as still in motion at the other end of the entrance hall, bustling along towards a knot of obviously nervous staff. Behind them, peering down from the main stair, was a solid rank of prefects. Behind them, higher up the stair, and just able to see, were several gaggles of non-prefectorial fifth and sixth formers. Sabriel didn’t doubt that the rest of the school would be lining the corridors behind them, all agog to hear what the commotion was all about.
Just as Mrs. Umbrade reached her staff, all the lights went out. For a moment, there was total, shocked quiet, then the noise redoubled. Girls screaming, soldiers shouting, crashes and bangs as people ran into things and each other.
Sabriel stood where she was, and conjured the Charter marks for light. They came easily, flowing down to her fingertips like cool water from a shower. She let them hang there for a moment, then cast them at the ceiling, drops of light that grew to the size of dinner plates and cast a steady yellow light all down the hall. Someone else was also casting similar lights down by Mrs. Umbrade, and Sabriel recognized the work of Magistrix Greenwood. She smiled at that recognition, a slight, upturning of just one side of her mouth. She knew the lights had gone out because Kerrigor had passed the electric sub-station, and that was halfway between the school and the village.
As expected, Mrs. Umbrade wasn’t telling her teachers anything useful—just going on about rudeness and some General. Sabriel saw the Magistrix behind the tall, bent figure of the Senior Science Mistress, and waved.
“And I was never more shocked to see one of our—” Mrs. Umbrade was saying, when Sabriel stepped up next to her and gently laid the marks of silence and immobility on the back of her neck.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Sabriel said, standing next to the temporarily frozen form of the Headmistress. “But this is an emergency. As you can see, the Army is temporarily taking over. I am assisting Colonel Horyse, who is in charge. Now, we need all the girls in the two Senior Magic classes to come down to the Great Hall—with you, Magistrix Greenwood, please. Everyone else—students, staff, gardeners, everyone—must go to the top floors of the North Tower and barricade yourselves in. Till dawn tomorrow.”
“Why?” demanded Mrs. Pearch, the Mathematics Mistress. “What’s all this about?”
“Something has come from the Old Kingdom,” Sabriel replied shortly, watching their faces change as she spoke. “We will shortly be attacked by the Dead.”
“So there will be danger to my students?” Miss Greenwood spoke, pushing her way forward, between two frightened English teachers. She looked Sabriel in the face, as if in recognition, and then added, “Abhorsen.”
“There will be danger to everyone,” Sabriel said bleakly. “But without the aid of the Charter Mages here, there isn’t even a chance . . .”
“Well,” replied Miss Greenwood, with some decision. “We’d better get organized then. I’ll go and fetch Sulyn and Ellimere. I think they’re the only two Charter Mages among the Prefects—they can organize the others. Mrs. Pearch, you’d better take charge of the . . . ah . . . evacuation to the North Tower, as I imagine Mrs. Umbrade will be . . . err . . . deep in thought. Mrs. Swann, you’d best round up Cook and the maids—get some fresh water, food and candles, too. Mr. Arkler, if you would be so kind as to fetch the swords from the gymnasium . . .”
Seeing that all was under control, Sabriel sighed, and quickly walked back outside, past soldiers stringing oil lamps up in the corridor. Despite them, it was still lighter outside, the sky washed red and orange with the last sunlight of the day.
Touchstone and the Scouts had the sarcophagus down, and roped up. It now seemed to glow with its own, ugly inner light, the flickering Free Magic marks floating on the surface like scum, or clots in blood. Apart from the Scouts pulling the ropes, no one went close to it. Soldiers were everywhere, coiling out barbed wire, filling sandbags from the rose gardens, preparing firing positions on the second floor, tying trip flares. But in all this commotion, there was an empty circle around the glistening coffin of Rogir.
Sabriel walked towards Touchstone, feeling the reluctance in her legs, her body revolting at the thought of going any closer to the bloody luminescence of the sarcophagus. It seemed to radiate stronger waves of nausea now, now that the sun had almost fled. In the twilight, it looked larger, stronger, its magic more forceful and malign.
“Pull!” shouted Touchstone, heaving on the ropes with the soldiers. “Pull!”
Slowly, the sarcophagus slid across the old paving stones, inching towards the front steps, where other soldiers were hastily hammering a wooden ramp together, fitting it over the steps.
Sabriel decided to leave Touchstone to it, and walked a little way down the drive, to where she could see out the iron gates. She stood there, watching, her hands nervously running over the handles of the bells. Six bells, now—all probably ineffective against the awful might of Kerrigor. And an unfamilar sword, strange to her touch, even if it was forged by the Wallmaker.
