Grindhelm's Key

by Nick Moseley

  The crowd shuffled its feet and murmured. Nobody spoke up. Every pair of eyes was nervously watching the Line as they spread out among the stalls. Trev was forced to move further away from the booth, losing sight of it. He reeled off a string of swear-words under his breath.

  ‘The police ought to be doing something about it,’ the leader continued, ‘but the bloody government has tied their hands. So we’re going to do something about it. The ordinary, hard-working men and women you’ve treated as victims all these years.’

  He smacked his baseball bat into the palm of his hand. ‘Not. Any. More. Tonight, you’re getting a warning.’

  The remaining stallholders were being herded towards the dancefloor. Trev saw that the young woman he’d offended earlier was still sitting behind her wares, clutching her huge coffee cup in both hands. One of the invading Line members, a burly man with a jutting beer belly and no neck to speak of, approached her.

  ‘Move,’ he said. He tapped his bat on the table in front of her.

  She shook her head. ‘No. This is all I have. I’m not leaving it to you.’

  A cacophony of bangs and crashes indicated that the Line had set to work smashing the other stalls. It was pretty obvious why the big man wanted her out of the way.

  ‘Move!’ the man snarled. He swept the bat across the table, sending most of the “psychic artefacts” into the muddy slush underfoot. He then stamped on a couple of them for good measure.

  The stallholder’s response was to throw her coffee into his face.

  He yelled, the sound a combination of surprise and pain. He swiped at his eyes with one hand and swung his bat with the other. The stallholder was caught a glancing blow on the shoulder and fell sideways out of her chair. The big man got a hand under the table and threw it aside, leaving the injured woman exposed. He swung his bat high, his intention clear. At best he was going to hurt her badly; at worst, he was going to kill her.

  So Trev felt justified in punching him really hard in the kidneys.

  The effect was gratifying. The man dropped his bat and fell to his knees with a strangled gasp. Trev stepped past him and picked up the weapon. His pulse thundered in his ears. Bad Trev was taking control. He clenched his fist around the bat, fighting the urge to wind up like an MLB all-star and knock the Line thug’s head clean off his shoulders.

  ‘Go, quick,’ he said to the stallholder. She nodded, clambering upright with her one good arm. She turned to join the crowd of people milling about on the dancefloor, but not before kicking her assailant hard enough in the ribs to break a couple of them. He fell on his side with a low groan.

  ‘Oi!’ shouted a voice. Trev looked up. He’d been spotted. Two more of the black-clad Line members had seen their comrade go down and were rushing to his aid. As Trev went to meet them he felt Oscar drop out of the bottom of his coat.

  ‘I’ll find Sarah!’ the cat called out. Trev nodded absently, his attention on his next two targets.

  The first man came in at a charge, swinging his bat in a looping, overhand arc. Trev knocked it aside with ease and let his opponent’s momentum carry him past. As he went by Trev cracked him on the side of the knee, sending him sprawling, and continued the swing into the midriff of the second man, who folded around the bat with a whoof of lost breath. Trev carried on without breaking stride, leaving the two men in the mud.

  His casual gait belied the internal conflict he was suffering. Bad Trev had its hands on the steering wheel and Trev was leaning over from the passenger seat, trying to wrestle back some control. He was drawing more attention now. Another three Line members looked up from the stall they were wrecking and shouted at him. He strolled towards them, idly swinging his bat.

  SMASH HIS FACE IN, snarled the impulse in Trev’s mind as the first man rushed him. Trev sidestepped his wild swing and thumped his assailant in the kidneys, leaving him on his knees. The next two men attacked together. Trev laughed at them. Compared to sparring with Mishti Desai, these clowns might as well have written their plan of attack in an e-mail and sent it to him the previous day.

  He toyed with them for a moment, dodging and parrying. BREAK THEIR LEGS, howled Bad Trev. Trev strained against the impulse, instead crunching his bat into the larger man’s thumb. He screamed and dropped his weapon, clutching the broken digit. His colleague turned and tried to run, but Trev’s bat rapped him on the ankle. He crashed head-first into a nearby stall, which collapsed on top of him. Trev continued on his way, Bad Trev demanding that he go back and finish them off.

