I let the silence stretch as I considered my options.

Two problems, Prince Guillerme and Baroness Constance had suddenly become one, Dame D'Amore.

I didn't know the specifics, but I could guess at the outline. D'Amore here had recognized Duchess Constance for what she was, a burden and danger to all around her. Hearing me say as much to the Baroness had probably put the final nail in the coffin, and D'Amore had mutinied. She'd killed the loyalists and captured the Baroness. I was still a little shaky on the order in which things had happened, at some point they'd discovered the village and theme-park. While I suspected that they found it before the mutiny, the fact it appeared there had been two separate battles did leave me with several questions.

Questions like, 'How did she get the prince under control?'

If she'd used magic, then I had a much bigger problem on my hands. But it was also possible that she'd scared the hell out of him, and followed it up with some feminine wiles. Here's the stick, but maybe you'd prefer the carrot?

She was still reclining before the fire while the Prince was kneeling, and the implications of this were not lost on me. Was it an improvement? Yeah, probably. But as I gave it further thought, the more I realized that I didn't want to deal with D'Amore either.

She'd just stabbed her previous liege in the back and slaughtered a dozen men that had once counted on her for leadership.

So what did I want? Forget practicality, what did I want out of this situation? Once I figured that out, then I could decide what compromises I was willing to make to get as close to the desired outcome as possible.

I didn't need to think about it for very long. I wanted control of the hotel, control of the village, and control of the theme-park. I wanted Temerity to fuck off, and I wanted not to have to deal with Dame D'Amore, the Prince, or a dozen soldiers of dubious loyalty.

And when framed in that manner, the question of what to do was straightforward. I'd come here expecting a fight- hoping for a fight, I realized -so why not? I had my long axe with me, and there were only six of them, counting the Dame. They were armed, and aside from the Dame, armoured. But their weapons were sheathed and they'd removed their helmets.

The 'why not' was obvious. Dame D'Amore was offering me a peaceful solution, and I was standing here thinking about whether or not to kill her and all of her friends. I couldn't help but think that this would be a hell of a lot easier if Dame D'Amore had attacked me when I walked in the door. That would be easy, uncomplicated, and wouldn't raise any annoying moral issues.

I'm starting to think that Cassius is the only sane one. I left him behind because I wasn't sure he had the stomach to kill again, but all that really says is Cassius is a normal and well-adjusted guy, and I'm kinda messed up.

D'Amore had killed people, killed them in their sleep no less, and if I'd been present to stop it I wouldn't have hesitated to raise my axe, nor given it a second thought afterwards. But now that it was in the past would I still be justified in my actions if I struck now?

What even was justice? Everyone seemed real happy to refer to me as Lord Wallace. If I really was the lord of these lands did that mean justice was whatever I decided it was? Did it matter? Would it be okay to act, so long as it all worked out in the end?

The ends justify the means, now there's a slippery slope.

Did it matter when I intervened, so long as I did? And if I waited until she took new action that justified violence, would I be responsible for whatever damage I allowed her to do?

It's enough to drive a man mad.

Mentally, I took another step back. What if this were a game, what decision would I make? Would I side with the 'bad guy'? No, obviously, but then life is rarely so black and white. Say it's a strategy game then, not an RPG. Morality still matters, but the scale is less personal. The question becomes more about how the decision influences the realm as the whole. If I took Dame D'Amore's offer, I'd be expanding my realm, but the majority of both land and people would be under her direct control. There was the Prince, but he may as well be wearing a leash. The park and village would be her demesne, to rule as she saw fit. I'd get my taxes, mainly paid in food and raw materials, and she'd make of the people what she willed. Better then to skip the middleman and control the land directly. A larger portion of the resources would be available to me, either for my own use or to reinvest. I'd also be better situated to apply my knowledge to bootstrap their technological development.

I felt a chill come over me as I realized that I'd made my decision. I wasn't going to leave these people in the hands of Dame D'Amore, and I wasn't going to negotiate with her.

Dame D'Amore reacted quickly. Her hand moving to the hilt of her sword less than an eyeblink after I began to raise my left arm.

At the same time, I reached behind my back with my right. My fingers closed around the haft of the long axe and began to draw it forwards, and I rolled my shoulder to get the strap free of my arm.

