It connected with the back of his skull with a sickening crack that made Skif wince—not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to make him stagger, dazed.

And that moment was just enough for Alberich to slash savagely at his neck, cutting halfway through it. The man twisted in agony, dropping to the floor, blood everywhere as he writhed for a long and horrible moment, then stilled.

Skif froze, watching in fascination, aghast. Alberich did not. Nor did the two men still fighting. They reacted by coming at Alberich from both directions at once, and in the rain of blows that followed, Alberich was wounded again, a glancing slash across the arm that peeled back leather and a little flesh—but he delivered a worse blow than he had gotten to the head of the third man, who dropped like a stone. At which point the first man who’d been felled stood up, shaking his head to clear it, and plunged back into the fray.

Skif shook himself out of his trance and flung two more bowls. Neither connected as well as the first; the first man remaining was hit in the shoulder, and the second in the back. But the distraction was their undoing, for they lost the initiative and Alberich managed to get out of their trap, nor could they pin him between them again.

The fight moved closer to the Guildmaster—Alberich got the second man in the leg, leaving his dagger in the man’s thigh, and the bodyguard staggered back.

Skif threw his last bowl, which hit the man nearest the Guildmaster in the side of the face. Alberich saw his opening, and took it, with an all-or-nothing lunge that carried him halfway across the room.

Skif let out a strangled cry of horror—

If any fighter Skif had ever seen before had tried that move, it would have ended differently. But this was Alberich, and he came in under the man’s sword and inside his dagger, and the next thing Skif knew, the point of Alberich’s sword was sticking out of the man’s back, and the man was gazing down at Alberich with an utterly stupefied expression on his face.

Then he toppled over slowly—

But he took Alberich’s sword with him.

And now the Guildmaster struck.

Because he had done nothing all this time, Skif had virtually forgotten he was there, and had assumed that he was harmless. Perhaps Alberich had done the same. It was a mistaken assumption on both their parts.

The Guildmaster moved like a ferret, so fast that he seemed to blur, and too fast for Alberich, exhausted as he was, to react. The Guildmaster didn’t have a weapon.

He didn’t need one.