Free Daygo's Fury by John F. O' Sullivan

out and send ’em towards the market, we’ll get ’em before the end of the street.”
    “And how the fuck are we meant to do that?” Calum muttered.
    Carrick pretended he didn’t hear.
    They all moved down the street, fanning out to either side. Liam and Calum broke off a little from the rest.
    “How come you’re so pissed?” asked Liam as they walked side by side. Calum looked over at him and spat for the third time.
    “Dono, man, I’ve been thinkin’ about this the last couple of days, and more and more I’ve been thinkin’ how stupid it is. Carrick over there,” he nodded his head in his direction, not bothering to cover his anger as Carrick glared back at him, “doesn’t have the balls to go back in there himself. So he’s sendin’ us instead.”
    Liam frowned beside him.
    “I was talkin’ to a few people last night,” Calum went on, “and this blacksmith is meant to be one mean son of a whore. They said Carrick was a fool to go after him and was lucky to get away with what he got.”
    Liam felt a small ball of anxiety build within him. He squashed it down as well as he could and tried to think of their options.
    “Can we back out of it?” asked Liam.
    Calum shook his head. “Carrick won’t use us again if we chicken out now. And I’m not in with the gang yet.”
    They needed the money that working for Carrick brought in. Cutting purses and stealing from venders only brought them so far. If they wanted to get anywhere, they needed to work jobs. Carrick was an idiot and careless, but he was fairly straight with what he said. That was the only reason Liam could think of why he had anyone at all following his lead as opposed to the other way around.
    He had said that after another couple of jobs he would bring Calum and Liam in proper, giving them a fair split of the earnings. At the moment, they got less than half what the rest of the crew did. Although Liam knew that a couple might end up meaning five or six, he also knew they would get there eventually with Carrick. He thought he knew anyway.
    “Alright,” he said, “so how we goin’ a do this?”
    “Go in and hope for the best,” said Calum. “I don’t know if his sons are there or not. If they are, we’re fucked. Either way, we need to get in and out fast, before he has a chance to call them out from the back or somethin’.”
    “So we need to go in and try to snatch somethin’ quick that will draw ’em out after us.” Liam took a deep breath as they approached the smith’s. “Why are we doing this in the middle of the day?”
    “Because Carrick thinks the smith won’t be expectin’ anyt’in’ in daytime and he wants everyone to see what happens when you cross Carrick Flattop.”
    Liam almost laughed at the reference to Carrick’s nickname.
    “We’ll go in, we’ll have a look. If we can’t see anything that could get him outside, we’ll leave again and just tell Carrick to fuck off.” Even as Calum said it, Liam knew that it would be no easy thing to do. They had to try something at least.
    They were only two buildings down from the smithy, towards the end of Caipur Street. It was a busy street close to the market. The carpenter’s lay behind the blacksmith’s on the street parallel. The street was full of tradesmen. There was a leather worker’s, a pottery, a cobbler’s and even a stable. The street saw a lot of business coming from the Great Road to Darwin at the far side of the market.
    Anything from a wagon needing a new wheel or a horse needing to be re-shod, tools needing to be fixed, weapons sharpened. It was often cheaper and easier for the travellers of the road to get it done here in the slums as opposed to inside the city proper.
    The street was mostly filled with common slummers but there were the occasional foreigners, sometimes on their own or sometimes in small groups. A common trait that Liam had noticed about foreigners was that they generally seemed to have a look of disgust and an upturned