‘I’m afraid my fighting days are over,’ he said. I’ll bet, I thought.
I made my way back onto the sand. The crowd parted for me. Three on one were not good odds. I wondered what I was doing. Was I trying to impress these people? The girl? Her dad? Why?
The crowd parted, forming three channels from three different directions. The two guys and the girl who came out were solidly built. They moved like they knew how to handle themselves and one of the guys and the girl had matt-black lenses for eyes. The third guy had more expensive lenses but the Royal Marine Commando tattoo on his chest gave him away as a veteran as well.
The woman carried a basket-hilted broadsword of the kind I’d seen decorating the walls of Calum’s castle. Except this one looked sharp and well balanced. She held the sword – I think it was called a claymore – in one hand and a round wooden shield reinforced with iron studs in the other. The guy who wasn’t an ex-marine had a shaved head and his face was a patchwork of scars. He carried a ball and chain in one hand and was already spinning the heavy-looking studded head of the weapon. In his off hand he also carried a shield. The ex-marine was carrying a fucking polearm. It looked like a meat cleaver on the end of a six-foot shaft. Above the cleaver blade was a hook. I wondered if he was expecting cavalry.
If I wasn’t going to risk dying for something worthwhile like murdering Rolleston then I certainly wasn’t going to risk dying in this cellar. I didn’t care what they thought of me. I had nothing to prove. I shook my head and turned to walk away. The problem was, with them all coming from different directions I had to pass one of them.
The woman with the claymore swung at me. I just managed to dance out of the way.
‘What the fuck! Are you insane?! I’m not fucking interested!’ She just smiled at me and remained poised to attack. I tried to walk into the crowd but was faced by a solid wall of screaming rich people, their features twisted in expectation. They wanted to see blood.
They did. The hook on the polearm ripped into my shoulder. It had enough boosted muscle behind it to penetrate the subcutaneous armour. The ex-marine ripped the hook down, tearing open part of my back. I almost fell to my knees. He tore the weapon out of me and then short-swung the cleaver blade at my head. I only just managed to duck out of the way.
I turned to the side as the claymore whistled through the air. The blade hit my metal arm and only succeeded in scoring it. It was a heavy blade and I was faster than her. As she readied another blow I tried to kick her in the head with as much force as I could muster. She got the shield up just in time but I heard it crack and she staggered away from me.
My IVD jumped as the studded head of the ball and chain cracked me solidly in the skull and sent me staggering forward into the crowd. My blood spattered some of them but they were baying for more and I got pushed back into the ring. I found myself missing Balor and New York. The blow to the head made me feel sick.
This was the problem with fighting three people. The minute you tried to deal with one the other got you. As quickly as I could manage, I ducked under another swing of the ball and chain and hooked a kick around the scarred guy’s leg, bringing him down on one knee. I flung myself out of the way of a downward strike from the polearm and threw myself towards the swordswoman. She hadn’t been expecting me to close so quickly and aimed a hurried blow at me, but I grabbed her shield and yanked it towards her sword arm, messing up her strike.
I moved behind her, using her for cover as the polearm hit her shield, then reached around to grab her forehead and yanked her head back as I brought my knee up into the back of her skull. I sidestepped as she stumbled back and four nine-inch blades extended from my knuckles on either hand. I punched her in her sword arm. Three of the four blades on that fist punched clean through her arm and momentarily pinioned her arm to her side. I ripped the blades out and kicked her knee as she continued staggering back. I heard it break. She tumbled to the ground and I stamped on her head.
I didn’t want to kill her and I was pretty sure I hadn’t. She was obviously an augmented combat vet. But I didn’t want her getting up behind me as I tried to deal with the other two.
The crowd went wild.
I turned and ran towards the shaven-headed guy. He saw me coming and swung at me. I twisted as I ran and tried to deflect the blow with my prosthetic arm. The chain wrapped around it. The blade of the polearm wielded by the marine hit me solidly in the back and I screamed. It went through my subcutaneous armour and bit into my reinforced spine, but he would have had to hit a lot harder to sever it.
