Alba turned at a brisk pace into a small alley with a paved brick road, deciding to avoid the narrow streets of the dangerous district, thereby slightly increasing his path. He was heading straight ahead toward a large, deserted avenue. Burned flyers, gray dust, and fallen tree leaves swirled in the air around him, rising and falling like forgotten ashes that foretold the end of this world. On the curbs lay the wreckage of the destroyed shops: stone, glass, crumbled cement, and so on. The heavy iron smell permeated the Inquisition chief's imperfect lungs, and he felt short of breath. But he paid no attention to it. All thoughts were focused on his plan to defeat the revolutionary movement. So far, he didn't know who was in charge of all this, or how they had managed to escape the omniscient eye of God. The situation in Agernox was getting more heated by the minute, rising above the critical level, it seemed that the boiler of impatience was about to explode and there was no point in guessing what lay ahead, it was only necessary to swim with the current of this mud river in the hope of not being thrown ashore.

Alba reached a small market square with abandoned tents, some of which had burned down. He walked through the stalls, avoiding by a safe distance the remains of broken wood, burned nails, blackened metal beams, and piles of debris. In one of the passages on the road, he found small craters from the explosions, as well as several dead people, who, apparently, did not have time to hide in their homes, at the very beginning of the uprising.

Alba wanted to turn onto the street after two hours, but it was blocked by blown-up steam cars, which he did not want to climb over, fearing that somewhere there were still mines or bombs, or even worse - an ambush. There were suspiciously many abandoned stagecoaches in the taxi parking, had the merchants abandoned them for their lives? It's hard to believe. He took the only possible route forward, along a narrowing avenue that zigzagged to the right and left. Alba heard the dull shots of crossbows a kilometer away.

It must be from the direction of the t-shaped intersection... damn it ... he thought, and quickened his pace, realizing that if the enemy managed to block the access to the road, then it would be as difficult as hell to get into the forbidden city. Around the last bend, he saw the scene of a scuffle, where there were about three dozen policemen and soldiers. Without wasting time, Alba approached the squad leader and asked what was going on here, he clearly did not expect to see such a high-ranking inquisitor and hesitated for a couple of seconds, mumbling and repeating unintelligible words, then gathered his thoughts and answered:

"We are blocked on both sides by rashly improvised barricades. There are steam engines, bags of sand and cement, even construction debris thrown in, God knows where did they find it all. We were ordered to hold our position in this area and to keep that passage ahead clear. Only at one point we were attacked by armed mercenaries, some of the soldiers were shot, and then, well... you can see for yourself."

"It doesn't look like the usual revolutionaries…"

"I swear on my head, it feels like they were waiting for us. In addition, you are right, their actions are very coordinated."

Alba turned back, and saw that from the street from which he had come, about fifty people blocked the escape route with steam stagecoaches. They darted around them from all sides, and in a minute they were out of sight.

"What's going on?" the squad leader asked.

"It looks like we've been ambushed. Do you have a weapon for me?"

"There are steam crossbows in the front on the corpses of the policemen. Only you can't get to them, too dangerous."

Five inquisitors approached Alba and bowed.

"We are glad to see you, Sir Alba," one of them said. "What are your orders?"

Alba looked towards the new barricade, silence, no one even tried to aim at them.

"I don't know yet..." said Alba. "I can't understand how we overlooked such a huge revolutionary movement consisting of trained soldiers. Did you see their faces, Commander, did you recognize them?"

Shots were fired from the direction of the intersection, and the screams of wounded soldiers were heard.

"Keep your head down, you idiots!" Alba shouted. "Stay close to the walls of the houses and wait for orders!"

"We didn't see their faces; they were all wearing masks. Besides, we couldn't kill anyone."

"No one at all?"

"They're sly devils, sir!"

“Fuck.”

Alba went half-crouched to the scene of the skirmish and pulled out the bodies of several still-breathing soldiers under the bolts flying at him. He looked around and saw that on the opposite end of the road, one bolt had broken the window of a house.

Why aren't we getting shot in the back? What is the logic? Alba thought.

He ran across the road, picked up the shard, and came back and looked through the glass at the barricades to assess the situation.

"Why aren't they advancing?"

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"No idea, sir!"

"We're in full view here."

"Apparently they don't want to lose their people for nothing."

Alba looked at the new enemy barricade, about a hundred meters away.

They don't shoot because of the distance. Something will start soon…

Suddenly, a steam engine drove towards them at full speed from the direction of the intersection, the soldiers looked around the corner and fired a shot at the windshield, where the driver should have been sitting, but this did not slow down the attack. Ten seconds later, the car came alongside with the corner of the house where the soldiers were standing and a deafening crash sounded. Alba, like few others, was in the kill zone, he was thrown back by the blast wave, but the armor saved him from serious injuries. He wasn't hurt. When he got up, he saw about a dozen dead bodies, some without an arm, some without a leg, faces covered with severe burns, and the road was filled with pools of blood and destroyed stones.

"What are you waiting for!" Alba shouted. "Save the wounded! Are there any medics here?"

"No. We didn't expect an attack."

"How can you not expect it, motherfucker! The civil war has begun here!"

