Assassin Outclassin / Literature

• After the Revolution: Roland's opening chapter is about Roland out-fighting a Cyborg kill squad hired to assassinate him while amnesiac, coming down from an acid high, and naked. Halfway through Roland humiliating them, said employer shows up and turns out to be Roland's old friend Jim, who wants to hire Roland for a job.
• Animorphs: There have been numerous attempts to kill Vissers Three and One, including by each other.
  • Ax tries to kill Visser Three in book #8, and succeeds in forcing him out of his host body, but can't bring himself to kill Alloran.
  • Arbat and his team try to kill the Visser, but are foiled by the Animorphs, who want to prevent him releasing a Synthetic Plague.
  • In book #30, the Animorphs attempt to manipulate an Enemy Mine situation to get both of them to kill each other, but both survive.
• In Lynn Abbey's Beneath the Web, after many failed attempts, the assassins' guild declares Prince Rinchen sorRodion too difficult to kill, and refuses to take any more contracts on him.
• In Amanda Downum's The Bone Palace, Savedra, the Crown Prince's transsexual mistress, repeatedly dispatches assassins sent to kill her, the Prince, or for that matter his wife. Not that either of them is that defenseless either, especially the rather Amazonian warrior Princess.
• Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain survives no less than three attacks in Duty Calls. When, later, he speculates that an apparent Friendly Fire incident was a fourth, he admits it sounds paranoid but obviously someone was out to get him.
• The Dark Side of the Sun: Dom Sabalos survives countless assassination attempts, mostly due to "probability maths" that grant him fate-like, epic luck by allowing him to instinctively "navigate" to countless Alternate Universes where he survives those attacks.
• In Darth Bane: Rule of Two, Darth Zannah meets a nobleman named Hetton offering all the Sith knowledge he's amassed in exchange for being made her apprentice. She sends him to kill her master Bane as a test. Despite having several deadly Sith assassins from the former Dark Brotherhood with him, Bane kills him.
• David Eddings liked to use this trope to demonstrate how badass his heroes (and their friends) are:
  • In The Belgariad, Garion is by the Murgo version of a ninja, but he and his companions are just too good; the assassin is thwarted several times, and finally killed by Silk. In the sequel series The Malloreon, the Big Bad Zandramas makes a habit of trying to kill Garion or one of his companions, because if one of them dies at the wrong time, Zandramas will win the final confrontation by default. Since Garion has a master alchemist/physician, a couple of sorcerers, and not one but two master spies/assassins on his side, not to mention the Prophecy of Light, none of the enemy assassins have much chance of surviving, much less succeeding.
  • In The Elenium, the primary plot of the first trilogy is Sir Sparhawk and his friends working to foil an assassination attempt against Queen Ehlana of Elenia. Along the way, Sparhawk is targeted by assassins more than once, and more than once escapes by the skin of his teeth.
• A number of characters evade assassins in the Deryni works by Katherine Kurtz, with or without help. A partial list:
  • Prince Richard Haldane is saved from Mearan assassins by the Earl of Lendour and his son Lord Ahern de Corwyn (the Earl dies, and his son is injured).
  • King Donal Haldane is saved from assassins by Sir Kenneth Morgan in In the King's Service. Sir Kenneth takes an arrow in the leg.
  • King Brion Haldane is saved from assassin Zachris Pomeroy and his minions by Master Jamyl Arilan, Kenneth Morgan (now Earl of Lendour in right of his wife) Rhydon of Eastmarch, and Sir Sé trelawney in Childe Morgan.
  • Kelson Haldane escapes a deadly Stenrect thanks to Alaric Morgan in Deryni Rising.
  • Morgan is saved from an assassin by a Haldane squire while sailing aboard his ship Rhafallia in Deryni Checkmate. Later in the same book, he's rescued from Warin de Grey and his men by his cousin Duncan.
