“The trucks have stalled,” reported Sam. “Though the wind’s practically a westerly. I think we’re getting too close to the hemispheres. We’ll have to walk from here.”
“Where are we?” Lirael asked. She stood up too quickly, and her head hit the canvas canopy, just missing one of the steel struts. There was a lot of noise outside now—shouting and the crash of hobnailed boots on the road—but behind all that there was also a constant dull booming. In her half-asleep state, it took a moment for her to understand it wasn’t thunder, which she half-expected, but something else.
The Dog jumped out over the tailgate, and Lirael followed, somewhat more sedately. They were still on the Perimeter road, she saw, and it looked like early morning. The moon was up, a slim crescent rather than the nearly full moon of the Old Kingdom. It was subtly different in shape and color, too, Lirael noted. Less silver, and more a pale buttercup yellow.
The booming noise was coming from farther south, and there was a faint whistling with it. Lirael could see bright flashes on the horizon there, but it was not lightning. There was thunder as well, to the west, and the flashes from that direction were definitely lightning. As she looked, Lirael thought she caught the faintest whiff of Free Magic, though the wind was indeed a southerly. And she could sense Dead somewhere up ahead. Not more than a mile away.
“What is that noise, and the lights?” she asked Sam, pointing south. He turned to look but had to step back before he could answer, as soldiers started to trot past the trucks.
“Artillery,” he said after a moment. “Big guns. They must be far enough back, so they aren’t affected by the Old Kingdom or the hemispheres and can still fire. Um, they’re sort of like catapults that throw an exploding device several miles, which hits the ground or blows up in the air and kills people.”
“A total waste of time,” interrupted Major Greene, who had come puffing up. “You can’t hear any shells exploding, can you? So all they’re doing is lobbing what might be as well be big rocks over, and even a direct hit with an unexploded shell won’t do anything to the Dead. It’ll just be a big mess for the ordnance people to clear up. Thousands of UXBs, and most of them white phosphorus. Nasty stuff! Come on!”
The Major puffed on past, with Lirael, the Dog, and Sam following. They left their packs in the trucks, and for a moment Lirael thought Mogget was still asleep in Sam’s. Then she saw the little white cat up ahead behind the first double-timing platoon, dashing along the roadside as if he were chasing a mouse. As he pounced, she recognized that was exactly what he was doing. Hunting something to eat.
“Where are we?” asked Lirael as she easily caught up to Major Greene. He looked at her, took a coughing breath, and nodded his head at Lieutenant Tindall, who was up ahead. Lirael got the hint. She ran forward to the younger officer and repeated her question.
“About three miles from the Perimeter’s Western Strongpoint,” replied Tindall. “Forwin Mill is about sixteen miles south of there, but hopefully we’ll be able to stop this Hedge at the Wall—First Platoon, halt!”
The sudden order surprised Lirael, and she ran on a few steps before she saw the soldiers in front had stopped. Lieutenant Tindall barked out some more orders, repeated by a sergeant at the front, and the soldiers ran off to either side of the road, readying their rifles.
“Cavalry, ma’am!” snapped Tindall, taking her arm and urging her to the side of the road. “We don’t know whose.”
Lirael rejoined Sam and drew her sword. They stared down the road, listening to the beat of hooves on the metaled road. The Dog stared, too, but Mogget played with the mouse he’d caught. It was still alive, and he kept letting it go, only to snap it up after it had run a few feet, holding it frantic and terrified in his partly open mouth.
“Not Dead,” pronounced Lirael.
“Or Free Magic,” said the Disreputable Dog with a loud sniff. “But very afraid.”
They saw the horse and rider a moment later. He was an Ancelstierran soldier, a mounted infantryman, though he had lost his carbine and saber. He shouted as he saw the soldiers.
“Get out of the way! Get out of here!”
He tried to ride on, but the horse shied as soldiers spilled out on the road. Someone grabbed the bridle and brought the horse to a halt. Others dragged the man roughly from the saddle as he tried to slap the horse on with his hands.
“What’s going on, man?” asked Major Greene roughly. “What’s your name and unit?”
