The brute growled and pawed at him again.
Noted, Kingsley thought as he tried to stay upright, the left side of the jaw isn’t their weak spot. He wasn’t pinning much hope on the right side of the jaw either.
Kingsley had automatically thrust his throbbing fist under his armpit, but he dragged it out and jabbed at the Neanderthal as he advanced – not with any hope of doing damage, and with some hope of not connecting, but just to keep the blackguard at bay. The last thing Kingsley wanted to do was to wrestle with the barrel-chested brute. Grappling was a shortcut to being torn apart; nimbleness was the only answer. Keep moving, he told himself, don’t get caught.
A twang came from behind him. His attacker blinked. He fumbled at his shoulder, then staggered and fell. ‘To your right!’ Evadne cried. Kingsley twisted just in time to avoid a shoulder charge that would have knocked him right over the dockyards and into the river, but was quick enough to launch a kick at the ham-like buttocks sailing past. The extra padding there meant that his foot didn’t suffer the same fate as his fist, but it knew it had done a good day’s work, nonetheless. The extra impetus sent the Neanderthal crashing into a pile of muck that released an odour not unlike hell. Undignified, but not seriously inconveniencing.
Another twang and a second Neanderthal fell. Kingsley saw then that his job was to keep the Neanderthals at bay while Evadne used her dart gun to dispatch as many as possible. The trouble was that the Neanderthals had come to the same conclusion and were swarming up the steps of the market cross. Two smaller brutes circled him, with a certain level of amusement at his more and more frantic glances to where Evadne was calmly shooting, reloading and shooting again.
‘What, only two of you?’ Kingsley tried. He bobbed and then drew back, retreating until he came up against the remains of a cart that had been left there. A huge fist whistled past and the Neanderthal laughed. ‘Stand still, grub!’
‘So you can break all the bones in my body? Of course!’ Kingsley dropped his hands and came to attention, smiling.
Both Neanderthals frowned at this display, but obviously thought it too good an opportunity to argue with. They advanced, arms spread wide.
That’s right, just a few more steps.
The puddle wasn’t deep, but it was wet enough for both Neanderthals to look down at what they’d trodden in – which gave Kingsley time to produce the solid length of wood he’d been working at behind his back, thankful that the derelict nature of the cart meant quick and easy disassembly.
Kingsley wound up, spared a hope that he wasn’t simply about to irritate his foes, and then swung.
He almost lifted himself off his feet with the effort, but the length of wood caught the first Neanderthal on the side of the head – the left, again – with a sound like a giant coconut shy. The blow toppled him against his comrade. They struck heads. The result was a double coconut sound and they both went to their knees, sprawling in the mud and water.
When they looked up, they’d stopped smiling. The first had blood dripping down his scalp and into his straggly, sandy beard. He wiped it away. ‘I’ll eat your heart for that, grub.’
Kingsley was shoved in his back, propelled towards the grub-hating brute who had thrown his arms out, ready for a spine-cracking hug. Desperately, Kingsley allowed his momentum to carry him forward. Ignoring a basic rule of hand-to-hand combat (Don’t go to ground!) he threw himself to one side of the Neanderthal’s grasp, hoping that he could roll to his feet in time to meet any new attacker.
A heavy-gutted Neanderthal loomed over him for an instant, but his eyes rolled up and he crumpled, going to his knees and then falling. Kingsley managed to avoid being crushed, but when he bounced to his feet he was surrounded. A ring of four foes faced him. Three others were climbing the market cross and were reaching for Evadne, who had scrambled up as high as she could go. She had a leg hooked around the top of the cross. One hand held the dart gun and the other slashed with her sabre. In the middle of all the mayhem, Kingsley found a split-second to admire her swordplay, her aim and the quality of her taunting – her descriptions of her attackers’ physical failings and her estimations of their family origins made them even more determined to drag her from her perch. She’d thrown back her hood and her hair flashed silver as she swivelled, keeping her attackers at bay with such elan that it was worthy of applause.