  By this time he’d caught the eye of the Line leader. ‘GET THAT WANKER!’ the man yelled. All around him black-clad figures straightened up from the smashed and splintered stalls and turned their heads to Trev, who carried on walking towards them as if he were a late-comer to a garden party. When he was a short distance away from the nearest group of Line members, he planted his feet and rested his bat across his shoulders in a deliberate imitation of their leader. He could see the booth now. It appeared untouched, although a trio of thugs had been destroying the stall next to it.

  There was a moment of quiet as everyone stared at him. The twitching and groaning bodies of Trev’s previous opponents were visible behind him; as a result nobody seemed to want to be the first to take him on. He let his eyes drift across the group, catching the gaze of as many as he could. Quite a few of them looked away.

  He spread his hands. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘I SAID GET HIM!’ roared the leader.

  At that point the real carnage began.

  The milling crowd of stallholders, dancers and other attendees had been intimidated by the masked Line thugs and their baseball bats, despite their greater numbers. Now they saw how reluctant the intruders were to face a lone man willing to stand up to them, and that intimidation melted away. They pushed against the cordon holding them back. Scuffles broke out. Shouts went up. Within seconds a huge brawl was taking place on the dancefloor.

  A wave of uncertainty ran through the Line members. Some of them took a few hesitant steps towards Trev, others towards the dancefloor. The majority, however, looked dumbly at their leader for instruction.

  Unlike his troops, he was unfazed by the shift in mood. He snapped out instructions, sending most of his people to shore up the disintegrating dancefloor cordon and a handful of his largest and meanest-looking thugs to deal with Trev.

  ‘Hurt him, then bring him here,’ he snapped.

  The group spread out and advanced. They didn’t rush and they didn’t have the amateurish look of Trev’s previous assailants. He still had the angry pulse of Bad Trev thumping in his temples, but his rational side had reasserted itself enough for him to assess the danger he was in.

  He’d taken down the first bloke by sucker-punching him, and the other five had been idiots who’d probably never even picked up a weapon before that night. The men coming after him now, however, were clearly no strangers to violence. Although Bad Trev’s influence had boosted his aggression and ruthlessness, it wasn’t the same as having a vapour weapon. The only combat skills he possessed were those he’d been learning from Desai, and he didn’t have the benefit of the lightning reflexes and calm composure that a vapour weapon would’ve given him. BRING THEM ON, Bad Trev jeered. His rational side was less enthusiastic. I’m about to get my head smashed in, he thought.

  He had two advantages. The first was that the inbound thugs had no idea what they were dealing with; he’d taken down six people, so they were a little wary of him. If they’d known how inept he really was, they wouldn’t have been advancing with such caution. His second advantage was the narrow aisles between the stalls. There was no way they could attack him en masse without getting in each others’ way and it would be difficult to surround him.

  Trev’s plan was still to get to the booth if he could. He couldn’t go straight for it, though. The Line bruisers were between it and him, and fighting his way through the whole bunch of them wasn’t an option. His only chance – other than just making a run for it
– was playing a dangerous game of hide-and-seek around the stalls. And he didn’t think his new playmates were going to stop and count to a hundred with their eyes closed.

  He gave them a cheeky wave and dropped back, ducking into a narrow gap between two of the stalls. One of them was the clothing stall he’d stopped at earlier, and the tall rails of garments hid him from sight. On the dancefloor the battle was still in full swing, and the racket it was making would cover any small sounds Trev made. On the flip-side, it meant that he wouldn’t hear his pursuers either.

  He moved quickly to the next aisle, keeping as low as he could. He hoped the thugs would stay cautious, expecting an ambush, while he looped all the way around them and back in the direction of the booth. Sadly, they didn’t. They were quick, efficient and coordinated. If the leader was ex-military, it was quite possible – if not probable – that his closest lieutenants would be too. They certainly operated as a unit.