  • Duncan learns the increased security in Dhassa in High Deryni was put in place after a failed assassination attempt against itinerant bishop Wolfram de Blanet. Cardiel and Arilan fear Loris was behind it, so he could appoint a replacement and get the needed twelfth vote in his reduced Curia.
  • Duncan fights off an assassin (a youth disguised in his Mclain livery) in The Bishop's Heir. He is slashed across the palm of one hand, and the dagger is laced with merasha.
  • Nigel fights off Torenthi assassins with help from his son Conall, his brother-in-law Saer de Traherne, and Haldane household archers and troops in The King's Justice. Nigel also ensures young Liam of Torenth is safe; there is some evidence Liam's death was intended in the attack as well as Nigel's.
  • Kelson and Liam fight off assassins (with help from Brendan Coris and Morgan) while visiting the Hort of Orsal in King Kelson's Bride.
• Discworld:
  • Sam Vimes does this to various assassins many many times. Despite being an enormous headache for the political intrigue of the city, Vimes proved so repeatedly unkillable that he became the second person to be struck from the guild register; the first was Vetinari, either because as a former assassin he too is unkillable, or simply because as the Patrician, and, being Vetinari, killing him would cause too many political hiccoughs. (It's also implied that killing Vimes, despite the trouble he causes the Guild (or at least, the kind of people that would hire the Guild), would cause other repercussions that the Guild doesn't want to deal with either.)
  • Not only is he unkillable, but Vimes provides a unique opportunity for the Assassin's Guild. Unlike the Patrician, who tends to make sure Nothing happens to people who make attempts on his life, Vimes tends towards relatively nonlethal measures of self-defense, provided his family is not targeted. Thus, the Assassins use him for a training exercise... in humility. Indeed, Vimes seems to take a perverse pleasure in booby-trapping his home.
  • Also, in Thud!, some religiously fanatic dwarf tries to attack his family: One of them gets roasted by twenty-six of Sybil's dragons after his flamethrower utterly fails to harm his target, one is stabbed by Willikins and one is knocked out and dies from poison he took before. It is possible others are killed when Willikins takes control of the flamethrower and aims it down the tunnel they came through, just in case.
  • Rincewind, who survives all manner of ridiculous situations through a combination of extreme luck and applied cowardice. Assassins fare no better around him than anything else. Worse, usually. Special mention goes to all the wizards trying to kill him in The Light Fantastic.
  • In Interesting Times Lord Hong is introduced in such circumstances. He is, of course, the outclasser, if such word applies to such a flamboyant display of sheer badassery.
  • Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, who by virtue of his position is a prime target for Klingon Promotion. Fortunately for him, he's not just a powerful wizard, but a Genius Bruiser who can fend off most would-be assassins with only his staff. He rarely kills attempted assassins, but always at least breaks a limb. (Mention is made of one would-be usurper who went deaf during his attempt on Ridcully's life.) Much like Vetinari and Vimes, the other wizards realized it was simply too much trouble to try to kill him and have since largely given up the "Pointy Shoes" tradition.
  • Moist von Lipwig in Making Money discovers another side to the Assassins and might have finessed them into keeping him alive. He is under a suspended Guild contract that will only be activated if he fails to keep the dog Mr Fusspot alive and healthy. If the dog, who has become chairman of the Royal Bank and thus a highly important player of the game, dies of anything but natural causes, so does Moist. Therefore to allow Moist to keep the dog alive and to allow a Guild member a chance to earn the money if he doesn't, Moist — and dog — need to be bodyguarded and kept alive by the Guild.... and this dog is politically important, don't forget. Simply put, the guild won't take a second contract on the same person and no self-respecting member will agree to assassinate a dog.
  • Susan Sto Helit is pretty good at outclassin' assassins — albeit on other people's behalf, and usually without them knowing at the time. In Soul Music she (ab)used the power of Death to scare the Gresham Ford Close Harmony Singers^note the Musician's Guild enforcers and two members of the Assassin's Guild away from Imp y Celyn; in Hogfather, her grandfather (Death) asked her to save the Hogfather, first from mad Assassin Teatime and then from the Auditors of Reality. Finally, in Thief of Time, she teams up with the Sweeper, a rogue Auditor and half of the Anthropomorphic Personification of Time to save Time (and, by extension the world) from the Auditors.
