The men were dressed like peasants, but one look at their haughty bearings said otherwise.

The second he caught their eye, they looked away in haste, embarrassment apparent on their faces. Another dead give-away.

No self-respecting peasant would look the other way; he would ogle back challengingly. The habit had got Philippe into some trouble with superiors in the Army for his first year. He had then realized that he would have to learn to curb it if he wanted to rise within the ranks.

As he made his way from Maurice's house, Marie d'Aramitz's warning about the men from Bordeaux came to his mind.

Panic surged through him and his hand went to his coat's pocket reflexively, feeling for the hilt of the dagger. However, the cool metal did little to calm him when he noticed that the men's hands too lingered at their waists. They probably had swords tucked into their trousers. His tongue grew dry as the enormity of the situation dawned upon him.

He would stand a pitiful chance against the five men and their swords, if any at all, with only the dagger to help him defend himself. They would butcher him like a pig.

He strode away from Maurice's house as casually as his nervousness would allow, his eyes straying to the men behind him every time he took a step. The second he'd turned his back, their eyes were on him again. However, they did not move from their positions. They merely stared at him, looking away whenever he caught their eyes.

When he made it to the bend of the road, he took one last look at them. The shortest one of them—a brown-haired man with a face Philippe thought was strangely familiar met his eyes. He looked a little out-of-place among the four other men, who seemed as close as brothers. This man was a stranger amongst them, Philippe realized as he turned away.

With his hand still on his dagger and his heart running a marathon in his ribcage, he quickened his pace. He had to get home as soon as possible—they couldn't possibly enter the house without attracting the neighbors' attention.

Philippe navigated through the crowded streets, throwing an occasional glance behind him to make sure that the men weren't following him. Maurice's house was right next to a marketplace, and Philippe thanked his stars for that.

He pushed and shoved past customers bargaining ruthlessly with vendors, beggar boys trying to steal whatever they could to satiate their rumbling stomachs and what seemed like a battle for an ounce of sugar. The deafening noise in the market seemed like nothing but the annoying buzz of a bee as the sense of urgency enveloped Philippe in a cocoon of ringing silence. His eyes played merciless tricks on him, catching flashes of what could be those men in the marketplace. Left hand clinging to his dagger with a vice-like grip, he emerged from the marketplace into an area where the crowd was considerably thinner.

Philippe was fairly confident that he had lost the men, but he wished that there were more people to camouflage him just in case. He knew that he would have to pass some empty streets on his way home, but hoped that taking some detours would help him lose them if he already hadn't.

He nudged past streets so narrow that he barely fit and faked some turns until he was convinced that there was absolutely no chance of them still being on his trail. Considerably less nervous after all that trouble he had gone through, he stopped next to an abandoned fruit cart and took a deep breath.

The street was empty save for three women at one end, but they didn't pay any attention to him. They talked amongst themselves lightly, their high pitched giggles irritatingly shrill and frequent.

He glanced at the mud soaked trouser in his hand, the one he had stolen from Maurice. It had appealed to him back at Helene's house, but now it just left a bitter taste in his mouth. He wondered if he should discard them, but decided against it because he could never be sure when his family would run out of money.

Savoring the silence, he folded the trousers neatly and fitted them under his arm. He decided to hurry home and then try to make sense of what he would do next. If they had been able to find him in such a large and bustling city once, he couldn't put it beyond them to find him a second time.

Suddenly, a cry erupted from behind him. "C'est ce bâtard, he killed my Theo!"

It seemed like the world had come to a standstill.

As dread trickled into his body, Philippe slowly looked back. The women had stopped gossiping. Their eyes went wide as they tersely travelled from Philippe to the five men. Lost in his reverie, he had failed to hear the boot-clad footsteps of the very men who he had been running away from. They stood at the end of the road, glaring at him menacingly. They were all unarmed.

The short man who'd caught Philippe's eyes drew his sword out. In a fraction of a second, before Philippe could draw his own dagger to protect himself, the four men pounced on their companion. He gazed at the scene confusedly, wondering why they were tackling the short man instead of him.

The sword in the man's hand clattered to the ground. The harsh sound of metal against stone was masked by his rabid screams to let go. He seemed to possess superhuman strength as he wrestled all four better-built men. Vengeance swam in his eyes, with intensity sharper than the sword he had been holding. His chest heaved with effort as he attempted to wriggle away, spewing the choicest insults at his companions and at Philippe.

Philippe was dumbstruck. He gazed at the man blankly, his hands hanging limply by his side. The companions persevered with gritted teeth and harsh warnings.

"Let me go, that man killed my brother!"

"Stop it, you imbecile. We need him alive."

"Let go of me!"

"Thibault—"

"I will kill him, and you are not going to stop me."

"Thibault, no! He shall be taken back to Bordeaux."

It was when the man—Thibault--turned his venomous eyes at Philippe once again that the latter's senses began trickling back into him, like water from a little crack.

Suddenly, his heart rate rose sharply and his breath hitched. The dagger in his pocket suddenly weighed more than it ever had before. One of the men gave Thibault a heavy kick in the head that made him collapse and pulled his sword out of his trouser with one clean swipe. Brandishing it with frightening skill, he inched towards Philippe.

Philippe glanced at the cart behind him. He would push it towards the man, wheel it right on his leg. That would surely buy him time to pull his dagger out, and probably throw in a fatal stab too.

The man kept thrusting at him rapidly, targeting his limbs, hoping to cause superficial damage that would cause him to stop fighting but still leave him alive. He dodged them the best he could, moving towards the cart, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

Thibault had been subdued, and the three other men surrounded him. Philippe knew that his struggle would be pointless with so many skilled men simultaneously trying to bring him down, but he would have to try to get out alive. If his struggles yielded no fruit, he could stab his own heart. But as someone who valued his life above everything else, he did not want to go down that route.

