Darren Craske - The equivoque principle

'Who the devil just hit me?' he snarled, as Butter helped him to his feet.

'That'd be me, mate,' said the gruff voice from the darkness, as a man with a grubby face stepped forth into the hazy light. 'My first blow might not 've done the trick-but I guarantee you, my second one will,' the man roared, as he slashed at the air with his wooden pole.

It came down in an arc, narrowly missing Quaint, striking the stone ground. Quaint quickly stepped towards the man, and stamped all his weight upon the tip of the wooden pole pulling it from the man's hand onto the ground. As the shadowed man tried in vain to wrest it from under Quaint's heel, the conjuror kicked up with his boot as hard as he could, and the metal cap on his heel made contact with the man's face. Quaint watched with a certain sense of satisfaction as the bridge of the man's nose split in half, spraying a saturated curtain of bright red blood into the air. Quaint towered over the man, brandishing the wooden stave.

'Now listen to me, my good man, I'm sorry about all that, but you attacked me first…I was merely defending myself,' he said, apologetically. 'We don't wish for any trouble, we're only searching for a friend of ours-a big, tall gentleman with a beard-about so high.' Quaint held his hand about a foot above his head. 'I don't suppose you've seen him about anywhere have you?'

'Course I ain't!' spat the bloodied man.

'Worth a try, I suppose.'

'I don't give a rat's arse why you're here, mate,' said the bull of a man. 'You ain't gonna be around for much longer-you're dead meat!'

'Be reasonable, there's a good fellow. If we've stumbled upon your sleeping place, we apologise,' exclaimed Quaint, holding his hands up in appeal. 'We'll just be on our way, and no harm done, eh?'

'You ain't goin' nowhere-I ain't finished with you yet,' the bull yelled, as he pulled a small switchblade from his rear pocket. He cut the air, inches from Quaint's face. 'By the time I'm done with you, Quaint, you'll be pickin' up your teeth with broken fingers!'

'I won't, if it's all the same to you,' said Quaint.

'Boss,' said Butter into Quaint's ear. 'How does he know your name?'

Quaint froze. 'That's a thoroughly good question.'

'All you need to know, old man, is that my boss has paid me to make sure you don't walk out've this marketplace in one piece,' the man brandished the knife menacingly. 'And I'm going to make sure I earn every damn penny of it!'

'Good for you. Although, I feel it only fair to warn you; I used to box at county level, and was unbeaten for eight consecutive years! If it's a fight you're looking for, then congratulations-you just found one,' Quaint clenched his jaw, and pulled off his overcoat, throwing it aside onto the sodden floor. He pushed his curly, grey-brown fringe away from his eyes, and raised his fists. 'You'll last about three minutes by the looks of you.'

'Yeah? Then you'll have plenty of time to take on the rest of that lot then,' said the rough-voiced man, pointing the far entrance as the main doors opened.

Quaint's eyes were naturally drawn to the sight at the end of the market. Early evening moonlight flooded in through the open doors, framing the silhouettes of a large group of grunting men approaching him at pace. They sneered, they jeered, and they cursed-each one with a fixed intention-to exact violence upon their target.

Quaint eyed the grizzled bunch. 'Brace yourself, Butter.'

Butter swallowed hard. 'This is going to hurt, isn't it, boss?'

'Only if they hit you.'

'What next we do then, boss? We run or we fight?'

'Considering the numbers, not to mention the obvious disposition of those chaps, if we had a choice, I would have to say that perhaps discretion was the order of the day.'

'Then we run?'

'The problem is, Butter-we don't have a choice. This place seems to have only one entrance…and one exit, and we have to get through that lot to reach it.'

'Fight it is then?'

'Afraid so, old chum,' Quaint suddenly sprinted towards the oncoming rush of men, and launched himself upon the nearest one to him. His fists flailed wildly about. Within seconds, the pack of men was upon him, but Cornelius Quaint was not a man to go down without a fight. 'Steel yourself, Butter!' yelled Quaint, like a battle cry, as he left his Inuit companion behind him.

Butter shot a nervous glance from Quaint to the looming storm of men, and then back to Quaint again. 'Boss, what do these men want with us?'

'Who knows,' replied Quaint, head-butting a man who'd just caught him a nasty blow on the jaw. 'We'll ask questions once we're done.'

'What shall I do, boss? I do not like to fight!'

'It's a simple theory, Butter-hit as many men as you can, as hard as you can-and don't stop until you're the only one left standing,' shouted Quaint in reply as he jostled with a heavy-set foe. 'If it makes it easier-imagine they're a pack of walruses!' He linked both his hands and smashed them down hard onto his foe's back, bringing his knee up at the same time. The man hit the floor.

Butter gritted his teeth, and threw himself into the raging pack.

'Good lad,' said Quaint with a grin, but he couldn't keep his eyes on Butter long-he had more pressing matters of his own to consider.

As Quaint was the first to attack, his group of opponents was quite a bit larger than Butter's, and his furious fighting had to increase in ferocity also. No quarter could be spared, and he was damn sure none would be given. Drawing his fist back as far as he could, battling against grabbing hands from the rear, Quaint threw another punch at an assailant. The man tried to shrug it off, but the sheer force of will behind the showman's blow had sent him staggering off balance, wheezing like a prize-fighting boxer caught on the ropes. The man teetered, only his body's reflexes keeping him standing, and then he crashed unconscious onto the wet stone floor.

Given a little respite from the grappling pack, Quaint quickly joined Butter's side, just in time. 'Keep your back to me!' he commanded. 'Get in as close as you can like a rugger scrum. Don't let them land a solid shot. Got that?'

'I will try my best, boss,' said Butter, surveying the swathes of clenched fists, raised weapons and gritted teeth before him. 'But these odds do not favour us.'

'What have I told you before, my friend?' said Quaint, snatching up his unconscious attacker's wooden stave from the ground. 'Always play against the odds-it makes things far more satisfying.'

'Only if you win,' whispered Butter to himself.

Quaint threw himself into the mass of men, and was doing his best to disarm as many as possible with a few well-placed jabs with the stave. Considering the odds were indeed stacked against him, he was doing rather well. Using the stave as a brace, Quaint threaded the wooden post behind an assailant's arm, and wrenched it back as far as he could. The man screamed in agony as the bones in his forearm snapped. His metal staff fell to the ground with a heavy clang, and Quaint quickly snatched it up. Trading up on his weapons, he brought the metal pole into contact with as many heads as he could.

Quaint hated physical violence-but that wasn't to say he was no good at it. Many decades before in his wild, impetuous youth, he had befriended a bamboo-seller whilst travelling through the Yahn province of Northern China. The man had taught Quaint some basic attack and defence techniques-most of them involving a sturdy three-foot bamboo cane. The young Cornelius Quaint was a hungry learner, and this was advantageous considering the long metal pole that he now brandished between his hands. He jabbed frantically at the baying crowd, as sprays of blood smattered his hands and cuffs. Men were falling to the ground every second, clutching battered body parts, but still the combatants mindlessly continued their path, clambering over the bodies of the fallen to get at Quaint and his companion.