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“You don’t either,” Logan shouted back as he jumped out of the way of a morning star.

Its spikes impaled the ground, and the norn who wielded it yanked it back for another blow. The weapon fell again, and Logan barely scooted out of the way.

He spun and slammed his hammer into the norn’s hip guard. The thick metal plate rang, and the hammer jangled in Logan’s grip.

Worse—the morning star swung at him again. He ducked, but the spikes snagged his leather armor, tearing it loose and dragging long lines down Logan’s back.

“Arrhhh!” he growled. “That’s it!” He charged the norn and buried his hammer in the warrior’s groin.

A high-pitched whine came from the towering warrior, who bent over at the waist and fell like a tree. Logan scrambled out from beneath him as the norn smashed to the sand.

“One down,” Logan said as he glanced over to Caithe.

She was scrambling across the back of the third norn like a squirrel running around a tree. He danced, trying to shake her loose. Caithe kept on, every once in a while jabbing her white stiletto into a weak point. The norn twisted and roared, gulped and giggled, bedeviled by the omnipresent sylvari and her ticklish blade.

As he convulsed, a wave of laughter rolled through the crowd. They began shouting, “Caithe! Caithe! Caithe!”

Now the norn was running and swatting, like a man beset by bees. His escape lasted only a moment before Caithe wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed. “You’re going to get sleepy,” she announced as the norn went limp and tumbled to the sand.

The crowd went wild.

Caithe rolled free and stood up to survey the battlefield. She shouted to Logan, “Let’s give Rytlock a hand!”

Logan turned and saw that Rytlock was in a desperate scrum.

Sohothin lay out of reach, twenty yards away, and a scorched norn held Rytlock in a headlock. Growling, the norn drove his weight onto the charr, hurling them both to the sands.

The two other members of Edge of Steel jogged up to where the charr and the norn wrestled.

“How you doing?” Logan asked.

Spraying sand from his mouth, Rytlock said, “How do you think? Stick a blade in him.”

Caithe leaped onto the norn’s back and jabbed her dagger into a buttock.

“Yow!” the norn yelped as he climbed off Rytlock.

Caithe leaped free, rolled on the sands, and came up with her stiletto ready.

The remaining norn stared, panting, at his foes, then looked beyond them to the two figures lying in the sands. The norn’s expression went from anger to amazement. “You laid out my brothers?”

Caithe smiled, cocking her hips. “Want to see how?”

“There’s an easy way and a hard way, my friend,” Logan said, his comrades coming to stand beside him. “We’re the hard way.”

The norn nodded. “Then let it be.” He charged.

“Let it be,” Rytlock replied. He ran head-on into the towering warrior, knocking him to the ground.

The norn struggled to rise.

Caithe leaped on him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and squeezed.

The norn thrashed, trying to throw her off, but she clung on. In moments, he teetered and then toppled and flopped down, unconscious.

Edge of Steel emerged from a cloud of dust, their latest victim lying in the midst of it.

The stadium roared.

Rytlock grabbed the hands of his comrades and lifted them high. The cheer redoubled. “It’ll be a thousand silver this time.”

“Enough to buy some new armor?” Logan said faintly, his slick hand dragging from Rytlock’s grip. He fell forward, and his friends saw four red stripes down his back.

“We need a chirurgeon!”

Logan got his chirurgeon—and a new plate-mail breastplate, an upgrade from his leather. Rytlock got his glory and his thundershrimp. Caithe got her name spoken on ten thousand lips: the woman who fought with the frenzy of a whirlwind.

They paid four hundred more silver toward their billet. “How much does that leave?” Rytlock asked Sangjo.

“Four hundred ninety-three gold,” the man said with a serene smile.

Rytlock cocked his head. “Looks like we’ll be fighting a lot.”

“Looks like