Chapter Thirty-Four #3
He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it aside. His waistcoat followed, and he faced Adam from across the makeshift ring of sepoys, who were already passing around their bets.
Adam had never seen Jacobs in his shirtsleeves before. He was not surprised to discover that the man was as hard as a bloody rock—lean, lithe, and dangerous.
It made sense. He was a goddamned killer.
Adam was taller than Jacobs and heavier by a stone or so. It should have given him an advantage—but he’d fought Jacobs before. His opponent was taut and focused with a whipcord readiness. Adam wasn’t even close to certain that he would come out on top of this.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to.
Adam pictured the bruises around Ellie’s throat and swung his fist at Jacobs’ face. He felt the impact of his knuckles on bone.
Jacobs countered with a punch to Adam’s gut.
Adam caught the motion just in time to ready himself for it, which saved his diaphragm from collapsing.
He offered up a momentary burst of gratitude that he had managed to keep his breath—but Jacobs was still moving, fists jabbing with controlled power.
Adam ducked one, shoving aside another. He made his own strike at Jacobs’ side, but Jacobs stepped into it, robbing the momentum from the blow.
He grasped Adam’s arm, wrenching it at an expert angle. The move forced Adam into a twist.
Adam pulled back, drawing on every ounce of his advantage in size and strength to stall the move. The hold shifted into a stalemate—and then Adam threw himself at Jacobs’ body, knocking them both to the ground.
He was only vaguely aware of the cheering and catcalling of the soldiers that surrounded him. Borthwick watched the fight with an air of distant amusement. Dawson stared with horrified fascination, gaping at them open-mouthed from behind the colonel.
How long had it been since it had all started? The taunting, the disarming, the explosion into blows… had it taken three minutes? Four?
How much time did Vanika need?
Jacobs gripped Adam’s jaw, forcing his head back until Adam’s neck screamed in protest.
Adam slammed the heel of his hand into the crook of Jacob’s elbow, buckling his hold.
The two men rolled free of each other, and Adam scrambled back to his feet. The ground was still damp from the previous night’s rain. Sand clung to his trousers and the back of his shirt.
He took a slight consolation in the fact that Jacobs was just as disheveled.
A bloody abrasion marred his cheek, and his knuckle was split.
Half the buttons on his shirt had ripped loose, exposing a deep triangle of pale skin on his chest—and the smallest sliver of raven black that Adam recognized with surprise as a tattoo.
Adam pushed the distraction aside. He had to keep everyone watching. “That all you got?” he taunted—if a little breathlessly.
With a flash of vicious determination, Jacobs ran at him.
Adam twisted to avoid the full force of Jacobs’ impact, but it still pushed him to the edge of the stream, where his boots splashed into the shallow water.
He moved to counter with a punch, but Jacobs pivoted, and the blow glanced off his kidney.
Adam knew from experience that the hit would still hurt like hell, but Jacobs weathered it with a soft grunt of discomfort.
He thrust his leg between Adam’s thighs, tripping him into a fall. A knee drove into Adam’s spine as his arm twisted into a hold that made his shoulder scream in protest.
With his other hand, Jacobs pressed Adam’s face into the water.
Adam inhaled a surprised snort of the stream. It burned in his nostrils before he managed to turn his head and catch a breath.
He tried to push himself up with his free hand.
Jacobs twisted his arm tighter. Adam coughed out a curse as the tension threatened to wrench his shoulder out of its socket.
Jacobs leaned in, using the full weight of his body to force Adam’s head back into the sandy shallows. The moist earth gave under his cheek. Water splashed up over his face again.
Borthwick’s voice cut through the hiss of the current and the roaring of the crowd. “Enough.”
Jacobs’ breath was a hot pulse against Adam’s cheek. The fury roiling through him tightened at Borthwick’s haughty command.
“Did you not hear me?” Borthwick snapped.
Jacobs bit out the words with a grunt of effort as he pushed Adam deeper. “He needs… to bloody… learn.”
Water flooded his mouth, and Adam wondered, with a vague surprise, whether Jacobs actually meant to kill him.
A crack sounded through the hot, still air, loud and sharp as a rifle shot.
Jacobs froze.
Something dripped onto Adam’s skin, warm and slick in contrast to the cooler water of the stream.
Adam’s shoulder howled with relief as Jacobs loosened his grip. He lifted his head from the water, coughing out what he had inhaled.
Propping himself up with a shaking arm, he glanced at the boulder at the edge of camp.
The rock was empty. Vanika was gone.
Victory rushed over him giddily as he staggered to his feet, clothes plastered to his body with water and sand.
The feeling died as he looked at Jacobs.
The man’s shirt was torn. Where the fabric parted at the back of his shoulder, pale skin was marred by a bloody red gash.
Borthwick faced them with his whip casually unfurled at his side.
“Jesus Christ,” Adam breathed out as shock washed over him.
Ellie watched from behind the circle of soldiers, her face drawn with horrified surprise.
Borthwick had given Jacobs the full fury of his flail. The injury needed stitches—dozens of them. The scar would be there for the rest of Jacobs’ life. Adam couldn’t even imagine how much pain the man was in right now.
Not that he showed it. All Adam could read on Jacobs’ face was cold fury as tension stretched between him and Borthwick like the plucked string of a cello.
A whip wasn’t meant to be used on a man like that. Adam wouldn’t be able to stand by and let Borthwick strike out with it again—not even against a man like Jacobs.
That left him wondering, bizarrely, if he was about to throw himself into a fight to protect a man who had just tried to kill him.
Jacobs’ shirt had pulled open to the waist. The tattoo on his chest was fully visible now, covering the flat surface of his left pectoral.
A pair of swords crossed beneath a broken tower. Over it, a Latin motto blazed in blocky capitals.
PER ARDUA
Adam had always had a knack for Latin. He translated the words by reflex.
Through difficulty.
The soldiers watched Jacobs like a feral animal that had just wandered into their camp. A few put their hands on their rifles.
Blood glazing down his back, Jacobs pinned Borthwick with a glare that would’ve turned Adam’s blood to ice.
It felt like a promise.
Then he walked away.
Singh Rao came to Borthwick’s side. “Colonel, the girl is missing.”
Borthwick’s attention fixed on Adam with an intensity that stripped him bare. “Tie him up. The woman, too.”
A pair of men stepped in to follow the order, others cocking their rifles at Adam’s head. He let them wrench his arms behind his back and lash them there… and tried not to worry that his likelihood of surviving the day might now lie in the hands of a twelve-year-old girl.