'No,' Gil said, surprised that he should even mention the possibility.

Ingold smiled at the self-evident tone in her voice. 'I am not saying that either of us will survive this,' he went on. 'But if the outer gates go, the inner ones will crumple like thin tin. Icefalcon!' he called, and the thin young captain ran to them from where he had been among Janus' Guards..

It was thus that Rudy saw them as he dropped the last few feet down a makeshift ladder from a rickety second-level balcony. They looked like scouts in enemy territory, framed in the sooty jumping shadows of the gate torches, their faces revealed by the white light of the staff. The clamour of the gates redoubled, the separate blows merging into one continuous assault, roaring like an earsplitting cannonade that set the inner gates visibly vibrating and stopped Rudy's breath with horror.

Someone close to him screamed. The Icefalcon mounted the steps at a light-footed run, braids white in the shadows against his black surcoat, and began to turn the locking rings that closed the inner gates. The thought of the pounding fury in the night outside made Rudy's blood run cold, but he would not for any reason whatever have gone close enough to the gates to stop them. The gates moved open, inward on their soundless hinges; the bellowing roar of the assault on the outer gates rolled from the ten-foot passage between, a howling tidal wave of sound. The black square gaped, a clanging maw of darkness and roaring horror.

In the white circle of the magelight, Ingold and Gil stood like lovers, wizard and warrior, their nicked, bruised swordsman's hands joined on the wood of the staff. Then Rudy, his soul cringing, saw Ingold turn away and mount the steps. Gil followed with the glowing staff upraised like a lantern in her hand.