Despite this, Kingsley was under no illusions about their predicament. Things could be going better, he thought as he feinted right, then sprinted through the gap that caused, barely avoiding clutching hands. He leaped over another pile of muck that his pursuer opted to plough through.
Three Neanderthals were stretched out, slumbering, but they still had seven to contend with.
Kingsley reached the wall of the inn. He whirled. Kingsley essayed a jab at one of them, who instinctively pulled away, then advanced. Kingsley lunged one way, then the other, but they’d learned. They closed, flanking him to cut off any avenue of escape.
Kingsley swallowed. His teeth buried themselves in his lower lip. He knew, then, that he was standing on the precipice, in one of those moments that would determine the course of his life. If the Neanderthals took him, he would end up dead or worse – and he’d be unable to help Evadne. He could surrender and make sure of this fate, or he could continue to fight and end up the same.
His life’s possibilities had narrowed to two equally unpalatable choices. He was trapped.
He blinked. Trapped? No answers? It was back to the Basic Principles. He remembered one of his favourites: Take advantage of whatever is available in order to free yourself.
What was available to him? Backed against a well-made stone wall with his only source of help under siege herself, he had little at his command.
Except surrendering to his wild self.
It burst free as if it had been waiting for this opportunity, and he threw back his head and howled. It had the unexpected effect of momentarily stopping the advance of the Neanderthals.
Suddenly, in the heat of the fight, Kingsley’s world was richer. Sounds were more thrilling, smells were manifold and each told its own story. Removing the strictures of civilisation had allowed him to see what needed to be done. Decency, honour, mercy: none of them had any place here.
He was fighting for his life.
Fiercely, teeth bared, he lashed out and clawed at the eyes of the nearest of the advancing Neanderthals – not to do serious damage, but merely to distract. While that one snarled and staggered, Kingsley snapped a kick right at the groin of the fellow who was about to seize him from his left. He didn’t take any time to revel in the agonised yelp that signalled a successful strike, or to marvel that the Neanderthals shared a classic weak spot with their cousins. He stooped and dragged up a handful of mud that he planted in the open mouth of his more wary third assailant, then raked his hand upward to plug the enormous nostrils. He clawed them into the bargain. The Neanderthal tried to shriek, but the intake of breath only meant he sucked the mud straight down his throat. Choking, he staggered away, eyes bulging, grasping at his own neck.
One left.
Kingsley moved on his toes, snarling, looking for an opportunity. The blood roared in his veins as he circled, the suddenly careful Neanderthal circling in the opposite direction, one hand extended. Hardly thinking, noticing details at a level beneath the conscious, Kingsley saw the sweat on the brute’s brow and knew that his grip would be slippery. He saw the pulse beating in the bull neck and instantly knew the vein would be well protected. The boots on his foe’s feet were solid – stay away from a kick! – but were extremely heavy. He’d be slow to move.
Kingsley danced to his right. As expected, the Neanderthal followed, but Kingsley had judged nicely. The pair of raised cobbles caught his foe’s heavy boot. The brute went to shift his weight and Kingsley flicked his fingers at him. Not much mud was left, but the Neanderthal flinch
ed as the patter struck his face.
It was enough. Kingsley crouched, took up a loose cobble, leaped and brought the stone down. Not on the Neanderthal’s head, but on his neck where the pulse had fluttered.
The lout fell like a tree. Panting with effort and wild exhilaration, Kingsley danced around him, growling deep in his chest. He wanted to take to him with his teeth, to rip at his throat, to feel blood on lips.
Kingsley took a step, then reeled away. He crouched against the wall of the inn, trembling, staring at his fallen foe, his breath coming in ragged gasps. There, in the mud and rain, he had a moment of clarity. He understood, at least in part, the allure of the wild, most especially in circumstances such as these. Throwing aside the conventions of civilisation was liberating. More than that, it was, thrilling!
Exactly like escaping from a trap.