“Trooper 732769 Maculler, sir,” replied the man automatically, but his teeth chattered as he spoke, and sweat was pouring down his face. “Fourteenth Light Horse, with the Perimeter Flying Detachment.”
“Good. Now tell me what’s going on,” said the Major.
“Dead, all dead,” whispered the man. “We rode in from due south, through the fog. Strange, twisty fog . . . We caught them with these big silver . . . like half oranges, but huge . . . They were putting them on carts, but the draft horses were dead. Only they weren’t dead, they moved. The horses were pulling the carts even though they were dead. Everyone dead . . .”
Major Greene shook him, very hard. Lirael put her hand forward as if to stop him, but Sam held her back.
“Report, Trooper Maculler! The situation!”
“They’re all dead but me, sir,” said Maculler simply. “Me and Dusty fell in the charge. By the time we got up, it was all over. Something made us sick. Maybe there was gas in the fog. Everyone in the reconaissance troop went down, the horses, too, or running free. Then there were these things lying all around the carts. Bodies, we thought, dead Southerlings, but they got up as we fell. I saw them, swarming over my mates . . . thousands of monsters, horrible monsters. They’re coming this way, sir.”
“The silver hemispheres,” interrupted Lirael urgently. “Which way did the carts go?”
“I don’t know,” mumbled the man. “They were headed south, straight at us, when we ran into them. I don’t know after that.”
“Hedge is across and the hemispheres are already on their way to the Lightning Farm,” said Lirael to the others. “We have to get there before they do! It’s our last chance!”
“How?” asked Sam, his face white. “If they’re already across the Wall . . .”
Lieutenant Tindall had the map out and was trying the switch on a small electric flashlight, which failed to work. Suppressing a curse with an apologetic glance at Lirael, he held the map to the moonlight.
As he did, Lirael felt her Death sense twitch, and she looked up. She couldn’t see anything down the road ahead, but she knew what was coming. Dead Hands. A very large number of Dead Hands. And there was something else, too. A familiar cold presence. One of the Greater Dead, not a necromancer. It had to be Chlorr.
“They’re coming,” she said urgently. “Two groups of Hands. About a hundred in front, and a lot more farther back.”
The Major barked out orders and soldiers ran in all directions, mostly forward, carrying tripods, machine-guns, and other gear. A medical orderly led Trooper Maculler away, his horse following obediently behind. Lieutenant Tindall shook the map and squinted at it.
“Always on the bloody folds, or where a map joins!” he cursed. “It looks like we could head southeast from the crossroads back there, then cut southwest and loop up to Forwin Mill from the south. The trucks might work if we do it that way. We’ll have to push them back to start with.”
“Get to it then!” roared Major Greene. “Take your platoon to push. We’ll hold out here as long as we can.”
“Chlorr leads them,” said Lirael to Sam and the Dog. “What should we do?”
“We cannot reach the Lightning Farm before Hedge on foot,” said Sam quickly. “We could take that man’s horse, but only the two of us could ride, and it is sixteen miles in the dark—”
“The horse is done in,” interrupted Mogget. He was chewing, and the words weren’t very clear. “Couldn’t carry two if it wanted to. Which it doesn’t.”
“So we’ll have to
go with the soldiers,” said Lirael. “Which means holding off Chlorr and the first wave of the Dead long enough to get the trucks pushed back to where they’ll work.”
She looked down the road past the soldiers, who were kneeling behind a tripod-mounted machine-gun. There was just enough moon- and starlight to make out the road and the stunted bushes on either side, though they were stark and colorless. As she watched, darker shapes blotted out the lighter parts of the landscape. The Dead, shambling close together in an unplanned and unorganized mob. A larger, darker shape was at the fore, and even from several hundred yards away, Lirael could see the fire that burned inside the shadow.
It was Chlorr.
Major Greene saw the Dead, too, and suddenly shouted right near Lirael’s ear.
“Company! Two hundred yards at twelve o’clock, Dead things en masse in the road, fire! Fire! Fire!”
