The ballroom is quite spacious and ornate, or at least it was. One masked attacker is kneeling on the floor, clutching his wrist and shrieking: his hand has been completely amputated, and blood spurts out to fan across the wooden floor. Another masked attacker sits in the corner, quite dead, with the handle of a short, black-bladed knife buried in his neck. In the center of the room the dining table has been kicked over, and behind this barricade stands Sigrud, covered in sweat and blood, with one frantic and miserable masked attacker in a headlock under his left arm. With his right hand Sigrud holds the remains of the ballroom chandelier—which has apparently been ripped out of the ceiling—and he is using it to fend off another attacker, who attempts to engage him with a sword. But though it is hard to tell through all the glimmering crystals flying through the air, the attacker appears to be steadily losing, stumbling back with every blow, in between which Sigrud, using the fist holding the chandelier, manages to pummel the face of the unhappy man in his headlock.
The leader of the attackers stands agog at this sight for a moment, before holding his sword high, screaming at the top of his lungs, and rushing in, bounding over the table.
Sigrud gives him an irritated glance—What now?—and lifts up the headlocked man just in time for the man’s back to receive the point of the leader’s sword.
Both masked men gag in shock. Sigrud swings the chandelier around so that it hooks the blade of the free attacker, shoves the man to the floor, and releases the chandelier.
The leader lets go of the hilt of his sword, pulls out a short knife, and with an anguished scream, dives at Sigrud.
Sigrud releases the headlock on the dead (or dying) man, grabs the leader’s wrist before the knife can strike home, head-butts the leader soundly, and then—to the vocal horror of Vohannes—opens his mouth wide, lunges forward, and tears out most of the man’s throat with his teeth.
The gush of blood is positively tidal. Shara feels a little disgusted at herself for thinking only, This will definitely make the papers.
Sigrud, now totally anointed with crimson, drops the leader, grabs the sword sticking out of the dead man’s back, and seemingly without a thought hurls it like a javelin at the shrieking attacker with the severed wrist. The point of the blade catches the man just under the joint of his jawbone. He collapses immediately. The sword wobbles, and though it is buried deep enough in the man’s skull that it does not fall out, the wobbling is accompanied by an unpleasant cracking noise.
Sigrud turns to the groaning man trapped under the remains of the chandelier.
“No,” says Shara.
He turns to look at her. His one eye is alight with a cold rage.
“We need one alive.”
“They shot me,” he says, and holds up a bleeding palm. “With an arrow.”
“We need one alive, Sigrud.”
“They shot me,” he says again, incensed, “with an arrow.”
“There must be more downstairs,” says Shara. “The hostages, Sigrud. Think. Take care of them—carefully.”
Sigrud makes a face like a child who has just been given onerous chores. He walks to the man with the knife in his neck, pulls it out, and stalks out of the room.
Vohannes stares around his ruined ballroom. “This?” he says. “This is what your man does best?”
Shara approaches the masked man struggling to lift the chandelier and begins to disarm him. “We all have our talents.”
*
Sigrud spots no masked attackers guarding the hostages when he runs down the stairs. “Oh, thank goodness you came, we—,” says one woman, before seeing fully seeing him. Then she begins shrieking.
Mulaghesh is not half so fazed. She clears her throat from beside a pillar in the foyer: the polis governor is hunched over a robed figure and appears to be calmly garroting him with a festively colored ribbon. Mulaghesh looks at him, her left eye blooming dark from what must have been a terrific blow, and says, “Two more. Out the door.”
When Sigrud makes it outside the car is already trundling away, but is not gaining much speed yet. His boots thud as he sprints across the cobblestones. He hears one of the men inside it cry, “Go! Go! Hurry!”
The answer: “I am! I’m trying!”
The car shifts into a higher gear, but just before it can pull away, Sigrud leaps forward and grabs onto the back door.
“Shit!” shrieks one of the men. “Oh, gods!”
Sigrud’s hands are so slick with blood that he almost loses his hold. He wedges a foot into the running board, then reaches up with his right hand and stabs his black knife into the roof of the car.
“Shoot him, damn you!” cries a voice.
A bolt-shot appears in the window. Sigrud leans to the side. The bolt slices through the glass of the window, missing him by inches, but does not shatter the window. Sigrud punches through the window with his left hand, grabs the man who fired at him by the collar, and repeatedly slams him against the door and roof of the car.
The driver, now totally panicked, begins swerving throughout the street. Sigrud can see coffeehouse patrons, restaurant attendees, and horse-and-cart drivers stare in amazement as they fly by. A small child points and laughs, delighted. Sigrud focuses on battering the man into submission.
Sigrud can feel it when the man goes unconscious, and he begins to haul the man out of the broken window with one arm, intending to hurl him from the car. But then the car makes a hard turn. …
He looks up. The corner of a building flies at them. Sigrud immediately sees that the driver intends to scrape the car along the building’s side, scraping off Sigrud as well.