Fighting for one’s life was existence brought to its fundamentals. There was no time for niceties, no time for hesitation. Survival was a matter of split-second opportunities. A chance to defeat one’s foe came in a heartbeat and had to be taken then, there, with all the force that could be summoned.
The trappings of civilisation were an impediment in a fight such as he’d just been through. It was like wearing a lead overcoat – an unnecessary, constricting burden. Civilisation was a countermanding voice, insisting that one couldn’t claw at the eyes, that a foe should be given respect, that cunning was unworthy.
In such circumstances, civilisation was a shortcut to death. The pack who raised Kingsley, who saved him from death, had no need for civilisation. They were wild. They were free.
Kingsley heard its call and wanted to run with it. With the license granted to the wild, without the restraining influences of civilisation, ruthlessness wasn’t just acceptable, it was laudable!
Still crouched, still panting, still with the heavy cobblestone in his hand, he felt the rain begin to fall. It washed away the sweat on his brow. He tasted salt on his lips.
He was sceptical. He always had trouble with simple answers to complex situations. Life was rarely as straightforward as his wild self would like it to be. The wild might be the natural state of humanity but, like it or not, Kingsley Ward lived in a civilised world. Besides, some of these layers that civilisation brought – some of these useless trappings, according to his wild self – were worthwhile. In a fight, the wild world had no time for compassion, or for mercy, but Kingsley knew that the world, and he, would be worse off without them.
Sometimes we can be better than our natures.
He dropped the cobblestone. He stepped over the Neanderthal and looked for Evadne, only to find her serenely descending from the market cross, the last of the comatose Neanderthals scattered around her like pagan worshippers prostrate in the face of the arrival of a goddess. The sight was so bizarre and so civilised – so unwild – that Kingsley was cheered.
He touched his ribs. They were hurting, even though he couldn’t remember actually being struck there. Most of his muscles were trembling. His stomach was hollow, a gaping void inside him. The square was strewn with Neanderthals and Kingsley dully noted how Evadne had taken care of those he’d inconvenienced. With more interest, he noted how each of them, underneath their workaday jacket, was wearing an unlikely broad belt that sparkled as if sequin-strewn.
Adjusting the phlogiston satchel over her shoulder, she came to him, put a hand on his shoulder and peered into his face. Her hair was wet, her eyes concerned. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Not seriously. Bruised ribs.’
‘You did well.’
‘Thanks. So did you.’
Evadne was looking at him over the top of her blue-tinted spectacles. ‘Do you remember that secret you were going to tell me? I don’t think you really have to spell it out for me.’
Kingsley looked down, looked up, looked around, looked anywhere but at this remarkable young woman who was still there, despite having seen – knowing! – the secret Kingsley had inside him.
‘Perhaps,’ he mumbled. Then he straightened. ‘Which puts me at a disadvantage in our secret-sharing pact.’
‘Don’t worry. I don’t intend to renege. A pact is a pact.’
Kingsley was spared from responding when the patrons of the inn began to creep out from where they’d been hiding. The first, the most curious, was a short man, even shorter than those behind him. He was young, with awkwardly cropped hair and a jacket that looked as if had seen better days a century or so ago. ‘You beat the ogres,’ he said, eyes wide, staring at the Neanderthals, then at Kingsley and Evadne. ‘You and the ghost beat the monsters.’
At first, Kingsley had trouble understanding. The vowels were long and thick, the words stretched, but he put the sense together. ‘She’s not a ghost.’
The curious one and his friends – several with tankards in hand – chose to differ. ‘White skin, hair. Ghost.’
Arguing wasn’t likely to get them anywhere. Without thinking, Kingsley took her hand. ‘The ogres will wake up soon. They eat people.’
Kingsley and Evadne crossed the square while the patrons of the inn tried to see who could run the fastest in the opposite direction.
After spending the night in two small but clean rooms that Evadne found at another Demimonde establishment, it had been Kingsley’s turn to lead the way. At the Royal Dockyards, he negotiated passage with a boatman who was more interested in Kingsley’s silver coins than in his strange way of speaking and even stranger garb.
