She slipped between them with a balletic pirouette, so lightly she almost didn’t touch the sand. She struck Matted Hair in passing, precisely where he ought to be struck: in the carotid artery. The blow was so subtle it didn’t jar her rhythm. She ducked away in a reverse feint, so swiftly that not a single drop of the blood gushing from Matted Hair’s neck in a two-yard stream fell on her. Amaranth, behind her, aimed to slash across the back of her neck, but his treacherous blow clanged against a lightning-fast parry of her blade, held up behind her. Ciri unwound like a spring, slashing with both hands, amplifying the blow’s power with a jerk of her hips. The dark gnomish blade was like a razor, and cut his abdomen open with a hiss and a squelch. Amaranth howled and flopped forward onto the sand, curling up in a ball. Horsehide leaped at Ciri and thrust towards her throat, but she dodged, spun fluidly and struck from close quarters with the middle of the blade, mutilating his eye, nose, mouth and chin.

The spectators yelled, whistled, stamped their feet and bayed for more. The Marchioness de Nementh-Uyvar thrust both hands between her clenched thighs, licked her shining lips and laughed in her nervous drinker’s contralto. The captain of the Nilfgaardian reserve horse was as wan as vellum. A woman tried to cover the eyes of her child as he wriggled free. A grizzled old man in the front row vomited loudly and spasmodically, and hung his head between his knees.

Horsehide sobbed, holding his face, as blood mixed with snot and spit poured through his fingers. Amaranth rolled around, squealing like a stuck hog. Matted Hair stopped scrabbling against a post slippery with blood, spurting from him in the rhythm of his heartbeat.

‘Heeelp meeee,’ Amaranth howled, tightly clutching his innards spilling out of his belly. ‘Comraaaades! Heeeelp meeee!’

‘Bheeeh… bhooo… bheeeeh…’ Horsehide spat and snorted blood.

‘Fin-ish-’im-off! Fin-ish-’im-off!’ chanted the audience, stamping their feet to the rhythm. The puking old man was shoved from the bench and kicked towards the gallery.

‘A diamond to a walnut,’ Bonhart’s sneering bass resounded amongst the racket, ‘that none will now dare enter the arena. A diamond to a walnut, Imbra! What am I saying–even to an empty walnut shell!’

‘Kill ‘em!’ A roaring, thumping of feet and clapping. ‘Kill ‘em!’

‘Noble maiden!’ Windsor Imbra shouted, gesturing his subordinates to go forward. ‘Let them remove the wounded! Let them enter the arena and take them, before they bleed to death! Have a heart, noble maiden!’

‘A heart,’ Ciri repeated with effort, only then feeling the adrenaline strike her. She got herself quickly under control, with a series of well-drilled breaths.

‘Come in and take them,’ she said. ‘But come in unarmed. Have a heart as well. Just this once.’

‘Noooo!’ the crowd roared and chanted. ‘We-want-blood! We-want-blood!’