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Bell had turned his chair halfway around when the last of the ten sailors entered the Lundehund so he could watch the himself It was the point in the verbal prelinal that it was time they all went outside and settled the affair as i to be men that the other crew suddenly launched themselves in a surprise attack

The move was a total break in protocol A popular waterfront bar should be given the reverence of holy ground when it canitude A brawl between two or even four men was certainly allowed, but not a full-on ruard for the inviolability of the tavern’s sanctity kept Fyrie and his crew a fraction slow to respond

Bell hadn’t expected it either, yet that didn’t ht He’d watched the big sailors enter the dim bar and fan out in a semicircle with the captain at the center He’d noted who kept their hands in their pockets to disguise the fact they’d arraded potential fighting abilities by how they held the, who looked like he’d poured hie He noted all these things on a subconscious level so that when they sprang into action, he’d already prioritized targets and wasbefore Fyrie or his men could extricate theian whalers had hoped to pin them

In one fluid rabbed the back of his chair and let hisarc It was a solid piece of furniture, doubtless a veteran of its fair share of fights It didn’t shatter upon i a baton fros cracked the h force to break both radius and ulna Bell released the chair and followed through by crashing the bottom of his boot into the outside of the man’s knee The man crumpled immediately and instinctively tried to break his fall with his broken wrist The strikes had been so quick that his brain hadn’t yet registered the injury When the cracked bones took on the weight of his two-hundred-pound frame, the ends came apart like shattered crystal and his screaeted

This assailant wasn’t as large as his captain, but he had Bell by three inches and thirty pounds None of that htly to square himself with the Van Dorn detective and Bell took a fast step toward theperiian didn’t kno to react In that rabbed the collar of his coat and pulled hih that his shoulders lost tension and his head dipped

Bell e of the sailor’s nose with the thickest part of his forehead in a butt that would do a bighorn sheep proud The crunch of bone and cartilage was acco blood

Twenty percent of the Isbjørn’s creas out of commission even before the surprise attack reached its intended target The four sailors to the right of the captain, and the captain hiht into it, hoping to crush the crew of the Hvalur Batur against the wall The three attackers on Bell’s side of the se they were now less of a threat and more like the threatened

Captain Fyrie and his crew had just enough tith with brute strength, and rather than have the sharp edge of the table crush theround and then spin the table enough to throw the five men opposite them off balance The Icelanders scra aside spilled pitchers and steins, and launched themselves bodily at the rival crew

The sneak attack turned into a s, and precision jabs Bell fitted the brass knuckles over the fingers of his right hand Around him, the room turned into a kaleidoscope of violence For every punch the detective took, he gave two right back He saw Ragnar Fyrie caught in a crushing hold by the captain of the Isbjørn His face was suffused with blood and his eyes goggled from their sockets

Bell didn’t have an angle to hit the attacker’s face and didn’t want to crack open his skull with the knuckle-dusters, so he threw five rapid, and increht kidney

The blows became so painful that the whaler had no choice but to release his hold on Fyrie When he turned on Bell, the Aht all the way up froh force that the monster Norse in an unconscious heap

That was the syht, but the bartender had reached for the 12-gauge side-by-side kept for just such purposes under the bar and he fired both barrels as the Norwegian captain hit the filthy floor Thewere raked with twin loads of coarse rock salt, a nonlethal way to drain the fight out of anyone taking a hit

Bell had his back turned to the blast yet felt the wasp-like sting of a salt frag his coat

In the deafening echo that followed the gunshots,overturned furniture, and, athered the wounded and slunk from the bar Two men were needed to drape the unconscious captain’s heavy ar him out, while another shepherded the man with the shattered wrist

Before any protests were raised by the owner and staff, Bell peeled off enough krone notes to cover any dae and slapped theesture that the next round for everybody was on hiotten