“Both at once,” Jak said.
RYAN COULD HAVE written the script for the coming hand-to-hand conflict, and he’d have been pretty close to the final, predictable outcome. J.B. could have done the same.
Just as Mildred was, possibly, the finest shot in the whole of Deathlands, so Jak was very probably the finest exponent of hand-to-hand lethal fighting that Ryan had ever known.
His lean 120-pound body was almost unbelievably agile, his fighting reflexes acutely honed, like a fine, ivory-hilted cutthroat razor.
“Won’t last more than a short minute,” Ryan whispered across to Krysty.
Jim Owsley overheard him and gave out a raucous, bellowing laugh of derision. “Right there, outlander. Inside a minute and the kid’ll be dead meat.”
Ryan didn’t bother to reply. He knew what he knew, and it wouldn’t be long before Jak proved him right.
To an outsider the fight looked absurdly unbalanced and unfair.
Two huge men were stripped to the waist, in belted jeans and knee-high boots. Their hairless bodies showed signs of running to fat, with a number of deep purple, weeping sores dappling them, but their jowled faces were wreathed in eager, anticipatory leering grins, and they were flexing their massive hands as they both dropped into a half crouch.
Jak, facing them, looked like a starving waif. He had taken off his canvas camouflage jacket and chose to fight in his ragged, short-sleeved, gray fur jacket.
Even Joshua Wolfe looked uncomfortable, glancing at Ryan. “You sure about this?”
“Sure.”
“Well, may the Lord Jesus, Blessed Savior of the merciful stranglehold and the knee-drop pick the winners of this combat. Go to it, boys.”
Bull and Lee weren’t particularly triple stupes. It was just that they hadn’t traveled all that much around Deathlands and had little experience of serious fighting outside their secluded enclave. It was easy enough to beat the crap out of some of the younger men living in the ville, and the fragile youth with the mane of tumbling white hair had to be just there for the taking.
And the first few seconds of the “fight” confirmed what nearly everyone expected.
The moment the word was given by Brother Wolfe, Jak turned away and ran from the two hulking men, his feet barely seeming to brush the earth as he glanced back over his shoulder to see if he was being pursued.
He was, the brothers splitting up and readying themselves to close in slowly on him from both sides.
“Yo, catch him!”
“Stop runnin’ and turn and fight, kid!”
“Shoot him if he tries to break out of the ville,” Wolfe ordered.
Jak opened up a gap of about forty yards, stopping before he reached the edge of the settlement. He paused for a moment, facing the heavily built pair of brothers, his arms dangling loosely at his sides.
Lee and Bull paused in their pursuit, grinning at each other, fingers clasping and unclasping. Ryan could smell the rancid odor of their sweat from where he watched.
“Nigh on a half minute already, outlander,” Jim Owsley said with a sneer. Ryan said nothing.
Jak gave the brothers a mocking half bow, then exploded into movement, powering across the clearing toward them, his legs a blur of white speed.
Suddenly he changed direction, reversing his attack, going into a series of snapping back handsprings.
“Look out!” Joshua Wolfe called, but his warning was drowned out by the roar of the spectators.
Jak was so much faster than the Burrows boys that neither of them managed to lay a hand on him. He whipped between them at extraordinary speed, and everyone heard a double cracking sound, like two dry branches being crushed at once.
Very few people had good enough eyesight to make out precisely what had happened. All most of them heard was the snapping noise, followed immediately by a double scream, high and thin like a boar being gelded.
Lee and Bull Burrows were down in the dirt, both clutching at their knees.
They rolled over and over, their faces contorted with a twin rictus of rending agony, a feeble, mewing cry erupting from their bloodied lips, eyes squeezed shut. ;
“Did he…?” Mildred said wonderingly. “Damned if I could make out how he did that.”