By now there were three inches of bare steel visible above the leather of D'Amore's hilt and she was halfway to her feet. Caught flat-footed, the remaining soldiers were just beginning to move. They lurched forwards, their hands scrambling for their weapons.

My left hand opened, revealing a handful of coins. Two of the coins dissolved, and the rest were flung forwards in a tight cone that caught Dame D'Amore in her unarmoured chest, with one burying itself just between her collarbones.

D'Amore crumpled backwards over her chair, her limp hand still clinging lightly to the hilt of her sword, only half drawn.

I'd been ready for it, but Regina's battle roar still startled me with its ferocity and volume, and it brought the soldiers' charge to a momentary halt.

In the moment of frozen shock, Regina leapt. She hit the nearest soldier full in the chest. Just the impact against the wall might have been enough to knock out, perhaps even kill the man. Regina was not about to make such an assumption, and her paw blurred. The man fell, his throat a bloody mess.

I couldn't get moving as quickly as Regina, not with bones like lead, and the two soldiers on my side of the inn had their weapons fully drawn before I could close the distance.

One of them grabbed the edge of a nearby table with their free hand and heaved. It toppled over onto its side, and the pair spread out, each coming at me from a separate side.

Behind me, I heard Regina bellowing and men screaming.

I held my axe right hand forwards, with the head above and in front of my right shoulder. So when the soldier on my right threw a chair at my head, it was easy to block with the haft of my axe. But that drew my guard further from my left, and his partner chose that moment to lunge forwards, sword extended.

I tried to twist out of the way, but the sabre still caught me across the side, drawing a line of fire as the blade cut a gash just below my ribs.

The butt spike of my axe flashed out, but the left-hand soldier danced back, and the thrust glanced harmlessly off his breastplate.

The right-hand soldier attacked while I was still recovering from my strike, his sabre point driving to strike under my upraised arm.

But this wasn't the first time I'd fought against multiple opponents. I practised historical European martial arts for years back on Earth, and we figured out pretty quickly that I'd win just about every one-on-one fight, barring some extreme handicaps. So nearly every time I went to spar it was against two, three, or even four other guys.

Needless to say, I was familiar with the game they were playing.

I struck down with the haft, defending myself not by blocking the attack, but by attacking the weapon. I hit with enough force to make the shaft buzz against my hands, and the blow tore the sabre from the soldier's grip. It clattered to the ground, and I kicked it away before he could so much as consider reaching for it. Not that he even tried.

Somewhere out on the street, I heard the crack of rifle fire, and much nearer, behind me, another leonine roar.

Recognizing a lost cause when he saw one, the man instead drew a long knife from his belt.

Ready for the counter-strike that was sure to come from his companion, I thrust backwards with the spike. Aimed only with my peripheral vision, I was unsurprised when the steel tasted only air, but the attack was convincing enough to make him hesitate. The angle was more awkward than I'd like, the low roof forcing my swing to be more horizontal than vertical, but his hesitation gave me the time I needed to bring the head around to strike.

The soldier's blade flashed out even as he leapt back, but he must have seen the sweep of my axe was too broad for him to escape and too powerful for him to deflect. So instead he struck at my bare hand in an attempt to force me to reconsider.

I knew, should my strike land, that it would be a killing blow. I didn't flinch away. I took the strike across my fingers and drove the blade of the axe into his face, just below the nose.

His limp body dragged the axe down, and his partner was on me before I could wrench it free.

He screamed and drove the knife into the back of my shoulder. The blade stopped dead when it met the shoulder blade, and I released my axe. I was about to round on the man with a spinning hammer fist, hoping to catch him in the head and put an end to this, but I felt a stabbing pain in my calf before I could turn.

There at my feet was the fucking Prince, one hand holding the knife, the other arm wrapped around my leg.

The soldier drew back his arm again to strike even as the Prince twisted the knife, and I screamed in pain. I lifted my leg and thrashed around until the Prince lost his grip, the soldier's knife rising and falling twice more as I did.

Still with the knife in his grasp, the Prince was lying on his back, but before he could scramble to his feet, I brought my boot down on his chest.

Another deafening roar from Regina swallowed the sound of splintering ribs, and at that moment, the world felt right.

