A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [52]
Mace looked around at the different speakers until an older man with sparse hair and a facial similarity to the innkeeper leaned over and patted his arm. He smelled of ale. “He was a brave, brave lad. He your son?”
“No.” Mace pulled his arm free. This was going to take longer than he’d hoped. “Where are these bandits?” He didn’t ask why the townsfolk hadn’t risen up themselves against them. They weren’t battle sylphs.
The innkeeper’s brow lifted. “Are you planning to go after them? By yourself?”
“Of course.”
They laughed. Mace would have been annoyed if he’d cared. They seemed to think he was crazy, though, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to reveal his identity just to get them to take him seriously. This whole “discretion” approach really wasn’t working as well as he’d hoped.
The innkeeper howled, wiping his eyes. “You’re going to go after them. Bandits. In winter. Alone. Just who the hell do you think you are?”
Mace frowned. “My name is Mace, and I need to know—”
“Mace?” The man gaped, his emotions flipping instantly to surprise. A complex twist of emotions overlaid with disgust replaced this as his entire personality changed, faster than Mace would have thought possible. His eyes narrowed. “Have you been here before? About nineteen years ago, in the winter?”
“Yes,” Mace said, having no idea why the man was asking. He’d been a giant, silent suit of armour then, and he’d never stepped into the inn. He’d been left out in the stable for the night, with only a single visitor.
“Bastard!” the man thundered, his face flushing red as he reached under the bar. Surprised, Mace just stared at him until the innkeeper brought out a cudgel and swung it hard against the side of his head.
It was a blow meant to kill, fueled by a sudden, passionate rage. With a normal man the attack would have been fatal, but Mace’s head only rocked to one side and back. The innkeeper gaped, and Mace reached across the bar, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and threw him across the room. The man howled and crashed into a table, knocking it over and scattering the people sitting around it. A moment later, everyone seemed to be piling atop Mace, joined in some form of semidrunken solidarity that was familiar to a battle sylph, if annoying beyond belief.
A chair smashed across Mace’s back and an ale mug struck him. Truly annoyed that Lily banned him from killing anyone, the battler grabbed one fist that was speeding toward his face and flung its owner off to his right. He then backhanded another. He didn’t try to kill either man, but his blows were more powerful than a human’s. This didn’t deter his attackers, however. The men in the inn were obviously family, and the more of them he knocked down, the more the rest seemed determined to get vengeance.
Mace wasn’t prepared to be their victim, no matter how much of this was a fear reaction because of bandits. Stepping forward, he bent down as a man came at him, catching him around the waist and straightening. The man’s roar of anger became an unmanly shriek as he found himself abruptly flipped upside down, held behind Mace’s head. Mace let him go and stepped forward, letting the man crash heavily onto the wood floor.
By this point, the innkeeper had struggled to his feet, standing unsteadily and waving at the rest. “Bash that guy’s head in!” he shouted. “That’s the bastard who ruined our family’s reputation! Just don’t wreck my inn!”
Right. There was a table beside him, a heavy thing made of scratched wood. Mace grabbed the end of it with one hand and threw it at a group, careful to aim just high enough that they could duck, much as he wanted to take their heads off. That gave more than a few of them pause, some of them realizing at last that this wasn’t a normal fight. Not that Mace cared. He just knew that he hadn’t come here for this, and he didn’t have the patience for it.
Throwing the table wasn’t enough. The men kept coming. Seeing no other option, Mace released his hate. Every man in the bar, whether drunk or sober, angry or afraid, froze. The hate of a battle sylph