Crunch—
The first door opened. A husband who had lost his wife charged at a knight, axe in hand.
A second door opened, then a third...
More and more residents poured out, searching for their loved ones, freeing neighbors from the prison wagons, and venting their fury on the dead knights and warhorses.
"We won," Annan said softly.
The City Guard stood beyond the street entrance, not daring to come in.
Annan sent a captain to negotiate with them while his men hurried to plant evidence. They searched the Blade of Freedom members' bodies, stuffed what they found into the knights' corpses, then told the residents, "They were Kingdom undercover agents sent into the slum on the outskirts to hunt the Blade of Freedom. But Blade of Freedom members who had infiltrated the Knights' Order discovered them."
Having pinned the blame elsewhere, Annan took every corpse and the residents who had lost family in the massacre back to the City Guard.
This was no minor disturbance. A street had been massacred, and an entire Knights' Order had been wiped out... As word spread, the people behind the Knights' Order learned what had happened and smashed a pile of expensive teacups.
Annan went nowhere. He stayed with the City Guard and waited for trouble to come to him, taking the opportunity to reinforce the soldiers' belief that the Knights' Order belonged to the Blade of Freedom.
They couldn't bury the bodies yet, but the dungeon was cool. They wouldn't start to rot for another three days.
Standing in the room where the Blade of Freedom members' bodies lay, Annan said softly, "I'm sorry. I need to use your bodies for a while. When this is over, I'll take you back to Free City and bury you in the warriors' cemetery."
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