Now, in such tight spaces, neither pike nor gun will be brought to bear easily - but armor is a weapon, and father always taught you to assume that all men are stronger than you, even the ones that don't look like they would be. Which these men certainly aren't. The surest bet to taking out both of them is with the Wand of Head-Knocking ... but that is not Socketed at the moment. It has a Fuel Nodule in its harness, though. Can you use it without it Socketed? You don't remember anything in your mother's letter about that. From your ... admittedly shaky grasp of the principles of such Witching-Work, you know that a Socketing Needle and the harness for it reduces the amount of Fuel necessary for the Mystery attached to it to reach completion once called upon, by making it easier to Reach and Draw. The issue is that you don't know if the Fuel in an Ounce Nodule is enough to work the wand without a Socketing Needle Socketed, or how the reaction might play out differently, or the survivability of Wand and Needle and harness and Nodule for attempting it. Just getting your hand around the Needle would be better than going just by the grip ... but you have no idea how much better. Getting that Needle into you is the only sure play, but of course, the Wand is dead in the center of the bundle, furthest from reach.

With that in mind, running might serve better than fighting. Except that once you get out of this hall, you are still in a tunnel. A barrel, for all intents and purposes, in which fish like you might be shot at leisure. Could you rely on getting out of sight before the shootist got free of the hall? Hiding in the dark? Not much to stake one's life on, but not nothing. You certainly wouldn't count on getting out of range of the gun on time, but maybe, just maybe you could get out of the Gatehouse and into the Cut, or at least get some stonework between you and him ... if you were able to down the first Guard, to obstruct the way of the second. Another point to consider is that he might not be willing to shoot, or at least more hesitant than he would ... under other circumstances.

Of course, with running, unless you were willing to risk either hiding in or otherwise getting caught in the Gatehouse, all of this would be running out of the Landward Walls, not into them.