  • It's made clear in works focusing on them that Assassins expect to be outclassed some of the time, and view this as part of what makes their existence acceptable. In Pyramids Dr Cruces tells his students that they may well find the target has employed some of their fellows as bodyguards, and the Rules in the Guild Diary say that they won't take commissions on anyone who cannot defend themselves. (Anyone who earns over a certain amount is assumed to be capable of defending themselves, one way or another, and it's not the Guild's fault if they don't.)
  • On the "Luck" side, the Diary also reveals that there is an open commission on Rincewind, but that every Assassin who has attempted it has either been eaten by the Luggage or died in highly unlikely circumstances. Rincewind has some powerful forces more-or-less on his side.
• Steven Brust's Dragaera series:
  • In Yendi, Vlad Taltos survives multiple assassination attempts during a turf war. He finally realizes that he shouldn't have been able to survive them that easily and realizes that there's something deeper going on.
  • In Five Hundred Years After, Khaavren survives no less than four attempts on his life as conspirators try to kill him to destabilize the Imperial court. The latter three attempts are thwarted by friends and allies who show up just in time.
• In The Dresden Files, assassins regularly make a pass at the titular wizard for one reason or another.
  • In Summer Knight, after Harry and Will see off a hit squad in the first few pages of the book, Harry complains that normally assassins only take a swing at him after he's started the investigation.
  • Notably averted at the end of Changes, where Harry actually gets assassinated. Like a chump. He was Only Mostly Dead, of course, but still! The lack of outclassin' is twisted when it's revealed who contracted the kill: Harry, trying to avoid being shackled for life to Queen Mab as her Winter Knight, hired the mercenary Kincaid to kill him then had Molly Carpenter erase his memory of having done so.
• Tiphaine d'Ath of the Emberverse, being a former assassin herself, has a pretty good idea of the preventative measures she needs to take when she's promoted to the juicy-target position of Grand Constable.
• Guardians of the Flame: The heroes get assassins sent after them multiple times in the later books, and always win, no matter how skilled they are.
• Halo: The Cole Protocol:
  • Thel 'Vadam (the future Arbiter) is engaged by three assassins proceeding his election to kaidon (lordship) over the State of Vadam. He quite quickly and easily dispatches all three, before tricking their employer into revealing himself and subsequently executing him as well.
  • In Sangheili culture, this trope is quite common: it's considered a right to send assassins after a leader whose position or policies one disagrees with. After all, a leader who can't fulfill this trope isn't worthy of being such anyway.
• The Han Solo Trilogy: Han and Chewie fatally defeat several bounty hunters who've come after the bounty on Han's head until Boba Fett shows up.
• Happens at least twice in the Heralds of Valdemar series
  • In Winds of Fate, an assain is able to get within striking distance of Princess Elspeth using magic. Thanks to some lessons in combat pragmatism, she gets the better of him, but she's shaken at the thought that mage-less Valdemar is vulnerable to that sort of attack.
  • In Storm Breaking, an assassin tries to take out the current heir to the Eastern Empire, Melles. Unfortunately, Melles is an assassin himself. He defeats his attacker, tortures him to find out who sent him, kills him, sneaks the body into the home of the man who hired him, and leaves it in the nursery with the man's infant child. As a warning.
• Honor Harrington:
  • In The Honor of the Queen, Honor is at dinner with the monarch of Grayson when assassins come after him as part of an attempted coup d'etat. Little do they know that A) Honor is a genetically enhanced heavyworlder and an expert in the Manticoran martial art coup de vitesse, and B) her "pet" treecat Nimitz is essentially a furry six-legged buzzsaw with empathic awareness.
