Chapter 76: Taking out Royal guards
Ken looked at the door, the way you looked at something with a longing to find out more. He decided to find out what was happening, so he walked to the door, opened it, and immediately what he saw made a sour taste form in his mouth.
There were five horses outside and five royal guards in full armor with the crest of the kingdom on their chests, and the reason they were standing here, well, that’s what made Ken pissed.
The guards were currently beating up Richard. One guard in particular kept kicking even when Richard had balled up on the ground and was not even resisting.
The crowd around watched with helpless eyes. They looked at Richard on the ground, and none of them could help. After all, those were royal guards.
Ken looked at the scene, and his hand moved to his sword immediately, only for him to feel a hand grab him from inside the inn. He turned his head and saw the grey-beard standing there.
"Don’t do it, kid. It’s not worth the trouble," he said and shook his head.
Ken looked at him and then shook his head as well. "That’s my butler they are stepping on," he said. As he said that, he pulled his sword and stepped forward.
The guards spotted Ken the moment he moved, and one stepped forward. "Hey, you can’t come closer. Can’t you see we are busy dealing with a thug here?" he said and stretched his hand out to stop Ken.
Ken looked at the hand and then looked at the guard. "You touched someone that belongs to me, and you call him a thug," Ken said, his anger seeping through his voice.
The guard saw that Ken was not willing to listen, so he moved to grab Ken, but the moment his hand touched Ken’s shoulder, there was a flash of silver, and what followed was the hand dropping to the ground with a thud that drew the attention of everyone.
The guard looked at his hand as blood started spraying out of it. His eyes widened.
"Arghhhhhhhhhh!" he screamed in pain as he looked at the hand. He staggered backwards while holding his arm.
The scene stunned everyone. They looked at it with disbelief. Had someone really attacked a royal guard? Could you even do that and leave?
The other guards all pulled their swords immediately.
"You, how dare you attack a royal guard? You’ll pay with your life!" one of the guards yelled. He pulled his sword and charged at Ken. He slashed down only for Ken to block the attack with ease and then kick him right in the guts and throw him back.
The guard looked at his armor that now had a boot print on it, and it was clear that Ken was not an easy person to deal with. They immediately encircled him and drew their blades.
"So the royal guards ambush people for a living," Ken said in a mocking tone.
"Shut up, we are sentencing you to death for attacking a royal guard," one yelled and charged in first. He slashed.
Ken stepped back and parried the attack. He kept the others in the periphery of his view and saw when they started approaching. He countered the attack fast and went for a clean slash, but the guard was trained, and unlike how the first one was taken unaware, he was ready. He pulled back fast and dodged the attack.
’He dodged. Tch.’ He was not stumped on what to do, but now he would have to waste more time.
The first guard recovered and came back in, this time with a second joining him from the left. Ken read it before they even committed, the angle of the second guard’s shoulder, the way his feet planted too early. Telegraphed.
Ken let the first sword come, deflected it with a half-parry that sent the blade scraping wide, then pivoted hard into the second guard’s momentum instead of away from it. The guard had expected distance. He got Ken’s elbow across the bridge of his nose.
The crunch was wet.
The guard dropped straight down like something had cut his strings, both hands flying to his face as blood poured between his fingers. He wasn’t getting up without help.
Two down.
The remaining three fanned out, slower now, reading him differently. The one on Ken’s far right, the one who had been kicking Richard, was the biggest of them. Broad in the chest, grip firm on a longsword that had clearly seen real use. He wasn’t charging. He was waiting.
Smart.
The middle guard feinted, pulling Ken’s attention, and the one on the left darted in low, going for Ken’s legs. Ken caught the movement at the edge of his vision and jumped back just enough that the swing kissed air, then stepped forward into the gap before the guard could recover. He grabbed the man’s sword arm at the wrist, twisted, and drove his knee up into the guard’s elbow.
The joint bent the wrong way.
The scream ripped through the square. The sword fell. The guard crumpled sideways, cradling his arm against his chest, and he was done, completely done, making sounds that made a few people in the crowd look away.
The middle guard hesitated for half a second at that, and half a second was everything.
Ken closed the distance fast, slapping the man’s sword arm aside before he could reset, and drove a headbutt straight into the guard’s helmet. The impact rang like a struck bell. The guard staggered, vision clearly gone, and Ken caught him by the collar and threw him sideways into the dirt. He bounced once and lay still, groaning.
Three down. One on his feet, one still standing.
The last two were the middle-ranked one, breathing hard now, a thin cut on his jaw from somewhere Ken didn’t remember giving him, and the big one. The kicker. He hadn’t moved yet. Just watched.
The middle guard came in with a real combination this time, overhead into a lateral sweep, textbook, and Ken respected it enough to actually work through it rather than shortcut. He blocked the overhead on the flat of his blade, let the force redirect, stepped past the lateral sweep, and answered with a slash across the back of the man’s thigh, not deep enough to cripple, but deep enough that the leg buckled immediately and the guard went down on one knee with a ragged shout, sword dropping as both hands went to the wound.
He wouldn’t be walking right for months.
Then it was just the big one.
The guard looked at his four companions. One clutching a stump. One face-down. One rocking on the ground with an arm destroyed. One bleeding from a leg. He looked at Ken. He looked at the horses.
Ken rolled his shoulder slowly and looked back at him. "You’re the one who was kicking him."
The guard’s jaw tightened. For a moment it looked like he might actually do it. There was something in his stance, a coiling, but then his eyes moved to the men on the ground again. His sword lowered by inches.
"We are royal guards," he said, but the authority had drained out of it. It sounded like something he was reminding himself.
"I know," Ken said. "And you still lost."
The guard looked at him one more second. Then he sheathed his sword, grabbed the nearest conscious man by the collar, and started pulling. "Get up. Get up, all of you." His voice was rough, stripped of ceremony. The crowd parted silently as he dragged one man and kicked at another to get him moving. The guard with the destroyed elbow was hauled upright by the big one, half-carried.
They left the horses.
The silence broke in pieces.
First one voice, then another, then the whole crowd bled into murmuring. Ken caught fragments as he walked toward Richard.
"He just..."
"Royal guards, all five of them..."
"Did you see that arm, the way it just..."
"Who is he?"
Ken crouched down beside Richard without answering any of it. His butler was curled on his side, breathing in shallow pulls, one eye swollen completely shut and his lip split badly. Ken slid an arm under him and lifted him with care that looked almost out of place after what had just happened.
The murmuring swelled as he carried him through the inn’s door and let it swing shut behind them.
