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 further 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 colourless. As she watched, darker shapes blotted out the lighter parts of the landscape. The Dead, shambling close together in an unplanned and unorganised mob. A larger, darker shape was at the fore, and even from several hundred yards away, Lirael could see the fire that burnt 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 further 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.