Chapter Nineteen #2
Two of the four men facing him suddenly charge forward, the cudgels they themselves had been concealing beneath voluminous jackets to the fore.
But Jonathan was as adept with a sword as his friend, and two wicked swipes cut a wide gash across the nearest man’s forehead sending blood pouring into his eyes.
A move he’d used before as it effectively blinded a man and put him out of the reckoning.
With his left hand, he simultaneously brought his cane down hard on the back of the second man’s hand and his cudgel shot from his grasp to roll uselessly across the road.
He leapt back, nursing his hand, which should contain a few broken bones now.
As he was the man with the dog, this had taken that beast out of the fight as well.
All the men retreated a couple of steps, their language loud and appalling. A light went on in the nearest house and curtains twitched.
The one whose forehead Jonathan had opened was now worse to useless as he couldn’t see for the blood, and he was groaning.
“Nice bit of fencing there,” Walter said, swinging his sword in an arc towards the three facing him to keep them back.
Despite the fact they were still outnumbering their prey, they didn’t seem keen to risk the sharp tip of his sword.
Cowards at heart, only ready to fight if they grossly outnumbered their prey. Typical of bullies.
Another light came on in a house to their left. Someone else must have heard the cries of their attackers and the loud swearing. Impossible not to hear it. This time the curtain was drawn back, and, as this happened, light spilled out onto the road for a moment, illuminating the scene.
Jonathan caught a brief glimpse of the footpads before the curtain was hurriedly closed again.
No doubt the owner of the house, or perhaps its butler, had thought better of interfering.
Three of them, including the man now blinded with his own blood and the one nursing a broken hand and the dog, were typical of the sort of rough, uncouth men to be found within the Devil’s Acre slums. Heavy, rough-featured, and unshaven, they wore tattered, dirty jackets and hefty boots, with filthy old cocked hats jammed on their heads.
The fourth, however, despite being clad in much the same fashion as his companions, was different.
Staring out at Jonathan from under a battered hat was a face he knew all too well.
Thomas Teesdale, his mean eyes alight with bloodlust, and his teeth bared over lips drawn back in glee, had a hand reaching inside the dirty jacket he must surely have borrowed from the wardrobe of one his new friends.
As he drew it out, Jonathan saw the flash of metal on a pistol.
A pistol pointed not at Jonathan, but at Walter.
“Teesdale!” Without thinking, Jonathan lunged towards the man who’d made his first year at Eton a torment and who now seemed to have murderous intentions towards his own best friend.
A loud report sounded, a burning sensation caught him high in the left shoulder, but he ignored it and drove his sword at Teesdale’s midriff.
It hit flesh and went on going, such was the power of the blow.
Teesdale’s eyes opened wide in shock and he staggered backwards.
Jonathan held onto his sword with a vengeance, wrenching it free, but as it came out of Teesdale’s body, an unseen cudgel scythed down on Jonathan’s forearm just below the elbow.
From somewhere to his left, a shout came, the voice angry and cultured. “Hoy there!” It did not belong to one of their attackers.
He both felt and heard the bones snap. His numbed fingers couldn’t keep hold of his sword, which went skittering away across the road, but he still had his cane in his left hand.
Careless of his broken right arm and injured shoulder, neither of which seemed to be hurting as yet, he swung back into the fray, wielding the cane like his lost sword.
Where was Walter? Had the bullet that had undoubtedly caught him in the shoulder gone on its way and taken his friend?
Why had Teesdale been aiming for him? If only it weren’t so dark and the movement around him so confusing.
With one man blinded, another with a broken hand, and Teesdale now lying in the road clutching his belly and sobbing incoherently to “get the bastard,” only four men remained to be fought off.
Fighting left-handed wasn’t something he was used to, but Jonathan threw himself into it with gusto.
The cane swung, catching the nearest man on the back of the head.
He went down and didn’t get up again, but another lumbered into the fray.
The giant. He was a bigger man than any of the others, topping Jonathan, who was himself over six feet tall, by several inches.
Ordinarily Jonathan would have had no trouble besting him, being quick on his feet thanks to the boxing he’d done at school, but this was not an ordinary moment, and his arm and shoulder, which were now beginning to hurt like hell, hampered him.
For some reason, he was finding it hard to stand up straight, his whole body seeming to want to curl up on itself around the pain in his broken arm.
The big bruiser snarled like a rabid dog and swung his cudgel, but his sheer size made him slow.
Jonathan ducked and almost fell, but forced himself upright again, the effort suddenly enormous.
But he still had his cane. For want of any other possible blow, he jabbed it with as much force as he could into the bruiser’s belly and was rewarded by the sound of all the air evacuating that man’s lungs at once.
He was just congratulating himself on a small victory when something heavy struck him hard in the side.
He staggered for a moment, tripping over something, or someone, spreadeagled on the ground, probably Teesdale who was always in the bloody way.
Another heavy blow followed, the air shooting out his own lungs this time, and he found himself falling sideways to his right, unable to save himself with his broken arm.
His head struck the road surface with force, somewhat superseding the pain in his forearm, and, for a brief moment, he saw stars. A dark shape loomed over him, he had a momentary vision of a swinging boot, and the stars vanished as his head snapped back. Darkness descended.