Abhorsen (22 page)

Golden fire burst from the mark as he touched it, and Tindall felt himself fall into the familiar, never-ending swirl of the Charter. It was an unsullied mark, and Tindall felt relief as strongly as he felt the Charter.

“Francis Tindall, isn’t it?” asked Sam, thankful that he’d made a luxurious mustache part of the glamour that disguised him with the uniform and accoutrements of a Scout officer. He’d met the young officer several times the year before at the regular official functions he always attended in term time. The Lieutenant was only a few years older than Sam. Francis’s father, General Tindall, commanded the entire Perimeter Garrison.

“Yes,” replied Francis, surprised. “Though I don’t recall?”

“Sam Stone,” said Sameth. But he kept his hands up and jerked his head back. “You’d better check Sergeant Clare. But be careful of his head. Arrow wound on the left side. He’s pretty groggy.”

Tindall nodded, stepped past, and repeated the procedure with sword and hand on the wounded sergeant. Most of the man’s head was roughly bandaged, but the Charter mark was clear, so he touched it. Once again he found it uncorrupted. This time he also realized that the power within the Sergeant was very, very strong—as had been Lieutenant Stone’s. Both these soldiers were enormously powerful Charter Mages, the strongest he’d ever encountered.

“They’re clear!” he shouted back to Sergeant Evans. “Stand the men down and get the listening posts back out!”

“Ah,” said Sam. “I wondered how you picked us up. I didn’t expect the trenches here to be manned.”

“There’s some sort of emergency farther west,” explained Tindall, as he led the way back to the trench. “We were ordered out only an hour ago. It’s lucky we were still here, in fact, since the rest of the battalion is halfway to Bain. Called out in support of the civil authorities. Probably trouble with the Southerling camps again, or Our Country demonstrations. Our company was the rear party.”

“An emergency west of here?” asked Sam anxiously. “What kind of emergency?”

“I haven’t had word,” replied Tindall. “Do you know something?”

“I hope not,” replied Sam. “But I need to get in touch with HQ as quickly as possible. Do you have a field telephone with you?”

“Yes,” replied Tindall. “But it’s not working. The wind from across the Wall, I expect. The one at the Company CP might just work, I suppose, but otherwise you’ll have to go all the way back to the road.”

“Damn!” exclaimed Sam as they climbed down into the trench. An emergency to the west. That had to have something to do with Hedge and Nicholas. Absently, he returned Evans’s salute and noted all the white faces staring at him out of the darkness of the trench, faces that showed their relief that he was not a creature of the Old Kingdom.

The Dog jumped down beside him, and the closest soldiers flinched. Lirael climbed down slowly after the hound, her muscles still sore from flying. It was strange, this Perimeter, and frightening, too. She could feel the vast weight of many deaths here, everywhere about her. There were many Dead pressing against the border with Life, prevented from crossing only by the wind flutes that sang their silent song out in No Man’s Land. Sabriel had made them, she knew, for wind flutes would stand only as long as the current Abhorsen lived. When she passed on, the wind flutes would fail with the next full moon, and the Dead would rise, till they were bound again by the new Abhorsen. Which, Lirael realized, would be herself.

Lieutenant Tindall noticed her shiver and looked at her with concern.

“Shouldn’t we get your Sergeant to the regimental aid post?” he asked. There was something peculiar about the Sergeant, something that made him difficult to look at directly. If he looked out of the corners of his eyes, Tindall could see a fuzzy aura that didn’t quite match the outline he was expecting. That bandolier was odd too. Since when did the Scouts carry bandoliers of rifle ammunition? Particularly when neither of them was carrying a rifle?

“No,” said Sam quickly. “He’ll be all right. We have to get to a phone as fast as possible and contact Colonel Dwyer.”

Tindall nodded but didn’t say anything. The nod hid a flash of concern across his face, and the thoughts that were racing through his head. Lieutenant Colonel Dwyer, who commanded the Crossing Point Scouts, had been on leave for the last two months. Tindall had even seen him off, following a memorable dinner at his father’s headquarters.

“You’d better come with me to the Company CP,” he said finally. “Major Greene will want to have a word.”

“I must telephone,” Sam insisted. “There’s no time for talking!”

“Major Greene’s telephone may be operational,” said Tindall, trying to keep his voice as even as possible. “Sergeant Evans—take charge of the platoon. Byatt and Emerson . . . follow on. Keep those bayonets fixed. Oh, Evans—send a runner for Lieutenant Gotley to join me at the CP. I think we might need his signals expertise.”

