“There was an abandoned sawmill, a broken-down dock, and what’s left of the railway they once used to bring the trees down from the hills,” said Tindall. “I don’t know what this Lightning Farm might be, but there is—”
“Nicholas had the Lightning Farm built there,” interrupted Lirael. “Quite recently, I think.”
“Any people about the place?” asked the Major.
“There are now,” replied Lieutenant Tindall. “Two Southerling refugee camps were built there late last year. Norris and Erimton they’re called, in the hills immediately above the loch valley. There might be fifty thousand refugees there, I suppose, under police guard.”
“If the Destroyer is made whole, they will be among the first to die,” said the Dog. “And Hedge will reap their spirits as they cross into Death, and they will serve him.”
“We’ll have to get them out of there, then,” said the Major. “Though being outside the Perimeter makes it difficult for us to do anything. General Tindall will understand. I only hope General Kingswold has gone home. He’s an Our Country supporter through and through—”
“We must hurry!” Lirael suddenly interrupted. There was no time for more talk. A terrible sense of foreboding gripped her, as if every second they spent here was a grain of sand lost from a nearly empty hourglass. “We have to get to Forwin Mill before Hedge and the hemispheres!”
“Right!” shouted Major Greene, suddenly energized again. He seemed to need spurring along every now and then. He snatched up his helmet, threw it on his head, and snagged his revolver by the lanyard with the return motion. “Carry on, Mister Tindall. Quickly now!”
Everything did happen very quickly then. Lieutenant Tindall disappeared into the night, and the Major led them at a trot down another communications trench. Eventually it rose out of the ground and became a simple track, identified every few yards with a white-painted rock that shone faintly in the starlight. There was no moon, though one had risen on the Old Kingdom side, and it was much colder here.
Twenty minutes later, the wheezing—but surprisingly fit—Major slowed to a walk, and the track joined a wide asphalt road that stretched as far as they could see by starlight, due east and west. Telephone poles lined the road, part of the network that connected the full length of the Perimeter.
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 mustache 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 leaned 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.”