He vaguely recognized the tall bearded man in the center wearing a navy dress suit. He was yelling at the men grouped around him gesturing with his hands."If I am not mistaken that is my eldest uncle Mamud Ilyas." Liang Jian Amal vaguely recognized the man having only seen him once when he had been around 9 or 10. "What is he doing here at the moment?" He tried to move closer to listen to their words, his movements alerted one of the armed men closest to him.
"Who"s there? Show yourself immediately!" The man who noticed the movements called out drawing his weapon as he moved towards Liang Jian Amal.
As quietly as he could he pulled his weapon to his hands from where it had hung over his shoulder. Gripping it white-knuckled he tried to listen over the high-pitched ringing to the others approach.
Liang Jian Amal waited until he heard and saw the man coming around the corner and rammed the b.u.t.t of the gun into the man"s face before shooting him and ducking behind the building. Keeping his rifle handy he started to run back to hide himself.
Even with the one man he took out 6-1 odds were still not good. He could hear the footsteps pounding behind him as he made quick turns to avoid being seen and hopefully lose them.
Liang Jian Amal turned the next corner and narrowly avoided having a gun smash into his face like he had done. One of the armed men had looped through the buildings and managed to cut him off. As they were in close quarters Liang Jian Amal drew the knife he kept at his belt hitting the man in his unprotected femoral artery as he tried to strike high.
After decisively slashing the man"s thigh, incapacitating him, he bouldered the man aside with his shoulder to keep moving. The man howled clutching the weeping meat of his thigh trying to clamp down on the blood loss from the savage gash.
As he ran past, the man took a couple of wild shots in anger at Liang Jian Amal who disappeared between another set of buildings. Hearing the loud clamor from afar Liang Jian Amal angled himself to the area to reunite with his comrades.
Liang Jian Amal tried to keep a steady pace hearing the angry shouts from the men behind him. Against his will though his steady gait quickly began to falter and he began to lose his speed.
Looking down he saw that one of the man"s wild shots had actually managed to hit him in his right calf. With his nerves and the tension from the whole scene he hadn"t noticed for a while.
"Well, that isn"t exactly good. I need to patch this up." Liang Jian Amal hid himself in an empty building, relying on the shadows of the doorway, to provide quick medical attention to himself. Like hounds he heard the men calling all around the area looking for him, enraged.
----
Once the army containing the majority of all the able bodied men left Muzdahir to confront the western threat ; a small force started to move from the south.
They had been hiding themselves carefully waiting until the area was largely unpopulated before making their move. Due to their size of only a few dozen men as well as the commotion to the west they had largely escaped attention and were now free to make their move towards the palace.