Darby saw it and grinned in his beard.
Ringil was already on his way out the door.
The first attacker came up on Darby from the rear, just off his left shoulder. It was an obvious move, not hard for him to anticipate. Those in front couldn’t, after all, conduct the fight across the living bodies of fallen worthy citizens. Plus, the long shadows cast on the cobbles telegraphed the attack. The watchman came in swinging his club down, and Darby wasn’t there anymore. He’d stepped back and aside, an odd, unlooked-for elegance in the move, almost like dance. The watchman was caught, arms up with the club, falling forward into his move. Darby swung hard, with the cudgel held horizontal, into the man’s unprotected belly and lower ribs. The impact sounded like an ax in wood. The watchman made a choked shriek.
The others rushed in as best they could.
Darby slid the cudgel clear like it was a sword, but it wasn’t. It was rough and blunt and the watchman’s weight was folded over it. In the moment the difference cost him, a second club wielder slammed him across the shoulders. It was a mistake—not trying for the head. Darby staggered and snarled, but he didn’t go down. The watchman tried to hook his feet out from under him and Darby stabbed backward with the cudgel, got the man in the face. Blood splashed in the sunlit air. Darby whooped at the sight of it, leapt the clerks’ bodies, and landed cat-like between two of the other watchmen before they could register what was happening. The cudgel whirled about him in a blur. The crowd swayed back with a fairground chorus of excited yells. The cudgel caught one of the Watch about the head and sent him staggering, but either it missed the other or the man was a cannier fighter than his fellows.
This much Ringil saw as he came through the door, this much he’d more or less assumed—the coat was its own prophecy of how the fight would go. But now the untouched watchman nearest to Darby waded in, club held in a two-handed sword grip, feinting and blocking, bellowing hoarse and low to those of his comrades still on their feet.
“Get in behind him! Bring this fuck down, will you!”
He was younger than Darby by a generation, and faster. He blocked Darby’s cudgel, looped it away, and got in a savage blow to the older man’s elbow. Darby howled obscenities, gave up no fucking inch of ground, swung back. Something in Ringil cheered at the sight. The young watchman skipped outside the swing, then rushed in with his club braced baton-style. He pinned Darby’s arm to his body, pinned the cudgel, and shoved him back a solid pace. A second watchman saw his chance and jumped in behind. He hooked his day-club over Darby’s head, took it back hard at the throat, and dragged his victim backward and down, a couple of yards away from where the two law clerks were finally sitting up and taking notice. Darby choked and thrashed and, finally, went to the ground over his attacker’s bent knee. The young watchman stepped up, dodging Darby’s flailing feet, and swung a long hard kick into the downed fighter’s groin. Darby squawked and convulsed.
The others closed in. The clubs rose and fell.
“That’s enough! He’s down.”
But now the Watch’s blood was up. The shout alone was never going to be enough and Ringil, clear in the knowledge, was moving forward even as the words left his lips. He reached up left-handed, grabbed a day-club as it came up, and yanked hard on it. The surprised watchman lost his grip and stumbled. Ringil got a grip on the man’s collar with his other hand, manhandled him impatiently out of the way. Then he waded in and used the commandeered club to break up the fun.
Jolt into belly, smash knuckles on an opposing club, tangle legs—block! shove! hurt! It was awhile since he’d fought with a stick—some village commons contest Jhesh had inveigled him into a few years back when Ringil’s finances were at low ebb and the storytelling wouldn’t cut it for his tab—but the dynamics never really went away. He’d trained extensively with mocked-up Majak staff lances in the Academy, before they let him loose on the real thing, and then there were Yhelteth empty-hand techniques that spilled out into a form using a simple bamboo pole . . . The watchmen were trained as well, of course, but not with much care, and this new attack was the last thing they’d looked for. It took Ringil a scant few seconds to drive them off the man on the ground, and then he had them repelled into a wary circle similar to the one they’d approached Darby with in the first place. Difference was, this time two of them were already down on the cobbles and out of it, courtesy of Darby’s earlier efforts, and the other four, nursing a host of minor injuries, did not know what to make of this newcomer, I mean, look, man: moss-soft cloak of blue that quite visibly would have cost them a year’s wages, clothes beneath of equally fine embroidered cloth, a sword on his back, a killing calm in his eyes, and the stolen day-club, held out one-handed and pointing as if it were a bladed weapon.
Ringil turned very slowly, marking each man along the shaft of the leveled club, daring them to come back at him.
“I think you made your arrest,” he said evenly. “Let’s call it a day, shall we?”
“You’re interfering with Watch business,” blustered the young, fast one who’d pinned Darby up in the fight. “That man’s a known public nuisance.”
“Maybe so.” Ringil sidestepped, eyes still on the circling watchmen, and prodded Darby’s prone form with his boot. Darby groaned. “But I don’t see him in a state to make much mischief now, do you?”
“He assaulted people. He’s got a history of it.”
“Well, we’re none of us historians here. Where are the injured parties?”
Unfortunately, the two law clerks hadn’t run off, they were still hiding in the crowd. Now they trod forward, clothes in disarray, faces flushed and bearing some small scrapes. Ringil spared them a glance.
“You got in a fight with this man?”
“He attacked us,” spluttered the more distressed looking of the two men. “Unprovoked. Started shoving us in the crowd, screaming abuse for no reason.”
“Lying fucks.” Slurring tones—at Ringil’s heel, Darby had managed to prop himself up on one arm. The motion brought with it a heady stink of unwashed flesh laced with piss and cheap wine. The man had clearly not bathed in a couple of months. “Called me an animal. A fucking marsh sloth. Not so long ago it was I fought to keep your mamas from being spitted on a big fucking lizard prick, that’s the thanks I get? I made my living with honest fucking steel, not robbing a man’s home and family with papers and ink.”
“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” said the other clerk, somewhat calmer than his companion. He seemed, perhaps with an eye sharpened by his profession, to have taken stock of Ringil’s attire. “But from the state of the man, I think it’s pretty clear who you can believe here.”
“That’s a skirmish ranger’s coat he’s wearing,” Ringil said, trying not to breathe through his nose. “Which suggests he was considered good enough to give his life for the city once. Perhaps there’s something in what he says.”
The clerk flushed. “Are you accusing me of lying, sir?”
“If you choose to take it that way.”
A slight, hanging silence. The crowd watched, lapping it up. The clerks looked uneasily at each other. Neither was armed beyond short ceremonial poniards they clearly had no idea how to use.
“Look,” one of them began.
Ringil shook his head. “You don’t look worse than shaken up, either of you. Nothing a visit to the baths won’t ease. In your place, I’d cut my losses and go home. Think of it as a valuable lesson in manners.”
He held their gaze for the time it took to make sure they’d do as he said. Watched them push through the gathered spectators and away, muttering angrily at each other, a couple of backward glances, nothing more. The crowd swallowed them, and chattering broke out in their wake. No one among the spectators seemed too upset by the way things were sliding. Ringil turned his attention back to the Watch.