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At first, I didn’t believe what my senses were telling me. So I made a game of it.

There were two of them, one young, one old, both male. Both rusty brown of hair, but clearly not related. They were clearly watching me as we approached. They walked normal, they talked normal, only their faces gave them away.

Cruel smiles, that reached all the way to their eyes. Both with clubs, one with a large sack.

I’d heard rumors of such activity, of course. But I’d always dismissed it as urban myth.

And I had always believed press gangs worked in larger numbers. But they had timed their paces so that we would intersect near an alleyway. I went ahead and nudged myself closer to the opening, giving them room to pass.

At just the right moment, the elder turned toward me and SHOVED with both hands.

I was in a bad mood; I stumbled, let him shove me again, deeper into the alley, well lit, but with debris against both walls. And a suspiciously new coil of rope, atop a crate.

The clubs were out now, so I pulled my Flavian from my inventory. It was too long to swing, but the point was...

.....

Ugh. I needed to replace my sword. The condition of it was just terrible, so low I wondered if it would make it through this fight.

“Oi, little one, we’re professionals at this. Just give up now, spare yourself the headache.”

I took up a line-duelist’s stance, ideal for this particular alley. Thank you, Gerald, for your lessons.

“I think not.” I said. The alley was narrow enough they could only come at me one at a time.

I almost missed the light footsteps from behind me. Almost.

Cats have AMAZING spinal joints. If you practice, you can jump backward, turn in mid-air, and land facing the direction that was behind you. Ready to lunge, which I did.

[You have scored an ORANGE critical for four times regular damage.]

My Flavian penetrated deep into his belly, tip protruding from the back. He folded over it, passing out almost immediately, and taking the sword with him.

That was ... surprisingly effective.

I turned in time to dodge a downward club-blow from the elder, but there were half eaten fruit rinds where I needed to step, and I slipped more than gracefully slid. He was able to get to one side of me, and the youth was at the other.

The youth feinted, the elder attacked; I caught his upper arm, but he pulled it away, barely nicking himself on my claws.

The youth landed a blow against the back of my shoulder for... two damage?

I sprang backward at him, extended a kick. Don’t do that without training or at least practice. It looked stupid and threw my balance off.

The kid wrapped an arm around my chest. “I got him!”

Except he hadn’t. I whirled, such that he took a blow the elder had meant for me. There came a popping noise from his ribs, and the strength went out of his hold as he screamed.

I clawed at his belly, hit his groin instead.

[You have scored a RED ... ORANGE critical for four times normal damage.]

The kid went down.

With a bellow, the elder swung blow after blow down upon me. I dodged, I parried his arms with mine, and I held my ground, slashing at any part of his body I could reach.

A single crit, a single lucky blow from him, and the fight might have ended differently. But he wasn’t lucky, not that day.

It was a narrow alley, with no room to maneuver. I had armor and he didn’t. While his weapon was better, he had abandoned any pretense at skill for raw savagery.

I was the better savage. I recovered my sword from the first corpse, and...

And somehow, my clothing had become soaked in blood.

The back of the alley opened into a courtyard with playing children under the watchful eyes of their mothers.

Well, there was no helping it, then. Exposing my state to the gawking onlookers, I made my way across the road, across the pier, and straight into the ocean.

That was more for the sake of my clothing than my reputation; as I’ve pointed out before, scaled visages were extremely rare in the Isles. It didn’t help; my clothing was irredeemably stained. I know HOW to get it out before it set, but the nearest soap of the proper type was on the Outrage.

By the time I got there, it was too late. The staining wasn’t as bad as I had feared; an ignorant person might not even notice the stains. But linens were cheap enough. I could just go to market...

There were four of the town guard at the base of our boarding ramp.

Well, that hadn’t taken long.

I accompanied the gentlemen to the local police building, where I was put into a large cell with a dozen dirty scruffy, yet surprisingly well-mannered humans. I had a seat in the middle of the room, as all the wall and corner spaces were claimed, and set about scratching at the itchy spots around my bruises and considering my options.

After an hour or so, I could hear Gamilla hollering about something in the front of the building, but nobody came to visit.

Not for me, at any rate. Every so often, two burly guards would come down, call the name of one prisoner or another, and escort them out of the basement.

They came for me shortly after dusk.

#

I awoke to find someone smelling of wine clapping manacles on my wrists. Okay, I’d expected that.

“Get up.” He said, yanking me to my feet.

I assisted him, but he still cuffed me when I yawned. My scales absorbed the damage, but he’d been trying to hurt me.

“This way.” He said. There seemed to be only two of them. Idiots, if they were attempting what I thought.

They led me to a darkened courtyard behind the jail. Was there nobody else?

“Kneel.”

I knelt, sliding the left manacle off my wrist, over my re-evolved knuckles, and onto the ground.

“In the name of the governor, and his peace...”

Surely, they weren’t going to let me pull my shield from inventory? But they did. They said nothing as I slid my arm through the straps, using my body to block their vision. I mean, they had to SEE I was moving, even if they couldn’t see exactly what?

Right?

But he kept droning on about law and justice and death.

My sword, as I have mentioned, was nearing the end of its lifespan. I pulled one of a set of knives from my inventory, holding it blade down.

“... do hereby sentence you to death. Go ahead, Marley.”

Marley advanced, took a swing at my head with a double-bladed axe, and seemed surprised when my shield was there to deflect it. The force of his own blow knocked the axe free of his grasp.

No, I realized as I rose, he had let it go to draw a sword from his belt.

The guards of Boadicea’s Girdle wore a chain hauberk, which covered them from neck to mid-thigh. Below that, there was only leather. He danced away from my dagger, his stance muddled by wine.

“Don’t just STAND there!” Marley said. “Get in here and help.”

The first guard chuckled. “Killed while trying to escape.”

And then, screaming, he ignited and went up like a candle.

Marley’s face paled in dawning horror, but before he could react, there was a blur of gray in the darkness, smaller than I was. Her sword entered his back just above the hip and poked his hauberk forward at the rib cage.

He opened his throat to scream, and the bronze head of a black-hafted spear pierced his throat beneath the metal helmet.

“See?” Madonna said, “All too easy.”

“Did...” I had trouble forming the words. “Did you all just come to rescue me?”

“Yup.” Kismet said. “Nothing says thank you quite like a spa day.”

“Spa day? Surely, we can’t stay here. I mean, we just killed two guards.” I said.

“Two night shift guards.” Gamilla said. “The correct entry in the log book and coins in the safebox, and we paid to have you released.”

“But that...” I rubbed my forehead. “CAN that work?”

Gamilla shrugged. “Let’s find out.”

While Gamilla set about that, we lugged the two bodies to the dump at the edge of town, where Madonna emptied her reserves of fire mana to reduce the bodies, which we then buried under a pile of rubbish.

“Hurry.” Madonna said. “Every instant I’m outside the ward is an instant I can be detected.”

But either she wasn’t detected, or the Hangwoman didn’t care about a devil walking around in the town.

We laughed about the danger when we were safely back in the cabin that Madonna and I shared.

Gamilla HAD found good rum, spiced with cinnamon.