Not only is the growing mob dressed in red, but they wear red masks, too, and have begun to arm themselves with an assortment of daggers, swords, and clubs. I've faced mobs before, but this one is organized and trained, which makes them very dangerous. Most mobs count on darkness and sheer numbers to make themselves anonymous, but this group wears masks, so even in broad daylight they have the courage of the crowd. The members of the watch we passed, who were armed with staves and sandbags on poles have disappeared, so no one is going to intervene to save us.
“Blasphemers!” Thank goodness she's wearing a mask, or she'd be sending spit flying all over my face as she shrieks.
“Sacrilege!”
“Goddess haters!”
The members of the red mob don't wave their weapons, but keep them at the ready. They've been disciplined to hide their weapons, and one weapon you might be tempted to overlook is their rage, and the disorientation that results from a cacophony of shouted voices, the clanging of gongs and the blowing of horns. The noise is deafening, driven by sheer rage. Even though all we can see are their eyes through their masks, they are consumed with atavistic hatred, shrieking at us, making vile threats and saying the most depraved things about Liana and their plans for her.
“We've got to get inside the nearest building,” Taur shouts.
I can't hear him over the noise, but I read his lips, and he's saying aloud what I'm thinking. “Agreed.” The crowd is starting to circle us, and there is something about the color red, the color of blood, of alarm. The brilliance of the scarlet crowd makes them stand out, so it is obvious that they have us outnumbered and surrounded.
Liana is between the two of us. The clanging of gongs, the blaring of horns, and the rattling of chains, which also serve as weapons, has an unsettling effect.
For a moment, the mass of crimson robes widens, like the aperture of a camera lens, and my hopes rises that we'll get out through the mob, but the small retreat is just enough to allow a barrage of thrown objects to sail through the air and converge on the three of us. Like a cloud passing over the sun, the light of day is dimmed by a mass of objects thrown at us, including stones, bottles, and balls of lead and iron. Instinctively, Taur and I go back-to-back, sandwiching Liana as the hail of projectiles lands. My body is buffeted by a rain of stones, some of which cut. The impact dives me back into Taur, who has drawn his cape as a shield, but I can hear the heavy stones and metal balls strike him.
A bottle hits the cobblestones with a pop, followed by an overpowering stench of urine and fecal matter. These sick bastards have filled several bottles with their own waste in the crudest form of germ warfare. I want to reach for my back, but I can't reach, so I use my tail to wipe off an object, which falls from my back to the street with a clank. From the corner of my eye I see that it is a spiked ball.
Most troubling of all, though, is that Liana has fallen. I place myself over her as a second flight of projectiles hurtles through the air. This orchestrated mob has loaded up with two projectiles, one in each hand; thrown the first is a coordinated fusillade, then launched the second on command. Taur flings his cape over Liana, and I see that her forehead has been gashed and blood streams over her pale face, trickling into the locks where the faded rose is perched over her earlobe.
“In the house!” I yell as a the second wave of objects falls, banging against the pavement, or in the case of the bottles, popping against the street and releasing a powerful stench of human waste, and some of the bottles have a pungent odor, as though they have been filled with acid or lye.
With eyes on the sides of my head, I cant' shelter them by ducking my head down like a human, so I have to take the barrage of missiles pounding my body until Liana is whisked away by Taur, dragged into the nearest doorway, where he waits for me.
“Close the door!” I shout. My leg buckles, weak from where several heavy stones have struck me, and I can feel blood trickling down my torso.
The door slams shut behind me, and I'm glad that an unconscious Liana now has some degree of safety, but I'm facing the mob, which has formed a semicircle around me. I stand with my back to the house, assaulted by screams and vile insults, accompanied by threats of the most hideous forms of death imaginable. Ironically, the mob that has murderous intent against three visitors in their midst, including a young girl, screams at us for being immoral, as though we deserve our violent deaths. In their twisted minds, they hold the moral high ground.
I can only see their eyes, but their rage is evident, and their masks do little to muffle their screams of rage coupled with accusations of sacrilege, blasphemy, and richest of all, coming from a murderous mob, hate.
The tips of their blades come up, pointing forward. It's a smart move which doesn't bode well for me. If they try to swing and hack at me, the tightly packed gang risks cutting each other, but with their points aimed at me, they can all thrust, impaling me dozens of times, with little risk to their companions.
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I could scale the wall behind me, but they'd have access to the door and might force their way in to the building, putting Taur and an unconscious Liana at risk. I can charge them, but they're tightly packed, and their numbers are too great. I see them preparing for a third wave of projectiles, which if it catches me with my back to the door, I'll be beaten down and weakened for a final assault.
My frantic thinking only takes milliseconds, but they seem to stretch out infinitely as I confront the howling pack, who continue banging gongs and rattling chains, blowing whistles and horns, while shrieking at me and my companions trapped in the house.
In a flash the answer strikes me, the only solution and an obvious one. If I stand to fight them like a man, I'll be destroyed, so I've got to go low, on my belly. I'm the only one in this baying mob who can fight at knee level.