  Trev scurried between the stalls, his thoughts racing. He needed a plan. The Line men hunting him seemed to be everywhere. They were driving him in the wrong direction, away from the booth and towards the dancefloor. Once there he’d be trapped between the two groups of thugs and it’d be all over. He had to break through the net his pursuers were closing around him and he had to do it quickly.

  He ducked into the shadows of yet another vintage clothing stall and peered through a gap. Black-clad figures moved along the aisles in every direction. If he could isolate one of them and take him down without his comrades noticing, he could slip through the line. It was a crap plan, he knew that. He also knew that he didn’t have any others. It would have to do.

  The men appeared to be evenly spaced, watching each other’s backs. Not all of them, though. One man was out of position, having become distracted by something on one of the stalls. An abandoned cash-box, perhaps. Trev could see a gap forming. He’d have a few seconds at most. He watched, waiting for the next nearest man to move out of sight behind a stall, before bolting from his hiding place. He channelled energy into his legs for a boost of speed. Across one aisle. A pause. Two seconds, three. Then he was rushing the stray thug, bat coming up, ready to get a blow into the man’s midriff to wind him and stop him from calling out.

  He didn’t get there.

  A black shape sprang out from behind a stall and crashed into him. Trev hit the ground and immediately rolled, a reflex action instilled by his training with Desai. It was just as well, because a baseball bat thumped into the mud where he’d fallen, missing him by inches. Trev came up onto one knee and swung his own bat into the attacker’s ribs. It was an inelegant strike but effective. The man let out a hoarse cry and collapsed, clutching his side.

  Trev couldn’t spare him a second thought as more men were rushing him. As he fended off the first thug, the realisation dawned on him that he’d walked into a trap. The stray man hadn’t been distracted by something on a stall; he’d been bait, inviting Trev to break through a gap that wasn’t really there while other Line men lurked in wait. I’m screwed, he thought.

  He parried a blow and tried to press his advantage, but his opponent dodged back and allowed one of his colleagues to pile in. Trev blocked the attack, aware that any moment he was going to be surrounded and brought down. Their leader had given the instruction for his men to “hurt him” and Trev wondered, with morbid curiosity, how enthusiastically that command would be carried out. Given the damage he’d already done to several of their number, he was willing to bet the answer was “very enthusiastically indeed”.

  He fell back, doing what he could to stay ahead of the men trying to outflank him. The thugs facing him kept him busy, waiting for their mates to close the circle around him. When that happened, the fight was going to end in a short flurry of cracked ribs, broken bones and missing teeth.

  Trev heard a shout from behind him. He risked a quick glance and saw that his time had run out. There were Line men at his back now, and in the aisles to the left and right. He was trapped.

  ‘You little prick,’ one of the men in front of him growled. ‘Think you’re a real hard-case, don’t you?’ He shook his head. ‘We’re going to put you in intensive care, my son.’

  ‘Get him!’ one of the others yelled.

  Trev raised his bat, ready to defend against the nearest enemy but knowing it was hopeless. The man brought his own weapon up, eyes bulging with homicidal intent, and a brown furry missile hit him from the side and bowled him over.

  The stalls erupted with snarling, growling and barking. The men charging Trev suddenly found themselves under attack by fast-moving things with four legs, wild eyes and a lot of teeth.

  The werewolves! Trev thought, with a rush of relief. He was sure he recognised Miss Pine’s wolf-form as she swept past, snapping at a fleeing thug’s ankles. Her fellow lupines appeared to be taking great pleasure in getting some payback on the Line, biting them, tearing at their clothes and jumping on them as they fell. Trev decided to get out of their way and clambered over a stall into the next aisle. He got his bearings and set off at a run towards the booth. The chances of anyone still being in it were slim, but he had to check.

  The battle on the dancefloor had expanded as the Line’s cordon dropped back. The outer edges of the brawl were now spilling into the market area; as Trev glanced across he saw the Line members were grouping up, forming a defensive block that was moving in the direction of the exit. He also saw the leader, bellowing instructions at his troops. It looked as if he’d ordered a retreat, albeit an organised one.