Fervently swearing under his breath, he cast for the fruit cart behind him. When his hands finally found it and his attacker's sword was dangerously close to him, Philippe slid the cart in front of him, pressing it down on what he hoped was his attacker's leg.

A scream of pain tore through the air, for the cart had found its mark. Philippe quickly pulled the dagger out of his pocket and swung for the man. He missed the man by a few inches and ended up leaving a gash on the cart.

Suddenly, excruciating pain shot through his skull. He turned around and saw one of the other men standing behind him with the hilt of his sword aimed at his head. Sliding down the end of the cart, he felt his senses slowly dulling. Little pinpricks of darkness cut across his vision. The men surrounded him, heaving. None of them said a word.

One of them bent down, saying something Philippe couldn't comprehend. And suddenly, he stood up, his face going red. Mens' shouts filled the air.

"Police—do we tell—they surely wouldn't do anything if they knew Duc Agard is involved—" Philippe heard snatches of the frenzied conversation the men were having.

"Not within the law—fake something--"

Philippe stirred. The police were there, he realized with a start. An idea came to his head—one that would ensure that the men wouldn't find him again for a long time. The possibilities it ensured infused a burst of energy back into him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a policeman escorting the three women away from the scene.

The men were stepping away from him, moving to a distance that wasn't very threatening. His dagger sat right next to him. All he wanted to do was stick the dagger into every one of those men, but he knew that now wasn't the time. Ignoring the dull throbbing in his head, he stuffed the dagger back into his coat.

It was legal for every able-bodied citizen to carry a weapon, it wouldn't look good for him if he were seen brandishing a dagger. Philippe adopted an air of innocent fear.

Two men in police uniforms rushed to him and helped him up. A tall man with a grizzly beard, seemingly the head of the lot, ordered that the men from Bordeaux be arrested. When they protested, he snapped at them to save their explanations for the interrogation and asked the policeman next to him to take a statement from Philippe. Moaning to them that he was missing his dinner break, he told them to make it quick and strode away from the scene.

Some of the other policemen—there must've been at least seven or eight on the scene—led the men from Bordeaux away. They did not struggle. Thibault, on the other hand, did. He even managed to scratch an officer and draw blood. One of them finally had enough and knocked him out with the butt of his rifle, swearing loudly.

The man who had been ordered to take Philippe's statement strode over to him and gazed at him critically from head to toe.

"You're that man who found the body in the woods," he commented.

"Yes," Philippe acknowledged uncomfortably. "And how do you know?"

"Henri told us all about it."

Philippe remembered Henri vaguely—he was the police man who had retrieved Maurice's body from the tree. He was a little annoyed, but he knew that the strangeness of the incident definitely warranted some narrations of it.

"Could you, uh, take down my statement? I need to be home soon," Philippe muttered weakly. By the looks of it, the policeman was eager to hear another account of Maurice's death, which Philippe did not want to discuss.

"Of course, of course," he said in a patronizing tone. "Do you know any of these men?"

"No," Philippe lied.

"Why do you think that were trying to do you in?"

"I do not know. I was merely walking down the road, minding my own business, and then that Thibault insinuated that I killed his brother and all the men pounced on me. If you hadn't made it here right on time, I-I would've been killed!" Philippe explained, throwing in as much fake gratitude into his voice as he could.

"I am glad we could be of some help."

"That Thibault—I have never met the man, but the vengeance with which he attacked me, it is one that belongs to the insane. He should be locked away with all his companions."

The policeman narrowed his eyes as he contemplated Philippe's exclamation.

"In times like this, when a squabble can result in a riot, they need to be kept in check," Philippe said slowly. "Those men are dangerous, wandering about the city with their swords and their unsound minds."

"I am Albin, pleased to make your acquaintance," the man said, shaking hands with Philippe. "Thank you for your co-operation." With that, he turned on his heel and walked away.

Philippe smiled lightly. Albin hadn't addressed his theory about the men being insane, but the seed had been planted in his head. He gazed back at the retreating figure in satisfaction.

However, pinpricks of worry pierced through his smugness.

The men from Bordeaux had been here for him, just as Marie had said. They had managed to find him in a city brimming with more than six hundred thousand people. They had obtained information about his connection to Maurice, which was the only possible explanation for where they were when they were.

Suddenly, a question struck Philippe.

Was it possible that they had killed Maurice?

But why? Perhaps it was a warning to him. A little 'appetizer' before they went in for their main kill, as Jacques Moreau would've put it.

Nay, what if Maurice had worked for them? That would explain his apprehension about revealing his third job to Philippe. The nobles in Bordeaux would've paid him well, if he had taken it up. A money-minded man like Maurice—he'd never turn that job down.

It felt like the weight of the world had been slipped on to his shoulders. His mouth was flooded with a bitter taste, and it took all he could to keep from hurling the contents of his lunch on the street, right there.

With a pain that felt like a thousand nails being hammered into his head, he made his way home like a drunk, stepping into the rivulets of blood from a butcher shop that flowed right into the streets. It wasn't an uncommon sight, for sanitation was non-existent in these parts of Paris. However, Philippe's footprints, bathed in blood, caused people to wince as he dragged himself home.

Hey there! Thank you so much for sticking around with Philippe on his journey, I hope you're enjoying watching him squirm and suffer.

Well, that was a weird 'outro'. Anyway, there was an exciting turn of events in this chapter. What do you think of it? After finally encountering the much talked about Bordeaux men, why do you think they're after him? What do you think of the manner in which Philippe is dealing with them?

Dedicated to Navya_is_a_penguin for being my beta reader and a stupid lil' piece of shit. 💩

And with that, au revoir! I hope to see you with a new chapter next week :)