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Thunder boomed closer now. The windows at the end of the hall where Hank stood rattled with a hard wind. He went down to it and saw that it was also raining.
Glinda and Hank had talked about trying to kill all the guards of the queen's suite and then dressing up the human raiders in the uniforms and having the hawks replace the dead ones. That idea had been quickly dismissed, however. There would be an unavoidable amount of noise which might attract the guards on the floor below.
Hank was to wait until Erakna came home and toss a grenade at her before she went into the suite. He would then step out and finish the work with his BAR.
"You don't mind killing women?" Glinda had said.
"I mind killing anybody," Hank had said. "But it has to be done."
Sharts came to him and looked out the window.
"She'll be here soon. It's just as well. Better, in fact. I didn't like the idea of waiting for her. Too much chance of somebody checking on the guards. As it is, somebody will be coming up these steps before the queen gets on this floor. I hope that there isn't more than one."
The bodies had been dragged around the corner of the staircase. Unwaz was occupying the late hawk's perch, and two men had put on the casques of the guard.
Ten minutes later, the hawk listening at the top of the steps turned and fluttered over to Sharts.
"I heard an officer challenge the guards. Must be our man."
Sharts got on one side of the doorway, and Blogo got on the other. As the officer came through the doorway, he was gripped around the neck and the mouth by giant hands. Blogo cut the officer's throat.
There was much noise down in the hall, the grounding of spear butts, hoarse commands, and the shrill voices and laughter of little women and men.
"Holy Thun!" Sharts said. "They're here! Quick, jpan!"
Hank went down the steps as softly but as quickly as he could. When he got to the doorway, he stood behind the wall and pulled a grenade from his jacket pocket. He had another in the other pocket if the first one did not explode.
"The queen! The queen!" an officer bawled. "Open the door for the queen!"
Hank stepped out into the hallway, pulled the pin on the grenade, got a glimpse of the crowd around the door, heard a warning shout to his right from down the hall, and threw the grenade. He turned then and ran up the steps. The door had been twenty feet away, and the wall would protect him. But there was going to be a hell of a blast. If the grenade worked. If it did not, he would have to run back down and use the BAR. His plan for tossing the second bomb might not work out. The queen could be behind her door by then.
There were shrieks and then a very loud boom.
Air rushed up the staircase. Black smoke followed it.
Hank turned, his BAR in his hands, ran down the steps, and plunged into the hall. Behind him he heard feet striking the steps. Sharts and the others were following him.
The smoke was still dense, but he could see some torn bodies on the floor. A few were still alive and screaming.
Pointing towards where he thought the door was, Hank pressed on the trigger until the twenty rounds were expended. Smiirn at once handed him a fresh magazine, and he attached it to the underside of the rifle.
A guard at the end of the hall charged them. He was a brave man, but he died when Blogo's ax caught him between shoulder and neck.
Hank ran toward the stairway down the hall past the door to Erakna's suite. He hurdled the bodies but slipped on blood, and he fell heavily backwards. Though partly stu
He looked down the hall. The smoke had thi
He cried in his piping voice, "She's not here! She must have gotten away!"
Hank groaned and said, "After all this!"
Sharts had plunged through the doorway. Blogo followed him, and three hawks flew in after him. Smiirn came to Hank and said, "How long can you hold them off with that thing?"
"Until the ammunition runs out," he said.
"We may need more time to look for the witch than we thought," Smiirn said. "It's a big apartment."
A helmeted head poked from the doorway below. Hank loosed two shots. The soldier was not hit, but two minutes passed before there was a yell and men poured through the entrance. The BAR crumpled ten before those behind ran, some falling down. Hank let them go. He just wanted to discourage them.
Two more minutes went by.
Another head came around the corner. This time, Hank did not shoot. He thought that his mere presence would keep them back. For a while, anyway.
Another sixty seconds.
All but Smiirn had gone into the suite to help in the search. It was well that Smiim was there as his ammo supplier. Otherwise, Hank might have been caught off-guard. Smiirn yelled. Hank looked at him and saw that he was pointing past him. He whirled. Two men were at the end of the hall and more were corning through the doorway of the apartment there. Glinda was not the only one who had prepared secret routes.
Their crossbows were pointed at him. He fired as he fell forward. The bolts missed, and his burst knocked the soldiers backwards. He reached forward and pulled the supports of the BAR down and fired from a prone position. Ten men fell. No others followed them.
He got up and beckoned for Smiirn to bring more boxes of magazines. He removed the empty one and put on a new one. Then he told Smiirn to watch the stairway while he took care of this other matter. When he was close to the door, which was open and bore two bullet holes, he took out the grenade, pulled the pin, counted, and threw it inside the door. He ran away along the wall and then dived. The explosion tore the door off and filled that end of the hall with black smoke for a while.
He put the third grenade in his pocket.
Sharts came ru
"So!"
"Yeah, so," Hank said. He had resumed his post at the top of the steps. "Did you find the queen?"
"No. She must have gone into a secret hideaway. Or down secret steps. She's probably on the floor below now."
"We'd better run then," Hank said. "Now."
"I don't like to fail!" Sharts yelled.
"Who does?" Hank said. "There's something worse than failure, though. Death. Let's get out of here."
"Do you think you could shoot your way through to the queen?" Sharts said. "She could be just around the bottom of the staircase. You might catch her before she could get away."
"No, I don't think so," Hank said. "Let's get out of here!"
Sharts snarled, but he turned and went to the door and bellowed for the searchers to come out into the hall.
Hank said, "Do you want the Gillikins to know what we're doing?"
Sharts gave him the finger. For some reason, Hank found that very fu
Before following the others, Hank half-emptied a magazine just to let those below know that he was there. He turned and ran then, but he stopped when his eyes caught something extraordinary. It was a velvet-covered box which had been blown open when he had thrown the grenade at the queen. Something dull yellow gleamed inside the box. He removed it and looked at it. It was a hemispherical object of gold large enough to fit over the head of an Amariikian of normal stature. He turned it over and looked inside it by the light of an oil-lamp which he took from a table near the window.
There were inscriptions in four rows inside its rim, but the light was not bright enough for him to read them. Even if the illumination had been stronger, he would not have been able to read them, for they were written in the undecipherable script of the Long-Gone Ones. Nevertheless, he knew what the gold hemisphere was.