For a moment, as the boat neared Greenwich, Kingsley was convinced that they had been brought to the wrong place. The riverbanks were crowded with people. They clustered in small groups, on wharfs and along the water’s grassy edge, looking upriver to the horror that was London ablaze, but it wasn’t that which so disconcerted Kingsley. The entire shape of the park and its environs threw him akilter because the most familiar buildings weren’t there. The palace renovations that would eventually become the beginnings of the massive Naval College were under way. The rest of the rambling old palace took up much of the bank, a tower was where the observatory should be, and the park itself was much more higgledy-piggledy than the one he knew – the one he’d seen only the night before.
The night before and two hundred and fifty years from now, he reminded himself.
Kingsley pushed through the crowd on the dock, while Evadne kept her head down, shielding her memorable face. The people displayed an odd mixture of attitudes. Many were that most recognisable of types: the ghoulish onlooker, the sort that Kingsley imagined had been on the outskirts of human disasters forever, probably standing near the ruins of Troy and commenting on the size of that horse. Others were praying for deliverance, either mumbling and downcast or wildly imploring the heavens. One wild-eyed fellow, bearded and surprisingly sprightly, was doing his best to convince everyone that this was the beginning of the Day of Judgement, it being the devilish year of 1666, so they’d be better off preparing themselves than gawking.
Kingsley shivered at his words, which were delivered with a chilling, matter-of-fact voice, as if the man were recommending a particular cut of beef for dinner. No beseecher, him.
Evadne gripped his arm. Standing at the back of the crowd was a tall, cadaverous figure in robes. It was by itself, a gap having opened around it as if it were blighted.
Spawn.
Kingsley had to steel himself to keep walking and not run. The Spawn couldn’t be looking for them – Evadne and he didn’t exist in this time, so to speak.
He needn’t have worried. The creature didn’t stir as they walked past, nor notice the way Evadne’s hand tightened on the sabre under her coat. Its attention was on the distant flames.
They found a path leading up from the river between two garden beds alive with hollyhocks, foxgloves and masses of daisies. ‘They’ll observe and report, no doubt.’ Evadne’s voice was flat and deadly. ‘The
Immortals will want to know what’s happening in the city.’
‘At least we have confirmation that the Immortals are here, after all.’
‘Mm.’ Evadne’s eyes tracked the Spawn. ‘Let’s not lose it.’
They skirted the Queen’s House. It was new, to their eyes, and magnificent – and looked decidedly lived in. Smoke came from the chimneys and the grounds on the east side included what was most definitely a kitchen garden.
They lingered a moment at a low brick wall before they broached the Giant Steps that joined the upper and lower parts of the park. In the distance to the east, Kingsley was charmed to see a herd of deer cropping the grass in front of the woods.
On top of the hill was a dismal sight. As they drew closer, Kingsley could see that the tower was derelict. Weeds, rampant and lank, infested the area. The battlements were uneven where stones had fallen and not been replaced – or had been stolen.
Kingsley leaned against a useful fir tree. ‘So the observatory must be built in the future?’
‘Their future,’ Evadne said. She rested a hand on her satchel. ‘Our past.’
The observatory wasn’t the only thing missing. The Conduit House that provided the entrance to the tunnel leading to the Hall of the Immortals wasn’t there either. Evadne stalked about, her hands on her hips, glancing up at the unfamiliar buildings on the summit of the hill. ‘Where’s the entrance to the Immortals’ lair?’
Kingsley gestured towards the remains of the tower. ‘I’d be tempted to look around there. I’m sure a ruin would be a fine place to hide a secret entrance, aren’t you?’
As fortresses went, Kingsley decided, the structure on the top of the hill would have been modest, even in its heyday. The property wasn’t extensive, ranging barely over the summit of the humble hill. Even so, the walls of the two towers were still impressively thick. Kingsley ran his hand over the stone, damp from the recent rain, and imagined the long-ago stonemasons at work, levelling and settling the huge blocks with the barest of tools.
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