Two guards slumped against a rge tree, heads lolled forward. Robin moved closer, steps silent on the manicured grass. He knelt beside the nearest one. Breathing, but unconscious. A small dart protruded from the guard's neck, needle-thin and professional.

  Ninja work.

  Robin's jaw tightened. He scanned the grounds, the shadows between buildings, the rooflines. Someone else was inside the compound. The question was how many and what they wanted.

  He pulled the dart free, examined it briefly, then dropped it. Nothing to be done about it now. He signaled the team: hostiles present, stay alert.

  They moved forward, using the garden's features for cover. Hedges, statuary, the dark spaces between mp posts. The cottage was close now, maybe two hundred feet beyond the next cluster of buildings.

  Robin rounded the corner of a gardening shed and stopped.

  Two ninjas fought in the courtyard garden ahead.

  The first wore dark tactical gear, a short sword in hand. Puppet cn, from the look of him. The second wielded a kusarigama, the chain whipping through the air in tight arcs. Cricket cn. They moved fast, brutal, no wasted motion. Elite fighters, both of them.

  Robin's hand went up again. The team melted into the shadows behind him, pressed against the shed wall. Will Scarlet was already scanning for alternate routes. Little John had his weapon ready.

  The ninjas circled each other. One spoke, voice low and tight with controlled fury.

  "...Geppetto would be ashamed..."

  The other's response was barely audible, clipped between breaths and movement.

  "...true inheritors... corrupted the way..."

  A csh of steel. The chain whipped out. Sword deflected it.

  "...false master... perverted the teachings..."

  "...serve tyrants... abandoned honor..."

  Robin watched the fragments of conversation, the venom in every word. Whatever this was about, it went deeper than any contract.

  "Cn war," he murmured.

  "That a problem?" Much whispered beside him.

  "It's a distraction," Robin said. "We use it."

  The Puppet lunged, sword fshing. The Cricket spun away, chain whipping out, and the Puppet caught it on his bde, twisted, yanked. The Cricket stumbled forward. The Puppet's boot caught him in the chest and sent him flying backward into the swimming pool.

  The spsh echoed across the courtyard.

  The kusarigama cttered onto the pool deck.

  The Puppet ninja walked to the pool's edge, sword held ready, waiting.

  For a moment, nothing. Just ripples spreading across the illuminated water.

  Then the Cricket surfaced, already holding something. A grappling hook on a line. Where he'd pulled it from, Robin couldn't tell. The ninja's arm snapped forward. The hook flew, line unspooling.

  It wrapped around the Puppet's legs.

  The Cricket pulled.

  The Puppet crashed into the pool, sword spinning away as he hit the water.

  Now both ninjas were in the water, thrashing, grappling. The pool churned with their violence, water spraying across the deck. They were locked together, trying to drown each other with nothing but hatred and bare hands.

  Robin didn't hesitate. "Now. Move."

  The team slipped past the pool, low and fast, using the chaos for cover. Robin led them along the far hedge line, away from the fight, toward the next building. The cottage was visible beyond it.

  Behind them, the sound of spshing and struggling continued.

  Get the harp. Get out.