Lianna said coldly, "That is the advice I would expect from the leader who ran away from Thallarna when the battle went against him."
Shorr Kan shrugged. "I'm still alive." He added, in a rueful tone, "Though that may not be for long." He had a weapon belted to his waist, as Gordon had, and he glanced down at it distastefully and said, "The closer I get to this business of dying heroically, the more dismal a prospect it seems."
Lianna ignored him, her brilliant eyes searching across the smoke and flame and uproar of the city. Gordon knew how she must feel, looking down that mighty avenue on which stood the statues of her ancestors, the embodied history of this star-kingdom, and seeing her people struggle against the tide of inhuman invasion.
She turned abruptly to Korkhann. "Tell Abro to send a message to the Barons. Say that if they do not send warships to our assistance at once, Fomalhaut may be lost."
The winged one bowed and left quickly. As Lianna turned back toward the city, a big hover-car with the insignia of Fomalhaut swept down through the drifting smoke and landed smoothly on the great balcony. The hatch doors opened.
"No!" exclaimed Lianna angrily. "I will not leave here! Send them away..."
"Look out!" yelled Shorr Kan. "Those aren't your men!"
Gordon saw that the men who came pouring out of the open hatch wore, not the insignia of Fomalhaut but the rearing symbol of the Mace. They ran across the balcony toward the little group.
They had not drawn their weapons, apparently counting on sheer physical numbers to overwhelm the three. But Shorr Kan, dropping into a sort of gunman's crouch, drew and fired, cutting down the front rank of the attackers with exploding atom-pellets.
Gordon pulled out his own weapon, cursing the unfamiliarity of the thing as he tried to thumb off the safety. It went off in his hand. He saw that he had fired high and he triggered again more carefully and saw the pellets explode among the men of the Mace.
Those who survived kept right on coming. They were still not shooting, and it dawned on Gordon that Lianna was their target and they wanted to take no chance of killing her.
They came fast, reinforced by more men from the hover-car. They spread out in a ragged half-moon that closed rapidly into a circle, and they were so close now that neither Gordon nor Shorr Kan dared to shoot because the back-flare of the pellets would engulf them and Lianna also. Gordon shortened his grip on the weapon and used it as a club, flinging himself at the men and laying about him furiously, shouting all the while to Lianna to run back into the palace. He heard Shorr Kan roaring, "Guards! Guards!" But Shorr Kan was smothered under a press of bodies, roughed and battered, wrestled to the ground, and Gordon found himself going the same way; there were too many hands, too many boots and bony knees. He could not see whether Lianna had made her escape, but he did see that from the great hall inside the balcony a file of Lianna's guards were running desperately toward them.
The men who remained in the hover-car had no compunction at all about shooting the guards, since that did not endanger Lianna. They shot them with stunning efficiency, using heavy-caliber mounted guns that swiveled and poured crashing fire, powdering the men to nothing, along with spouting dust and powdered glass. It got quiet again, and then the whole scene spun slowly around Gordon and flowed away into darkness, accompanied by the ringing of his skull as something struck it, hammer-like.
He woke, lying on the balcony. His head no longer rang, but simply ached. Nearby he saw Shorr Kan standing. His face was bloody. The men wearing the Mace stood around them, grim and tense.
"Lianna!" muttered Gordon, and tried to sit up.
Shorr Kan jerked his head toward the inner hall, beyond the tumbled bodies of the guards. "There. Not hurt. But the palace is theirs. That car was only the first of a fleet tricked out with the sign of Fomalhaut." One of the men struck Shorr Kan across the face, bringing more blood. Shorr Kan forbore to wince, but he stopped talking. Gordon became aware now, as his senses cleared, of a vague, inarticulate roaring, like the beating of the sea upon rocky cliffs. Then, as he was jerked to his feet, he looked out over the low rail of the balcony and saw the source of the sound.
The city had fallen. Fires still rose redly from many points, but there was no more firing, no more sounds of battle. The whole area around the palace seemed filled with the nonhuman hordes... the Gerrn, the Qhallas, the Andaxi, all the grotesque, nightmarish mobs, capering in triumph smashing the gardens, howling, roaring, gesticulating.
But the loudest roar came from a solid, tremendous mass of creatures making its way down the Avenue of the Kings. They voiced their frantic joy in hissing, purring, squawking voices. And they looked ever at one human man who rode ahead of them upon the black-furred back of a giant Gerrn-Narath Teyn, with his handsome head held high as he rode to claim his kingship.
23
The big hall, the one that opened onto the balcony, was quiet. Gordon stood, with guards behind him, and Shorr Kan stood beside him. The men who wore the Mace stood also, their weapons prominently displayed.
But Narath sat, as befitted a king.
He sat very straight, and there was a dreaming smile on his face. His brown hair fell to his shoulders, and he wore a glittering, close-fitting garment, He looked royal, and he looked mad.
Lianna sat a little distance from him. There was no expression at all on her face, except when she looked at Gordon.
"Soon," said Narath gently. "We will not have to wait much longer, cousin, for the Count Cyn Cryver and the others."
And Gordon knew who "the others" would be, and the skin crawled between his shoulders.
From the open doors that gave onto the great balcony, threads of acrid smoke drifted into the room. There came also from outside a distant, confused sound of voices, but not the roaring clamor of before. The bodies had been cleared away, both Lianna's men and Narath's. And now Gordon heard the soft hum of a hover-car descending.
Then Cyn Cryver came.
His bold, arrogant face blazed with triumph as he looked at them. He looked longest at Shorr Kan.
"It's well," he said. "I was afraid they might have killed you. And we don't want you to die too soon."
Shorr Kan made a derisive sound. "Do you have to be so damned theatrical? That was the most boring thing about my stay with you, listening all the time to your meaty, crashing statements."
Cyn Cryver's smile became deadly, but he did not answer. Narath had risen to his feet and was speaking in his gentle voice, "You are welcome, my brother of the Marches. Very welcome. And where are our friends?"
"They are here," said Cyn Cryver. "They are coming." He looked at Lianna and his smile deepened. "You're looking well, Highness. Remarkably well, considering that your world is in our fist and your fleet is being hammered to pieces in the Shoals."
He did not, Gordon thought, seem to know yet about the Hercules barons. Not that the barons' coming would make any difference to them now...
Three shapes, robed and cowled, glided silently into the hall. The H'Harn had come.
It was curious, the different reactions to them, Gordon thought. Shorr Kan looked at them with frank open disgust. Lianna paled a little, and Gordon was pretty sure he himself did the same. Even Cyn Cryver seemed a trifle ill at ease.
But Narath Teyn bent toward the cowled figures with the same dreaming smile, and said, "You come in good time, brothers. I am to be crowned."
It was only then Gordon realized the depth of alienation in Narath's mind. He, whom the not-men worshipped, who greeted the Magellanians as brothers, was less human than anyone here.
The foremost of the H'Harn spoke in a sibilant whisper. "Not yet, Narath. There is something first to be done, and it is most urgent."