Chapter 36

They’re coming.” Jordan Dyer clambered up onto the barricade that had been hastily constructed from a line of wagons to block the road between his workshop and the inn. “Not but a mile off, now—they’ve already reached Ernald Green’s and knocked the wall of his byre right through.”

Wat Cooper reached out a hand to help Jordan up over the mass of planks and spars that jutted from the wagons. “What do they look like?”

“Still like men, mostly—that’s the worst part of it.” Jordan turned away from a volley of frightened questions, his handsome face ashen gray. “They’re coming our way; that’s all that matters now.”

Edmund traced out the design of the spell with one finger on his writing tablet, then glanced at the notes he had made on a loop of parchment. Every time someone looked his way, he gave an encouraging smile, but from the way they reacted, he knew that he was not convincing them of anything.

“I’ll bet Lord Wolland’s going to wait until he sees the Skeleth coming our way.” Geoffrey stood at Edmund’s side, bow in one hand, cudgel in the other, his paltry store of arrows at his feet. “Then when we’re busy holding them back, he’ll try another charge, the coward.”

Edmund turned to look eastward at the shield wall. “Can Katherine stand them off again?”

“You let her do her job, and you do yours,” said Geoffrey. “How long will you need?”

“Not long, once I see them.” Edmund kept his gaze on the design of his spell, to avoid betraying how uncertain he felt.

“Edmund, Geoffrey, why won’t you come away?” Sarra Bale tried again, for the fourth time that night, to tug her sons from their post. “Please, Edmund, if you come away, your brother will come, too. There’s still time, there’s still time to run!”

“Mum.” Edmund plucked her fingers gently away from him. “There is nowhere for us to run. Geoffrey knows that as well as I do. We must win tonight, so let me do my part.”

Harman Bale crossed over to meet them at the statue, pole in hand, though he still held the other on the wound in his gut. “There’s only one reason to go to war, son—the defense of life and home.” He smiled. “So here we are.” He embraced both of his sons, and then did something Edmund had never seen him do out in the open before. He kissed Edmund’s mother—on the mouth.

Geoffrey and Edmund stared at them, and then at each other. They kept staring, long after their father had left to man the barricades, and their mother had retreated, red in the face, to help Bella Cooper hand around the last of the supplies.

“Move those spears to the bridge, we don’t need ’em here.” Jordan Dyer waved Molly Atbridge away from the barricade. A tight squad of men stood just behind the jutting beams on a pair of Gilbert Wainwright’s wagons. Even as Edmund watched, Knocky Turner ran back and forth, banging more pieces onto the structure with desperate speed.

“Need anything else?” Miles Twintree hauled three quivers full of arrows past the statue, leading a petrified Emma Russet on toward the bridge.

“Not just now.” Edmund looked to his brother. “How many arrows have we got left?”

“You let me worry about shooting—keep your mind on your spell.” Geoffrey grabbed a handful of arrows from Miles.

“Edmund, I’m scared.” Emma Russet carried a bucket of water to quench the thirst of the archers, but trembled with such fright that a good amount of it had spilled onto her sleeves. “Do you think we can win?”

“We have to win.” Edmund looked about him, watching the two halves of Katherine’s new and hastily improvised plan take shape. The folk on the barricades carried poles—many of them just garden tools with their metal points chopped off—for shoving the Skeleth away without killing the men they held trapped within them. While they held the Skeleth back, Katherine, Martin and a troop of village men would defend the shield wall across the bridge from anything else that Lord Wolland tried, backed by every archer that could be spared from other tasks. If everything went according to design, the whole of the force on the Longsettle road could swing around to the bridge once the Skeleth were gone.

All of that, of course, depended on Edmund. He looked about him, at his brother, his mother and his neighbors, then across the square at the girl he loved more than anything in the world. If he failed, none of them would live to see the dawn. He got back to work.

The Skeleth are seen and yet unseen. Trust your thoughts, not your eyes. That seemed clear enough. The Skeleth were hard to see and impossible to touch. They could not be seized, the way the man within them could be seized. To reach them, he had to trust to what he knew of them. It was the same thing as knowing that eight plus thirteen was twenty-one. He could only seize the number twenty-one with his mind.

The Skeleth are shapes without substance. Right is left, up is down. Edmund sketched out the boxy glyph for the Sign of Closing. To trap something that had no substance, he had to make a prison with no walls. The queen beneath the tower had shown him how—make a place where space folded in on itself, where going left was the same thing as going right. He glanced at the emptied-out strongbox he had taken from the inn. If the spell worked, the creatures would never be able to escape from its confines, but he wished he had been able to find a container that would be harder to break from without.

