"It's not my word you'll be fighting," he growls, eyes flicking to the dagger. (Good. He knows how to defend against that.)

His lungs fill like a bellows, and when he howls, one understands the nature of sound as a disturbance, a splitting, a percussion of the air: "TRAITOR!"

And lashes out with his borrowed blade, aiming straight for the stomach--for the large artery that he knows runs right across the top of the abdomen.