Hamath spat. “Told you there were likely more.”
I took advantage of the distraction and drew my sword. Armed and with three friends at my side, I liked the odds much better.
“Count ’em out, Ty.” said Ira. “Idiots woke me up.”
A strategy we often employed in certain situations was numbering each of the individuals standing against us, always starting from the left. A person, usually me, assigned who should take which numbered men. The tactic gave everyone a good starting point on the fly.
“Wait.” I looked at the leader of the six, who appeared less sure of himself. Something the man said earlier nagged at me. I took a chance to see if he’d talk. “You said you knew my type. What does that mean?”
“We heard the war is over.”
“So?”
“So, that means soldiers who haven’t been around for years are going to come home and try to take our jobs.”
“We aren’t settling here. We’re just passing through.”
“Maybe so, but there’ll be others who think they can just pick up the lives they once had before like nothing has changed. Well, a lot has changed and we don’t want people like you screwing up what we’ve got. We’ve heard all the stories about the war.”
The men behind him grunted and nodded in agreement.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but decided not to take the conversation in that direction. I chose to come at him from a different angle, hoping he might see things from our perspective.
“You know, most of us didn’t volunteer for the army. The king pressed us into service. And now that the war is over all we want is to get back home.”
“And disrupt everyone’s lives by pushing yourself back into them.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I don’t care what’s fair. Just like I don’t care if you volunteered or not. Makes no difference to me how you joined,” said the man shrugging.
“You pieces of garbage,” Hamath muttered.
“Count ’em out, Ty,” said Ira, louder than before.
I swore. “Dekar, one and two. Hamath, four. Ira, five and six. I got three.”
“You sure about three?” asked Dekar. “I can take three and two, and give you one.”
“I’m fine,” I said. Three, meant I’d be taking the leader. Sober, Dekar wouldn’t have asked me if I was sure about him. He didn’t know how focused I had become in spite of the alcohol.
The group had the same reaction as most did when I counted. Pure confusion followed by sudden realization that things were about to get ugly. The leader picked things up first. He raised his sword with both hands, yelled, and charged right at me.
He closed the distance between us faster than I had expected him to. He swung wildly, but with plenty force. Chaos erupted all around me. A chair sailed across my vision. Somewhere, the distinct sound of a table breaking resonated. Groans, moans, and whimpers followed as bones crunched.
I parried several of my opponent’s blows while turning him away from the others and giving me more room to maneuver.
Clear of the fallen stools at my feet, I made my move. Rather than parry his next clumsy strike, I side-stepped it. My sword came up against his unprotected lower arms, cutting into the flesh and stopping at bone. He let out a wail and lost his sword. Blood spurted from his forearms. He fell to his knees, tendons severed and hands unable to put pressure on the pulsing wounds. I shook my head, angry that the idiot had forced me to act. The man collapsed to the floor, losing consciousness from loss of blood. He’d be dead within moments.
I swore, killing my own countrymen had not been on the list of things I expected after being discharged.
The room had grown quiet with the exception of heavy breathing and a gurgling whimper. A sword silenced the whimper. I looked up as Ira withdrew his blade.
“Everyone all right?” I asked.
“I’m good,” said Ira.
“Fine,” said Dekar.
“Idiot got lucky and sliced my arm, but I’ll live,” said Hamath, tying a makeshift bandage around his upper arm.
“Based on some of the looks we got coming in, we’re probably not the only ones who were attacked,” said Dekar as he helped Hamath with the bandage.
“Probably not,” I admitted, staring down at the man who had charged me. Blood spilled from his arms, pooling on the floor. “A city this big has got to have more than these idiots in it.”
Ira said a few choice words. “So much for a night of fun.”
As if on cue, angry shouts erupted from the streets. I recognized several of the voices.
“Molak be cursed,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”
We rushed outside. Steel upon steel rang out.
Pandemonium had hit the streets.
Over a hundred of Damanhur’s citizens had armed themselves with anything they could find, blunt or sharp. Not the whole city by any means, but a mob nonetheless.
It appeared the soldiers not caught literally with their pants down by the locals had already come together, coalescing as a unit at the entrance of a narrow alley. Many held overturned tabletops like shields to push against the frothing mass.
Smart man, whoever had made that decision.
Pitchforks stabbed like spears, branding irons swung like swords, and cast-iron skillets clubbed like maces. The Damanhur citizens attacked with such ferocity, many of their own fell injured by the carelessness of the person next to them.
“Well, we’re not flanking that with only four of us,” said Hamath.
“We could just head back to the wagons while no one’s paying attention,” offered Ira.
He spoke with such calmness it made me realize how empty the rest of the street had become.
Dekar cuffed him.
“I was only joking,” muttered Ira.
“We need to draw them away from the alley,” I said.
“And what would be the point of that?” asked Hamath.
“To have them chase us. It’s far easier for four people to evade a mob than several dozen.”
“That’s crazy,” said Ira. “Besides, there ain’t no way we could get enough of them to come after us so everyone else can escape.”
“Not necessarily,” said Dekar, calling out from back inside the bar. He had slipped inside a moment before. Glass shattered over and over.
“What in the name of Xank are you doing in there?” asked Ira.
Dekar appeared in the doorway, carrying three lit oil lamps. “Creating a diversion. And getting them good and mad so they’ll come after us.”
He threw one of the lamps down, busting it open. The lit flame ignited the spilled oil, then crawled along the floor. Streams of fire spread across the common area, especially by the bar. Within seconds the entire lower floor was in flames.
“Weren’t there people still upstairs?” I asked, taking a step back from the heat.
Prostitutes came running out a side entrance on the right of the building, fleeing down an alley.
“Not anymore,” Ira snorted.
“Uh, Tyrus?”
I turned to Hamath. “Yeah?”
“I believe Dekar’s idea worked.”
I followed his gaze to the mob still at the alley mouth. People in the back had noticed the rising flames and were making it known to the rest of the group. Within a matter of moments, over a hundred angry faces stared in our direction.
“We should probably start running,” I said.
“Yep,” Hamath said.
The crowd came screaming toward us.
We set off in a sprint, but not before Dekar took the last two oil lamps and threw them through a window of the adjacent building. I spared a glance back long enough to see the window dressing ignite.
A smile crawled across my face as some of the mob regained enough of their senses to stop their pursuit in an effort to put out the fires. Those not blessed with common sense came at us more angered than before.
I lasted a full block before I vomited a couple mugs of ale. The rest came up half a block later. Though I stank worse than ever, the trade-off was worth it as we began to distance ourselves from the mob.