He wondered what Lianna was thinking as she looked out on that roaring crowd. None of her own people were there; the people of Hathyr city were dispersed, hiding or slain. And the human and inhuman conquerors shouted and cheered, and the old kings of Fomalhaut looked down with calm faces upon the end of all that they had wrought.
Again Narath raised his hand, and the roaring acclaim swelled up in a greater cry than before. He had reached the summit of his life, and the not-men whose fanatical devotion he had won were hailing him, and his whole bearing expressed his joy and his pride, and his great love for these his people.
The wave of sound died down, and Narath said, "Now, cousin."
Lianna, her figure rigidly erect, spoke in a clear, cold voice that Gordon could hardly recognize.
"I, Lianna, Princess Regent of Fomalhaut, do now cede my sovereignty, and recognize and affirm that sovereignty to have passed from me to..."
The thin whistling of small missiles interrupted her, and then Gordon saw Cyn Cryver and his guardsmen reel and fall as tiny atomic pellets drove into their bodies and flared there, blackening flesh and garments.
Gordon swung around. In the otherwise empty hall behind the balcony stood Hull Burrel and Korkhann, and they held the weapons that had just been fired, cutting down all but the H'Harn. V'ril, warned by some telepathic flash at the last moment, had darted aside in time to escape.
Narath turned around angrily. "What... ?"
Korkhann fired, his yellowbird-eyes clear and merciless. The tiny missile went deep into Narath's side.
Narath swayed, but did not fall. It seemed that he refused to fall, refused to admit death and defeat. He turned with a strangely regal movement to face the crowd below... a crowd unable to see what was happening above them. He tried to raise his arm, and then fell forward across the balcony rail and hung there. A silence began to spread across the gardens and down the Avenue of Kings.
Hull Burrel cried abruptly, "No!"
Korkhann, his eyes now glazed and strange, was swinging his weapon around to point at the Antarian.
Gordon saw V'ril, and knew instantly what was happening. He rushed forward over the smoking bodies of the Mace-men. He grasped the robed H'Harn in his arms... and he ran forward and hurled it out over the rail, swiftly, before it could think to stop him. In the brief seconds of its fall, mental force, not directed this time, merely projected as an instinctive reflex, slammed at him. It was cut short with shocking finality, and Gordon smiled. The H'Harn, it seemed, feared most dreadfully to die.
Korkhann lowered his weapon, unfired.
Down below the silence had become complete, as though every throat held breath, and the crowd stared up at the glittering figure of Narath Teyn doubled over the low rail, his bright hair streaming, his arms outspread as though he reached down to them in an appeal for help.
In that frozen moment, Shorr Kan acted with a lightning swiftness that Gordon was never to forget.
Shorr Kan rushed to the front of the balcony. He threw his arms skyward in a wild gesture, and he shouted to that stunned crowd in the lingua-franca of the not-men of the Marches.
"The counts have killed Narath Heyn! Vengeance!"
Gerrn and Andaxi and Qhalla, all the nameless others, the inhuman faces, looked up toward him. And then it sank in.
Narath was dead. Narath of Teyn, he whom they worshipped, whose banner they had followed, had been slain. A heart-stopping cry of rage and sorrow went up from them the coming led cry of all those thousands of inhuman throats, growling, hissing, screeching.
"Vengeance for Narath! Kill the counts!"
The crowd exploded into violence. The not-men fell, with fang and talon, beak and claw, upon the men of the Marches who a moment before had stood beside them as allies.
The cry of sorrow and of vengeance went out from the palace, spreading until it seemed that from the whole city of Hathyr there came a great inhuman baying.
Hull Burrel had run forward, while Korkhann still stood a little dazed by the H'Harn assault that had almost made him kill his comrade.
"This way," cried Hull. "Quickly! They'll be up here in minutes. Korkhann knew all the secret passages in the palace and that's how we saved ourselves when the palace fell. Hurry!"
Gordon took Lianna by the hand and ran with her. Shorr Kan delayed long enough to pick up weapons from the dead guards, one of which he tossed to Gordon He was chuckling.
"That set them going, didn't it? They're not too bright, those nonhumans... begging your pardon, Korkhann... and they reacted beautifully."
A seemingly solid section of the wall at the side of the great hall had been swung open, revealing a passageway. They crowded through and Shorr Kan slammed shut the panel behind them.
Lianna was sobbing, but Gordon paid no attention to her. He cried to Korkhann, "Can you take us to a communications center. I must send a message..."
Korkhann, unused to violence, seemed still a little dazed. "A message to the... the barons... ?"
"A message to Zarth Arn and the Empire fleet!" snapped Gordon. "I know where the H'Harn armada is, and I must get that word through!"
25
Korkhann led them down by narrow, twisting ways buried within the walls of the palace, illuminated dimly by an occasional bulb. He brought them at last through another concealed door, into a long corridor.
"The palace Communications Center," said Korkhann. "The fourth door ahead."
There was no one in the hallway, and they went down it rapidly, Gordon and Shorr Kan in the lead. And now, even through the massive partitions of the palace, they could hear a growing uproar above them.
"The horde is inside the palace," said Korkhann. "They will be killing all the counts' men..."
"And us too, if they find us," said Hull Burrel.
They flung open the fourth door. Beyond it was the large room filled with the instruments of galactic communication. They went in very fast. A man who wore the uniform of the Mace sat at the bank of controls, which he touched with a curious uncertainty. Behind him stood two robed H'Harn, the ones V'ril had sent with the message for the H'Harn fleet. The man froze with his hands in mid air. The H'Harn turned swiftly, and died with the motion uncompleted.
Gordon aimed his weapon at the frightened operator. "Did you send that message for the H'Harn?"
The man's face was greasy with sweat. He looked down at the small gray crumpled mounds and shivered. "I was trying to. But they use different frequencies... modulations... all different from ours, and that takes time. They told me they'd take me over and hurt my mind if I didn't hurry, but I couldn't..."
The stupid H'Harn running true to form, thought Gordon. Use all other peoples simply as tools, and break them if they do not instantly perform.
He turned to Hull Burrel. "You were in touch with Zarth Arn's fleet until the attack came. Reach them now."
Hull threw the operator out of the chair and began punching buttons and turning vernier controls.
The uproar in the palace above them was penetrating more loudly to this level. Shorr Kan closed the door of the Communications Center and locked it.
"They'll get down here eventually," he said. "But it may hold them for a while."
Gordon watched the door, sweating, until Hull established contact with the fleet. Telestereo was not possible at such distances, but Gordon could hear the voices of the fleet communications officers as they acknowledged and cut through channels to the top, and presently the voice of Zarth Arn was speaking to him.