‘I demand to know—’
‘What is going on?’
‘Is that … that animal really—’
‘Clearly this is not properly—’
‘This is an outrage! Who is respons—’
‘Shut up!’ roared Nick. ‘Shut up! That animal is from the Old Kingdom! It will kill all of us if we don’t keep it out with fire, which is why everybody needs to start spreading hay in a ring! Hurry!’
Without waiting to see their response, Nick ran to the nearest haycock and tore off a huge armful of hay and ran to add it to the circle. When he looked up, some of the guests were helping the servants, but most were still bickering and complaining.
He looked across at the house. The creature was no longer on the steps. There was a body sprawled there, but Dorrance had vanished as well.
‘Start pouring the paraffin!’ shouted Nick. ‘Get more hay on the ring! It’s coming!’
The butler and some of the footmen began to run around the circle, spraying white petroleum spirit out of four-gallon tins.
‘Anyone with matches or a cigarette lighter, stand by the ring!’ yelled Nick. He couldn’t see the creature, but his forehead was beginning to throb, and when he pulled his dagger out an inch, the Charter Marks were starting to glow.
Two people suddenly jumped the hay and ran across the meadow, heading for the drive and the front gate. A young man and woman, the woman throwing aside her shoes as she ran. She was the one who had come to his door, Nick saw. Tesrya, as she had called herself.
‘Come back!’ shouted Nick. ‘Come back—’
His voice fell away as a tall, strange shape emerged from the sunken ditch of the ha-ha, its shadow slinking ahead. Its arms looked impossibly long in the twilight, and its legs had three joints, not two. It began to lope slowly after the running couple, and for a brief instant Nick thought perhaps they might have a chance.
Then the creature lowered its head. Its legs stretched; the lope became a run and then a blurring sprint that caught it up with the man and woman in a matter of seconds. It knocked them down with its clubbed hands as it overshot them, turning to come back slowly as they flopped about on the ground like fresh-caught fish.
Tesrya was screaming, but the screams stopped abruptly as the creature bent over her.
Nick looked away and saw a patch of tall yellow flowers near his feet. Corn daisies, fooled into opening by the bright moonlight.
… wrapped in three chains. One of silver, one of lead, and one made from braided daisies …
‘Ripton!’
‘Yes, sir!’
Nick jumped as Ripton answered from slightly behind him and to his left.
‘Get anyone who can make flower chains braiding these daisies, and those poppies over there too. The maids might know how.’
‘What?’
‘I know what it sounds like, but there’s a chance that thing can be restrained with chains made from flowers.’
‘But …’
‘The Old Kingdom. Magic. Just make the chains!’
‘I knows the braiding of flowers,’ Llew said, bending down to gently pick a daisy in his huge hand. ‘As does my kin here, my nieces Ellyn and Alys, who are chambermaids and will have needle and thread in their apron pockets.’
‘Get to it then, please,’ said Nick. He looked across at where the young couple had fallen. The creature had been there only seconds ago, but now it was gone. ‘Damn! Anyone see where it went?’
‘No,’ snapped Ripton. He spun around on the spot as he tried to scan the whole area outside the defensive circle.
‘Light the hay! Light the hay! Quickly!’
Ripton struggled with his matches, striking them on his heel, but others were quicker. Guests with platinum and gold cigarette lighters flicked them open and on and held them to the hay; kitchen staff struck long, heavy-headed matches and threw them; and one old buffer wound and released a clockwork cigar fire starter, an affectation that had finally come into its own.
Accelerated by paraffin, brandy, and table polish, the ring of hay burst into flames. But not everywhere. While the fire leapt high and smoke coiled toward the moon over most of the ring, one segment about ten feet long remained stubbornly dark, dank, and unlit. The meadow was sunken there, and wet, and the paraffin had not been spread evenly, pooling in a hole.
‘There it is!’
The creature came out of the shadow of the oaks near the drive. Its strangely jointed legs propelled it across the meadow in a sprint that would have let it run down a leopard. It moved impossibly, horribly fast, coming around the outside of the ring. Nick and Ripton started to run too, even though they knew they had no chance of beating the creature.
It would be at the gap in seconds. Only one person was close enough to do anything—a kitchen maid running with a lit taper clutched in her right hand, her left holding up her apron.
The creature was far faster, but it had farther to go. It accelerated again, becoming a blur of movement.
Everyone within the ring watched the race, all of them desperately hoping that the fire would simply spread of its own accord, all of them wishing that this fatal hole in their shield of fire would not depend upon a young woman, an easily extinguished taper, and an apron that was too long for its wearer.
Six feet from the edge
of the hay, the apron slipped just enough for the girl to trip over the hem. She staggered, tried to recover her balance, and fell, the taper dropping from her hand.
Though she must have been shocked and bruised by the fall, the maid did not lie there. Even as the creature bunched its muscles for the last dash to the gap, the young woman picked up the still-burning taper and threw it the last few feet into the center of the dark section.
It caught instantly, fed by a pool of paraffin that had collected in the dip in the ground. Blue fire flashed over the hay, and flames licked up toward the yellow moon.
The creature shrieked in frustration, its hooked heels throwing up great clods of grass and soil as it checked its headlong rush. For a moment it looked as if it might try to jump the fire, but instead it turned and loped back to the ha-ha, disappearing out of sight.
Nick and Ripton stopped and bent over double, resting their hands on their knees, panting as they tried to recover from their desperate sprint.
‘It doesn’t like fire,’ Ripton coughed out after a minute. ‘But we haven’t got enough hay to keep this circle going for more than an hour or so. What happens then?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nick. He was acutely aware of his ignorance. None of this would be happening if the creature hadn’t drunk his blood. His blood, pumping furiously around his body that very second but a mystery to him. He knew nothing about its peculiar properties. He didn’t even know what it could do, or why it had been so strong that the creature needed to dilute it with the blood of others.
‘Can you do any of that Old Kingdom magic the Scouts talk about?’
‘No,’ said Nick. ‘I … I’m rather useless, I’m afraid. I’ve been planning to go to the Old Kingdom … to learn about, well, a lot of things. But I haven’t managed to get there yet.’
‘So we’re pretty well stuffed,’ said Ripton. ‘When the fire burns down, that thing will just waltz in here and kill us all.’
‘We might get help,’ said Nick.
Ripton snorted. ‘Not the help we need. I told you. Bullets don’t hurt it. I doubt even an artillery shell would do anything, if a gunner could hit something moving that fast.’