“Edmund, do you hear that?” Geoffrey turned east, toward the shadows swarming on the opposite bank of the river. “The army, it’s marching again. They’re coming back!”

Edmund shut the Paelandabok. “Watch this for me.” He strode across the square to the shield wall at the bridge. He found Katherine sitting with her arm around a boy of seven whose face he did not know.

“This is Diggory Twintree, Henry’s nephew from down in Longsettle,” said Katherine. “The Skeleth harrowed his whole village—there’s dead folk on the road, cut down at the verge and just left there. He says his father tried to make a stand, and now he’s become one of them.”

Edmund turned toward the barricades facing south, then east across the river at Wolland’s gathering forces. “First the Skeleth will destroy Wolland’s enemies, and then they will betray him and consume his own army. History is about to repeat itself, if we don’t find a way to stop it.”

Martin Upfield leaned on his spear. “The Longsettle folk were going to tell us that our best hope was to run east across the bridge, and try to make it to Wolland over the moors.” He pulled at his beard. “What’ve we done, Edmund? What’ve we done?”

Nicky Bird clutched his two remaining arrows, and no longer bothered to carry a quiver. “We can try running—west, into the mountains.”

Edmund shook his head. “We’d starve up there, or freeze in the winter snows.”

“And that’s if the Nethergrim don’t have more beasts up there waiting to rip us limb from limb,” said Martin.

“Then . . . north.” Nicky turned to look that way, toward the stands of shadowed trees that bounded the horizon. “We run north.”

“And then what, swim the Tamber?” Henry Twintree picked up his nephew in his arms. “Even if we made it across somehow, we’d end up in the Dorwood, and you know what folk say about that place.”

Nicky looked wildly around him. “Then . . . then, we’re trapped.”

“That’s it.” Telbert Overbourne threw down his spear. “I’ve got nothing to keep me here. I’m running south.”

Henry snorted. “Right at the monsters, eh?”

“Around them, if I can manage it.” Telbert waved to his wife. “Elsie, come on. It’s all up for us. Let’s go.”

Katherine grabbed Telbert by the arm. “Look across the river. Those are knights, men on horseback. Their blood is up, they’re humiliated and they’re looking for revenge. If we turn our backs on them, they will come across and run us all down.”

“Then what can we do?” Telbert clenched his hands. “What can we possibly do?”

Edmund looked across the river at the army gathered at the opposite footing of the bridge. A desperate hope seized him. He took up a militia spear someone had discarded, hopped the shield wall and raced out onto the span.

“Where are you going?” Katherine jumped up and leapt after him. “Edmund, wait, get back here! Have you gone mad?”

“Edgar of Wolland!” Edmund thumped the butt of his spear onto the stone of the bridge. “My lord Wolland, come forth! Come forth to parley!”

There was a space of silence, then laughter rolled across the river. A portly figure dressed in full armor stepped to the far edge of the bridge, flanked by guards bearing wide, heavy shields.

“You pretend to a rank far above you, boy!” Lord Wolland’s voice was nearly lost in the echoes off the water. “To parley means to treat with a man worthy of command. I see no such man!”

Katherine hurried to his side near the apex of the bridge. “Edmund, this won’t work. We’ve already made him angry and, worse yet, we’ve embarrassed him in front of his men. He’ll never show us mercy now.”

“I have to try.” Edmund hauled in a full breath. “The Skeleth are not your allies, my lord! You have helped to free an ancient evil that cares nothing for the aims of men! They seek only destruction—they will betray you, as they betrayed King Childeric in ages past! You have played the fool and will earn a fool’s wages!”

“You know nothing of what you speak!” came the shouted reply. “Do not think to improve your position with lies!”

“We are men and women—they are monsters!” Edmund raised his spear and waved it. “Let us cross in peace, and we will stand with you against them!”

The wind blew up along the channel of the Tamber, forcing Wolland to try three times to make his reply. “—folk of Moorvale, you have awakened my spite—run while you can—no quarter will be given—” The rest was blown away by a wind that flapped the banners stiff.

Martin joined Katherine and Edmund out on the span. “It was a game try, Edmund, but my cousin’s right. Wolland’s blood is up. He’ll be making no peace tonight.”

“Men of Wolland! Men of Overstoke and Tand!” Edmund tried one last time, turning his voice to the troops of men and horses on the banks. “Your lord and commander has made a pact with the creatures of the Nethergrim! You stand on land made waste by the Skeleth long ago—do not help them ruin the rest of the north! Lord Wolland walks into a trap, and you walk with him!” He waited, watching and listening, but could not be sure if his words had been heard.

Then came the answer. Sturdy as it was, with a sturdiness to last the centuries, the span of the bridge yet trembled with the roll of approaching hooves.