“Not the crowd!” roared Touchstone’s voice. “Only armed targets!”
Their attackers were not so careful. They had gone under their vehicles and behind a post box and the wall of a flower-bed, and were firing wildly.
Bullets ricocheted off the street and the armoured cars in mad, zinging screeches. There was noise everywhere, harsh, confused sound, a mixture of screaming and shouting combined with the constant crack and chatter of gunfire. The crowd, so eager to rush forward only seconds before, had become a terrible, tumbling crush of people trying to flee.
Damed rushed to a knot of guards who were crouched between the two cars.
“The river,” he shouted. “Go through the square and down the Warden Steps. We have two boats there. You’ll lose any pursuit in the fog.”
“We can fight our way back to the Embassy!” retorted Touchstone.
“This is too well planned! The police have turned, or enough of them! You must get out of Corvere. Out of Ancelstierre!”
“No!” shouted Sabriel. “We haven’t finished—”
She was cut off as Damed violently pushed her and Touchstone over and dived on to the street. With his legendary quickness, he intercepted a large black cylinder that was tumbling through the air, trailing smoke behind it.
A bomb.
Damed caught and threw it in one swift motion, but even he was not fast enough.
The bomb exploded while it was still in the air. Packed with high explosive and pieces of metal, it killed Damed instantly. The blast broke every window for two miles, and momentarily deafened and blinded everyone within a hundred yards. But it was the thousands of metal fragments that did the real damage, ripping and screaming through the air, to bounce off stone or metal, or all too often, to cut through flesh.
Silence followed the explosion, save for the roar of the burning gas from the shattered lamps. Even the fog had been thrown back by the force of the blast, which had cleared a great circle open to the sky. Rays of weak sunshine filtered through, to illuminate the scene of destruction.
There were bodies strewn all around the cars, not one overcoated guard still standing. Even the car’s armoured windows were broken, and the occupants were slumped in death.
The assassins waited for a few minutes before they started forward, laughing and congratulating each other, their weapons cradled casually under their arms, or across a shoulder with what they imagined was debonair style.
Their talk and laughter was too loud, but they didn’t notice. Their senses were battered, their minds in shock. Not only from the gunfire, the explosion, the terrible sights that drew closer and more real with every step, or even the relief at being alive.
It was three hundred years since a King and a Queen had been slain on the streets of Corvere. Now it had happened again — and they had done the deed.