He had to do something. He had to act. He had to prove to himself he wasn’t a coward.
“I don’t need the bells!” he shouted, and he ran down the jetty, his boots echoing on the wooden planks. He burst past the surprised Lirael and the Dog, and sprinted through the gap where the willows had been pruned back.
He was past the trees in an instant and out in a twilit paddock. A Dead Hand rushed at him. He cut its legs away and kicked it over, all in one fluid motion. Before it could rise, he jumped over it and ran on.
The necromancer. He had to kill the necromancer, before he could drag him into Death. He had to kill him as quickly as he could.
A hot rage rose in him, banishing the fear. Sam growled and ran on.
Lirael and the Dog emerged from the willows to see Sam charge. The Dead Hand he’d cut down scrabbled towards them, but Lirael had the panpipes ready at her lips. She chose Saraneth and blew a strong, pure note, its commanding tones stopping the Hand in its tracks. Without a pause, Lirael changed to Kibeth, and a trill of dancing notes sent the corpse somersaulting backwards even as the Spirit inhabiting it was forced to walk back into Death.
“It’s gone,” said the Dog, loping forward. Lirael ran, too, but not with Sam’s reckless abandon.
It was still light enough to see that thirty or forty Dead Hands had surrounded a group of men, women, and children. Obviously, they’d tried to reach the safety of the river, only to fail at the very last. Now they had formed a ring with the children at the center, a last desperate defense.
Lirael could sense the Dead Hands . . . and something else, something strange and much more powerful. It was only when she saw Sam charge past the Hands and scream a challenge that she realized that it had to be the necromancer.
The people were screaming, too, and shouting, and crying. The Dead roared and screeched back, as they pulled their victims down and ripped their throats out or rent them limb from limb. Makeshift clubs and sharpened branches struck at the Dead, but their wielders did not know how to use them to best effect, and they were heavily outnumbered.
Lirael looked across and saw the necromancer turn to face Sam. He raised his hands, and the hot metal smell of Free Magic suddenly filled the air. A moment later, a blinding, blue white spark exploded out, leaping across to strike the charging boy.
At the same time, the Dead Hands howled in triumph as they burst through the ranks of struggling men and women and into the inner circle of children.
Lirael turned her easy run into an all-out sprint. Whoever she tried to help, it looked like she would be too late.
Sam saw the necromancer raise his hands and saw the bronze of his face. Even as he threw himself to the side, his mind raced. A bronze face! Then this wasn’t Hedge, but Chlorr of the Mask, the creature his mother had fought years ago!
The bolt sizzled past him, missing him by a few inches. Heat from its passage struck him, and the grass behind him burst into flame.
Sam slowed down as he reached into the Charter and pulled out four marks. He drew them with his free hand, fingers flashing too quickly to follow. A triangular silver blade suddenly materialized in his grip. Before it was even fully formed, Sam threw it.
The blade spun as it shot through the air. Chlorr easily ducked it, but the spinning blade turned a few paces beyond her and came shooting back.
Sam rushed forward as the blade struck the necromancer in the arm. He expected it to almost sever that limb, but there were only a burst of golden flame, a gout of white sparks, and a smoldering sleeve.
“Fool,” said Chlorr, raising her sword. Her voice crawled across his skin like a thousand tiny insects. Her breath stank of death and Free Magic. “You have no bells.”
In that instant, Sam realized that Chlorr didn’t have any bells, either. Nor were there any human eyes behind the mask. Pools of fire burnt there, and white smoke puffed from the mouth-hole.
Chlorr was no longer a necromancer. She was one of the Greater Dead. Sabriel had finished her as a living being.
But someone had brought her back.
“Run!” shouted Lirael. “Run!”
She stood between the last four survivors and those Dead Hands who had resisted the panpipes. Lirael had blown on Saraneth till her face was blue, but there had just been too many of them for her to deal with, the power of the pipes too slight. The Dead who were left didn’t seem affected at all.
Worse still, the children wouldn’t run. They were too shocked, incapable of doing anything, let alone understand what Lirael was shouting at them.
A Dead Hand lunged, and Lirael thrust at it. The Dog leapt at another, knocking it down. But a third, a low, loping thing with elongated jaws, got past them. It rushed at a small boy who could not stop screaming. The jaws closed, and the scream was instantly cut off.
Sobbing with fury and revulsion, Lirael spun around and hewed off the thing’s head, Nehima showering silver sparks as it cut through. But even then the Dead Hand functioned, the spirit inside indifferent to any physical harm. She cut at it again and again, but Dead fingers still clutched its victim, and the head still gnashed its teeth.
