Chapter 7
In less time than it took me to turn back to find the women with shocked expressions on their faces, the entire dining hall devolved into a drunken barroom brawl the likes of which I’d never seen before.
“Ken!” Serra shouted in panic.
She and Tanell were clinging to each other, and while Tanell looked a little less shaken than Serra, neither of them looked pleased about the situation.
Yori, on the other hand, had a delighted grin on her face, and Carissa’s expression was one of determination.
“Sire!” Anders shouted above the sudden commotion. “We must get you and the queens to safety!”
I nodded my head as I looked around and took in the erupting violence around us.
The two men who’d started the fight were on the ground at that point. The broad-shouldered guy who’d accused another man of cheating was now on his back. His opponent straddled his hips as he tried to throw punches down at the larger man, but he was either very drunk or very untrained.
Either way, the broad-shouldered guy wasn’t pinned down for long. He moved his arms away from defending his face to catch the drunk man’s next punch. In the next second, the tables were turned, and the broad-shouldered guy was on top of the other man.
Several others had crowded around to try to pull them apart, but their attempts had quickly turned into more one-on-one fistfights all around, and the chaos spread like wildfire.
I wasn’t sure if everyone in the crowded dining hall knew the two men well enough to take sides, or if they were simply taking advantage of the opportunity to brawl, but fistfights and grappling matches surrounded us on every side in a matter of seconds.
“Sire!” Anders shouted.
“Get Serra and Tanell out of here!” I hollered back at him.
“But Sire–” he tried to argue.
“I’m fine!” I yelled. “It’s just a bar fight!”
Anders clenched his jaw, and his eyes flicked around the room in a quick assessment of the situation. No one had tried to come at me with a blade or attempted to assassinate me yet, and he was forced to agree with me.
“Ken,” Serra gasped in worry. “How do we get out of here?”
“I’m not–” I looked around for an exit path, but my words were cut short when a tall, thin man with bright blond hair was bodyslammed into our table.
“Aaaahh!” Serra screamed.
Serra’s body tilted back away from the table as it careened to one side, and her death grip on Tanell’s arm brought the golden-blonde woman down with her.
“Your Majesties!” Anders shouted. “Fuck, where are Rubin and Otto?”
Before I could look for the next highest-ranking members of my personal security team, a belligerently drunk man with rosy cheeks and a pot belly took a swing at me.
Despite how obviously drunk he was, the punch was well-aimed.
“Shit!” I ducked under his right hook. “Stop! I’m your king!”
The fat, drunk man either didn’t hear or didn’t care, and he charged at me with his nearly three-hundred-pound body. The force of his charging body took the wind right out of me, and we both went to the ground.
He laughed as he landed on top of me, and his glazed eyes barely seemed able to focus on my face. I decided he had no idea who he’d just taken down, and that I couldn’t be too mad about the situation. This was probably the most fun he’d had in years.
“Fucker,” I half-growled and half-laughed.
I managed to get my right arm out from under him as he writhed on top of me like a beached whale. Being pinned between him and the floor didn’t leave me a lot of room to maneuver, but I drew my right arm as far back as I could and slugged him right in the side of his pudgy face.
My fist slammed into his ear, and his ruddy face contorted in pain.
“Fuck!” he groaned.
That was enough of an opening for me, and I was able to knock him off me and get back to my feet. I whipped around in search of the women.
Yori was in the middle of a sparring match with the tall man who’d been slammed through our table. Despite the insane height difference between them, Yori was holding her own.
She ducked under the lanky man’s wide punch and slugged him in the gut.
“Ooph!” he gasped.
Yori followed up the punch with a brutal kick to the side of his knee, and he went down with a scream of pain.
Carissa had pulled a short knife from somewhere and was brandishing it at a snide-looking man with jet-black hair. He had a broken glass bottle in one hand and was thrusting it in the air in her general direction.
I wasn’t worried about either of the dark-haired women, and I searched for the blondes.
“Serra!” I shouted.
“Down here!” Her voice came from around my feet, and I crouched down.
Serra and Tanell were tucked under and behind the tipped-over table.
“Good, stay there,” I said.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Serra said with a small but brave smile.
“Anders, protect them,” I ordered.
“Yes, sire!” Anders grunted as he blocked a punch from another drunken idiot.