The Wallmaker. That reminded her of Mogget. Who knew what he had been, that strange combination of irascible companion to the Abhorsens and blazing Free Magic construct sworn to kill them. Gone now, swept away by the mournful call of Astarael . . .
I left this place knowing almost nothing about the Old Kingdom, and I’ve come back with not much more, Sabriel thought. I am the most ignorant Abhorsen in centuries, and perhaps one of the most sorely tried . . .
A clatter of shots interrupted her thoughts, followed by the zing of a rocket arcing up into the sky, its yellow trail reaching down towards the road. More shots followed. A rapid volley—then sudden silence. The rocket burst into a white parachute flare, that slowly descended. In its harsh, magnesium brilliance, Sabriel saw fog rolling up the road, thick and wet, stretching back into the dark as far as she could see.
chapter xxviii
Sabriel forced herself to walk back to the main doors, rather than break into a screaming run. Lots of soldiers could see her—they were still placing lanterns out in lines, radiating out from the steps, and several soldiers were holding a coil of concertina wire, waiting to bounce it out. They looked anxiously at her as she passed.
The sarcophagus was just slipping off the ramp into the corridor ahead of her. Sabriel could easily have pushed past it, but she waited outside, looking out. After a moment, she became aware that Horyse was standing next to her, his face half-lit by the lanterns, half in shadow.
“The fog . . . the fog is almost at the gates,” she said, too quickly to be calm.
“I know,” replied Horyse, steadily. “That firing was a picket. Six men and a corporal.”
Sabriel nodded. She had felt their deaths, like slight punches in her stomach. Already she was hardening herself not to notice, to wilfully dull her senses. There would be many more deaths that night.
Suddenly, she felt something that wasn’t a death, but things already dead. She stood bolt upright, and exclaimed, “Colonel! The sun is truly down—and something’s coming, coming ahead of the fog!”
She drew her sword as she spoke, the Colonel’s blade flickering out a second later. The wiring party looked around, startled, then bolted for the steps and the corridor. On either side of the door, two-man teams cocked the heavy, tripod-mounted machine-guns, and laid their swords across the newly made sandbag walls.
“Second floor, stand ready!” Horyse shouted, and above her head, Sabriel heard the bolts of fifty rifles working. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two of the Scouts step back outside, and take up position behind her, arrows nocked, bows ready. She knew they were ready to snatch her inside, if it came to that . . .
In the expectant quiet, there were only the usual sounds of the night. Wind in the big trees out past the school wall, starting to rise as the sky darkened. Crickets beginning to chirp. Then Sabriel heard it—the massed grinding of Dead joints, no longer joined by gristle; the padding of Dead feet, bones like hobnails clicking through necrotic flesh.
“Hands,” she said, nervously. “Hundreds of Hands.”
/> Even as she spoke, a solid wall of Dead flesh hit the iron gates, throwing them over in a split second’s crash. Then vaguely human forms were everywhere, rushing towards them, Dead mouths gulping and hissing in a ghastly parody of a war cry.
“Fire!”
In the instant’s delay after this command, Sabriel felt the terrible fear that the guns wouldn’t work. Then rifles cracked, and the machine-guns beat out a terrible, barking roar, red tracer rounds flinging out, ricocheting from the paving in a crazy embroidery of terrible violence. Bullets tore Dead flesh, splintered bone, knocked the Hands down and over—but still they came, till they were literally torn apart, broken into pieces, hung up on the wire.
The firing slowed, but before it could entirely cease, another wave of Hands came stumbling, crawling, running through the gateway, slipping, tumbling over the wall. Hundreds of them, so densely packed they crushed the wire and came on, till the last of them were mown down by the guns at the very foot of the front steps. Some, still with a slight vestige of human intelligence, retreated, only to be caught in great gouts of flame from white phosphorus grenades thrown out from the second floor.
“Sabriel—get inside!” Horyse ordered, as the last of the Hands flopped and crawled in crazy circles, till more bullets thudded into them and made them still.
“Yes,” replied Sabriel, looking out at the carpet of bodies, the flickering fires from the lanterns and lumps of phosphorus burning like candles in some ghastly charnel house. The stench of cordite was in her nose, through her hair, on her clothes, the machine-gun’s barrels glowing an evil red to either side of her. The Hands were already dead, but even so, this mass destruction made her sicker than any Free Magic . . .
She went inside, sheathing her sword. Only then did she remember the bells. Possibly, she could have quelled that vast mob of Hands, sent them peaceably back into Death, without—but it was too late. And what if she had been overmastered?