In the first brutal, astonishing seconds, Bellis did not even breathe. One hand to her mouth, her lips pursed shut. Then she emitted little gasps of astonishment with the rest of the crowd.

Uther Doul did not seem to live in the same time as anyone else. He seemed like some visitor to a world much more gross and sluggish than his own. Despite the bulk of his body, he moved with such speed that even gravity seemed to operate more quickly for him.

There was nothing spare to his movements. As he shifted from stamp to hammerpunch to block, his limbs slipped from one poise, one state, to the next by the most utterly seamless and pared-down routes, like machines.

Doul slapped open-handed, and one man went down; he stepped sideways and, poised on one leg, kicked twice to another’s solar plexus, then used the raised leg to block the attack of the third. He spun and shoved without flourish, with brutal precision, dispatching his rivals at his ease.

He took the last one with a throw, scooping his arm from the air and hugging it tight to him, pulling the man after his trapped limb. Doul seemed to roll through the air, preparing his body as he fell, landing astride the other’s back, pinioning his arm and immobilizing him.

There was a long silence, and then a rapture burst from the crowd like blood from a scabmettler, a tide of applause and cheers.

Bellis watched, and went cold, and held her breath again.

The fallen men raised themselves, or were dragged off, and Uther Doul stood, breathing heavily but rhythmically, his arms held very slightly out, the ridges of his muscles running with sweat and other men’s blood.

"The Lovers’ guard," said Silas amid the audience’s frenzy. "Uther Doul. Scholar, refugee, soldier. Expert in probability theory, in Ghosthead history, and in fighting. The Lovers’ guard, their second, their assassin and strong-arm and champion. That’s what you had to see, Bellis. That is what’s trying to stop us leaving."

They left and walked the winding nightlit pathways of Thee-And-Thine toward Shaddler, and Garwater and the Chromolith.

Neither spoke.

At the end of Doul’s fight, Bellis had seen something that had brought her up short and made her afraid. As he had turned, his hands clawed, his chest taut and heaving, she had seen his face.

It was stretched tight, every muscle straining, into a glare of feral savagery unlike anything she had ever seen on a human being.

Then a second later, with his bout won, he had turned to acknowledge the crowd and had looked once more like a contemplative priest.

Bellis could imagine some fatuous warrior code, some mysticism that abstracted the violence of combat and allowed one to fight like a holy man. And equally she could imagine tapping into savagery, letting atavistic viciousness take over in a berserker fugue. But Doul’s combination stunned her.