His shouts were followed by the mass clicking of triggers, loud even after the shouts. But nothing else happened. There was no sudden assault of sound, no crack of gunfire. Just clicks and muttered exclamations.
“I don’t understand,” said Greene. “The wind’s westerly, and the guns usually work long after the engines stop!”
“The hemispheres,” said Sam, with a glance at the Dog, who nodded. “They are a source of Free Magic on their own, and we are close to them. Hedge has probably also worked the wind. We might as well still be in the Old Kingdom, as far as your technology goes.”
“Damn! First and Second Platoon, form up on the road, two ranks on the double!” ordered Greene. “Archers at the rear! Gunners, take your bolts and draw your swords!”
There was a sudden bustle as the machine-gunners took the bolts out of their weapons and drew their swords. Lirael drew her sword, too, and after a moment’s hesitation Saraneth. She wanted to use Kibeth for some reason—it felt more familiar to her touch—but to deal with Chlorr she would need the authority of the bigger bell.
“I thought it was later than twelve o’clock,” she said to Sam as they moved up to take a position in the forward line of soldiers. There were about sixty of them in two lines across the road and out into the fields on either side. The front line all wore mail, and their rifles were fixed with long sword bayonets that shone with silver. The second rank were archers, though Lirael could tell by looking at the way they held their bows that only half of them really knew what they were doing. Their arrows were silvered, too, she noticed with approval. That would help a little against the Dead.
“Um, Major Greene’s ‘twelve o’clock’ meant ‘straight ahead’; the time is about two in the morning,” replied Sam, after a glance at the night sky. Obviously he knew the Ancelstierran stars as well as the Old Kingdom ones, for the heavens here meant nothing to Lirael.
“Front rank kneel!” ordered Major Greene. He stood at the front with Lirael and Sam and cast a sideways glance at the Disreputable Dog, who was growing to her full fighting size. The soldiers next to the hound shifted nervously, even as they knelt and set their bayoneted rifles out at a forty-five degree angle, so the front rank was a thicket of spears.
“Archers stand ready!”
The archers nocked arrows but did not draw. The Dead were approaching at a steady pace, but they were not close enough for Lirael and Sam to make out individuals in the dark other than Chlorr. The clicking of their bones could be heard, and the shuffle of many misshapen feet upon the road.
Lirael felt the tension and fear in the soldiers around her. The drawn-in breaths that were not released. The nervous shifting of feet and the fussing with equipment. The silence after the Major’s shouted orders. It would not take much to set them fleeing for their lives.
“They’ve stopped,” said the Dog, her keen eyes cutting through the night.
Lirael peered ahead. Sure enough, the dark mass did seem to have stopped, and the red glint from Chlorr was moving sideways rather than ahead.
“Trying to outflank us?” asked the Major. “I wonder why.”
“No,” said Sam. He could sense the much larger group of Dead farther back. “She’s waiting for the second lot of Dead. Close to a thousand, I’d say.”
He spoke softly, but there was a ripple among the nearer soldiers at his last words, a ripple that went slowly through both lines as his words were repeated.
“Quiet!” ordered Greene. “Sergeant! Take that man’s name!”
“Sir!” confirmed several sergeants. Most of them had just been whispering themselves, and none made even a show of writing something in their field notebooks.
“We can’t wait,” said Lirael anxiously. “We have to get to the Lightning Farm!”
“We can’t turn our backs on this lot either,” said Greene. He bent close, the Charter Mark on his forehead glowing softly as it responded to the Charter Magic in the Dog, and whispered, “The men are close to breaking. They’re not Scouts, not used to this sort of thing.”
Lirael nodded. She gritted her teeth, marking a moment of indecision, then stepped out from the front rank.
“I’ll take the fight to Chlorr,” she declared. “If I can defeat her, the Hands may wander off or go back to Hedge. They’ll fight badly, anyway.”
“You’re not going without me,” said the Dog. She stepped forward too, with an excited bark, a bark that echoed out across the night. There was something strange about that bark. It made everyone’s hair stand on end, and the bell in Lirael’s hand chimed quietly before she could still it. Both sounds made the soldiers even jumpier.
