The roofed granite row of stone pillars in front of the Eastern Foundation Dormitories had been built a hundred and sixty winters ago to shelter young new students practicing their morning spear postures during the heavy mountain snows. Sixteen feet wide and eighty feet long, its heavy slate roof was supported on the outer edge by a row of eight-sided granite pillars and on the inner edge by the timber-and-plaster wall of the three-story student sleeping quarters.
Under ordinary circumstances, a sixteen-foot stone gallery was an ideal fighting lane for a master of the spear. Tonight, with eighty scared children and two hundred valley refugees huddled behind the thin lath-and-plaster wall on the left, that same gallery was a fine china shop built over a powder magazine.
Commander Keth Or halted at the foot of the row of stone pillars steps, his twenty-four black-armored recovery troopers fanning out to block the lower terrace exits. Meanwhile, Osen Tal shrank back into the shadow of the gatehouse arch. Looking up the stone gallery at Hall Mistress Soran, Keth Or didn’t show the careless arrogance he had turned on the two Bronze instructors. Even with the bruised spirit vein vessels at her temples from holding up the Red Chute rock-slide five days ago, Soran stood in the Mature Jade realm. A half-step higher than Keth Or’s newly consolidated early Jade foundation.
