Crow laughed. “If you’d ever met Baron Silveen, you wouldn’t be asking that question. Take it from me, no one would want to cross him. That’s not to say that some, fired up by the spirits, may not.”
“And they’re the ones to watch out for,” Ryan muttered.
“Yeah, but how do you tell?” added J.B., who had ridden up to join them. “Ryan,” he continued, “don’t be fooled by the way they look—take a look at some of the blasters, then sniff the air.”
Ryan frowned, and tried to get a look at the blasters carried by the women without being spotted. The Armorer was right. Although the women seemed unkempt, and their clothes were colorful, tight fitting and sluttish, the handblasters that all of them seemed to pack were, as far as he could tell from what was visible, highly polished. If they kept the visible part of the blaster in that good a condition, then chances were that the mechanisms were also well maintained. And the air? The one-eyed man was about to comment to J.B. that he could smell the chemical aroma of plas-ex being broken down and reconstituted, and possibly homemade explosives, too, when a sudden flurry of violent activity distracted him.
A fight had broken out among one group of women. Ryan hadn’t heard the argument that led to it, but Krysty and Mildred had. Two women were arguing about an old man who lurked in the doorway of one of the huts, and did nothing to stop the argument. In point of fact, he seemed to revel in the sudden chaos he had caused.
“I tell you he wouldn’t go with you if you was the last woman on the face of the world, which you’d have to be to get any attention from a man,” the younger of the women added to drive her point home.
The older woman—who was about a hundred pounds heavier and had dark red hair shot through with silver—replied angrily, “Shit, he must hate being the father of such a gaudy slut. How many of these kids are his?”
This was too much for the younger woman. Despite her inferior weight, she yelled in incoherent fury and threw a haymaker punch that caught the older woman on the side of the head, making her stagger backward with a startled yelp.
She recovered quickly, however, and charged back at her opponent with a snarl, catching her under the chin with a roundhouse blow that would have rendered her unconscious had it properly connected. It didn’t, but it was still hard enough to knock her backward into the rest of the women, who were now beginning to draw up sides for the fight.
It looked as if it could get out of hand quickly, and Krysty and Mildred knew they had to act. They also knew that it would stamp the companions authority hard if they were the ones to quell the disturbance, rather than the men.
The two Mandrake women were locked together now, wrestling in a small circle, the better to try to gain the upper hand. The other women were closing in, swapping insults with each other depending on the sides they had chosen. There were some blows being flung, but so far it hadn’t escalated into a full-scale fight.
And it wouldn’t if Mildred and Krysty had anything to do with it.
Both women were off their horses and into the midst of the fledgling fight before anyone had a chance to react. A glance between them determined that Krysty would take the older woman and Mildred the younger. Krysty was slightly taller than Mildred, and would have the height and leverage advantage to overcome the weight of the older woman, whereas Mildred’s lesser height would enable her to fight face-to-face with the younger woman.
But first they had to get them apart.
The speed and unexpectedness of their attack gave them an advantage in breaking through the crowd, both women using their elbows and heavy boots to crack shins and cause the crowd to part as their ribs became the object of a series of blows. It didn’t take a second for Mildred and Krysty to reach the center of the action.