“Or me,” said Sam stoutly. He stepped forward as well, his sword bright with Charter marks, his cupped left hand glowing with a prepared spell.
“I’ll come and watch,” said Mogget. “Maybe you’ll scare a couple of mice out of their holes.”
“If you’ll let an old man fight with you—” Greene began, but Lirael shook her head.
“You stay here, Major,” she said, and her voice was not that of a young woman but of an Abhorsen about to deal with the Dead. “Protect our rear.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Major Greene. He saluted and stepped back into the line.
Lirael walked ahead, the gravel of the road crunching under her feet. The Disreputable Dog was at her right hand and Sam on her left. Mogget, a swift white shape, ran along the roadside, darting backwards and forwards, presumably in search of more mice to torment.
The Dead did not move towards Lirael as she marched on, but as she got closer, she saw they were spreading out, moving into the fields to present a broader front. Chlorr waited on the road, a tall shape, darker than the night save for her burning eyes. Lirael could feel the Greater Dead’s presence like a chill hand upon the back of her neck.
When they were about fifty yards away, Lirael stopped, the Dog and Sam a half step behind her. She held Saraneth high, so the bell shone silver in the moonlight, the Charter marks glowing and moving upon the metal.
“Chlorr of the Mask,” shouted Lirael, “return to Death!”
She flipped the bell, catching it by the handle and ringing it at the same time. Saraneth boomed out across the night, the Dead Hands flinching as the sound hit them. But it was for Chlorr the bell sounded, and all Lirael’s power and attention were focused on that spirit.
Chlorr raised her shadow-bladed sword above her head and screamed back in defiance. Yet the scream was drowned in the continued tolling of the bell, and Chlorr took a step back even as she brandished her sword.
“Return to Death!” ordered Lirael, walking forward, swinging Saraneth in slow loops that were straight out of a page of The Book of the Dead that now shone so brightly in her mind. “Your time is over!”
Chlorr hissed and took another step backwards. Then a new sound joined the bell. A peremptory bark, impossibly sustained, stretching on and on, sharper and higher pitched than Saraneth’s deep voice. Chlorr raised her sword as if to parry the sounds but took two more steps back. Confused Dead Hands staggered out of her way, gobbling their distress from their decayed throats.
Sam’s arm circled in an overarm bowling motion, and golden fire suddenly exploded on and around Chlorr and splashed onto the Hands, who screamed and writhed as it ate into their Dead flesh.
Then a small white shape suddenly appeared almost at Chlorr’s feet. A cat, capering on its hind feet, batting at the air in front of the Greater Dead spirit.
“Run! Run away, Chlorr No-Face!” laughed Mogget. “The Abhorsen comes to send you beyond the Ninth Gate!”
Chlorr swung at the cat, who nimbly leapt aside as the blade swept past. Then the Greater Dead thing turned the swing into a leap, a great leap across thirty feet over the heads of the Dead Hands behind her. Transforming as she leaped, she became a great raven-shaped cloud of darkness that sped across the fields to the north, to the Wall and safety, pursued by the sound of Saraneth and the bark of the Dog.
Chapter Nineteen
A Tin of Sardines
AS CHLORR FLED, the mass of Dead Hands erupted like an anthill splashed with hot water. They ran in all directions, the most stupid of them towards Lirael, Sam, and the Dog. Mogget ran between their legs, laughing, as Charter Magic fire burnt through their sinews and sent them crashing to the ground, the Dog’s barking sent their spirits back into Death, and Saraneth commanded them to relinquish their bodies.
In a few mad minutes, it was all over. The echoes of bell and bark died away, leaving Lirael and her companions standing on an empty road under the moon and stars, surrounded by a hundred bodies that were no more than empty husks.
The silence was broken by cheering and yelling from the soldiers behind them. Lirael ignored it and called out to Mogget.
“Why did you tell Chlorr to run? We were winning! And what was that No-Face thing about?”
“It was quicker, which I thought was the point,” said Mogget. He went up to Sam’s feet and sat there, yawning. “Chlorr was always overcautious, even when she was an A— alive. I’m tired now. Can you carry me?”