I leaped into the air and felt the blade tear out of my back. Scarface tried to put his shield between him and me. I landed on it. He buckled under my weight. I punched down with my claws. Boosted muscle pushed the carbon-fibre blades through the wood and iron shield and into his shoulder. He cried out. I twisted the blades, hoping to render his shield arm useless.
Scarface yanked on the ball and chain’s wooden handle. The chain was still wrapped around my arm. I fell awkwardly onto the ground. I had a moment to realise that the polearm blade was flying towards my head. I rolled out of the way and sand flew as the blade hit the ground. I yanked the chain that still connected me to the ball and chain, jerking Scarface towards me, and kicked out with a sweep, taking his legs from him. I axed my foot down into his face with as much power as I could muster and was rewarded with the satisfying noise of subcutaneous armour, bone and cartilage being crushed. His face looked like it had been split. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose.
I rolled out of the way of another polearm blow, towards Scarface and, just to make sure he wasn’t going to get up and come after me, rammed my claws through both his kneecaps and into the muscle and flesh of his lower legs and then tore them back out. I left him a screaming, bleeding, crippled mess on the floor.
Then I stood up and turned to face the marine. He was backing off. I stared at him as I unwrapped the ball and chain from around my prosthetic arm. The crowd were jeering him. A polearm is great in a medieval infantry line working in conjunction with others. Less good one on one, particularly against an opponent with paired weapons.
I paced left and right looking for an opening. He was making half-hearted thrusts towards me, trying to keep me at bay. I charged him. He swung at me. I parried easily and was past the weapon’s reach. Then he did something I’d rarely seen marines do. He turned and ran. The problem was he didn’t have anywhere to go. He ran straight into the crowd, who pushed him back. He started throwing punches and I saw one rich guy’s nose explode as the marine tried to fight his way through. But by that point I’d thrown myself into the air.
I landed on his back and pushed both sets of blades through his shoulders. I didn’t want to kill him but I was really, really angry. There was resistance as I pushed through his subcutaneous armour. The blades appeared from his chest and the crowd became more excited as more of them were spattered with blood.
I pulled the marine down on top of me. He kept screaming as I used my claws in his flesh to turn him over so I was astride him and he was face down on the sand. Then to the wild screaming cheers of the crowd I grabbed the back of his head and rammed his face into the ground until blood seeped out into the sand around him and he stopped moving.
I didn’t care if I had killed him. I stood up. I was covered with blood, some of it mine, most of it not.
‘Where is he?!’ I was panting for breath but I still managed to scream hoarsely. I was scanning the room for Alasdair. I could see Fiona watching. She had a hungry grin on her face.
Of course they turned on him. They were laughing. He wasn’t; he was sobbing and begging as I made my way through the crowd towards him. Anyone who got in the way had their legs kicked out from under them or got an elbow in the face.
As I reached him he turned and started to beg. I grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off his feet and carried him through the crowd by his neck until I could slam him into the wall.
I pulled my arm back and extended my blades. Fiona was standing next to me. The look of expectation on her face was almost sexual. Her look turned to one of disgust as Alasdair soiled himself. There was laughter. Someone grabbed my arm. I whipped my head round ready to hurt someone else and saw Calum there.
‘No!’ he shouted. Then calmer: ‘You can’t do this, Jakob.’ There were sounds of disappointment from the crowd. I let Alasdair go and retracted my blades. He sank to the ground in a pool of his own muck.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you people?’ I asked, shaking my head. I was disgusted, as much with myself as with them. I wouldn’t fight to do something worthwhile like kill Rolleston but I’d become a spectacle, entertainment for these scum. These were the people that the Cabal had worked to protect.
‘You could have stopped this,’ I said accusingly to Calum.
