Watching those heavies dive away was gratifying, he had to admit to himself, but the shout to end it before it got bloodier was a good thing -- even those heavies might have realized what happened and gone for him with a vengeance and a viciousness, and for all that they were called a squad, there was more cohesiveness in the gang he ran with before it was torn apart and sold out. The sergeant could speak of watching one anothers' backs, but it was a hypothesis at this time, something that remained to be seen. 

But the Fifth Echelon meant even less to Tal, particularly the squad of heavies that just got done trying to beat in his skull. There might be a grudge there in the future, and while the sergeant and the leader of the entire Echelon conferred, he kept his eye on the remaining members of the other squad, just in case. It wasn't over just because some man said so, and maybe that was Tal's cynical streak at work, but he simply did not care to take eyes off them until they were no longer a threat.

The sergeant's voice jolted him out of his observation of the limping, shambling retreat of the defeated; he acknowledged the compliment with a short nod, but wasn't inclined to say much more. Nasty? He'd take that as a compliment, just as he did the flat-eyed glares of the men from the defeated unit, apparently feeling sore about the 'unfair' use of magics. He could read the body language, the outrage on the faces of the muscleheads. 

The job was nasty, getting it done right was nasty. This world of mercenaries and warfare was no place to play nicely. If theft was a game, and burglary a challenge, warfare was that writ large, with much higher stakes -- greater rewards for winning and much greater penalties to the losers. Tal Etai didn't intend to lose.