A great bearded lout swinging a crude but serviceable sword glared down at me. I glared back, noting that not only did his eyes meet in the middle but that his hairline also started at his eyebrows. When he shouted at me his breath frightened me more than he did.

"You dere, little boy. Gimme what you carrying. You all drop what you got or you get it."

"No one tell me what to do unless he can beat me, you illiterate cretin," I shouted back. The macho showdown with these macho mothers would have to take place sooner or later. Sooner was better.

He roared angrily at the insults, even though he could not understand them, and swung up the sword. I sneered.

"Big coward kill little man with sword when little man got no ax." I gave him two fingers to doubly amplify my feelings.

I hoped my simple syntax fitted the local linguistic profile because I wanted to make sure they all understood me. They must have, because Pigbreath dropped his sword and jumped towards me. I swung off my pack and stepped out into the mud. He had his arms out, fingers snapping, ready to grab and crush.

I ducked under them, tripped him as he went by to splat down into a puddle. He rose up, angrier than ever, balled his fists and came on more warily this time.

I could have finished it then and there and made life easier. But I had to display a bit of skill first so his mates wouldn't think that his downfall had been an accident. I blocked his punch, grabbed and twisted his arm, then ran him into the wall with a satisfactory crunch.

The blood from his nose did not improve his temper. Nor did my flying kick that numbed one of his legs, a stab with my knee that crumpled the other. Legless, he dropped to his knees, then crawled towards me on all fours. By this time even the dullest of the audience knew who had won this fight. So I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him up, hit his throat with the edge of my hand and let him keep going backwards, splatting down unconscious in the mud. I picked up his discarded sword, tested the edge with my thumb-jumped about so suddenly and menacingly that the armed men stepped away without thinking. I kept the momentum going.