Chapter 22 #2
Even as the first invader cried out in pain, Mr. Drydale, still holding onto his arm, threw him into the kitchen for Mr. Verling to deal with.
He immediately grabbed the wrist of the second man, twisting it and causing him to drop his knife.
Blocking the man’s clumsy punch with his left hand, he then dragged the man also into the kitchen, where Phoebe stepped up to meet him.
Keriah turned her attention to Mr. Verling to see if there was any way in which she might assist him. He had bent low and swept the legs of the attacker, causing him to fall hard on the side where he had been injured by the knife.
Rather than kicking the man, Mr. Verling slammed his body down diagonally on top of the man’s back.
The man had one hand on the ground, so Mr. Verling jabbed his thumb in his armpit, causing him to go down on one elbow.
He then grabbed the man’s other arm and twisted it behind his back, driving his wrist toward his shoulder blades using his body weight, forcing him face down.
At the same time, his other hand pulled at the man’s inner thigh, hooking his knee up.
It was a grappling hold that Keriah had never seen before, twisting the man’s spine like wringing water out of a towel.
The man on the Root seemed surprised that he was unable to throw Mr. Verling off of him.
Each time the man attempted to plant his free arm or leg on the floor, Mr. Verling kept shifting his weight, sliding back and resetting the twist in the man’s hips.
In this way, his fighting technique outmatched the attacker’s greater strength. It gave Keriah the few seconds she needed to rush in and slash the sedative knife across his leg, avoiding the femoral artery on his inner thigh.
Keriah did not wait to watch as the sedative began to affect him, and instead turned to where Phoebe was fighting the other man. The attacker was taller than her friend, but Phoebe’s greater speed enabled her to dodge his wildly flailing fists.
Phoebe saw Keriah hovering, and she made a bold move, moving closer to the man inside his wide, meaty punch. It caught her in the shoulder, and she grunted, but she was already using her near proximity to hook her leg behind the man’s knee.
At the same instant, she seized his striking arm with both hands and dragged it hard across her body. His torso twisted while his leg stayed trapped. The mismatch ripped his balance away, and he went down heavily on his side.
The man’s attention was fully focused on Phoebe, so Keriah was able to sweep down and stab the dagger into his triceps brachii muscle.
She turned in time to see Mr. Drydale dealing with a third attacker.
The man had been slowed when he was forced to climb over the bodies in the scullery, but now he rushed at Mr. Drydale.
Her superior officer pivoted, his hand catching the man’s forearm and guiding it past him.
The move caused him to slam shoulder first into the wall of the scullery.
Before he fell to the ground, Keriah jumped in to slash the exposed biceps humeri on his underarm with another sedative knife.
The man clambered to his feet. When he was half crouched, off-balanced with one hand braced against the doorframe, Mr. Drydale stepped in close, denying him the space to swing a fist. He grabbed the man’s wrist and folded it in half.
Keriah knew from her experiments with Mr. Coulton-Jones and Phoebe that men under the influence of the Goldensuit could resist pain to an extent, but they could do nothing about the way the joints of the human body operated. Mr. Drydale twisted the man’s arm and forced him downward.
Keriah had already stepped back, giving Phoebe the space to step in and kick at the man’s jaw, rendering him unconscious.
There was a pause then, as no one tried to enter the house through the scullery door.
Keriah was confused for a moment, but Mr. Drydale quickly understood how the attackers had changed their plans.
Silently, he waved Phoebe and Mr. Verling to move closer to the two kitchen windows.
Keriah went to collect more sedative knives—they were her last.
The men didn’t attack all at once, but an invader smashed through the left kitchen window only a heartbeat or two before another broke through the right window. The left window man was clambering over the windowsill and still only half inside the kitchen when he lunged toward Phoebe.
She sidestepped and grabbed his collar. Using the window frame as leverage, she slammed him face-first into the edge of the wooden worktable.
He was stunned but remained conscious, one hand grabbing the table while the other flailed out toward Phoebe.
She punched him in his liver, which caused him to stop flailing.
His legs were half on the stone counter and his feet dangled out the window, so Keriah darted in and slashed across the biceps femoris muscle at the back of his thigh with the sedative knife. Phoebe followed with a punch to the man’s jaw, and he crumpled to the ground.
Keriah turned toward Mr. Verling to discover he had clamped his arms around the other man’s torso and shifted his weight backward to topple them both to the floor.
Since the man had been standing on the stone counter, he was helpless in midair as Mr. Verling twisted his body, causing the man to land under him on the stone tiles.
Keriah moved in and sliced the sedative knife under the man’s arm, but she miscalculated his ability to move his fist. He swung at her, cuffing her in the shoulder.
The pain was immense. She felt as though her shoulder had exploded into fragments of bone and muscle. She didn’t remember falling backward onto the floor until she blinked and saw the ceiling of the kitchen above her. She tried to get to her feet, but her body wouldn’t move.