  Trev neared the booth. By some miracle it was still standing. The majority of its neighbours hadn’t been as fortunate, their wares scattered and fittings smashed. Trev was within a few yards when a group of four black-clad figures ran by, stooping to grab some of the spilled goods out of the mud. One of them had a backpack, into which they crammed their spoils. They turned towards the exit just as three people emerged from the booth.

  One of them was Sarah. With her was a slight figure in a grey overcoat whom Trev assumed was the unfortunately-named Berndt Bumberger. He barely gave the man a second glance, however, because his open-mouthed attention was on Sarah’s captor.

  ‘Holy shit,’ he whispered.

  Eighteen

  The last time Trev saw the man, he’d had a moustache rather than a beard. He’d also been walking out of a door having angrily threatened to kill Trev if their paths crossed again. It was a threat he was very capable of fulfilling, given that he was one of the most dangerous people in the supernatural world.

  What the hell is Ezekiel bloody Barker doing here? Trev asked himself. It wasn’t just a spanner in the works, it was the whole tool-kit and possibly the mechanic as well. Trev had hoped Sarah’s captor might be someone who could be reasoned with, or at least bargained with. Ezekiel Barker, however, was a rogue element. Once, he’d been a potential leader of the Custodians, though that was before he’d been displaced from his own time and turned into an assassin by the ghoulish Victorian scientist Francis Ducrow.

  There wasn’t time for Trev to give any more thought to the situation because the trio leaving the booth had run straight into the group of Line stragglers. There was a brief moment when it looked as if they might all take the British option of apologising without making eye contact and going their separate ways; then the Line went for their weapons. This proved to be an error.

  Barker was armed with nothing more than a long black umbrella. Against four opponents equipped with baseball bats he appeared to be at a disadvantage, but he was a highly-skilled swordsman with or without a vapour weapon. The first man to attack him found this out by being on the receiving end of a jab to the gut followed by an umbrella handle to the jaw. He folded quietly to the ground.

  Still outnumbered, Barker pressed his advantage before the remaining Line thugs could coordinate themselves. He sidestepped a hopeful swing from the next man and smashed his leg out from under him. As he fell, Barker shoved him into one of his comrades and the two of them went spraw
ling. They took one look at Barker advancing on them and scrambled to their feet to get away, one running, the other limping. Barker let them go.

  The fourth man seemed to have trouble deciding between fight and flight and opted to instead stand his ground and look frightened. As battle tactics went, this was unconventional stuff. Sarah demonstrated why Sun Tzu had left this particular strategy out of The Art of War by kicking the man squarely between the legs and following up with a very serviceable right hook. He went down, wracked by a new indecision: should he clutch his face or his crotch?

  Barker was heading for the exit before the last man had even hit the ground. Sarah went with him, gesturing for Bumberger to follow. He gave her a shake of the head in response, jerking a thumb in the direction of his booth. Trev couldn’t hear what was being said, but it wasn’t difficult to guess. Bumberger wasn’t willing to abandon his booth and whatever possessions he had inside it. Sarah gave a frustrated shrug and hurried after Barker, who slowed to let her catch up. His hand strayed to the inside pocket of his coat, as if checking something was still there.

  Trev worked his own way towards the exit, staying out of sight. He needed to get some idea of where Sarah and Barker were going or the night’s various inconveniences would be in vain. From the sound of things the Line’s fighting retreat was going to be passing through at any moment which raised the possibility of being caught between them and Barker. If that happened he was going to have the life expectancy of a snowman in the Sahara.

  Barker and Sarah pushed through the curtain. Trev hurried after them. Glancing to his left, he saw the man Sarah had knocked down was back on his feet. He’d retrieved his baseball bat and was sneaking up – a little gingerly – on Bumberger, who was surveying the broken stalls next to his booth. The Line man’s expression was murderous. He wasn’t happy about having his groin used for drop-kick practice and was going to make someone pay for it.