What’s wrong with and mayhem?

Brenan considered how to answer James’ question, knowing full well that he was getting himself involved in something where it was crucial that he displayed good judgement and made the right decisions.

Simply leading their pursuers into a nice alleyway or back-street and attempting to ambush them there was not a good idea, no matter how much it appealed to Brenan’s hatred towards the Veer. Even if there were a lot of good spots into which they could lead the despicable pair that was trailing them and then attack them, he wasn’t sure of how well James would carry himself in a fight or how close the two agents were to their backup, which they were bound to have coming their way thanks to that third bastard who had set off for the harbour earlier on.

But leading the agents to the Drunken Sailor and trying to lose them there wasn’t such a good idea either, even if they did manage to locate Sasha, she didn’t know Brenan and the sight of his unfamiliar face along with two agents revealing themselves meant that it was quite possible that she would become so frightened by the realization that the people pursuing her were that close to her that she would simply panic and decide that even James and Julien were out to get her and that they had merely pretended to be sympathetic towards her and her plight. And Brenan had seen too much to be content with hoping that Sasha would remain calm and cool under such stressful circumstances.

The third option was to split up and attempt to shake their pursuers, but that would involve at least one of them heading off on his own, and that would surely increase the risk of being cornered and captured if that Veer spider had agents out moving about on the streets, ready to provide each other with support, which she just might, if she was any good.

“Alright boys, slow down,” Brenan ordered the other two just before stopping in the middle of an intersection and throwing a glance first to his left and then to his right, not needing to look behind him to know that their followers were doing everything to appear as inconspicuous as possible, “and let’s start acting like we don’t have a care in the world.”

“I don’t know if I can,” James admitted with a nervous smile. At least he hadn't broken out into an exaggerated laugh or done something else to alert the two men behind them that they were onto them.

“We’re just three men heading down the street, not knowing we’re being followed,” Brenan assured the two brothers, to which the two of them nodded, “And now we’re moving again.”

Without any protests coming from either James or Julien, the three of them were on the move again, and Brenan didn’t exactly need eyes in the back of his head to know that they were still being followed.

“See that alleyway up ahead?” Brenan asked in a voice just strong enough not to be a whisper, to which Julien and James replied by some fairly weak nodding of their heads.

“Good, we’re going to dash through it and see if we can’t shake these assholes, and you’ll head straight for the Drunken Sailor once you’re on the other side,” Brenan instructed them, feeling confident that two young men would never fail to find a particular bar.

“What about you?” Julien asked.

“I’ll join you there a little while later,” Brenan replied before beginning the countdown, “three, two, one, go!” and leading the two brothers into a sprint as they all took a sharp turn to the right and dashed into the alleyway, cutting past a couple of pedestrians and hearing some commotion behind them as their pursuers reacted to what they were doing.

If the agents were smart, they wouldn’t follow after them but instead try to find them again on the other side of the alleyway. If they weren’t, Brenan would have to settle for the one bad option which he was most in favour of.

“Alright, keep going,” Brenan ordered Julien and James just as the three of them rounded a sharp corner in the alleyway, with them being so caught up in the moment that they barely looked at him as they continued racing down the narrow street.

“Damn,” Brenan sighed as he stood pressed against the tiled wall a few seconds later and heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps hitting the cobblestones on the other side of the turn, as it dawned on him that the two agents were too dumb for their own good. Well, at least he’d given them a chance to get to live to be senile old farts, it wasn’t his fault that they hadn’t taken it.

“Where the fuck did they go?” He could hear one of them ask from just on the other side of the corner, and he then spent a moment making sure that his narrow-bladed knife was perfectly placed in his grip before stepping out in front of the man that had spoken, who turned out to be the smaller dark-skinned bastard, leaving him with a surprised expression on his face as he grabbed hold of his collar and yanked him towards him before jabbing the thin knife into his throat.

Standing directly behind his shorter counterpart, the blonde fellow found himself having had his colleague shoved straight at him and had just had time to grab hold of him in an act of horrified surprise before Brenan had come up beside him, pulled up his second, much larger knife, and thrust it into his side, after which he pulled the knife out from between his ribs, stepped in behind him, put his hand over his face and thrust his whole head back so that he could slit his throat, leaving the Veer Empire with two less agents on this island.

After cleaning and tucking away his two knives, Brenan left the two dead men behind and set off to catch up with Julien and James before they reached the Drunken Sailor.