Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [268]
"Shouldn't ought to be here, mutie." He spat, in imitation-bully-mode; Mark almost laughed.
"You're right," he agreed easily. He let his accent go mid-Atlantic Earth, non-Barrayaran. "This place is a pit."
"Offworlder!" the old woman whined in even sharper disapproval. "You can take a wormhole jump to hell, offworlder!"
"I seem to have already," Mark said dryly. Bad manners, but he was in a bad mood. If these slum-louts wanted to bait him, he would bait them right back. "Barrayarans. If there's anything worse than the Vor it's the fools under 'em. No wonder galactics despise this place for a hole." He was surprised at how easily the suppressed rage vented, and how good it felt. Better not go too far.
"Gonna get you, mutie," the boy promised, hovering on the balls of his feet in nervous threat. The hag urged her bravo on with a rude gesture at Mark. A peculiar set-up; little old ladies and punks were normally natural enemies, but these two seemed in it together. Comrades of the Imperium, no doubt, uniting against a common foe.
"Better a mutie than a moron," Mark intoned with false cordiality.
The lout's brows wrinkled. "Hey! Is that back-chat to me? Huh?"
"Do you see any other morons around here?" At the boy's eye-flicker, Mark looked over his shoulder. "Oh. Excuse me. There are two more. I understand your confusion." His adrenaline pumped, turning his late lunch into a lump of regret in his belly. Two more youths, taller, heavier, older, but only adolescents. Possibly vicious, but untrained. Still . . . where was Ivan now? Where was that bloody invisible supposed outer perimeter guard? On break? "Aren't you late for school? Your remedial drooling class, perhaps?"
"Funny mutie," said one of the older ones. He wasn't laughing.
The attack was sudden, and almost took Mark by surprise; he thought etiquette demanded they exchange a few more insults first, and he was just working up some good ones. Exhilaration mixed strangely with the anticipation of pain. Or maybe it was the anticipation of pain that was exhilarating. The biggest punk tried to kick him in the groin. He caught the foot with one hand and boosted it skyward, flipping the kid onto his back on the stones with a wham that knocked the wind out of him. The second one launched a blow with his fist; Mark caught his arm. They whirled, and the punk found himself stumbling into his skinny companion. Unfortunately, now they both were between Mark and the exit.
They scrambled to their feet, looking astonished and outraged; what kind of easy pickings had they expected, for God's sake? Easy enough. His reflexes were two years stale, and he was already getting winded. Yet the extra weight made him harder to knock off his feet. Three to one on a crippled-looking fat little lost stranger, eh? You like those odds? Come to me, baby cannibals. The bakery bag was still clutched absurdly in his fist as he grinned and opened his arms in invitation.
They jumped him both together, telegraphing every move. The purely defensive katas continued to work charmingly; they flowed into, and out of, his momentum-gate to end up both on the ground, shaking their heads dizzily, victims of their own aggression. Mark wriggled his jaw, which had taken a clumsy blow, hard enough to sting and wake him up. The next round was not so successful; he ended up rolling out of reach, finally losing his grip on the bakery bag, which promptly got stomped. And then one of them caught up with him in a grapple, and they took some of their own back, pounding unscientific blows of clenched fists. He was getting seriously out of breath. He planned an arm-bar and a sprint to the street. It might have ended there, a good time having been had by all, if one of the idiot punks, crouching, hadn't pulled out a battered old shock-stick and jabbed it toward him.
Mark almost killed him instantly with a kick to the neck; he pulled his punch barely in time, and the