The knife started its starlit arc, and Brian moved forward rather than away. He twisted at the waist to throw his useless left arm against the blade. Something thumped against the meat of his forearm and stuck there, tugging, as he spun up along the kid's arm and whipped a back-fist to his head.
The boy went down, jerking his knife with him as he fell. Brian felt another tug but no pain. If he was extremely lucky, it had only cut his jacket.
Snow crunched behind him, and Brian ducked. Pain burst across his right shoulder. He half-fell away from it, turning, seeing a blurred form pulling back a club for the finishing blow. Brian's left foot rose by itself, cocked, and snapped out an instep kick. It found the shadowy fork where the shadow's legs converged, and thumped hard enough into the crotch that his other, injured leg shot pain straight up to the base of his skull and collapsed under him.
Five.
If there were any more, they had him.
Brian rolled in the snow, retching. Gasps followed him--the sobbing, choking sounds of a young male kicked so hard in the balls his pelvis cracked. Sometime soon that kid was going to find the breath to scream.
Club. Brian rolled across one of the clubs, fumbled it into his right hand, and half-crawled across the churned snow of the alley to gently, scientifically tap a skull. The sobs quieted.
The club served as a brace, as well. He fought his way upright, right hand supporting right leg, left arm dangling useless, blood dripping black into the gray-orange glimmer of the snow.
Five down. They'd probably all live, although that back-fist to the head could have crushed the temple of the kid's skull. Served him right, for pulling a knife. Fiona would have skinned him alive. Or worse.
Not a tidy fight.
Any others?
His blurry eyes sorted shadows and doorways, compared them against the files of recent memory. Nada.
The pause gave him a chance to survey the damage, and the answer wasn't good. Probable broken ribs. Probable cracked leg-bone, fibula by the feel of it. Something damaged in his shoulder, God only knows what. Unknown bone or nerve or muscle damage to the left arm. It still had enough feeling in it for him to know that was blood flowing down hot to drip off his fingers.
So much for just cutting the jacket. No light, no time to check it out. Simple pressure bandage. He struggled to force thoughts through the fog.
Belts. He hobbled to the nearest body, using the club as a cane. He knelt down in jerky stages that edged on collapse. Shaking fingers coiled the kid's belt around the cut arm, outside the jacket and tight like an elastic bandage, pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding.
More belts. Clubs. He splinted his leg, something to take pressure off his shoulder. That cane trick wasn't going to work more than another five minutes--he didn't have a good arm to use it with.
With his leg bound straight, Brian crawled to a security grill and used its chain-link mesh as a ladder to haul his wracked body vertical. His head swam, and the stars dropped down to orbit around the alley.
Sergeant Mulvaney was back. You're pretty well knackered, laddie. Not good at all. A tyke in nappies could toddle up and push you over with one finger. You've got a problem, old son.
He didn't need phantom voices to tell him he needed help. Hurt, in a foreign land, with no I.D. that'd stand more than a passing glance--and how'd he like some blood tests run, before they gave him a transfusion? Maybe a series of x-rays? "Interesting, Doctor Jones: would you have a look at this? Never seen anything like it . . . ."
Brian staggered along the alley wall, stiff-legged and one shoulder dragging against the bricks for support. The pain was waking up now, the fire of the knife-cut and the red-hot nails in his ribs stabbing him with every breath and a pounding lump on his right forehead he couldn't connect with anything in the fight. Maybe he'd hit it when he rolled.
Mulvaney was trying to get his attention again. First lesson a young officer learned was, pay attention to your senior NCOs. They could save your ass, no matter what the chain of command might say.
Draw on your Blood. Draw on your Power. Force the pain down. Remember what that bitch Deirdre used to say in training: pain is optional. Injury may be mandatory in a given situation, but pain is optional. And then she'd stub out a cigarette on the back of her hand.
Pain was optional. Easy for her to say. It was what she did to prove it, was a problem. About a dozen of the scars patterning his body had her name signed to them.
Mulvaney shook his head, sighing over the pig-headed nature of young subalterns. Show you learned what she taught. Not just remembered, but learned. Worry about healing later.
Brian looked up from the churned slush. Good. That little distraction had moved him about two blocks. Sweat trickled down his nose in spite of the winter air. He tried to wipe it off and found he couldn't lift either hand that far. He couldn't even turn his head far enough to reach his upper arm.
Forget about the sweat. He needed to concentrate on more important fluids. Those hot drips on his fingers--they were blood. He had a choice: take a chance on losing too much of it, or slow the circulation and risk frostbite of the fingers.
Try the middle way: moderation in all things, including moderation. Slow the loss but keep feeling in his fingers.
Meanwhile, he had to keep his feet moving.
Speaking of feet. Hey feet, where you taking us?
The answer seemed to be "Maureen's."
The girl with the gun and the attitude. She'd called him a rapist. What made his feet think she wouldn't let him past the door and
