Burr's grunts didn't hesitate once her fingers snapped. They rushed forward, shouting, boots scraping and weapons raised.
It was clear that they had no training or any coordination. But numbers were usually enough, and so was the noise and chaos.
But they felt and sounded confident. Not brave - they laughed and sneered and tossed crude comments around like they'd already decided how this would end. They had done something like this more than once already.
Someone near the front spat at the boss' feet, like he had offended them personally.
I pressed myself tighter against the closest wall and watched.
The first axe hit the boss.
It should have split a man's shoulder. Instead it rang with a dull metallic sound and bounced away as if it had struck a post. The woman holding it stumbled back, more surprised than hurt.
Then a knife. Then another.
They skidded off the boss's armor, scraping, turning aside at odd angles as they struck. One blade snapped clean in half. Another flew from its owner's hand.
Then the boss moved. He rushed into them, and wherever he put his hands, people fell.
He didn't swing wide. There was no windup to his strikes. He just gave them a good, clean hit each time.
A punch landed on a shoulder. I heard the crack even from where I was hiding. The woman screamed and went down, clutching herself and rolling.
The noise of the crowd changed after the first few hits. It didn't stop all at once but thinned out. Their shouts quieted down, and then that quiet turned into screams, either of fear or rage.
Fewer wanted to step forward and be the next one to test their mettle. The blood that they wanted was slowly turning into their own. And that panic didn't take long to spread.
Another punch caught a man in the ribs. He folded like paper and didn't get back up.
With as much strength as the boss seemed to have, it was strange that no one died.
I guessed he wasn't actively killing them. Not yet. He just wanted to break them first.
Another axe came down toward his head. It didn't seem like they learned after the first time.
He lifted one arm and caught the haft, stopped it dead, then twisted. The wood splintered, and the head dropped to the street. He shoved the woman away with one hand. She hit the wall and slid down, gasping.
Someone tried to stab him in the back. The blade scraped and slid away. The boss didn't even fully turn. He just reached back, grabbed the attacker by the wrist, and squeezed.
I watched the way that they try to rush him, and right away I knew how this would end.
I hadn't been in a fight for a long time, but I knew enough not to get myself killed, and many of them pushed others towards that end.
They were too close together, and there wasn't enough space. Even if one of them managed to dodge an attack from the boss, another one would take their place, and if they slashed or stabbed with their weapons, there was a good chance they'd hit one of their friends.
Most of them had never fought anything that fought back properly.
Mobbing someone that couldn't be beat with numbers was a really stupid idea, but they couldn't have known.
The boss didn't have many public appearances and kept most of the business side of things low-profile.
I guess I could call it smart being so much out of the attention of everyone. I wasn't even sure if other criminal organizations knew about the boss or our group as a whole.
There was a scream, and a second later the woman flew past my hiding place, landing only a few steps away from me.
She had a scarred face and a poorly set broken nose. She writhed on the ground, clutching her arm, making panicked noises. But still alive.
I shifted away from her, finding another spot farther away and higher up. I needed space.
They kept coming, but the noise was changing. Less shouting now. More screams. More panic.
Their weapons littered the street. Axes abandoned. Knives dropped. People tripping over each other trying to get away from the center of it.
And the boss still hadn't used magic. Just his hands.
It became clear, slower than it should have, that they couldn't hurt him.
They hit him. They cut at him. They tried to drag him down. And every time, it ended the same way with broken bones and screaming.
Alice Burr was at the back of the back of the mob. She wasn't laughing now.
Her axe was low, and there was fear and disbelief in her eyes.
She took a step back and then another. She tried to shout over the noise and for people to listen to her and her orders; that didn't take.
The people nearest her hesitated. Some looked at her. Some looked at the boss. Some just ran and looked past her.
I saw her snap at one of her own and shove her forward like she could force courage into him. She didn't move. None of them did.
Burr kept retreating, slowly at first, like she didn't want to admit what she was doing.
But she was retreating all the same.
On the other hand, there was no stopping the boss. He had no need to rush.
What had been a mob was turning into pieces. People limped, crawled, and dragged each other away, dropping their weapons just to run away faster.
The boss kept moving.
I could follow him now without losing track. He managed to dispel any chaos.
That's when I saw Alice Burr again.
She was coming back.
Not slowly this time. Not careful. She was moving fast, pushing through her own people, shouting at them to get out of the way. Her face was tight, not angry anymore, but set, like she'd made a choice she didn't like.
And she wasn't alone.
Someone was with her.
At first, I thought it was just another grunt. But then the figure moved at an unbelievable speed.
She left Alice behind in a blink of an eye.
One moment she was beside her, the next she wasn't.
I lost her for half a second, and then she was there, standing in front of the boss like she'd always been there. Both of them were in the middle of the rest of the mob.
Everyone else seemed to notice it immediately.
The few who were still standing ran. Dropped everything. Even some of the wounded dragged themselves away, fear giving them strength they hadn't had a moment ago.
Only those who couldn't move stayed where they were, whimpering or staring.
The woman was short. About the boss's size. Wrapped in rags that looked more like something torn off her than clothes. Her hair was long and green, hanging in uneven ropes down her back and over her shoulders, with bald patches where it looked like it had been ripped out by the fistfuls.
Parts of her ears were missing, both of them.
She smiled.
It was wide and wrong. Too eager. Missing a few teeth that made the rest stand out too much.
She rocked slightly on her feet, like she couldn't stand still. She raised a hand in a wave. She was missing two whole fingers and half of another on that hand.
Whoever she was, she had seen many fights in her life and survived them all, sometimes worse for wear.
At first I thought I knew the type of person she was. I'd seen her kind before, in alleys and burned-out taverns and places where fights never started or ended clean. Petty squabbles that turned deadly more often than not.
Survivors like that didn't rise by being strong or smart. They lasted just long enough where others didn't.
I wondered what Burr was thinking, calling someone like that over. Was she her ace in the hole? A sort of trump card where the other grunts were just pawns?
She didn't seem much more capable than the others, quite the opposite.
But she looked at the boss.
The boss looked at her with a sort of recognition.
And for the first time since the fight started, he stopped moving.
They didn't speak.
At once, the street went quiet until I could hear my own breathing again.
Alice Burr, who was breathing hard and sweating, stood well back now, almost hiding behind a doorway. Her axe hung loose in her hand, forgotten. She didn't look in charge anymore. She looked like someone who'd just handed the problem to something worse.
The woman in rags tilted her head, studying the boss like he was something new and interesting. Her eyes widened, and she put her hands at her back, wandering around the boss like she was inspecting him.
She stopped once she had walked a full circle around him, stepping on those who couldn't stand anymore.
Then she grinned wider.