A moment later the guards in the inner room heard a piercing cry from Boghaz.
“Help! Come quickly—Carse has thrown himself into the sea!”
They rushed onto the balcony, where Boghaz was leaning out, pointing down to the churning waves below.
“I tried to hold him,” he wailed, “but I could not.”
One of the guards grunted. “Small loss,” he said and then Carse stepped out of the shadows against the wall and struck him a sledgehammer blow that felled him, and Boghaz whirled around to lay a second man on his back.
The third one they knocked down between them before he could get his sword clear of the scabbard. The other two were climbing to their feet again with some idea of going on with the fight but Carse and the Valkisian had no time to waste and knew it. Fists hammered stunning blows with brutal accuracy and within a few minutes the three unconscious men were safely bound and gagged.
Carse started to take the sword from one of them, and Boghaz coughed with some embarrassment.
“Perhaps you’ll want your own blade back,” he said.
“Where is it?”
“Fortunately, just outside, where they made me leave it.”