genuine and absolute fear. 'I'm gonna beat you bloody, you fornicating little bitch!'
Kethry whirled, and threw herself on the left-hand guard, begging his protection, distracting both guards for the crucial moment that it took Tarma to get within arm's length of the right-hand guard.
Then Tarma pivoted, and took her guard out with the pommel of her sword, just as Kethry executed a neat right cross to the point of her target's chin. Both went down without a sound. Within heartbeats the Hawks were swarming the gate -- as two of their number, already bespelled into looking like the two guards they were replacing, dragged the bodies into the gatehouse, trussed and gagged them, and took up their stations. The fighters filled the courtyard on the other side, hidden in the dark shadow of the Palace, waiting for Tarma and Kethry to make the next moves.
Kethry stood in frozen immobility for a single moment; sensitized to stirrings of energies by her own status as Kal'enedral, Tarma actually felt her spring her trap-spells.
'Well?'
Kethry's eyes met hers with incredulous shock.
'They're holding -- all of them!'
'Lady with us, then, and let's hope they keep holding. New body, Keth,'
'Right,' the mage answered, and Tarma waited impatiently as the figure of 'Janna' blurred, became a rosy mist, and the mist solidified into a new guise -- a very ordinary looking female fighter in the scarlet-and-gold livery of Char's personal guard.'All right, Hawks,' Tarma said, in a low, but carrying voice. 'This is it -- form up on your leaders -- '
She marched up to the unlocked delivery door, Kethry beside her, and pushed it open. The half-drunk guard beyond blinked at her without alarm, and bemusedly; he was one of Char's own personal guards and Tarma (in her guise of Arton) had ordered him to stand duty tonight on this door for a reason. He was one of the men that had participated in the rape and torture of Idra.
She swung once, without a qualm, cutting him down before he had a chance to do more than blink at her. Her only regret was that she had not been able to grant him the lingering death she felt he deserved. She and Kethry hastily dragged his body out of the way; then she waved to the waiting shadows in the court behind her.
And the Sunhawks poured through the door, a flood of vengeance in human shape, a flood which split into many smaller streams -- and all of them were deadly.
'No luck,' Tarma said flatly, as her group met (as planned) with Stefan's, just outside the corridor leading to the rooms assigned to the unattached ladies of the court. 'He wasn't in his quarters, and he wasn't with the mages.'
'Nor with any of his current mistresses,' Stefansen reported. 'That leaves the throne room.'
Their combined group, which included Jadrek (who had accompanied Stefan) and both the other Sunhawk mages, now numbered some fifty strong.
The new force surged down the pristine white marble of the Great Hall to their goal of the throne room, all of them caught up in battle-fever. The Hawks had met with opposition from Char's fighters, some of it fierce. The bodies lying in pools of spreading scarlet on the snowy marble of the halls were not all wearing Char's livery. Sewen had been hurt, and Ikan. Garth was dead, and more than fifty others Tarma had known only vaguely. But the Hawks had triumphed, even in the pitched battle with the seasoned troupers of Char's army, and all but a handful of those who had murdered their Captain were now making their atonements to her in person.
But among that handful -- and the only one as yet uncaught -- was Raschar.
Those in the lead shouted as they reached their goal -- the great bronze double doors of the throne room -- first in triumph, and then in anger, as they attempted to force those doors open. The sculptured doors to the throne room were locked, from the inside.
Justin and Beaker and a half dozen more battered at them -- futilely -- as the rest came up. Their efforts did not even make the glittering doors tremble.
'Don't bother,' Stefansen shouted over the noise, 'Those damned doors are a handspan thick. We'll have to try to get in from the garden.'
'No we won't,' Kethry snarled, audible in her rage even over the frustrated efforts of those still trying to batter their way in. 'Stand back!'
She raised her hands high over her head, her face a mask of fury, and Tarma felt the surge of power that could only mean she had summoned some of that terrible anger-energy she had channeled away but not used in the trap-spells. This was the best purpose for such energies, Tarma knew -- anything destructive would do --
Kethry called out three piercing words, and a bolt of something very like scarlet lightning lanced from her hands to the meeting point of the double doors. There was a smell of hot metal and scorched air, and a crash that
