“I’ve given you an order! Now get to it!”

“Sir, we can’t help them,” Berl pleaded. “You don’t know what those things can do! Our standing orders are to defend the lighthouse, not to—”

“Coxswain Berl,” Drewe said stiffly, “whatever the Army’s failings, the Royal Ancelstierran Navy has never stood by while innocents die. It will not start doing so under my command!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Berl slowly. He raised one brawny hand in salute, then suddenly brought it crashing down on Drewe’s neck, under the rim of the officer’s helmet. The Lieutenant crumpled into Berl’s arms, and the coxswain laid him gently down on the floor and took his revolver and cutlass.

“What are you looking at, Kerrick! Get those bloody rockets firing!”

“But – but – what about—”

“If he comes to, give him a cup of water and tell him I’ve taken command,” ordered Berl. “I’m going down to prepare the defences.”

“Defences?”

“Those Southerlings came from the south, straight through the Army lines. So there’s something already on this side, something that fixed the soldiers good and proper. Something Dead, unless I miss my guess. We’ll be next, if they aren’t here already. So get going with the bloody rockets!”

The big petty officer shouted the last words as he climbed through the hatch and slammed it behind him.

The clang of the hatch was still echoing as Kerrick heard the first shouts, somewhere down in the courtyard. Then there was more shouting, and a terrible scream and a confusing hubbub of noise: yelling and screaming and the clash of steel.

Trembling, Kerrick opened the rocket store and wrestled one out. The launcher was set up on the balcony rail, but though he’d done it a hundred times in training, he couldn’t get the rocket to sit in it. When it was finally home, he pulled too quickly on the cord to ignite it and his hands were burnt as the rocket blasted into the sky.

Sobbing from pain and fear, Kerrick went back to get another rocket. Above his head, red blossoms fell from the sky, bright against the cloud.

Kerrick didn’t wait three minutes to fire the next one, or the next.

He was still firing rockets when the Dead Hands came up through the hatch. The fog was all around the lighthouse by then, only Kerrick, his rockets and the light room above the wet, flowing mass of mist. The fog looked almost like solid ground, so convincing that Kerrick hardly thought twice when the Dead creature came smashing through the glass door and reached out to rend him with hands that had too many fingers and ended in curved and bloody bone.

Kerrick jumped, and for a few steps the fog did seem to support him, and he laughed hysterically as he ran. But he was falling, falling, all the same. The Dead Hands watched him go, a tiny spark of Life that all too soon went out.

But Kerrick had not died in vain. The red rockets had been observed to the south and east. And in the light room, Lieutenant Drewe came to and staggered to his feet as Kerrick fell. He saw the Dead and, in a flash of inspiration, pulled the lever that released the striker and the pressurised oil.

Light flared atop the lighthouse, light magnified a thousandfold by the best lenses ever ground by the glass masters of Corvere. The beam shone out on two sides, bracketing the Dead on the balcony. They screeched and shielded their decaying eyes. Desperately, the young naval officer slammed the clockwork gear into neutral and leant on the capstan, to turn the light around. It had been designed for this, in case of total mechanical failure, but not to be pushed by one man.

Desperation and fear provided the necessary strength. The light turned to catch the Dead full in its hot white beam. It didn’t hurt them, but they hated it, so they retreated, taking Kerrick’s way, out into the fog. Unlike Kerrick, the Dead Hands survived the fall, though their bodies were smashed. Slowly they pulled themselves upright and, on jellied, broken limbs, began the long climb back up the stairs. There was Life there, and they wanted the taste of it, the annoyance of the light already forgotten.

Nick woke to thunder and lightning. As always in recent times, he was disoriented and dizzy. He could feel the ground moving unsteadily beneath him and it took him a moment to realise that he was being carried on a stretcher. There were two men at each end, marching along with their burden. Normal men, or normal enough. Not the leprous pit workers Hedge called the Night Crew.

“Where are we?” he asked. His voice was hoarse and he tasted blood. Hesitantly he touched his lips and felt the dried blood caked there. “I’d like a drink of water.”

“Master!” shouted one of the men. “He’s awake!”

Nick tried to sit up, but he didn’t have the strength. All he could see above was thunderclouds and lightning, which was striking down somewhere ahead. The hemispheres! It all came back to him now. He had to make sure the hemispheres were safe!

“The hemispheres!” he shouted, pain spiking in his throat.

“They’re safe,” said a familiar voice. Hedge suddenly towered above him. He’s got taller, Nick thought irrationally. Thinner, too. Sort of stretched out, like a toffee being fought over by two children. And he had seemed to be balding before, and now he had hair. Or was it shadow, curling across his forehead?

Nick shut his eyes. He couldn’t think where he was or how he had got here. Obviously he was still sick, more seriously ill than before or they wouldn’t have to carry him.

“Where are we?” Nick asked weakly. He opened his eyes again but he couldn’t see Hedge, though the man answered from somewhere close by.

“We are about to cross the Wall,” replied Hedge, and he laughed. It was an unpleasant laugh. But Nick couldn’t help laughing too. He didn’t know why, and he couldn’t make himself stop till he choked and had to.

Beyond Hedge’s laugh and the constant boom of thunder, there was another noise. Nick couldn’t identify it at first. He kept listening as his stretcher bearers stolidly carried him forward, till at last he thought he knew what it was. The audience at a football game or a cricket match. Shouting and yelling at a win. Though the Wall would be an odd place to have a game. Perhaps the soldiers at the Perimeter played, he thought.

Five minutes later, Nick could hear screaming in the crowd noise and he knew it was no football game. He tried to sit up again, only to be pressed back down by a hand that he knew was Hedge’s, though it was black and burnt-looking, and there were red flames where the fingernails should be.

Hallucinations, Nick thought desperately. Hallucinations.

“We must cross quickly,” said Hedge, instructing the stretcher bearers. “The Dead can keep the passage for only a few more minutes. As soon as the hemispheres are through, we will run.”

“Yes, sir,” chorused the stretcher bearers.

Nick wondered what Hedge was talking about. They were passing between two lines of his strange, afflicted labourers now. Nick tried not to look at them, at the decaying flesh held together by torn blue rags. Fortunately, he couldn’t see their ravaged faces. They were all facing away, like some sort of back-to-front honour guard, and they had linked their arms.

“The hemispheres are across the Wall!”

Nick didn’t know who spoke. The voice was strange and echoing, and it made him feel unclean. But the words had an immediate effect. The stretcher bearers began to run, bouncing Nick up and down. He gripped the sides and, on the peak of one of the bounces, used its extra momentum to sit up and look around.

They were running into a tunnel through the Wall that separated the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. A low, arched tunnel cut through the stone. It was packed with the Night Crew from beginning to end, great lines of them with their arms linked and only a very narrow passage in between the lines. Every man and woman was glowing with golden light, but as Nick got closer, he saw that the glow was from thousands of tiny golden flames, which were spreading and joining, and the people further inside the wall were actually on fire.