She leaned forward, catching a finger between her teeth. Biting down, trying to gnaw the digit off and spit it back at him, she tasted blood. Heartened by her progress, she continued to grind her teeth through flesh and on into bone.
She heard the rapist scream in agony and her breasts were momentarily forgotten in the interests of retrieving his hand before she did any more damage.
‘Rutting whore!’ he screamed. The first punch glanced off her temple; compared with the agony in her groin, she barely felt it. Hannah wished it had broken her jaw or crushed her nose, because then the worst would be behind her, but as a harbinger of brutality yet to come, the blow to her temple was about the cruellest thing her attackers could have done.
The breast grabber leaned back, free fist aloft, ready to pummel her into unconsciousness, but she maintained her death-grip on his ruined finger. As his warm blood trickled into her mouth she promised herself she would not let go, no matter how hard or how often they beat her, that finger was never going back.
The punch never landed.
Churn Prellis took the first Malakasian in a full sprinting tackle. The would-be rapist was rearing back to slug Hannah across the face; an easy target. Churn’s body blocked the sun for an instant before he carried the soldier – and most of his finger – across the road in a tangled pile of limbs. Horrified, Hannah spat an irregular chunk of flesh into the dirt before lifting her head hesitantly.
The remaining two attackers rolled from her body, stumbled to their feet and hurried to assist their companion. While Hannah self-consciously adjusted her clothing, fastening her jeans and pulling down her shirt, she caught sight of the tangle of flailing arms and legs; although there were three of them, it looked like her assailants were not having an easy time of it.
She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and came away with a thin smear of blood that ran from her wrist to her fingertips. Suddenly she started shaking. Convulsions began in her bloodstained fingers, moving up her arms to her chest. Wave after wave of rattling shudders wracked her thin form and she started panting breathlessly. Her throat felt raw from screaming.
Ignoring the melee going on beside her, Hannah, still hunched in a foetal position, tried to focus her tear-filled eyes on the smooth leather tops of her Nikes. They were dusted in pale beige; she thought she might reach out and scribble a message across each one: ‘This is only a dream,’ or ‘No more spicy Kung Pao, silly.’
Struggling to sit up, she wrapped her shivering arms around her knees. She feared the pain in her groin would force her to lie back down or, worse, to pass out, but she was terrified of what might happen if she retreated into unconsciousness. Her would-be rescuer was one man against three, after all. She bit her tongue until she tasted her own blood, then pushed her palms against the gritty dirt road and wrestled herself to her knees. Pale yellow flashes of light burst and faded before her eyes and she felt tears begin to carve thin streams through the dirt on her cheeks.
Hannah drew several stabilising breaths, then turned to watch her saviour battling her three assailants. She felt sorry she could not help him, but she was both surprised and delighted by what she saw: the big man, the one who had so deftly dragged the breast-grabber from his perch on her stomach, was winning handily. Two of the three would-be rapists were already motionless, their bodies sprawled in awkward, unnatural positions on the far side of the road. The third was hanging on the larger man’s back, looking comically like a child getting a piggy-back ride; he held both arms firmly about her saviour’s neck, trying with all his might to strangle his muscle-bound opponent.
While Hannah watched, the burly rescuer reached up with one hand and grasped the rapist’s forearms, but he made no effort to pull them away; rather, it looked as if he was trying to keep them held firmly about his throat. Perhaps he was ensuring the impromptu acrobat would not decide to let go suddenly and beat a hasty retreat.
Then the bigger man reached around and placed the flat of his free palm against the small of the rider’s back, a sort of clumsy, inside-out hug.
Transfixed by the curious struggle, like some ancient ritualistic dance, Hannah nearly forgot the pain in her gut and the swelling in her breasts. At first she couldn’t work out what her grim-faced rescuer was planning to do, and she wondered how long he could remain standing with the man in black strangling him so ardently. Then his strategy became clear. Gripping his attacker’s arms and back, the giant bent at the knees before leaping as far as he could into the air then, twisting, he brought the full force of his weight down on the smaller man’s body. Whump! Their impact with the dirt road sounded like gas escaping through a pressure release valve. Hannah felt certain the third rapist was dead; surely no one could have survived a landing like that. She hoped it had really hurt.
Hannah was still seated in the middle of the road when her saviour rolled over, checked to be sure none of his opponents were conscious – or maybe alive – and pushed himself to his feet. He strode silently to where she was now kneeling and squatted down on his haunches. Hannah had a flashback to natural history programmes about the lives and habits of the great silverback mountain gorilla. The man, now motionless, stared at her as if waiting for her to try to escape. From the look of his clothes he was from the same Renaissance troupe.
‘Oh my God,’ she cried aloud, suddenly realising the powerful young man might have beaten the others away so he could have her for himself, ‘please, don’t hurt me, please.’ The tears came again as she begged, ‘Please, I didn’t do anything to them, I didn’t say anything, I just needed to get to a phone.’
Gingerly, she tried to slide backwards, beyond the silent giant’s reach, but her legs failed. Shivering, she grasped at the loose sleeves of her coat and made a vain effort to cover the button and fly of her jeans with an improvised Gore-tex chastity belt.
‘Not again,’ she pleaded, ‘not again. I can’t take it-’
Churn didn’t move. The girl wore no armour and he couldn’t see any weapons, so she couldn’t be a soldier. And those colours – was she trying to attract attention to herself? She was so small, so helpless; she looked like something he had seen once in a picture, an illegal painting of sea nymphs hidden in a partisan’s basement. He had heard stories of sea nymphs too, and their magical powers. They would attract sailors with their beauty and their bright colours, like this woman’s bright colours, then they would lure the men out to sea, or into the waiting maw of some ravenous flesh-eating creature.
He reached out with one massive paw to feel the smooth texture of her odd white, blue and yellow shoes. They were the most strange and beautiful shoes he had ever seen; he thought they might shine even brighter if he dusted off some of the dirt that had built up on them. Brushing his fingers gently across their surface, Churn drew back suddenly when the young woman bellowed a terrified scream and kicked him hard across the chin.
Unfazed by the blow, the big Pragan backed away a few paces, hoping that would put the sea nymph more at ease. She continued to cry and carry on in her strange language, so Churn decided it was time to hand any further investigation over to Hoyt. He had beaten the soldiers; Hoyt could worry about communicating with the sea nymph. Churn searched the hillside for his friend; spotting Hoyt sitting complacently on a fallen log near the opposite side of the roadway, he gesticulated in a series of rapid signs.
‘No, I don’t think she is a sea nymph, Churn,’ Hoyt Navarra replied calmly, ‘but she’s certainly not from around here.’ He stood and came forward slowly so as not to alarm the already terrified young woman any further. ‘And back away from her will you?’ he chided; ‘I’d kick at you too if you were hovering over me like the rutting Twinmoon.’