Free Venture Unleashed (The Venture Books) by R.H. Russell Page A

said.
    “To show you boys there’s more than one way to learn how to fight.”
    “All right, then. Let’s go,” Calling said.
    Venture picked out a lanky one just in front of him. He easily kicked him just below the ribs, then sent him sprawling with a straight punch in the nose.
    “Vent! Behind you!” Earnest shouted.
    He caught one of the guys in mid-leap at his back. The man’s own momentum did most of the work when Venture grabbed him at the shoulder and between the legs and wheeled him over his head and to the floor. His body arched back as he was thrown, instead of curling up for safety. His head slammed and his back smacked against the firm straw mats in a way that it shouldn’t have if he were properly trained. He lay there, limp, eyes closed.
    “Anyone go for the lawmen yet?” Dasher said as he rammed another guy against the wall.
    “That’s where the little guys went,” Calling said.
    Venture was just thinking how smart that was, to send the handful of younger boys who’d been watching them to alert the lawmen, when he saw that one of them hadn’t made it out. One of the intruders had his hands around the throat of a twelve-year-old fighter named Bear, who’d been coming to watch Venture train since his first visit here. The intruder pressed him up against the wall without mercy. Bear had lost so much consciousness he couldn’t so much as gasp, and could only claw feebly at his assailant. It wasn’t even a proper choke. He could crush his throat, pressing into the front of it that way—even kill him.
    The stranger smiled at Bear sadistically, so enjoying himself that he failed to notice that his friends were being subdued, and that Venture was coming. Venture reached around from behind him, reached for the hands on Bear’s throat. He took each of the thumbs in one of his fists and wrenched them back, dislocating them from the rest of the man’s hands. The intruder released Bear, shrieking like a wounded animal. His knees folded and he huddled there on the mat, shaking.
    Bear sank down too, gasping and blinking. He put his own hands to his throat.
    “You okay?” Venture swiped the front of Bear’s dark hair back with one hand in order to get a good look at his bloodshot eyes.
    Bear nodded weakly, staring not at Venture, but at the one who’d attacked him, who lay curled up on the mat, looking at his own thumbs protruding unnaturally from his hands. The guy started screaming all over again.  
    “Earnest!” Venture had never been squeamish, but now his stomach was swimming.
    “Right here, Vent,” Earnest answered him, so calm and so close beside him that it startled him.
    “Can you put his thumbs back?”
    “If he’ll let me. But you’ve probably torn his tissues.”
    Venture and one of the other fighters held him still while Earnest popped his thumbs back into place.  
    The injured man looked up at Venture reproachfully, almost mournfully, as though he couldn’t understand why someone would do such a thing. But Calling looked at Venture and shook his head reassuringly.
    Then Calling stepped in front of the intruder and took his chin roughly in his hand. “You barged in here looking for a fight. What did you want, a little bit of excitement? Well, you got it, and some time in the lockup too.”
    If those guys had just waited for the fighters to come out on the street, and challenged them there, rather than trespassing on the center, they would have faced little or no penalty, assuming no one was seriously hurt. They were unarmed, and fist fights were seldom cause for the lockup, so long as none of the aggressors was a bondsman, and none of the assaulted Crested.
    The town guards entered with their clubs and swords, too late for the action, but just in time to load the men, all too battered to flee, into a wagon fitted with a top of iron bars, a cage on wheels.
    “At least they weren’t armed like the last group of thugs we had in here,” Calling said.
    Venture pushed back that