Jousting with the wood bats, striking and blocking and parrying thrusts, the men grunted and cursed. No protective headgear, no padding on their bodies. One of the men was clearly getting the better of the other. He was quicker and more aggressive and his strikes came in bursts of threes and fours, while the other man, slender and sandy-haired, seemed in pure defensive mode, blocking most of the thrusts, managing only an occasional counterpunch.
Stepping closer, he saw the young man’s face.
Flynn Moss.
No longer skinny, the kid had added a layer of muscle in the year since Thorn had last seen him.
The other guy was cut from coarser stuff. Two puncture wounds for eyes, a heavy nose, and a thug’s mouth with a belligerent jut of jaw. Rooted to the beam, whacking Thorn’s son, the guy was as pitiless and composed as a journeyman boxer taking out a lifetime of frustration, blow by blow, on his latest patsy.
Thorn kept his distance, circling the men, trying not to distract the eye of Flynn Moss, who seemed with every blow he took to be about to tumble backward off the beam and fall the seven or eight feet to the sand pit below.
For a minute or two he watched them club and batter and block, sweating heavily though neither seemed winded by their combat training.
Finally Thorn’s presence caught the attention of the other man, and he lowered his staff and gave this trespasser his full attention. When Flynn followed the other man’s gaze, Thorn raised his hand in a silent salute.
The man took that opening to ram the butt of his club into Flynn’s stomach, bending him double. Gagging, the kid somehow kept his balance and slashed his own stick in response, but the tough guy batted it away with a smile and stepped across from his beam to Flynn’s, a move that must have signified an end to their workout, since Flynn relaxed his grip and lowered his own club.
“Aw, shit,” Flynn said. “What the hell’re you doing here?”
But the man wasn’t done. With Flynn turned away, the guy lined up, cocked his bat, and nailed Flynn between his shoulder blades, sending him sprawling in a long, ungainly flop into the sand.
The man jumped off the beam, landing behind Flynn, and watched the young man struggle to sit up. Edging forward to Flynn’s backside, the man choked up on his club and drew it to his shoulder, aiming for the right side of Flynn’s head.
Thorn covered the ten yards at full tilt and reached the sandpit as the bludgeon was starting its downward flight. He grabbed it high and wrenched it to a halt and found the man’s grip was solidly fixed, so Thorn dug in his feet and pivoted, throwing out his hip to catch the guy on his backward stumble. Thorn’s hip jolted against the man’s thigh, a primitive judo move, a half step up from the schoolyard.
But it was enough.
Grunting, the man went down hard, slammed his shoulder in the sand, and tried to use the momentum of his fall to duck and roll back to his feet, but Thorn was waiting as he struggled to stand, the club in Thorn’s hands now.
He set himself, leaned into the blow, ramming the guy in the gut exactly as the man had rammed Flynn, then thrusting into the guy’s diaphragm. Knocking a long, wet cough out of him and sending him blundering backward into the sand.
He sat there trying to breathe. Staring up at Thorn while an ugly smile quivered on his lips, coming and going like a bad habit he was trying to break.
When he managed to speak, a teaspoon of sand was in his throat. “You just fucked up, sport. Nobody ambushes Wally.”
Wally jimmied himself upright, groaning as he straightened.
Thorn made him for late twenties. Robust with red cheeks and a fiery gaze, but sickly around the edges. His facial skin had the oily sheen of wax paper as though he’d survived a pot of scalding coffee poured into his crib. He was about Thorn’s height with wide shoulders and a barrel chest and thickened waistline and legs that were rooster thin.
“You know this guy?” he said to Flynn, edging closer to Thorn.
Thorn pitched the fighting club aside and squared off to Wally’s approach. Wally cleared the sand from his throat.
“His name is Thorn.”
“What the fuck is he doing here? You can’t just walk in here.”
Thorn was watching Wally inch forward.
“You ex-military?”
Thorn shook his head.
“SEAL, Ranger, Black Ops?”
“I’m nobody.”
“Somebody schooled you on those moves.”
“Nobody schooled me on anything.”
“Is he lying?” Wally asked Flynn
“I don’t think so. I don’t know that much about him.” Flynn was brushing the sand off his bare skin. “I just met him a couple of times. He knocked up my mother when she was a teenager.”
“Last time I checked, that makes him your old man.”