Lirael (Abhorsen 2)

He drew his dagger and felt Sprout’s neck. The pulse of her main artery was weak and erratic under his fingers. He rested the dagger there but didn’t push it in.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “She might recover.”

“The Dead will drink her blood and feast upon her flesh!” exclaimed Mogget. “You owe her better than that. Strike!”

“I can’t take a life. Even that of a horse, in mercy,” said Sam, standing up unsteadily. “I realized that after . . . after the constables. We’ll wait together.”

Mogget hissed, then jumped across Sprout’s neck, one paw tracing a line of white fire across the horse’s neck. For an instant, nothing happened. Then blood burst out in a terrible fountain, splashing Sam’s boots and throwing hot drops across his face. Sprout gave a single, convulsive shudder—and died.

Sam felt her die and turned his head away, unable to look at the dark pool that stained the ground beneath her.

Something nudged at his shins. Mogget, urging him into motion. Blindly, he turned away and began to trudge towards the mill. Sprout was dead, and he knew Mogget had done the only possible thing. But it just didn’t seem right.

“Quickly!” urged the cat again, dancing around his feet, a white blur in the darkness. Sam could hear the Dead behind him now, hear the clicking of their bones, the screech of dry knees bent at angles impossible in Life. Fear fought the tiredness in him, made him move, but the mill seemed so far away.

He stumbled and almost fell, but somehow recovered. The pain in his leg jabbed at his head again, clearing it a little. His horse might be dead, but there was no reason why he should join her in Death. Only his weariness had made that seem attractive—for a moment.

There was the mill ahead, built out into the mighty Ratterlin, with the mill race, sluice gate, and wheel cut into the shore. He need only reach the race and open the sluice gate, and the mill would be defended by swift water, diverted from the river.

He risked a look over his shoulder and stumbled again, surprised by the dark and the nearness and number of the Dead. There were far more than a score of them now, moving in lines from all directions, the closest little more than forty yards away. Their corpse-white faces looked like flocks of bobbing moths, stark in the starlight.

Many of the Dead wore the remnants of blue scarves and blue hats. Sam stared at them. They were dead Southerlings! Probably some of the ones his father had tried to find.

“Run, you idiot!” shouted Mogget, streaking ahead himself, as the Dead behind seemed to finally realize that their quarry might escape them. Dead muscles squealed, suddenly forced into speed, and Dead throats cried strange, dessicated battle cries.

Sam didn’t look again. He could hear their heavy footfalls, the squelch of rotten meat pushed beyond even its magically supported limits. He pushed himself, breaking into a run, his breath burning in his throat and lungs, muscles sending streaks of pain through the length of his body.

He made the mill race—a deep, narrow channel—barely ahead of the Dead. Four steps and he was over the planks of the simple bridge, kicking it down into the race. But the channel was dry, so the first Dead Hands simply hurled themselves down and began to claw up the other side. Behind them came more Hands, line after line of them, a tide of Dead that could not be turned back.

Desperately, Sam rushed to the sluice gate and the wheel that would lift it, to send the roaring waters of the Ratterlin into the race and across the climbing Dead.

But the wheel was rusted tight, the sluice gate stuck in place. Sam put all his weight on the iron wheel, but it simply broke, leaving him clutching a piece of the rusted rim.

Then the first Dead Hand pulled itself out of the mill race and turned towards him. It was dark, true dark now, but Sam could just make it out. It had been human once, but the magic that had brought it back to Life had twisted the body as if following a mad artist’s whim. Its arms trailed below its knees, its head no longer sat upon a neck but sank into its shoulders, and the mouth had split upwards, usurping the place that had once held a nose. There were more behind it, other twisted shapes, using the blades of the water-wheel like steps to climb out of the mill race.

“Through here!” commanded Mogget, his tail flicking as he leapt through a doorway into the mill itself. Sam tried to follow, but the Dead Hand barred his way, skeletal mouth grinning with too many teeth, its long hands outstretched with grasping, bare-boned fingers.

