“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?”