Ahead of him Hedge burst out of the tunnel and turned back to gesture at Nick. He felt the gesture like a physical grasp, dragging him forward even faster. The golden fire reached out to him everywhere it could, but there were too many Night Crew, too many burning bodies. The fire could not reach Nicholas and finally he staggered out of the tunnel, away from the golden flames.
He had crossed the Wall and was in Ancelstierre. Or rather, in the no-man’s-land between the Wall and the Perimeter. Normally this would be a quiet, empty place of raw earth and barbed wire, made somehow peaceful by the soft whisper of the wind flutes that Nick had always presumed to be some sort of weird decoration or memorial. Now it was wreathed in fog, fog eerily underlit by the low, red glow of the setting sun and flashes of lightning. The fog thinned in places as it rolled inexorably south, revealing scenes of awful carnage. The white mass was like the curtain of a horror show, briefly drawing back to show piles of corpses, bodies everywhere, bodies hanging on the wire and piled on the ground. They were all blue capped and blue scarved, and Nick finally recognised that they were slain Southerling refugees, and that in some horrible way, that was who Hedge’s Night Crew had also been.
Lightning crackled above him and thunder rumbled. Fog billowed apart and Nick caught a glimpse of the hemispheres a little way ahead, roped on to the huge sleds that Nick knew had been waiting for them when they off-loaded the barges at the Redmouth. But he couldn’t remember that happening, or anything between talking to Lirael in the reed boat and his awakening just before crossing the Wall. The hemispheres had been dragged here, obviously by the men who were dragging them now. Normal men, or at least not the Night Crew. Men dressed in strange, ragged combinations of Ancelstierran Army uniforms and Old Kingdom clothes, khaki tunics contrasting with hunting leathers, bright coloured breeches and rusty mail.
The force that had propelled him though the tunnel suddenly retreated and Nick fell at Hedge’s feet. The necromancer was at least seven feet tall now, and the red flames burning around his flesh and in his eye sockets were brighter and more intense. For the first time, Nick was frightened of him and he wondered why he hadn’t been all along. But he was too weak to do anything but crouch at Hedge’s feet and clutch at his chest, where the pain still throbbed.
“Soon,” said Hedge, his voice rumbling like the thunder. “Soon our master will be free.”
Nick found himself nodding enthusiastically and was as frightened by this as he was by Hedge. He was already drifting back into that dreamy state where all he could think about was the hemispheres and his Lightning Farm, and what had to be done—
“No,” whispered Nick. What must not be done. He didn’t know what was happening, and until he did know, he wasn’t going to do anything. “No!”
Hedge recognised that Nick spoke with an independent voice. He grinned, and fire flickered in his throat. He lifted Nick up like a baby and cradled him to his chest, against the bandoleer of bells.
“Your part is nearly done, Nicholas Sayre,” he said, and his breath was hot like steam and smelled of decay. “You were never more than an imperfect host, though your uncle and father have proved to be more helpful than even I could have hoped, albeit unwittingly.”
Nick could only stare up at the burning eyes. Already he had forgotten everything that had come back to him in the tunnel. In Hedge’s eyes he saw the silver hemispheres, the lightning, the joining that he knew once again was the single high purpose of his own short life.
“The hemispheres,” he whispered, almost ritually. “The hemispheres must be joined.”
“Soon, Master, soon,” crooned Hedge. He stalked over to the waiting bearers and laid Nicholas down on the stretcher, stroking his chest just above his heart with a blackened, still-burning hand. What little was left of Nick’s Ancelstierran shirt dissolved at Hedge’s touch, showing bare skin that was blue with deep bruising. “Soon!”
Nick watched dully as Hedge walked away. No independent thought was left to him. Only the burning vision of the hemispheres and their ultimate joining. He tried to sit up to look at them but didn’t have the strength, and in any case the fog was thickening once again. Wearied by the effort, Nick’s hands fell to the ground on either side of the stretcher and one finger touched a piece of debris that sent a strange feeling through his arm. A sharp pain and a gentle, healing warmth.
He tried to close his hand on the object, but his fingers refused. With considerable effort Nick rolled over to see exactly what it was. He peered down from the stretcher and saw it was a piece of broken wood, a fragment of one of the smashed wind flutes, like the one whose stump he could see a few feet away. The fragment was still infused with Charter marks, which flowed over and through the wood. As Nick watched them, something stirred in the recesses of his mind. For a moment he remembered who he really was once more, and recalled the promise he had given to Lirael.
His right hand would not obey him, so Nicholas leant over even more and tried to pick up the wooden fragment with his left hand. He succeeded for a few seconds, but even his left hand was no longer his to command. His fingers opened and the piece of the wind flute fell on the stretcher, between Nick’s left arm and his body, not quite touching on either side.
Hedge did not walk far from Nicholas. He strode through the fog, which parted before him, straight to the largest pile of Southerling corpses. They had been killed by the Dead that Hedge had raised earlier that day from the temporary cemeteries around the camps. He was amused by the notion of using Southerling Dead to kill Southerlings. They had also killed the soldiers in the quaintly named Western Strongpoint, and the sailors in the lighthouse.
Hedge had crossed the Wall three times that day. Once to set the initial attacks in motion in Ancelstierre, which was no great task; second to go back to prepare the crossing of the hemispheres, which was much more difficult; and the third time with the hemispheres and Nicholas. He would never need to cross again, he knew, for the Wall would be one of the first things his master would destroy, along with all other works of the despised Charter.
All that remained to be done here was to go into Death and compel as many spirits as he could find to return and inhabit these bodies. Though Forwin Mill was less than twenty miles away and they should be able to reach it by morning, Hedge knew the Ancelstierran Army would attempt to prevent their breaking out of the Perimeter. He needed Dead Hands to fight the Army, and most of the ones he’d brought from the north and those created earlier that day in the Southerling camp cemeteries had been consumed in the crossing of the Wall, used up in order to get the hemispheres across.
Hedge drew two bells from his bandoleer. Saraneth, for compulsion. Mosrael, to wake the spirits who slumbered here in no-man’s-land, now freed from the chains of the hated Abhorsen’s wind toys. He would use Mosrael to rouse as many as possible, though use of that bell would send him far into Death himself. Then he would come back through the gates and precincts, using Saraneth to drive any other spirits he could find into Life.
There would be plenty of bodies for all.
But before he could begin, he sensed something coming through the darkness. Ever careful, Hedge put Mosrael away, lest it sound of its own accord, and drew his sword instead, whispering the words that set the dark flames running down the blade.
He knew who it was, but he did not trust even the bounds and charms he had laid upon her. Chlorr was one of the Greater Dead now. In Life she had come under the sway of the Destroyer, but in Death she was somewhat beyond that control. Hedge had forced her obedience by other means, and as always with a necromancer’s control over such a spirit, this obedience could be tenuous.