The Crimson Highway was smoother and faster to travel than the jungle terrain that surrounded it, but Dago quickly tired of the bland, grey cobblestones, stretching on and on. He was relieved when the city of Ith finally came into view. He could remember maps of the Highway, and the stretch between Elpan and Ith was one of the straightest.
Ith, unlike its fellow slaving city, Vagren, ran even the city’s layout by a careful, mathematic plan. Ruled by a coven of magicians, Ith was a city of scholars, hypocritical or heretical priests, and pompous slave masters with more wealth than some southern cities ever generated. Its walls were hundreds of feet tall and a dozen feet deep, scorched here and there but never crumbling. Within, various wards had been added as the city expanded, so the outer wall reflected the obsolete walls that divided districts now; when last Dago had heard myth of the city, it was said to house a million humans, though only a quarter of that were free men or citizens.
By the time that Dago wandered along that last stretch of road, there were flocks of refuges, hundreds clutching to the roadway. Men in red robes or red armour picked their way through the gathering homeless to see their crimson coins of passage. Ahead, a massive fence had been built, with wooden stakes jutting out of the ground to force men and women to pass through the checkpoint before approaching Ith.
Without warning, a man spat on Dago; when the sellsword looked up at him, the man sneered at him and said, “Folk like you are why Elpan was destroyed in the first place, you popper and rebel.”
“I ain’t no popper,” Dago said, as he wiped spittle off his arm. “And I didn’t break your town, but I will break your bones.” He slammed his palm upwards into the man’s jaw; the man cried out, clutched his face with his hands as blood splattered the cobblestones below their boots. He cowered, raising one red-stained hand to defend himself from further attacks. Dago just laughed and started to walk away.
“Eh! Stop!” a younger voice blurted. “Who do you think you are?”
Dago sighed, and turned to look behind him. Another refugees came striding past concerned women and children. He had a string tying his hair back, and a sabre dangled from his fingers. “I’ve got as much right to travel the Crimson Highway as any of your homeless kin,” Dago told the man. “Now shove off and let me be. It’ll be better that way.”
He turned back to the road ahead, to see another man striding forward. The man raised his fists in front of him and took a swing at Dago. The mercenary easily ducked beneath the fist, and stepped into the man’s side. He yanked his sword hilt up with his right hand, as hard as he could, breaking one of the man’s ribs with the blunt pommel. Dago put his hand on the man’s shoulder as he tried to catch his wind. The man’s fist was slack, hanging over the sellsword’s shoulder. With ease, Dago twisted his scabbard to free his sword from the confines of the man’s stunned torso, then, plunged the blade through the man’s throat. Blood splattered down the man’s back, and Dago stepped away before any landed on him.
The crowd of refugees around gasped, and the circle around Dago grew wider.
Footsteps clapped off the cobblestones behind him. “Die, you filthy—” The man who had ordered the jobless mercenary to stop came charging at him, but Dago only had to lurch forward, testing with his blade to give the man cause to hesitate and step back.
Dago grinned. “Easy, there. Just watch it.” He raised his sword on an angle, hilt at the level of his head. With a faked swing from the man’s right, he slashed at the refugee’s face from the left with as much muscle as he could manage. Blood sprayed against the onlookers, and the man’s body collapsed to the ground.
“We done?” Dago asked the horrified people that surrounded him. “Don’t be looking at me like… they attacked me, missus.”
“And you finished the job?” a voice asked. A woman in the crowd. “Didn’t have to go like that,” she said.
Another accused: “You could’ve just walked on by.”
“Yeah, and the sun rises in north, right?” Dago asked.
Two men pulled off their cloaks and hats and brandished wooden branches at him. Another man, with a pitchfork, lowered the points and started to circle Dago. “Can’t have you making us look bad to the guards?”
“Are you serious?” Dago questioned. “Nothing about you looks good. The guards are laughing at you—they’ll probably thank me for mopping the cobbles with a couple.”
A man with a staff started to take jabs at Dago, and he slashed them away as he spun in a circle to consider all his attackers. Only one man wielded a sword, out of the nine refugees that had decided dealing with Dago was their responsibility. Among them were two women, one with a hammer, the other with a whip of some sort.
The man with the pitchfork charged at Dago, and he stepped to the left, using his sword to guide the wooden shaft of the farming implement into the nearby thigh of a craftsman. The man screamed, and the farmer stared in horror until Dago lifted his feet and stomped on the pitchfork—the wood shattered beneath his boot. Then Dago ducked, as a quarterstaff thrust through the air he had just disturbed. He poked the staff wielder’s arm with the point of his sword, and the quarterstaff clattered to the ground along with the head of the pitchfork. The man who had yanked the latter out of his leg was dragging himself away with his hands, leaving a red trail.
“Come on,” Dago cried, aflame with adrenaline. One of the girls came at him with a hammer, and he grabbed the side of it with his hand when she swung it. Though his palm resounded with the impact, he smashed her in the stomach with his hilt. She coughed, doubled over, and he brought the hammer down on her back, dropping her to the ground.
Another staff struck his leg, and he fell to one knee. The man with the sword dove into the fray, and Dago had to drop to his other knee to avoid the slash. He threw the hammer at the man as he used his sword point to lift himself to his feet. The whip cracked off his bare shoulder and his arm went numb. He watched, in surprise, as his sword clanged to the ground. He still wasn’t back up to the pinnacle of his abilities.
The farmer struck at him with the splintered end of his pitchfork, and Dago leapt backward to avoid it. A knife slashed his side as he skidded to a stop, but he grabbed the arm that was holding the knife in one hand and broke it with his other. The knife wielder appeared to be a merchant of some kind—the man screamed and released his weapon, which promptly jabbed his stomach before being turned to face another opponent. The merchant stumbled away from the melee. Then the whip fell again, but this time Dago was ready. He grabbed it, let it coil around his left arm with a painful smack, and then yanked it out of the hands of the woman who wielded it. She stumbled one step forward, though she was still distant in terms of their fight.
Dago threw his knife at her, though the hilt hit her. She cried out anyway.
As three others arrayed themselves between him and her, the farmer again came at Dago with his blunted tool. Dago swung his hands and used his elbow to knock the wooden weapon away—wooden splinters embedded in his bruised forearm. The leather whip, swinging from his movement, was caught in his other hand and dragged back around the neck of the surprised farmer until it was piercing the flesh of his neck in spots it pinched.
“Enough!” shouted an old man, striding forward. He cut the whip in half with a small knife, but yanked the farmer away from Dago with enough force to knock the half-suffocated man to his arse. “This fighting,” the elder gasped, “is what cost us our homes in the first place. I don’t care who started it.”
Dago eyed the man, glancing regularly at the remaining fighters. He was bleeding from his side, from the knife, and in two places from the piercing crack of the whip. His arm was bruised and pocked full of wooden tendrils from the pitchfork and he had more bruises than he could count. He thought he could probably have won this fight, but he was a little relieved it was over. He found his sword and picked it up. Gradually, the group dissipated. Dago watched them all go, even the old man who had ended it, before he continued along the road toward Ith. There were enough refugees, by the hundred, that he wouldn’t reach the city gate this day. And he was getting hungry.