“Perhaps you are the innkeeper after all.” Hunnar gazed nonchalantly up at the interloper. “Yet you look more like a rockworm to me.” His gaze dropped to the other’s feet. “But the slime you trail behind you leads from the entrance, not the back rooms.”
Stepping back and pulling his sword in the same motion, the offended citizen slashed down. Hunnar was still balanced on the rear two legs of his chair. As the blade descended he shoved back. The sturdy back of the chair hit the attacker in the midsection, sending him stumbling away.
Ethan had managed to slide from behind the table and draw his own weapon. It weighed more than a cardmeter, but he’d been forced to learn how to use this new persuader in the past months. He didn’t see the Tran who’d slipped up behind all of them, but dal-Jagger did. The would-be assassin threw Hunnar off-balance as he stumbled into him, clawing blindly at the squire’s dirk which protruded between his eyes.
Everyone in the tavern, it seemed, charged them then. Ice swords and axes of bone and metal flailed wildly at the newcomers. Ethan found himself on the floor, trying to avoid the lance a husky customer was thrusting at him. He rolled, and the lance point struck sparks from the stone paving. The lance wielder tried raising his weapon for another strike when a table hit him in the face.
After throwing the table, September found himself wrestling with the giant Tran who’d backed up the wealthy insult-monger. The enormous bone club thrummed through the air. September skipped agilely out of its path. It took a head-sized chunk out of the wooden wall of the booth.
September moved in, hitting his feline opponent hard in the midsection. The giant grunted in surprise but didn’t fall. He raised the club over his head, his expression turning from furious to foolish. September lifted the lightly-boned colossus into the air and threw him halfway across the tavern.
Knowing full well his own limitations where physical combat was concerned, Milliken Williams crouched low in the booth and did his utmost not to draw attention to his presence.
Ethan ducked a sword swing, grabbed the Tran by the neck and wrenched him off his feet. He struck the wall hard, went limp, and collapsed. Between the unexpected strength of the heavy-bodied humans and the professional fighting skill of Sir Hunnar and his squires, the large but undisciplined group of attackers was having a difficult time.
The aroma of blood began to be overpowering.
Ethan blocked a wide saber swing with his arm, felt the impact reverberate up to his shoulder muscles. Trying to bring as much of his weight to bear as possible, he swung his own sword over and down. His opponent parried, but the force of the blow knocked his blade from his hand. He knelt and recovered it before Ethan could strike again. But instead of resuming his assault, he backed away and hunted for help.
The most effective combatant of all proved to be not September, Sir Hunnar, or any of the rampaging citizens, but the innkeeper.
A massive circular band of black wrought iron hung from the rafters. It supported eight large oil-burning lamps. When September pulled it out of the ceiling and began to swing it as a weapon, the proprietor decided the time had come to make a stand for fiscal sanity. Being metal, the chandelier was the most valuable single furnishing in the tavern. It wouldn’t do to have it broken and bent. Risking his life, he charged across the battlefield and emerged on the other side unscathed.
The fight continued only a few minutes more, until, with admirable speed the innkeeper had located a group of constables. One of the combatants near the door announced their impending arrival and the interlocked fighters instantly separated and began searching out unorthodox exits.
“The kitchen!” Hunnar shouted.
“Why?” Ethan wanted to know. “We didn’t start anything.”
A hand shoved him forward. “Police are usually the same everywhere, feller-me-lad. Best to avoid them when you can.”
They raced through the malodorous cookroom, emerging into a back alley lightly carpeted with snow. Following Hunnar’s lead they ran a short distance to the left, then slowed.
“Why are we slowing down?” Ethan looked back expectantly. But there was no sign of pursuit in the narrow passageway. “We’re still fairly close to the tavern.”
“They will not come looking for us this way, friend Ethan.” Hunnar was panting steadily, his breaths much shorter and faster than that of the three humans.
“Why not?”
Hunnar indicated the surface they were traversing. With a clawed foot he kicked away the pale white veneer of snow to reveal stone blocks beneath. “There is no icepath here. No Tran in a hurry to go anywhere would leave a fast icepath. This idea I take from you.” His breath condensed, vanishing with mathematical regularity in front of him.
“We do not think of ‘running,’ as you are naturally wont to do,” he added. “Tran do not walk or run where they can chivan. The local authorities will not think of this, and will pursue those who chose the ice-paths.”
They continued to follow the stone-paving until they came to a wider road. There they blended into the daily traffic. Only their troubled thoughts distinguished them from the Tran moving busily around them, and they kept those as well concealed as their stained weapons.
Back on board the Slanderscree the other sailors and soldiers crowded quickly around dal-Jagger and Budjir, inspecting their slight wounds critically, all the while questioning them about the fight. Hunnar and the three humans moved off to the railing, staring back at the innocent harbor scene.
“They attacked us.”
“That’s pretty obvious, Milliken.” The schoolteacher shook his head impatiently.
“No, no—I’m not restating the obvious. I mean they attacked us… humans.”
“What’s so signif—” Ethan stopped, thoughtful. “I see. Ever since we’ve been here the locals have treated us with courtesy, even deference.” He glanced up at September excitedly. “Skua, remember that incident a few days ago when we first went to visit the portmaster? The crowd that confronted Hunnar outside but backed off when we looked ready to intervene? What happened to that protection today?”
“I can only think of one thing, lad.” September continued to stare at the town, one newly survival-suited hand picking at the ice on the wooden railing. “It was a preplanned attack. We were deliberately provoked. Or rather, Hunnar and his boys were, in the hope that you and I and Milliken would be drawn in—as we were. Somebody wants us dead, as well as Hunnar. I thought some of the customers fought awfully well for a bunch of spontaneously irritated townsfolk.”
“But why?” Ethan’s thoughts were as steady as the wind, which is to say, not at all.
“Have you not learned this truth by now, friend Ethan?” Hunnar glared at the city, his tone sardonic. “This is the kind of reception we will likely encounter everywhere we go with this plan of confederation. All Tran have a natural suspicion of outlanders. Only your presence might mitigate this, and if it does not do so here in Arsudun where your people are known as benefactors, surely it will do us no good elsewhere.”
“Sorry, Hunnar.” September ran his gloved hand up from the rail to grip one of the thick pika-pina shrouds. “You’re right about your people being naturally suspicious of strangers, but I doubt that’s why we were attacked.
“Someone thinks we’re dangerous—Ethan and Milliken and I. They’d like us out of the way. Why? That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Some folks here—maybe Arsudunite, likely both—have a nice little profitable monopoly on offworld trade. We’ve declared our intention of breaking up that monopoly. Some sailors must’ve talked.” His voice dropped. “Wasn’t sure it was important enough for someone to chance killin’ us, though. Not til this afternoon.”