A low, concrete blockhouse brooded on the other side of the road, fed from the telegraph poles with a spaghetti-like pile of telephone wires.
Major Greene led the way inside like some corpulent missile, shouting to wake the unfortunate soldier who was slumped over a switchboard desk, his head nestled in a web of lines and plugs.
“Get me Perimeter HQ!” ordered the Major. The semiconscious soldier obeyed him, plugging in lines with the dumb expertise of the highly trained. “General Tindall in person! Wake him up if necessary!”
“Yes sir, yes, sir, yes,” mumbled the telephone orderly, wishing that he had chosen a different night to drink his secret hoard of rum. He kept one hand over his mouth to try to keep the smell from the ferocious Major and his strange companions.
When the call went through, Greene grabbed the handset and spoke quickly. Obviously he was talking to various unhelpful in-between people, because his face kept getting redder and redder, till Lirael thought his skin would set his moustache on fire. Finally he reached someone who he listened to for a minute, without interruption. Then he slowly put the handset back in its cradle.
“There is an incursion happening at the western end of the Perimeter right now,” he said. “There were reports of red distress rockets, but we’ve lost communication from Mile One to Mile Nine, so it’s a broad attack. No one knows what’s going on. General Tindall has already ordered out a flying column, but apparently he’s gone to some other trouble at the Crossing Point. The shiny-bum staff colonel on the other end has ordered me to stay here.”
“Stay here! Can’t we go west and try and stop Hedge at the Wall?” asked Lirael.
“We lost communication an hour ago,” said Major Greene. “It hasn’t been re-established. No more rockets have been seen. That means there is no one left alive to fire any. Or else they’ve run away. In either case, your Hedge and his hemispheres will already be over the Wall and past the Perimeter.”
“I don’t understand how they could have caught up with us,” said Lirael.
“Time plays tricks between here and home,” said Mogget sepulchrally, frightening the life out of the telephone operator. The little cat jumped out of Sam’s pack, ignored the soldier and added, “Though I expect it will be slow going, dragging the hemispheres to this Forwin Mill. We may have time to get there first.”
“I’d better get in touch with my parents,” said Sam. “Can you patch into the civilian telephone system?”
“Ah,” said the Major. He rubbed his nose and seemed unsure of what he was going to say. “I thought you would have known. It happened almost a week ago...”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, son,” said the Major. He braced himself to attention and said, “Your parents are dead. They were murdered in Corvere by Corolini’s radicals. A bomb. Their car was totally destroyed.”
Sam listened blank faced to the Major’s words. Then he slid down the wall and put his head in his hands.
Lirael touched Sam’s left shoulder, and the Dog rested her nose on his right. Only Mogget seemed unaffected by the news. He sat next to the switchboard operator, his green eyes sparkling.
Lirael spent the next few seconds walling off the news, pushing it down to where she had always pushed her distress, somewhere that allowed her to keep on going. If she lived, she would weep for the sister she had never known, as she would weep for Touchstone, and her mother, and so many other things that had gone wrong in the world. But now there was no time for weeping, since many other sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and others depended on them doing what must be done.
“Don’t think about it,” said Lirael, squeezing Sam’s shoulder. “It’s up to us now. We have to get to Forwin Mill before Hedge does!”
“We can’t,” said Sam. “We might as well give up—”
He stopped himself in mid sentence, let his hands fall from his face and stood up, but hunched over as if there were a pain in his gut. He stood there silently for almost a minute. Then he took the feather-coin out of his sleeve and flipped it. It spun up to the ceiling of the blockhouse and hung there. Sam leant against the wall to watch it, his body still crooked but his head craned back.
Eventually he stopped looking at the spinning coin and straightened up, until he was standing at attention opposite Lirael. He didn’t snap his fingers to recall the coin.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. There were tears in his eyes, but he blinked them back. “I’m... I’m all right now.” He bent his head to Lirael and added, “Abhorsen.”
Lirael shut her eyes for a moment. That single word brought it all home. She was the Abhorsen. No longer in waiting.
“Yes,” she said, accepting the title and everything that went with it. “I am the Abhorsen, and as such, I need all the help I can get.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Major Greene. “But I can’t legally order the company to follow. Though most of ’em would probably volunteer.”
“I don’t understand!” protested Lirael. “Who cares what’s legal? Your whole country could be destroyed! Everybody killed everywhere! Don’t you understand?”
“I understand. It’s just not that simple...” the Major began. Then he paused, and his red face went blotchy and pale at the temples. Lirael watched his brow furrow up as if a strange thought were trying to break free. Then it cleared. Carefully he put his hand into his pocket, then suddenly withdrew it and punched his newly brass-knuckled fist into the Bakelite exchange board, its delicate internal mechanisms exploding with a rush of sparks and smoke.
“Damn it! It is that simple! I’ll order the company to go. After all, the politicos can only shoot me for it later if we win. As for you, Private, if you mention a word of this to anyone, I’ll feed you to the cat thing here. Understand?”
“Yum,” said Mogget.
“Yes, sir!” mumbled the telephone operator, his hands shaking as he tried to smother the burning wreckage of his switchboard with a fire blanket.
But the Major hadn’t paused for his answer. He was already out the door, shouting at some poor subordinate outside to “Hurry up and get the trucks going!”
“Trucks?” asked Lirael as they rushed out after him.
“Um... horseless wagons,” said Sam mechanically. The words came out of his mouth slowly, as if he had to remember what they were. “They’ll... they’ll get us to Forwin Mill much faster. If they work.”
“They might well do so,” said the Dog, lifting her nose and sniffing. “The wind is veering to the southwest and it’s getting colder. But look to the west!”
They looked. The western horizon was lit by bright flashes of lightning and there was the dull rumble of distant thunder.
Mogget watched too, from his post back on top of Sam’s pack. His green eyes were calculating, and Lirael noticed he was counting quietly aloud. Then he sniffed with a disgruntled tone.
“How far did that boy say Forwin Mill was?” he asked, noting Lirael’s look.
“About thirty miles,” said Sam.
“About five leagues,” said Lirael at the same time.
“That lightning is due west, and six or seven leagues away. Hedge and his cargo must still be crossing the Wall!”
second interlude
The blue postal service van crunched its gears as it slowed to take the turnoff from the road into the bricked drive. Then it had to slow even more and judder to a stop because the gates that were normally open were closed. There were also people with guns and swords on the other side. Armed schoolgirls in white tennis dresses or hockey tunics, who looked as if they should be holding racquets or hockey sticks rather than weapons. Two of them kept their rifles trained on the driver while another two came through the little postern gate in the wall, the naked blades they held at the ready catching the light of the late afternoon sun.