Once I knew my women were safe enough, under the current circumstances, I scanned the room again in search of Rubin, Otto, and the other members of my security personnel.
Rubin was locked in a grappling match with a man dressed in black near the pair of men who’d started the fight. It looked like the man in black might have been a personal guard for the broad-shouldered man who’d thrown the first punch.
Otto was clear on the other side of the room, and he had the broken remains of a wooden chair in his hands. It looked like he’d broken the chair in half on purpose to turn the legs into batons, and as I watched, he whacked some poor guy over the back of the head with one.
“That’s gotta hurt,” I hissed.
The rest of my private guards were busy in fights of their own, and I saw no signs of the fight stopping any time soon.
The entire dining hall was in chaos. Glass was smashed in several piles across the wooden floor, there wasn’t a single table still standing on its legs, and everyone was either fighting or taking cover behind the bar or the toppled furniture.
The older man who’d been serving drinks behind the bar was leaning back against the wall with a glass of brown liquor in one hand and a shortsword in the other. Any time someone tried to come near him, he grumbled something, waved the sword at the person, and waited.
I wondered if he was threatening the locals with banning them from the bar for life because whatever he said to them was highly effective, and he was mostly left alone to enjoy his drink.
The young maid, Merryl, was huddled in the far corner near the door to the kitchen with three other women who were wearing matching aprons.
I suspected they were the other servers in the tavern, and I guessed the cooks had barricaded the kitchen doors to keep the fight from reaching them.
That was all well and good for the cooks, but it had left the waitresses to cower in the corner.
My brain raced as I tried to figure out what to do. I didn’t think shouting would do much good. The barfight was too loud for any one voice to be heard over the thunderous sounds of breaking chairs, shattering glass, and fists punching flesh.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
Another drunken idiot threw himself at me with a sloppy grin on his ruddy face. His right fist was bloody at the knuckles, and his left eye was starting to swell.
He lurched as I ducked under his wide swing, and I slammed my knee up into his gut.
“Uuuh!” he grunted and toppled forward.
“Stay here!” I shouted at the women.
Yori grinned as she slugged her new opponent across the face with her empty silver mug. Carissa slashed her blade threateningly through the air at the young buck who’d stupidly decided to take her on.
His eyes went wide with shock and panic, and he flung both hands up in the air in surrender before he backed away.
“Where are you going?” Carissa asked as she positioned herself between the fight and my blonde queens.
“To stop this thing!” I shouted. “Anders, keep them safe!”
“Sire!” Anders tried to reach out to stop me, but he was forced to intercept another belligerent moron who tried to grab Serra out from under the table. “No, you don’t!”
Anders, Carissa, and Yori were doing well for themselves, and I knew they’d work together to hold the position and keep Tanell and Serra safe.
I also knew Tanell and Serra were well enough equipped to defend themselves if the need arose, but the best thing I could do was put an end to the damn fight.
I started to work my way through the chaos toward where the fight had broken out. The two men who’d started the whole thing were still locked in their battle, and they’d both gotten a few good shots in on the other.
As I made my way across the room, I had to block and dodge a dozen more punches and even some kicks, but I got a better look at the two men.
The broad-shouldered one had dark hair that was turning gray, and it had come undone from its tidy tie at the nape of his neck.
His opponent must have gotten a good hit on his eyebrow because a thin line of blood had dribbled down his face and dripped onto his white, silk shirt.
The sleeve of his black jacket was ripped, and the shirt underneath was torn as well.
He had a fancy gold ring with a large emerald on his left hand, and I realized he was probably a nobleman.
The guy he was fighting had hair that was much grayer and a face lined with wrinkles, but he was a nobleman, too.
He also wore quality clothing made of silk and fine linen.
His formerly straight nose was now very crooked and actively bleeding down his lips and chin.
The broad-shouldered guy must have broken it during the fight.
The table that had once been between them was now on the floor, and a deck of cards was scattered all around with their spilled drinks and plates of half-eaten food.
“Where ya goin’ fancy pants?” a man slurred as he stepped into my path. “Let’s fight!”
“Fuck off.” I rolled my eyes.
“Yer no fun,” he grunted as he reared an arm back to punch me.
“Maybe not,” I said, and I lifted my foot to kick him square in the gut.