  • In Field of Dishonor, an assassin who acts openly — he's a professional duelist hired to maneuver his target into making a challenge — kills Honor's lover and then faces her. Due to a personal grudge, he intends to kill her slowly, with several non-fatal body shots before the kill shot. In the event, he doesn't get off a single round before she does to him exactly what he was planning to do to her: four not-quite-lethal rounds to the body and then a finishing shot right between the eyes.
• In the third Inheritance Cycle novel Brisingr, Eragon, while attending an election for the next Dwarf king, is attacked by several Dwarven assassins under orders from another clan who hate Dragon Riders. Most are killed by Eragon himself.
• Kris Longknife:
  • Kris escaped her first assassination attempt (disguised as a kidnapping) when she was ten. During the series proper she defeats a disturbingly large number of overt and covert assassination attempts, which gets to the point at the end of book six where she asks her Artificial Intelligence companion Nelly to keep track of the time it takes for the next person to try to kill her and Nelly responds that she doesn't think she can count that low. In Undaunted, she actually feels insulted that the latest attempt she survived was actually aimed at someone else she was with.
  • Vicky Peterwald's current record is surviving four assassination attempts in one day.
• In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Colonel Aureliano Buendía manages to avoid many assassination attempts due to a combination of luck and his premonitions.
• Eugenides from The Queen's Thief series is able to take on multiple assassins singlehandedly and win. Turns out that the hook he has instead of a hand is actually razor-sharp. Also, he was trained to be a soldier, though he doesn't look like it. And he's a master of the Bare-Handed Blade Block. To top everything off, he has the literal protection of a god.
• The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal: The outlaw Thorir, hired by Ottar of Grimstunga to take revenge on the sons of Thorstein, botches his attempt on Gudbrand's life; he tries to flee but Gudbrand pursues and kills him. The second assassin, Svart, manages to get the job done but also dies in the process.
• The Silerian Trilogy: Kiloran sends several assassins to kill Tansen, who easily kills them all as he's gained superior training in swordfighting since leaving Sileria ten years before.
• Six of Crows: Inej Ghafa manages to outclass Dunyasha, the assassin sent after her in Crooked Kingdom. Mostly because Inej is a lot tougher and more used to fighting through pain, as well as knowing the terrain better, but she still beat the White Blade, who was a very skilled assassin.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Queen Cersei sent a minor lord after Bronn. The lord's wife comes back, lamenting that the former sellsword killed her husband and took over his lands. A bit of a subversion; Cersei dropped hints that she wanted Bronn covertly assassinated; instead, the lord (a presumably once-puissant but currently aged man) quite openly challenged Bronn, a battle-hardened mercenary in his prime, to single combat.
• Happens several times in Tales of the Branion Realm (understandable as it focuses on a royal family). From the first book alone: Demnor survives an attack and doesn't even bother to tell anyone, binding his own wound. His 12-year-old sister Kassandra shoots another assassin through the eye. His other sister Quindara actively dares rebels to try to kill her while on campaign and leaves a string of hanged corpses behind her. Quindara earned her knighthood at fourteen by killing an assassin hiding outside her mother's tent.
• Tales of the Otori: Takeo, Justified by him being a trained (and very talented) assassin himself.
• In Timeline-191, George Armstrong Custer is appointed military governor of occupied Canada after WWI. During a pre-retirement farewell tour, the Canadian terrorist Arthur McGregor throws a bomb into his car. Custer, who had long suspected him of terrorism, throws it back just before it explodes.
• In The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, the entry on assassins is all about this trope. It indicates that at some point the protagonist will get attacked by a supposedly dangerously skilled assassin and defeat/kill them, and the assassin will go their death complaining that the protagonist wasn't playing according to the "rules".
• Wagons West: in Kentucky!, assassins are sent to kill Henry. Henry manages to kill them instead, althro he still becomes injured.
• The second book of The Witchlands opens with Merik waking up and realizing there's an assassin in his bedroom, then easily overpowering him. Subverted when it turns out the assassin was of the suicide bomber type.