stretch. The bat whistled past his head, skimming his hair, and landed across his extended forearm with a solid crunch. Some corner of my mind registered the sound of bones breaking. The shock of the sudden injury put him down, and the pain of it kept him there.
Geronimo had a sudden change of heart about being eager to get home. He spun on his haunches with a grunt of effort, jerking his lead rope through my hands. I’d taken off my riding gloves, so I let go rather than waste time trying to control him. He hightailed it back towards the safety of the horse barns.
At that moment, a second figure emerged from behind another parked trailer, over to our right this time, and closed in on us from the other side.
Like the first man, he was wearing dull nondescript clothing and a ski mask, dark glasses covering his eyes. But this one was unarmed apart from what looked like PlastiCuff restraints.
His focus was completely on Dina, hardly even glancing in my direction until I moved to intercept. Then he tried to shoulder me aside with blatant disregard. To protect my hands, I hit him hard with an upswept elbow under his jaw. He dropped.
Cerdo had started to panic as soon as the attack began, skittering in a circle around Dina. Hampered by her injured leg, she could do little to stop him, although something made her refuse to jettison him as I had with Geronimo. With more courage than sense, she clung to his lead rope with both hands even when he reared up to wave steel-shod front feet in her face.
It was a toss-up, at that moment, whether the greater threat to my principal came from our attackers or from her own horse.
The man who’d clouted Raleigh, meanwhile, was standing over his writhing quarry with the bat still at the ready, as if he’d expected the downed instructor to put up more of a fight. It was only when Cerdo began his antics that he looked across and saw his partner on the ground. He twisted in my direction and stood there a moment, frozen, then hurdled Raleigh’s legs and came for us with the bat upraised.
For a split second, time seemed to slow almost to a standstill, so I had time to analyse our situation with my options spread before me. All I had to do was choose. None of them looked good.
The parking area was out of direct sight of the yard itself. I could only hope that Geronimo’s sudden flight would bring people running, but how much use they’d be when they got here was another matter.
In my peripheral vision, I could see the nose of Torquil’s gold Bentley, one of his bodyguards still in the passenger seat. The man had jacked upright to get a better view – might even have drawn his weapon – but he was too well drilled to get out of the car and come to Dina’s rescue. As far as he was concerned, I was on my own.
I gave momentary thought to reaching for my own SIG, but dismissed the idea before it had formed. If I drew against a charging batsman at such close quarters, I’d have to fire to stop him. And not just shoot, but keep shooting until the threat was neutralised.
Instead, I chose the biggest and best weapon I had to hand.
Cerdo.
The horse’s flailing had spun him so that he was facing away from the trailer. As the man approached, I shoved Dina around onto the opposite side of the horse’s neck, keeping her behind me and the horse between both of us and our attacker. Cerdo reared again, stabbing out furiously with his hooves like a giant boxer. Even armed with a baseball bat, the man faltered in the face of this towering aggression.
As the horse’s front feet touched down again, I made a grab for his headcollar and, ignoring Dina’s protests, yanked his head around towards me, reaching back to prod him sharply in the ribs with the stiffened fingers of an open hand at the same time.
Horses, like people, have a collection of nerve endings in their side which makes them sensitive to signals from the rider’s leg. Cerdo, being a dressage horse, was more sensitive than most. The effect of a strike in that spot was calculated to produce maximum effect. I wasn’t disappointed.
The white horse reacted immediately. I heard the furious clack of his teeth as he leapt away from the blow, ears laid flat, swinging his hindquarters in a rapid arc and cannoning into the man with the baseball bat. Three- quarters of a ton of fast-moving Andalusian, scared and pissed off in equal measure. It was not an even contest.
Cerdo’s primeval fight-or-flight reflexes were well and truly awoken now. They told him to run from the danger. And if he couldn’t run, to lash out at the thing behind him, before it had a chance to jump onto his back and sink teeth and claws into his neck. He humped his back and let rip with both hind legs.
If the man with the bat had been directly behind those flying hooves, he would have been in serious trouble. Fortunately for him, Cerdo’s initial impact had knocked him to the side and he caught a relatively glancing blow to his upper arm. It was enough.
He dropped the bat and scrambled away, obviously terrified of what the animal might do next. People not familiar with horses are often frightened by the sheer size and unpredictability of them close up. Such animals may no longer be asked to go charging towards the enemy on a battlefield, but the basic fear they instil is why police forces around the world still use them for crowd control. A mounted officer is deemed six times more effective than one on the ground.
I reckoned I’d get no arguments from our assailants on that score. The man with the restraints – the one I’d hit – had come round enough to reach his hands and knees, groaning. For a moment I watched his partner debate on leaving him to his fate, then he realised the drawbacks of such a move. He grabbed the fallen man with his uninjured left hand and dragged him to his feet. Together they stumbled through the line of trailers and were lost to view.
I was tempted to give chase, but Cerdo’s nerves were in tatters and Dina was struggling to hold onto him with only one good leg to balance on. With a last regretful glance in the direction of our attackers, I managed to get a hand through the horse’s headcollar and tried to calm him. He took some convincing that it was all over.
Out of sight, an engine cranked and fired. I caught a glimpse of a medium-sized van, possibly a Chevy Astro, go fishtailing over the gravel towards the driveway and freedom. It was moving fast and there was enough dirt liberally spread across the licence plate to make identification impossible.
Dina hobbled over to Raleigh and helped him sit up. He had turned a disconcerting shade of pale green and was clutching his arm. Dina wasn’t looking much better.
‘Be careful he doesn’t throw up on you,’ I told her. She flashed me a look of distaste and said nothing. Cerdo had finally stopped trying to rip himself free of my grasp and was standing with his head low, blowing hard through flared nostrils, his muscles quivering.
Running feet nearly set him off again and I saw Hunt and Orlando hurrying across the gravel. I made a ‘slow down’ gesture with my hand behind me and they finished their approach at a more cautious pace.
‘What
Dina’s face snapped in my direction and I saw the sudden pleading in her expression.
‘Something like that,’ I agreed, rubbing Cerdo’s damp ears. It was true, after all – to a point. I just didn’t say who or what he’d been fighting.
Hunt helped get Raleigh to his feet, swaying. He stared at me through a hazy filter of pain and shock. ‘What the bloody hell—?’
‘Don’t talk,’ I said quickly, a warning wrapped up as solicitude. I glanced at Hunt. ‘Perhaps you could take him back to the yard and get some sugar down him.’
Hunt nodded. Orlando began insisting that Raleigh go to the nearest ER and that distracted him from questions into making half-hearted protests about not leaving the yard unattended.
‘We can stay—’ Dina began, but I silenced her with a cutting stare.
‘We’re leaving,’ I said firmly. ‘Your leg needs ice and elevation, and both horses need a night in their own stable to calm down from all of this.’
Dina might have thought about arguing, but not for long. She nodded meekly and limped back to take the lead rope from me. ‘Where’s Geronimo?’
‘He shot through the yard like his tail was on fire,’ Hunt said. ‘One of the girls caught him, I think. I’ll check.’
I nodded my thanks and he and Orlando walked back towards the horse barns with Raleigh stumbling dazedly