While most of the people were distracted by the wounded, a stagecoach came at them from behind at top speed. Alba saw it first, snatched the crossbow from the soldier's hands and pulled a bolt with a bunch of dry tow from his quiver, lit it and fired at the stagecoach, hitting it exactly in the boiler compartment. There was an explosion which hit one Inquisitor. His body was instantly engulfed in flames, he caught fire and ran around in a panic, ran out to the intersection and was immediately killed by a volley of ten bolts.

Alba swore and ordered everyone to gather around him urgently and said:

"They overload the engines of steam coaches so much that they overheat to the point where they turn into trigger bombs. And apparently, there are some flammable liquids inside. The engines do not overheat quickly, that's why they slow down and keep a safe distance. Smart-ass bitches. Everyone, get incendiary bolts and shoot at the engines or the cockpit at the first opportunity. We can't pass the intersection, we'll have to go back, prepare our weapons, we don't have much time!"

Another stagecoach exploded from the direction of the intersection, taking the lives of two careless soldiers. The remaining soldiers and police officers formed up outside the house, preparing for a counterattack. Alba picked up a crossbow lying near one of the corpses, checked the balance of the weapon, pulled out a magazine full of ordinary bolts, put it in his bosom, and the others did the same. Then he took a quiver of incendiary bolts, hung it on his back, and stuck one bolt in the muzzle, set it on fire, and fired. Everyone stared at him, waiting for an explanation.

"We're about forty meters short. Let's run straight ahead!"

The squad ran, shouting and screaming. The enemy hooted back, turned the stagecoaches around, and let them all go at once. Some of the soldiers stopped and took aim, others rushed back in fear, but the enemy fighters came out from behind the houses at the t-shaped intersection and killed them. One soldier ran to the door of the house and tried to hide inside, but explosive tripwires were installed on the door and the soldier's body was torn to shreds. Alba ordered them to shoot on the move, the smoke from the explosion would cover them. Bolts flew back and forth, stagecoaches exploded one after another, deafening explosions cracked windows and people no longer looked at the show, and plaster fell like dust in the wind.

Out of the thick gray smoke, Alba was the first to run out, hit by several bolts, but they immediately bounced off. He fired back, and one of the enemies caught fire and screamed. Then he did a forward somersault, bent over in a crouch, inserted a magazine with ordinary bolts, and fired three more shots for suppression, but did not hit anyone. The soldiers and policemen came running out of the black smoke, shouting like wild werewolves, and the Inquisitors were hiding behind them. A bloodbath began, Alba continued to shout at everyone to make a breakthrough and then someone grabbed his shoulder, he turned around – it was one of the inquisitors.

"Let's use metovis, sir. Kill them all and run away."

"Will you kill the people in the houses, too, you idiot? Take your weapons and pray to the God you stay alive."

The attack continued, Alba's companions fell to the ground from fatal and not only wounds, but they no longer helped anyone, it was every man for himself. A bolt flew past Alba, and he dodged it at the last moment, and the steel tip pierced the inquisitor behind him in the head, hitting him squarely in the right eye. Alba paid no attention to him and ran forward through the fiery, blazing stagecoaches. And when he was ready to fight back in close combat, he saw that the enemies had retreated.

What the hell?

He turned around and saw that the enemy had already moved several dozen bags of sand and cement to the t-shaped intersection and were waiting. No one was in a hurry to finish the remaining ones off. It was a well-coordinated and planned action, but the goal was unclear until the end.

They don't want to let me go to the forbidden city, Alba assumed.

He went to the burned body of the enemy, but could not identify who this person was. Only a few soldiers and policemen survived, plus two inquisitors. Alba followed the enemy and at the end he noticed that they turned into the street blocked by stagecoaches, and was glad that he did not choose this path. The out of breath survivors gathered around him and then all together ran back to the market and made sure that no one was following them anymore and began to think about what to do next. No one really suggested anything, and one of the inquisitors took Alba aside and said:

"Sir, do you remember the revolution twenty-five years ago?"

"It's hard to forget."

"We were tipped off by the «Grandfather» - that sly old bastard. He lives nearby, we can pay him to have his people help us through this bloody hell."

"You're contradicting yourself. You can't use "sly" and "help" in the same sentence, what will we do if everything goes wrong?"

"We'll kill him."

"And a bunch of his people and our soldiers and the cops who don't know we can use metovis, right? Do you want to leave a scorched earth behind?"

"It's a civil war right now, even if it happens, no one will know it was us, and no one will know who attacked him, I bet the «Grandfather» has a lot of enemies."

"I don't like the idea."

"There won't be any others."

"We'll see. And cover your shoulder. I see a tattoo with numbers on it."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Let's go."

They both went back to the others, and Alba asked:

"Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can get into the forbidden city?"

"Only if we go to the west gate and go around the whole city along the walls, we can try to make a detour and go around the intersection from the south, but it's not a fact that we won't run into the enemy there either."

"More ideas and suggestions?"

"None, sir."

And there are no underground tunnels nearby…

Alba looked at the Inquisitor, who nodded imperceptibly.

"Follow me. There's a man who lives not far away, so we'll ask him for..." he paused "for help."

"Reliable man?" one of the policemen asked.

"No. Extremely dangerous, so be prepared, is everything clear?"

"Yes, sir!"