really, truly did. But she just couldn’t stay safely away from the main building. After pacing her bedroom restlessly for several minutes, and then the common room for several minutes more, her feet automatically took her toward the main doors. The only way for people to enter was through the main gates, as Jarnsmor had tight security around his perimeter. The few holes he’d had were pointed out by previous attacks and corrected. Fei and Rune felt certain that the attack would come in through the front tonight.
She entered the main hallway cautiously, one sword held at the ready, eyes searching for any sign of life. Not a soul was nearby, but she could clearly hear the battle raging in the main foyer dead ahead. The light here was dim, barely any gleam coming through the windows, and it became progressively darker the further she went. The foyer was closed off from her view by two thick wooden doors, but even then it didn’t muffle the sounds of metal clanging, men cursing, and feet stomping on the floor. Was that really only thirty or so men fighting ahead? It sounded like a hundred.
Reaching the door, Siobhan paused with her hand on the latch. Did she dare open it and peek, satisfying her curiosity? Opening the door would allow her to see them, true, but it would also allow them to see her. If discovered, she would be in a world of trouble with Wolf. And Rune. And Tran. And Fei.
Just imagining it made her wince. Perhaps this wasn’t the best of ideas.
“Fei, duck!” Tran bellowed.
In sheer instinct she wrenched the door open and took a step through, sword up and eyes frantically searching for her people.
She found them in a split second, not ten feet away from where she stood and to the right. Fei, Tran and Rune had grouped together so that they watched each other’s backs, each of them striking out hard and fast only to fall back into position. Her eyes could barely track their hands and feet, they moved so quickly. They already had several men lying comatose at their feet, silent proof of how deadly they fought.
Wolf was some three feet away from them, fighting earnestly with shield and sword, a berserker grin on his face that sent chills down her spine. Even as she watched, he used his shield like a battering ram and slammed it into his opponent’s face, which no doubt broke the man’s nose. It sent him flying back and landing against the floor in an inelegant sprawl.
Her eyes skipped across the rest of the room. Jarnsmor had indeed deployed some of his men to help—she recognized four of them—and it seemed they were competent fighters. In fact, the battle looked to be more or less over, as bodies littered the ground in every possible position and very few were still standing and fighting.
Grinning, she took a few quick steps forward and slammed her sword hilt into the back of one greasy head, sending the man slumping to the floor with a gasp of pain. Rune looked up, startled that his opponent had so suddenly collapsed, and found her smiling at him. “Hey!” he protested with an unhappy scowl. “Yer not supposed to come.”
“Fight’s over,” she pointed out. “And as your guildmaster, I can be anywhere I please.”
“Always stubborn like that,” Tran mourned.
Another crunch of broken bones came from behind her. She half-turned to see that Wolf had finished the last Silent Order guildsman with the flat of his sword. Also with a scowl on his face, he stepped over the gasping, injured man and strode to her. “Siobhan,” he growled between clenched teeth, “the fight was not over yet.”
“Shilly-shally,” she negated with a careless toss of the hand, sheathing her sword. “My, you boys were effective. I can’t believe they really showed up like you predicted, Fei. I felt sure they’d learn from their mistakes.”
“Matter of power, it is,” Rune explained. He looked more resigned than upset over the situation. “Guildmaster can’t let a man go and have him join a good guild like I did. It sets the idea in other’s minds they can do the same.”
Which meant that a dark guildmaster would potentially lose most of his people, as the benefits of belonging to a good guild far outweighed being in a dark guild. Besides, it was probably a matter of sheer stubbornness at this point, too. Rune was supposed to suffer a terrible fate after having failed