More fighting!
Jim’s hopefully final assailant had a lined face, a final defiant fringe of gray hair on his mottled pate, and the sunken expression that comes from having too few teeth. If it had been five years ago, Jim would have guessed his age at being anywhere from thirty to fifty. Now? He looked like someone from an area resisting Reclamation. Certainly the bastard had enough rage in his watery eyes to be a loyalist from the old regime.
And a well-fed one, too; the bastard threw the still-smoking pistol right into Jim’s face. Only blind luck let Jim get one arm up in time to stop him from losing some teeth of his own, and that same arm took a long, vicious slice from the knife blade that followed.
Astoundingly, the attacker stepped back. “Sharpthing badjuice, badman,” he sneered in Goodsay, his mouth a distorted grin. “Sleep now. No unsleep later.”
“See, this is why I fucking hate that language,” Jim wheezed, carefully not touching his ripped arm. Instead, he moved into a unarmed combat stance, noting how his opponent’s eyes suddenly widened. “Even when you want to explain something, you can’t. ‘Badjuice’ I can sorta figure out from context, but was it poison, or just a sedative?”