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The groom remained near the carriage. Raven decided he wasn’t a threat, too young. He could see from the way he held himself that he wanted no part of the fight. Probably a son or nephew of one of the men, not a hardened criminal yet.
“Don’t try anything, or I’ll drill you with a bullet,” said the leader.
“She’s a prime article, isn’t she?” Raven asked the two men. “Better than you’ll ever have.”
“We’ll have herandthe diamond and we’ll tie you up so you can watch.”
Like hell they would.
“Now,” Raven whispered.
He and Indy moved back to back. She drew her blade in a flash of silver and slashed at one of the men. Raven’s fist crashed into a jawbone. There was the cracking sound of a pistol firing but Indy was low to the ground, slashing at the man’s hamstrings, and Raven was shielded by the bulk of the man he’d knocked out.
He threw the man off and lunged for the leader. He knocked away the man’s pistol and turned to deliver a kick to the fourth man’s head. The man fell easily.
The giant was another story. He roared a battle cry and threw himself at Raven.
The man was no thick wit. He’d been trained. Probably one of Le Triton’s elite guard force. Raven wasn’t able to see what was happening to Indy with her opponent because he had his hands full with the towering giant, whose fists were the size of Raven’s head.
Raven kept landing blows and the giant just kept coming.
He locked his elbow around Raven’s neck.
“Here you, move your arse here and fight like a man,” the giant called to the groom, who was watching with a stricken expression on his pale face.
Raven jabbed his elbow into the giant’s kidneys and broke free. “Stay right there, boy, and I won’t slit your throat,” he croaked.
The boy wavered.
“I’ll stick you myself for being a dog coward,” said the giant, between blows to Raven’s ears. “Go help Antoine with the fancy piece. She’s got a knife and she knows how to use it.”
“I won’t attack a lady,” said the boy.
The giant spat out a tooth. “You won’t make it far in life, then.”
Raven risked a swift glance at Indy. She had the man down on the ground with her knife at his throat.
He and the giant exchanged another round of blows. Raven staggered. If he could find a way to use the pocket watch with the sleeping powder inside, he could fell this Goliath, but the man wasn’t exactly giving Raven any room to breathe.
Out of the corner of his eye Raven caught a flash of purple silk.
His vision narrowed. Land a blow on the giant’s nose and move in for the kill.
This was why she never wore tight bodices and puffed sleeves. She couldn’t take full breaths in this infernal corset. At least she’d worn her boots, one of which was currently crushing her assailant’s windpipe.
“Stop moving or I’ll slit your throat,” she said coldly. She pressed down harder with her boot.
The man whimpered. He wasn’t going to stop fighting if she released him. So she did what she had to do.
She drove her knife into the heavy canvas of his trousers, grazing his thigh just deep enough to make him shriek with pain but not to permanently wound him. She shoved the dagger deep into the ground with her boot, trapping the man down.
She finished him off with a swift kick to the groin.
Raven had already felled two men and was working on the final threat, the towering man who had ordered them out of the carriage.
Raven’s pistol lay on the ground only a few feet away. She darted forward.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot this pistol,” she shouted.