I drop to my stomach and dart forward, catching them by surprise because until now I have been standing on my rear legs.
I shoot across the narrow gap between me and the mob, but my foot hits a patch of putrid waste and slips, causing me to gash myself. I aim to go between their legs, and while I'm there, I figure I might as well throw in a crotch shot, snapping my head upward, or occasionally throwing a manacled wrist into someone's groin. They're all masked and robed, so I don't know who's male or female, but they all get a blow to the groin regardless. For a moment I am Oprah, “You get a crotch shot! And you get a crotch shot! Everybody gets a crotch shot!”
I am down low, darting through their midst where the packed condition of the mob makes it difficult for them to see me down at their knees. Their masks work against them, obstructing their view downward at their feet. I slam my weight into their knees, and when I have skittered between someone's legs, the weight against the inside of the knee results in a gratifying buckling and popping. When I have the opportunity I whip my tail into their faces.
Whenever the crowd parts—which is difficult because the weight of those at the back surging forward gives them little room to maneuver, I follow, avoiding the gaps and staying low, always aiming to slip between someone's legs. For once their own damn noise works against them, so they can't hear where I am or the shouts of their comrades.
My mind keeps flashing back to the sight of Liana, lying unconscious with blood streaming from her forehead down over her delicate face. I am fueled by real rage, not the imagined stupid shit that animates the mob.
When I get to the back edge of the gang I could bolt down the street, but I'm going to dish out retribution. There's going to be some serious payback. I'm scampering down low and am about to shoot past the back edge of the crowd when I latch onto the calf of one of the red robes. His (her?) leg serves as an anchor, so that momentum carries my body forward, but I rotate, pivoting on his calf and tearing his muscles with my teeth as I turn. I continue the spin and throw him, hurling him down the street.
The red mob turns to chase me, but I am charging forward. I spin and throw my tail at head level, lashing several faces. My snout opens in a snarl, followed by a spray of acid into several more faces.
Someone clad in red swings a sword at me, but I drop to all fours to allow it to pass overhead. Like a baseball batter who has missed a swing for the fences, the swordsman is twisted up. I seize his exposed midsection and clamp down. My teeth are short, but they have a fierce grip. I pick him up and rise up on two feet, then promptly slam him against his associates, using his head and shoulders or feet to block swings with swords, a cudgel, and a bottle. I now whip him into the crowd, using his body like the prison weapon of a bar of soap in a towel, striking the red mob on all sides. Anyone who tries to flank me gets my tail whipped into his eyes.
Unexpectedly, the red mob becomes the victim of their own tactic when Taur begins to hurl objects from the second floor window, including a sewing machine and a boiling pot of soup. Once the guy in my jaws—I think it's a guy, but once they start with that high pitched wail, they all sound like girls—stops wailing, I decide he's lost his usefulness so I fling him into the crowd.
I immediately seize the next red robed thug by the cranium and try to throw his body off of his head. His neck breaks, but his head stays on, which is really frustrating because I'm going for intimidation and shock value. I throw him again, slinging his legs into the pack, but his head stubbornly remains attached to his body. It's not until the third attempt with a little added bite on my part that his headless corpse spins into the mob, complete with an arterial spray, driving them back to where a rain of furniture lands on them. What a letdown: the headless corpse just sprayed blood all over the crowd, but you can't see it because they're all wearing red.
A robed figure charges me, but I throw the severed head into him, creating a flinch, then pounce on him and crush his skull with a single bite. Remember the Tootsie Pop ad where the owl bites the lollipop, crunching the shell to get to the center? That was me just a moment ago.
The scarlet mob is like all gangs, like the torturers I fought, who as long as they're facing helpless victims with overwhelming numbers and advantage, have the courage of the mob, but once the tables turn, and they start getting hurt, they run like bitches. The red mob scatters, with its members running in all directions. They don't even try to hurl any insults as they run away: what a bunch of punks.
Well, guess who shows up late to the party? The daywatch, with their polearms, come marching toward me. Funny how that works. When the red gang was murdering three innocent people, the daywatch was nowhere to be found, but once the red mob started getting a taste of their own medicine, the city guard decided to intervene. I'm seeing a huge double standard in “justice,” in which the mob is free to kill you without police intervention, but once you fight back, you're arrested for violent assault.
Now that I'm standing, I realize I'm weakened—blood loss will do that to you every time. At least I'm in the sun. For once, it's quiet, because the howling red mob has left, so I can hear blood dripping to the pavement and splattering against the cobblestones. I'm feeling woozy.
There is furniture and a few bodies, including a headless corpse, piled up by the door, so I don't want to try to claw my way into the building, and even if I could climb into the building, I don't want the city guard to follow a blood trail up the wall into the building where Taur and Liana are holed up.
The city guard are charging at me, having broken into a run, and I'm tired. For just once, could I get a one-on-one fight?