For the first time in my entire life, I was able to act upon my anger, certain in the knowledge the people I was hurting deserved it. It was a gratifying experience, and though each strike had brought with it the initial shock of pain, I hardly felt the wounds.

When the next knife-blow came I struck out at the soldier's outstretched arm with my left forearm. Before the sound of cracking bone even registered, I'd already hit him in the head with the heel of my right palm. He fell, and the inn was silent except for the ringing in my ears.

Regina had wounds on her shoulders, chest, and forelegs, but like me, she hardly seemed to notice.

I wrenched my axe free of the thing that was once a man and strode to the front door. I hardly slowed as I kicked it open, and stepped out onto the street to find two dead elves lying on the cobbles, and two live elves pinned down behind a police call box.

My injured fingers were clumsy, digging in my pocket for coins. I paid no heed to cover or stealth as I walked steadily towards the pair. They noticed Regina and I when we'd covered about half the distance, but by that point, I'd gotten my bloody fingers on what I needed.

I raised my hand, there was a crack as the coins broke the sound barrier, and then the soldiers fell limply to the sidewalk.

I couldn't make out the words over the ringing in my ears, Regina's roars had been loud enough to hurt in the confined space, but I heard a shocked exclamation from Valentine. A moment later the three of them were in the street, rushing towards us.

"Gods Wallace, what happened to you?" Val cried.

"God's blood, you two," Amity blurted, "Come, come, inside, sit down. I don't even know where to begin."

Amity bustled the two of us into the nearest storefront and got Phoebe and Valentine working as nurses. Phoebe ran back to where they'd seen a liquor store, returning with several bottles of spirits, and Val began gathering up cloth and tearing it into strips to form bandages. It was only after I noticed that Amity was binding the wound on my leg with a length of raw cotton that I realized we were back in the dressmaker's shop.

Amity worked quickly, and while Phoebe and Valentine made sure that we didn't leak too much, the gynoid went back and forth between the two of us stitching up the worst wounds before moving on to the lighter stuff.

Which is how the current state of affairs came to be. With Baroness Constance standing before me while I sat in my underwear, covered in freshly stitched and bandaged wounds.

The girls hadn't known that the Baroness was still alive, or even that she'd warranted rescuing. But once told, Phoebe and Val went to collect her and wasted no time presenting her to me.

They'd removed her gag and cut her ankles free, though her hands remained tied behind her back.

I'd since come down from my adrenaline high, and faced with Baroness Constance, nearly naked and shaking in fear, I knew that I couldn't hurt her. Was she blameless? Probably not. One doesn't become a medieval lord without getting a little blood on their hands.

But she hadn't, for example, crept up on her allies in the middle of the night to slit their throats.

"Untie her," I instructed, "Amity, can you help her get cleaned up, maybe find her something to wear?"

"Of course, Wallace," she promised, "Come now, no one is going to hurt you."

Amity led the shellshocked woman upstairs, and I turned to Val. Before I could say anything, she threw herself at me and wrapped her arms around my neck. She buried her face in my shoulder and breathed deeply.

Once I realized she wasn't going to say anything, I patted her back gently and murmured, "Okay fine, so maybe I need some armour."

She didn't pull away, and my shoulder muffled her voice, "It's not funny, Wallace. I'm not some prissy little noblewoman, fainting at a little blood. I've seen real combat, fought and killed for real. Most people hurt this badly are called corpses."

"Valentine," I soothed, "I'm okay. Yeah, I was bleeding like a stuck pig, but none of it was very deep. There's a lot of muscle and bone to get through before you can reach anything important."

It could have been a lot worse, if the Prince had stabbed me in the thigh instead of the calf, for example, but I kept that to myself.

"What about you three?" I asked, "I only counted four bodies, are there two more of D'Amore's men out there?"

She shook her head, though kept her forehead pressed against my shoulder as she did it, "They climbed up after us, I shot them. Their bodies are up on the roof."

"One less thing to worry about, I suppose. You said you saw some villagers poking around in the buildings earlier?"

She laid her hand against my chest and nodded.

"I'll give Constance some time to put herself back in order. Then we need to have a little chat with her, and with the villagers. There are some questions I need answering, and we need to decide what to do with Constance, now that she's not in a position to hurt us."