, she rolled on her side and dodged a punch by an inch.

Bouncing up only to realize a man was behind her at some point.

No time to take the gun, she drew a saber from her boots to block, a few rounds later her opponent also drew a short knife, the scene was suddenly dangerous. Cold blade with terrible power, the narrow room is not easy to dodge, not long has been her arm sore.

If you can't beat them, you can't run away. When encountering such an opponent, the slightest retreat is death.

The enemy was blocked by the bed frame, slightly delayed for a moment; Windsor seized a line of opportunity, the saber along the shoulder and neck zipped down, the other side deflected and moved, and the knife fell through, embedded in the wooden door can not be pulled out, she knew that she was fooled and immediately discarded the knife, before she could collect her hand has been strangled by the arm, and the back of the neck came from the sharp pain, plunged into complete darkness.

Muddled with a divine thought that seemed to float in a void, for a long time suddenly falling, Windsor awoke with a start.

It took a while to get used to the total darkness, unconsciousness seemed to be moved to a half-collapsed ruined house, pain coming from her neck at the slightest movement, she sucked in a small breath and searched for a gun and saber in her line of sight.

"Those things aren't there." A low male voice suddenly came from the dark corner. "You know this is the ghetto; there's a shortage of everything."

The complete lack of presence of the enemy was creepy, and Windsor's undershirt seeped with sweat, half out of breath.

"You saved me? Thanks."

"Thank me for saving you, or thank me for not killing you?" The man laughed, mocking in the extreme.

"It must have been His Excellency who risked his life to rescue someone from the rebels." Windsor misdirected her eyes, avoiding the invisible and oppressive sight.

The man was silent for a few moments and said lightly. "I thought the army was full of idiots, but it seems there are exceptions."

The remnants of dizziness still lingered, and Windsor held herself steady against the wall. "I appreciate it, but military discipline requires that you return to your unit, and I ......"

"You think you can walk out?"

"I'm sorry. I was knocked out and didn't see anything, so I probably won't be able to return the favor to Your Excellency." Hazily peering at a blurry shadow, she quickly brushed her head away again.

There was a click in the darkness, and the firelight danced, revealing a sharply defined face, the corners of his mouth lined in what looked like a sarcastic grin, and the man lit a cigarette carelessly, stifling her slightly shifting footsteps. "You see it now."

"I have a bad memory." The smell of smoke filled the room, and Windsor stifled a choking cough, the neck injury causing a sharp, throbbing pain in the corner of her forehead.

"First, you're a woman, and second, you didn't kill anyone, so I'll let you go." The man played with flint and flicked over a piece of iron coated with phosphorus powder that glowed faintly fluorescent in the dark. "Pin it to your left arm, count it as an exchange of weapons, go out the alley, turn left when you see a white house, follow the hedge, next time you won't be so lucky."