Their hoofbeats made an entirely different kind of echo when they reached the open plaza of the Tarkin’s Square. Another touch on her thigh told her they were stopping-but at a point she judged well back from the gates themselves.
“The gates are open,” Dal said. He kept his voice pitched low and soft, so that it would not carry over, but his shock was evident. Dhulyn understood. The outer gates of the Carnelian Dome stood open only when the Carnelian Guard was parading in the square, and her ears told her that other than themselves, the square was empty.
“It’s only the pass door,” Karlyn said. “Whatever may be the explanation for this, we cannot turn back now.”
“In a tale,” Dhulyn said, “those words would be the signal for an attack.”
“That is what comes of reading too much.”
They stopped again at what Dhulyn estimated was well within bow-shot of the gates, and therefore too close for comfort if they really expected to be attacked. She heard the creak of Dal’s saddle as he stood up in his stirrups.
“Give answer,” he called. “Who attends the gates, give answer.”
“I attend,” came a man’s voice out of the air.
“I am Dal-eDal Tenebro, the cousin of Lok-iKol Tarkin. May I pass?”
Dhulyn grinned. Would anyone else find it significant that Dal-eDal was so careful to say which Tarkin he was related to?
“Enter, enter, enter…” said the voice in the air, fading as though the speaker was turning and walking away. Around her were the noises of her companions dismounting, but Dhulyn stayed where she was.
“You’ll have to duck down,” Karlyn said from around her right elbow. “You’ll just fit through the door if Bloodbone walks carefully.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Dhulyn said rapidly reviewing the knots she’d used before deciding none of them would either pull loose or become dangerously tight if she bent enough to get through the door. Such doors, she knew, were specifically designed to prevent the entrance of people on horseback, but Bloodbone was not large, and if Dhulyn could lay practically flat along the mare’s neck…
She pressed her cheek against Bloodbone’s mane, and felt the loop around her right knee tighten painfully. Just as she was about to sit up again, she felt a hand loosening it. “Thank you,” she said, knowing it was Karlyn-Tan.
The quality of the echoes thrown off from hooves and footsteps once they’d passed through the gate told Dhulyn the inner gate was already open, and she could picture the look of disgust that must have decorated Karlyn-Tan’s face at the carelessness which allowed both gates to be open at once.
Dhulyn closed her eyes and concentrated her senses-there was more wrong here than sloppiness with the gates.
“Are there archers in the recesses?” she asked. There should be, she knew. There had been archers at the slitted openings high in the curve of the tunnel walls when she had passed through here with Parno and Alkoryn.
“I see no one,” Karlyn said.
A shifting of air and the feel of sunlight on the skin of her arms and hands told her they were through the inner gate and into the main courtyard of the Dome.
“You there,” Dal called out. “Where are the Stewards? Our horses need attendance, as do we.”
Nothing more than muttering, and what sounded like fingers snapping in time to an unheard tune. The muscles in Dhulyn’s stomach tightened. The last time she’d felt this way had been in Navra, watching the crowd around the Finder’s fire.
“What is happening?” she said, not caring who heard her speak.
Before anyone could answer Dhulyn heard the unmistakable sound of an arrow whistling through the air, and a grunt behind her, a swift click of hooves as a horse shied to one side, a jingle of harness, followed by the unmistakable dull thud of a body hitting the cobbles.
Without conscious thought she squeezed her knees together and Bloodbone obeyed the signal, rearing as Dhulyn thrust out both heels, pulling free of her leg bindings and sliding off Bloodbone’s back to land squarely on her feet as the mare took a step forward. Lifting and uncrossing her arms over her head freed them, and Dhulyn yanked off the hood, ducking just in time to avoid another arrow as it fell bouncing on the stones beyond her. The flagstones underfoot were swept relatively clean, but as she straightened, Dhulyn mimed tossing dirt into the faces of the two nearest strangers, who flinched without thinking. She pulled her boot knives free and used them to deflect yet another arrow.
Not that the arrows appeared to be specifically aimed at anyone, Dhulyn realized as she glanced around, squinting against the light, near blinding after so long in the hood. The second flight of arrows seemed let off from loose strings, so haphazard as to be no real danger. Not like the armed guards running from the doorway beside the gate. They were badly dressed and disorderly, but heavily armed and deadly serious. Though if they hadn’t been coming from what was obviously a wardroom, Dhulyn would have sworn these were soldiers coming spent and dirty from the battlefield.
One even had dried blood on the blade of her sword. And a moment later, Dhulyn’s dagger growing out of her eye.
Dhulyn turned and pulled her own sword from the scabbard lying hidden along Bloodbone’s side under her woolly oversized saddle pad. Why would a professional soldier not clean her weapon, Dhulyn thought, as she automatically brought up her blade to block a blow aimed with great fury but little skill at her head. And since when did the guards of the Carnelian Dome have little skill?
“This way,” Dal-eDal called from behind her, and Dhulyn automatically stepped back, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder. Dal was heading toward a small arched doorway on the far right of the courtyard, not the elaborately carved main entrance Dhulyn had used when she’d come for her audience with the Tarkin.
Three more guards came trotting into the courtyard, but instead of coming directly to the help of their fellows, they hesitated, looking from friend to foe with frowns. One of them stared about as if he wasn’t even sure where he was. Dhulyn moved her sword with more discretion, hitting with the flat of the heavy blade, pushing one youngster away with a boot to the midsection, unwilling to kill people who didn’t seem altogether certain that they wished to kill her.
She was one of the last to reach the doorway Dal stood guarding, and she helped him slam the heavy door into place, stepping aside as Karlyn and Cullen thrust down the bar. A quick look around confirmed only minor injuries, barring the unlucky Linn, who’d been hit by the first arrow-the only one which had come with any force. They had left his body outside with the horses.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Karlyn said. “Where are the Stewards? Why were the gate guards not better organized?”
“And cleaner. And aware enough to actually do some damage with their swords,” said Dhulyn.
“What do you mean, Wolfshead?” Dal-eDal said.
“Did you not see it?” Cullen said. “They moved as if they knew what to do, but had forgotten how.” He looked between Karlyn and Dhulyn.
“Or as if they’d forgotten why,” Dhulyn said. “There was no coordination, as if they’d never fought together before. As if they were each of them alone.”
“We were lucky,” Karlyn said. “You can be killed just as dead by someone who doesn’t know why he’s shooting at you.”
“This is a kind of madness,” Dhulyn said. “We saw this in Navra, Parno and I. Did you see their eyes? It is some effect of the Green Shadow.”
“We waste time with questions we cannot answer,” Dal said pushing away from the wall. “Come.”