“What about you, Jayla?” Pietro asked. “Will you join in our attempt to keep a decorous crowd?”
“Sure,” she said. “Where should we set up?”
In a few minutes, they’d borrowed a table and turned themselves into a tiny distribution center. Cody fetched cartons and bags as they were dumped onto the bank, and Pietro doled out portions. Jayla harried the fretful campers into forming an orderly line, and then patrolled the queue. “Hey now,” she said any time someone tried to get ahead in line, and frowned at anyone who looked rebellious.
Only twice did she have to exert a little more pressure. The first time was when a group of teenage boys followed a girl from the distribution site and tried to steal her sack of fruit. But Jayla had already noted them as potential troublemakers, and she was upon them before they could do more than snatch at the girl’s hands. They turned on her with snarls of anger, but she faced them down with a professional’s cool dispassion.
“Don’t start any trouble with me,” she warned. One of the boys feinted forward, and she hit him hard enough to get his attention without bringing him to the ground. The other two backed off, eyeing her a little more intently. She made sure they could see the soldier’s bracelet welded around her left wrist. “Just get in line if you need supplies.”
The girl scampered away while the boys watched Jayla for another tense moment. Then the largest of the three grunted in disgust and motioned to his buddies. They sneered just to show they weren’t afraid, then trotted off to the far end of the encampment.
When Jayla returned to patrol the line, everyone else was conspicuously polite. No one even bumped into anyone else for the next thirty minutes.
The second altercation came after they’d been handing out goods for almost two hours. The sun was sinking, the temperature was still a little too warm on this early summer day, and everyone was tired and irritable. Word had made it up from the embankment that the flow of supplies was about to stop for the day, though it would resume in the morning. The last few casks of water had been liberated from their harnesses and set on the ground, and Jayla could only see one more bag of food hanging from the pulley as it eased across the canyon. She was pretty certain that most everyone in camp had been through the line at least once, but the news still caused a murmur of anxiety among the travelers.
Then three men in merchant clothing calmly pushed through the crowd and picked up three of the last casks of water, shouldering them with ease. The onlookers reacted with alarm and disbelief, but no one made a move to stop them as they shoved their way back through the line.
Until Jayla stepped directly into their path and said, “No.”
They halted, but in a way that radiated menace, and formed a looming semicircle around her. They were all a good four or five inches taller than she was, muscular, their faces rough with hard travel and harder bargaining. She couldn’t tell by their coloring what their heritage might be, but she could read their bracelets, and none of them showed a soldier’s glyphs.
“That water’s for everybody,” she said. “Leave it here.”
“Don’t see how you can take it from us,” one of them said in a matter-of-fact voice.
“I can make you drop it,” she said. “And then everybody loses.”
“Don’t think you can even do that,” he said.
He’d barely uttered the last word before she dove at him, ramming her head into his stomach with such force that he fell over backward. He hit the rocky ground so heavily that his bones crunched and the cask splintered, spewing water everywhere. He cried out in pain, clutching his head, but he didn’t try to get up. Jayla spun away from him, already in a half-crouch, to face his friends.
“What about you two?” she said. “Want to waste the water?”
They’d hastily set down their burdens and began circling her, their faces creasing with anger. She could see they both had blades in their belts, but they hadn’t drawn weapons yet, probably figuring they could crush her easily enough with their bare hands. She didn’t think either one was paying much attention to the way the spilled water was seeping into the spare ground, making a slick spot of mud over the hard surface of stone.
“This is none of your mix,” one of them said.
“It’s everybody’s mix,” she answered. “We’re all trapped here.”
That was enough conversation for them. They lunged for her, moving in concert, but they weren’t trained soldiers, so they just got in each other’s way. One of the blows meant for her landed on the other man instead, and there was a bellow of pain. Jayla spun around and got two good kicks on each of them, one in the kidneys, one in the knees. Each man staggered in first one direction, then the other, and the beefiest of the two stayed half-bent over, trying to regain his balance. Jayla snaked her foot around his ankle, and he went down hard. The third man came boring in, slashing at her with thick, heavy hands; she felt the impact on her right cheek and upper arm. But she danced backward, luring him after her until he was in just the right spot. Then she spun again, came around behind him, and kicked him in the back of his legs. Overbalancing in the mud, he landed face-first on the unforgiving ground.
The second man was up on his hands and knees, but cautiously, as if testing to see whether anything was broken. Big men weren’t used to falling, Jayla had always thought; they were accustomed to winning contests just by strength and size, and being on the ground caused them deep disorientation. If this had been a desperate fight, she would have taken advantage of his loss of focus to leap on his back and crack a few ribs, maybe even twist his neck. But this was just a skirmish. A warning. Back off. Play fair.
A movement on the periphery of her vision caused her to swing in that direction, but it was just Cody snagging one of the water barrels. A quick glance around showed her that he must have already rescued the first one, because it was nowhere nearby. He caught her eye and grinned as he heaved the barrel to his shoulder, and for the life of her she couldn’t resist grinning back.
He’d made no move to come to her aid. She couldn’t remember the last time any man had paid her such a high compliment.
The third assailant had scrambled to his feet, but he didn’t immediately advance on Jayla again. She saw him glance around and note the absence of the barrels. His gaze went to the people in line, all of them staring at him and his friends, some in stupefaction, some in anger. His attention came back to Jayla, and his expression was dark, but in it she could also read some of a merchant’s cold calculation. No payoff in continuing this brawl. His mouth twisted and he took a couple of careful steps forward to prod one of his partners with his foot.
“Enough,” he said brusquely.
His friend took a deep breath and nodded, pushing himself upright. The third man had come to a sitting position, his hand still pressed to his head. Jayla saw blood running down his temple. The other two helped him up, and they lumbered off without another word or a backward glance.
Jayla watched them go, then turned around to see if any other kind of trouble might be brewing. But the few people who remained in line were mostly just watching her, and none of them looked inclined to mayhem. She nodded curtly and settled her hands on her belt, adopting the pose of someone waiting and watching. In another ten minutes, the final water cask was empty, the last bundle of dried meat had been handed over, and all the travelers had returned to their individual campsites.