Sam drew his sword and hacked at it, all in one swift motion. The Charter marks on the blade blazed, silver sparks spewing into the night as spelled metal ate into Dead flesh.

The Hand reeled back, broken but not beaten, one arm hanging from a single strip of sinew. Sam punched it farther away with the pommel of his sword, back into two more that sought to close in. Then he swung around to strike at one leaping up behind him, and backed into the mill.

“The door!” spat Mogget from somewhere at his feet, and Sam reached out and felt wood. Desperately he gripped the door’s edge and slammed it in the grinning faces of the Dead. Mogget jumped up, fur brushing Sam’s hand, and a heavy thump told him the cat had just pushed down the bar. The door, at least for the moment, was closed.

He couldn’t see a thing. It was completely, suffocatingly dark. He couldn’t even see the bright white coat of Mogget.

“Mogget!” he yelped, panic in his voice. The single word was suddenly drowned in a violent crash as the Dead Hands threw themselves against the door. They were too stupid to find some timber to use as a ram.

“Here,” said the cat, calm as ever. “Reach down.”

Sam reached, more urgently than he would have liked to admit, fingers grasping Mogget by his Charter-spelled collar. For an awful moment, he thought he’d inadvertently pulled the collar off. Then the cat moved, the miniature Ranna tinkled, and he knew the collar had stayed on. Ranna’s sound sent a wave of drowsiness against him, but that was nothing compared to the relief of feeling the collar still tight against that feline neck. With the Dead so close and the door already splintering under their attack, it would take more than a miniature Ranna to send him into sleep.

“This way,” said Mogget, a disembodied voice in the darkness. Sam felt him move again and quickly hurried after, every sense alert to the door behind.

Then Mogget suddenly turned, but Sam kept going for a step, his sword hitting something solid and rebounding, almost hitting him in the face. Sam sheathed his sword, nearly stabbing himself, and reached out to touch whatever it was.

His hand traced another door—a door that must lead to the river itself. He could hear the water rushing by, just audible under the crash of the Dead Hands hurling themselves against the other door. The noise reverberated up into the higher reaches of the mill. Despite the noise, they hadn’t got in, and Sam offered up silent thanks to the miller who had built so well.

His trembling hands found the bar and lifted it, then the ring that turned the lock. He twisted it, met resistance, then twisted again, fear shooting through him. Surely this door couldn’t be locked from the outside?

Behind him, he heard screaming hinges finally give way, and the other door exploded inwards. Dead Hands came bounding through, croaking cries that were inhuman echoes of the triumphant yells of the Living.

Sam turned the ring the other way, and the door suddenly swung open. He went with it, sprawling outside and down some steps that led to a narrow landing stage. He landed there with a thud that sent a blinding pain through his wounded leg, but he didn’t care. At last he had reached the Ratterlin!

He could see again, at least somewhat, by the stars above and their reflections in the water. There was the river, rushing past, little more than an arm’s length away. There was a tin bathtub, too, a big one, of the kind used to bathe several children at once, big enough for a grown person to lounge in. Sam saw it and, in the same instant, picked it up and pushed it into the river, holding it against the current with one hand while he dropped his sword and the saddlebags in.

?

??I take it back,” said Mogget, jumping in. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”

Sam tried to answer, but his face and mouth seemed unable to move. He climbed into the bathtub, clutching at the last step of the landing stage. The tub sank alarmingly, but even when he was fully in, it still had several inches of freeboard.

He pushed off as the Dead poured out of the door. The first one recoiled at the proximity of so much running water. But the others pushed behind it, and the Hand fell—straight at Sam’s makeshift boat.

The Dead creature screamed as it bounced on the steps, sounding almost alive for a brief second. Its hands scrabbled as it fell, trying to hold on to something, but it succeeded only in changing the direction of its fall. A second later, it entered the Ratterlin, and its scream was lost in a fountain of silver sparks and golden fire.