Sam parried another blow from the thing that had once been Chlorr. Her strength was incredible, and once again he nearly lost his sword. His hand and wrist were numb, and the Charter marks he’d spelled so laboriously into the blade were slowly being destroyed by Chlorr’s power. When they were gone, the blade would shatter—
He staggered back and glanced quickly around the field. He could just make out Lirael and the Dog, fighting with at least a half dozen Dead Hands. He’d heard the pipes before, the voices of Saraneth and Kibeth, though strangely different from the bells he knew. They had sent most of the spirits animating the Hands back into Death, but had had no effect upon Chlorr.
Chlorr struck again, hissing. Sam dodged. Desperately, he tried to think of what he could do. There had to be some spell, something that would at least hold her back long enough for him to get away. . . .
Lirael and the Dog struck together, smashing the last Dead Hand to the ground. Before it could get up, the Dog barked in its face. Instantly, it went limp, no more than a ghastly, misshapen corpse, the spirit banished.
“Thanks,” gasped Lirael. She looked around her, at the grotesque forms of Dead Hands and the pathetic bodies of their victims. Desperately, she hoped to see even just one of the children. But there was no one standing except her and the Dog. There were bodies everywhere, sprawled on the blood-soaked ground. The cast-off remnants of the Dead Hands piled up with the slaughtered people.
Lirael closed her eyes, her sense of Death almost overpowering her. That sense confirmed what her eyes had already told her.
No one had survived.
She felt sick, the gorge rising in her throat. But as she bent forward to throw up, she suddenly heard Sam shouting. She straightened up, opened her eyes, and looked around. She couldn’t see Sam, but off in the distance there was a blaze of golden fire, interspersed with huge showers of white sparks. It might have been a fireworks display, but Lirael knew better.
Even so, it took her a few seconds to work out what Sam was shouting.
When it finally percolated into her stunned, shocked mind, all thought of throwing up disappeared. She jumped over the bodies of the Dead Hands and their victims and started to run.
Sam was shouting, “Help! Lirael! Dog! Mogget! Anyone! Help!”
Sam’s sword had broken on the last exchange of blows. It had snapped off near the hilt, leaving him with a useless dead weight, devoid of magic.
Chlorr laughed. A laugh strange and distant behind her mask, as if it echoed from inside some far-off hall.
She had grown taller as she had stalked after Sam, visibly a thing of darkness under the rotting, splitting furs. Now she stood head and shoulders above him, white smoke drifting from her mouth as she raised her sword again. Red fire flowed along the blade, and flaming drops fell to the grass.
Sam threw the hilt at her face and jumped back, shouting, “He
lp! Lirael! Dog!”
The sword came down. Chlorr leapt forward as well, faster and farther than Sam had expected. The blade whisked past his nose. Shocked, he shouted again, “Mogget! Anyone! Help!”
Lirael saw the necromancer’s sword of red fire come blazing down. Sam fell under the blow, and the red fire obscured Lirael’s vision.
“Sam!” she screamed.
As she screamed, the Disreputable Dog sprang ahead, leaping in great bounds towards Sam and the necromancer.
For a panicked second, Lirael thought Sam had been killed. Then she saw him roll aside, untouched. The necromancer raised her sword again, and Lirael burst her lungs trying to get there in time to do something. But she could not. She was still forty or fifty yards away, and her mind was empty of all the spells that might have crossed the distance and distracted the enemy.
“Die!” whispered Chlorr, raising her sword two-handed above her head, the blade pointing straight down. Sam looked up at it and knew he could not get out of the way in time. She was too fast, too strong. He half raised his hand and tried to speak a Charter mark, but the only one that came to mind was something useless, some mark used in making his toys.
The blade came down.
Sam screamed.
The Disreputable Dog barked.
There was Charter Magic in the bark. It hit Chlorr as she struck. Her arms flashed gold and sizzled, white smoke gouting out of a thousand tiny holes. The blow that should have impaled Sam went awry, the sword sinking deep into the earth, so close that his hip was burnt by the flame.
All Chlorr’s unnatural strength had gone into the blow. Now she struggled to free the weapon as the Dog advanced upon her, growling. The hound had grown and was now the size of a desert lion, with teeth and claws to match. Her collar shone with golden fire, the Charter marks shifting and joining in a wild dance.
The Dead creature let the sword go and backed away. Sam struggled to his feet as Chlorr drew back. He clenched his fists as he tried to calm himself, in preparation for casting a spell.
Lirael arrived a second later, completely out of breath. Gasping, she slowed to a walk and moved up behind the Dog.
Chlorr raised one shadowy fist, her fingernails elongating into thin blades of darkness. White smoke still eddied around her, but the holes in her arm had already closed.