He led the way off down the communications trench, Sam, Lirael, and the Dog following. Evans, who had caught his Lieutenant’s eye and call for the only other Charter Mage in the company besides Major Greene, held Byatt and Emerson back for a few moments, whispering, “Something funny’s up, lads. If the boss gives the word, or there’s any sign of trouble, stick those two in the back!”

Chapter Sixteen

A Major’s Decision

SAMETH’S HEART FELL
as Lieutenant Tindall led them into a deep dugout about a hundred yards behind the fighting trench. Even in the dim light of an oil lamp, he could see it looked too much like the abode of a lazy and comfort-loving officer—who probably wouldn’t even listen, let alone understand what they needed to do.

There was a woodstove burning fiercely in one corner, an open bottle of whisky on the map table, and a comfortable armchair wedged in one corner. Major Greene, in turn, was wedged in the chair, looking red faced and cantankerous. But he did have his boots on, Sam noted, a sword next to his chair, and a holstered revolver that hung by its lanyard from a nearby peg.

“What’s this?” bellowed the Major, creakily rising up as they ducked under the lintel and spread out around the map table. He was old for a major, Sam thought. Pushing fifty at least, and imminent retirement.

Before he could speak, Lieutenant Tindall—who’d moved around behind them—said, “Imposters, sir. Only I’m not sure what kind. They do bear uncorrupted Charter marks.”

Sam stiffened at the word “imposters,” and he saw Lirael grab the Dog’s collar as she growled, deep and angrily.

“Imposters, hey?” said Major Greene. He looked at Sam, and for the first time Sam realized the old officer had a Charter mark on his forehead. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“I’m Lieutenant Stone of the NPRU,” said Sam stiffly. “That is Sergeant Clare and the Sniffer Dog Woppet. I need to phone Perimeter HQ urgently—”

“Rubbish!” roared the Major, without any anger. “I know all the officers of the Scouts, the NCOs too. I was one for long enough! And I’m pretty familiar with the sniffer dogs, and that one ain’t of the breed. I’d be surprised if it could smell a cow pat in a kitchen.”

“I could so,” said the Dog indignantly. Her words were met by a hushed silence; then the Major had his sword out and leveled at them, and Lieutenant Tindall and his men had moved forward, sword and bayonet points only inches behind Sam’s and Lirael’s unprotected necks.

“Oops,” said the Dog, sitting down and resting her head on her paws. “Sorry, Mistress.”

“Mistress?” exclaimed Greene, his face going even redder. “Who are you two? And what is that?”

Sam sighed and said, “I am Prince Sameth of the Old Kingdom, and my companion is Lirael, the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. The Dog is a friend. We are all under a glamour. Do I have your permission to remove it? We’ll glow a bit, but it isn’t dangerous.”

The Major looked redder-faced than ever, but he nodded.

A few minutes later Sam and Lirael stood in front of Major Greene wearing their own clothes and faces. Both were obviously very tired, and clearly had suffered much in recent times. The Major looked at them carefully, then down at the Dog. Her breastplate had disappeared and her collar changed, and she looked larger than before. She met his gaze with a sorrowful eye, then spoiled it by winking.

“It is Prince Sameth,” declared Lieutenant Tindall, who’d edged around to see their faces. There was a strange expression on his face. A sympathetic look, and he nodded twice at Sameth, who looked surprised. “And she looks . . . I beg your pardon, ma’am. I mean to say you look very like Sabriel, I mean the Abhorsen.”

“Yes, I am Prince Sameth,” said Sam slowly, with little expectation that this overweight, soon-to-be-retired Major would be much help. “I urgently need to contact Colonel Dwyer.”

“The phone doesn’t work,” replied the Major. “Besides, Colonel Dwyer is on leave. What’s this urgent need to communicate?”

Lirael answered him, her voice cracked and croaking from the onset of a cold, caused by the sudden transition from a warm Old Kingdom summer to the Ancelstierran spring. The oil lamp flared as she spoke, sending her shadow flickering and dancing across the table.

“An ancient and terrible evil is being brought into Ancelstierre. We need help to find It and stop It—before It destroys your country and then our own.”

The Major looked at her, his red face set in a frown. But it wasn’t a frown of disbelief, as Sam had feared.