When she at last managed to turn onto her side, she saw Mr. Verling using a similar grappling hold as he had used before to keep the man on the ground. But the attacker’s movements were already slow and sluggish, and Phoebe stepped in with a blow to the back of the man’s head.
Keriah shakily rose to her feet in time to see another invader step through the scullery door, after climbing over or around the unconscious men in the scullery.
He was tall, with a commanding air about him, and Keriah could tell from the way he moved with liquid athletic grace that he was by far the best fighter of all the others.
Mr. Drydale was not intimidated and immediately attacked the instant he cleared the doorway. He feinted with a high left punch, then struck the man in the sternum. Keriah could see his breath hitch.
Mr. Drydale tried to grab his wrist and leverage his elbow to force him face down, but the Commander was stronger and faster.
Before he could lock the man’s joints, the Commander swung his arm out, flinging Mr. Drydale away from him.
He flew backward into the kitchen, crashing into the stone counter and sliding a few feet on top of it.
The Commander advanced into the kitchen.
And the person closest to him was Keriah.
In her training at the Ramparts, Mr. Armstrong had tried to teach her how to control her fear so that she would not stiffen. But the gaze of the man advancing upon her blazed with intimidation that rooted her feet to the ground.
Her shaking fingers fumbled for a sedative knife, but she realized she had dropped the last one when the man had struck her. She fumbled for the knife she had slipped into her long evening gloves, but the elbow-length gloves made it difficult for her to reach deep enough inside to grab the hilt.
She heard Phoebe call to her, knew her friend was trying to reach them in time. She tried to step aside, to give Phoebe space to attack him, but his eyes followed her and he closed the distance. His arm reached out and clamped around Keriah’s throat.
But before he even had a chance to start squeezing, there was a blur and a powerful fist punched sharply at the soft hinge of the Commander’s wrist. His grip broke as if a cord had snapped—fingers jerking open in an automatic spasm—and Keriah tore free, gasping.
Mr. Coulton-Jones followed up his punch to the man’s wrist with another at his jaw. But despite the pain, the Commander dodged.
Keriah staggered backward, her shaking hands reaching up to her neck. It hurt, but would not leave more than a bruise.
She realized that Mrs. Coulton-Jones must be safe if her son had come down to the kitchen to aid them.
Keriah was facing the scullery door and saw a shadow within. She opened her mouth toward Mr. Drydale, who had turned toward Mr. Coulton-Jones’s fight with the Commander.
Mr. Norton emerged from the shadows of the scullery, stepping over all the other bodies. A knife gleamed in his hand, and he immediately attacked Mr. Drydale with two rapid thrusts.
Mr. Drydale must have seen the movement in the doorway, for he turned in time to block one knife attack with one forearm and the other with his other hand. However, it caused his body to twist awkwardly.
Mr. Norton rotated behind him, his other arm wrapping around Mr. Drydale’s throat. But because Mr. Drydale’s knees were bent, Mr. Norton had to bend over, and Mr. Drydale used Mr. Norton’s weight to roll them both to the ground.
They landed on their backs, and he snapped an elbow at Mr. Norton to stun him before scrambling to his feet. He tried to kick Mr. Norton, who was also rising, but the Ramparts agent unexpectedly punched just above the side of Mr. Drydale’s knee, making him stumble.
Mr. Coulton-Jones’s fight with the Commander raged in front of Phoebe and Mr. Verling, preventing them from moving to aid Mr. Drydale. Keriah alone was close enough. She looked around, and removed a knife from the body of an unconscious man.
Mr. Drydale lunged at Mr. Norton before he could fully rise to his feet, driving him into the stone counter. The two of them struggled, the fight moving from the counter to the wall, where Mr. Norton slammed Mr. Drydale’s back into it.
He didn’t realize this was precisely what Mr. Drydale had been trying to do.
Keriah stepped in behind him, reached under Mr. Norton’s arm, and delivered a sedative cut to the inner biceps. Mr. Norton roared in pain.
He tried to twist around to hit Keriah, but Mr. Drydale grabbed Mr. Norton’s wrist just long enough for the sedative to affect him.
The knife had already been used on a man on the Root, so the dosage was far less, but Mr. Norton fell quickly to the sedative. He couldn’t move for more than a few seconds before he crashed face down, unconscious.
Keriah turned around, looking for Mr. Coulton-Jones and the man he had been fighting.
She found the Commander on the floor, pinned down by both Mr. Coulton-Jones and Phoebe, who were just rising to their feet.
The Commander looked to be unconscious, and Mr. Verling pulled a sedative knife from where it had been thrust into his calf.
All of them stood, breathing heavily, surrounded by the unconscious bodies in the kitchen.
Mr. Drydale nodded and straightened. “Now,” he said to them all, “next is the difficult part.”