“If I didn’t know what your title signified, and recognize the bells you wear,” the Major said slowly, “I would suspect you of overstatement. I don’t think I have ever heard of an evil so powerful it could destroy my entire country. I wish I weren’t hearing about it now.”

“It is called the Destroyer,” said Lirael, her voice soft, but charged with the fear that had been growing since they had left the Red Lake. “It is one of the Nine Bright Shiners, the Free Spirits of the Beginning. It was bound and broken by the Seven and buried deep beneath the ground. Only now the two metal hemispheres that hold It prisoner have been dug up by a necromancer called Hedge, and even as we talk here, he could be bringing them across the Wall.”

“So that’s what it is,” said the Major, but there was no satisfaction in his voice. “I had a carrier pigeon from Brigade about trouble to the west and a defense alert, but there’s been nothing since. Hedge, you say? I knew a sergeant of that name, in the Scouts when I first joined. Couldn’t be him, though—that was thirty-five years ago and he was fifty if he was a day—”

“Major, I have to get to a telephone!” interrupted Sameth.

“At once!” declared the Major. He seemed to be recalled to a more vigorous and perhaps younger version of himself. “Mister Tindall, pull your platoon in and tell Edward and CSM Porrit to organize a move. I’m going to take these two—”

“Three,” said the Dog.

“Four,” interrupted Mogget, poking his head out of Sam’s pack. “I’m tired of keeping quiet.”

“He’s a friend too,” Lirael assured the soldiers hastily, as hands once more went for swords and bayonets swung back. “Mogget is the cat and the Disreputable Dog is the . . . um . . . dog. They are . . . er . . . servants of the Clayr and the Abhorsen.”

“Just like the Perimeter! It never rains but it pours,” declared the Major. “Now, I’m going to take you four back to the reserve line road, and we’ll try the phone there. Francis, follow to the transport rendezvous as fast as you can.”

He paused and added, “I don’t suppose you know where this Hedge is going, if they’ve got across the Perimeter?”

“Forwin Mill, where there is something called a Lightning Farm that they will use to free the Destroyer,” said Lirael. “They may have no difficulty getting across the Perimeter. Hedge has the Chief Minister’s nephew with him, Nicholas Sayre, and they’re being met by someone who has a letter from the Chief Minister allowing them to bring the hemispheres in.”

“That wouldn’t be sufficient,” declared the Major. “I suppose it might work at the Crossing Point, but there’d be hours of to and fro with Garrison at Bain and even Corvere. No one in their right mind would fall for it on the real Perimeter. They’ll have to fight their way through, though if an alert was sounded an hour ago, they probably already have. Orderly!”

A corporal, a burning cigarette disguised in one cupped hand, poked his head into the dugout entrance.

“Get me a map that covers Forwin Mill, somewhere west of here! I’ve never heard of the bloody place.”

“It’s about thirty miles down the coast from here, sir,” volunteered Tindall, stopping in mid rush for the exit. “I’ve been fishing there—there’s a loch with quite good salmon. It is a few miles outside the Perimeter Zone, sir.”

“Is it? Humph!” remarked Greene, his face once again turning a deeper shade of red. “What else is there?”

“There was an abandoned sawmill, a broken-down dock, and what’s left of the railway they once used to bring the trees down from the hills,” said Tindall. “I don’t know what this Lightning Farm might be, but there is—”

“Nicholas had the Lightning Farm built there,” interrupted Lirael. “Quite recently, I think.”

“Any people about the place?” asked the Major.

“There are now,” replied Lieutenant Tindall. “Two Southerling refugee camps were built there late last year. Norris and Erimton they’re called, in the hills immediately above the loch valley. There might be fifty thousand refugees there, I suppose, under police guard.”

“If the Destroyer is made whole, they will be among the first to die,” said the Dog. “And Hedge will reap their spirits as they cross into Death, and they will serve him.”

“We’ll have to get them out of there, then,” said the Major. “Though being outside the Perimeter makes it difficult for us to do anything. General Tindall will understand. I only hope General Kingswold has gone home. He’s an Our Country supporter through and through—”

“We must hurry!” Lirael suddenly interrupted. There was no time for more talk. A terrible sense of foreboding gripped her, as if every second they spent here was a grain of sand lost from a nearly empty hourglass. “We have to get to Forwin Mill before Hedge and the hemispheres!”