THE FIELD HOSPITAL ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE CHATEAU was a large and well-ordered, if sombre, place. George hurried Aubrey and Caroline through the rows of tents full of beds with men who weren’t critically wounded, but who were definitely not capable of fighting in the near future. At the centre of the medical facility was a large tent in uproar. ‘She’s refusing to go into the operating theatre until she sees you,’ George explained to Aubrey and Caroline.

‘She’s hurt?’

‘She was on that ornithopter we saw crash, but it’s more than that.’

George explained that Sophie had been co-opted into acting as an interpreter for the hurt Gallians who had ended up at the facility. George had done what he could, and when on an errand to find a particular chest surgeon he’d been recognised by the seriously injured Professor Mansfield. She had implored him to bring Aubrey to her.

Having delivered Aubrey and Caroline, George hurried off to find Sophie.

Wounded men and stretcher bearers were clustered at the opening of the tent, which smelled of carbolic soap, ether and blood. From inside came shouting and the sound of breaking glass.

With Caroline at his side, Aubrey eased his way through the crush at the entrance to find a large space, well lit by electric light, a preparation area for those about to enter the operating area behind the two wooden doors at the far end of the tent. Screened-off beds were being shielded by nurses, while near the doors white-coated doctors struggled around a trolley. One – round glasses and an impressive pointed beard – staggered back and cursed in a most unprofessional manner. When he saw Aubrey, he barked in aggrieved Albionite tones: ‘Are you Fitzwilliam? She keeps calling for you.’

‘Professor Mansfield?’

‘Calm her down, quickly. She needs surgery, but we have others just as needy who are waiting.’

With a word from him, the other doctors backed away from the narrow trolley. Aubrey approached to find his one-time lecturer in Ancient Languages draped in a blood-stained sheet, her eyes wild, her movements frantic. ‘Aubrey? Is that you?’

Aubrey’s heart went out to her. She had been the most energetic and most vivid of his Greythorn lecturers, and not only because she was the only woman among them, and nor was it the fact that she was by far the youngest. It was her animation and her vivacity that had appealed to him, but here it was transformed. Her eyes rolled, her small frame shivered, her face was blackened by soot, her hair hung in sweaty ringlets as she was sitting, gaze darting about as if she expected to be attacked from all sides at once.

He came to her side. ‘Professor Mansfield.’

Her gaze locked on him. She gasped – a wrenching, tormented sound – and clutched at his arm with bony fingers. She buried her face in his chest. Awkwardly, he took her in his arms. ‘Dr Tremaine,’ she sobbed hoarsely, ‘he’s on his way to attack Trinovant.’

Trinovant? But Tremaine needs to be near a battlefront for the Ritual of the Way!

Aubrey felt as if he’d been standing on carefully constructed scaffolding made from his observations, speculations and deductions about Dr Tremaine and as he was about to reach out to grasp the final, clear understanding of the rogue sorcerer’s plans the scaffolding dissolved beneath him.

Why is he abandoning everything?

Aubrey glanced at Caroline to find that she was staring with horror at the back of Professor Mansfield’s head.

He looked down and nearly cried out. In a shaved patch, just above where her neck swelled out into the skull proper, was a socket.

The ghastly thing was an inch or so in diameter and had the appearance of hard, white ceramic. Scar tissue surrounded it, reddened and weeping in places, and Aubrey shuddered at the thought of the operation needed to insert such an abomination.

Professor Mansfield pushed away from Aubrey. Before he could ask what had happened to her, she chided herself. ‘No, no, no! I promised Kurt I wouldn’t cry. Not a tear, not at all.’

Aubrey took Professor Mansfield’s shoulders, but at that moment he saw the bearded doctor hovering behind her. He pointed at his watch then at his leg in an awkward pantomime. Aubrey looked down and saw fresh blood on the sheet.

‘They said I might lose my leg,’ Professor Mansfield said softly.

‘Don’t worry.’ The words came automatically to Aubrey’s lips. ‘You’ll have the best of care.’

She grimaced, then gripped his arm again, hard. ‘I won’t, but it doesn’t matter. Kurt risked his life to save us from that madman. He made a much larger sacrifice when we crashed, and I’m not going to dishonour his memory.’

‘But how is Dr Tremaine going to attack Trinovant?’

‘He has the Rashid Stone,’ she said and Aubrey wondered at her state of mind, skating about like that. How badly shaken had she been by her experiences, let alone the crash?

‘It’s important?’

‘Listen!’ She glared at him and her fingers dug into his arm. ‘He’s collected magical artefacts from all over to enhance his magic, including the Rashid Stone. He’s gathered magicians and savants from all over –’ She broke off and coughed, her face contorting with pain. ‘He’s harvested their knowledge and harnessed their magical talent.’

‘He wired you together.’ Aubrey remembered the booths under Dr Tremaine’s clifftop estate. Revulsion made the words stick in his throat. ‘He treated you like a row of batteries.’

A flutter of a smile. ‘You were always quick, Aubrey. As you should be with such parents.’

Aubrey did his best to be reassuring, but he found it difficult as he tried to fit this new data into his thinking. ‘He did this to you and the others to achieve his goal.’

‘You know what that is?’

‘I do.’ The Ritual of the Way. A blood sacrifice and then immortality for his sister and himself.

A thousand thoughts were rampaging in Aubrey’s mind, calling for attention, insisting that he bring them all together to form a coherent, comprehensive theory. One of these thoughts rose above all the others and thumped the inside of his skull until he turned to it.

Dr Tremaine wouldn’t abandon his preparations unless he had something more suited to his ends. ‘He could have something better than the Ritual of the Way,’ he said softly. The horror of anything that would surpass a magical rite needing the blood of thousands struck him like a blow. Only with an effort did he prevent himself from folding in the middle and falling to the floor.

‘Aubrey.’ Professor Mansfield brought her face close to his. She was shivering. ‘Whatever he’s doing, he must be stopped. He’s going now!’

THE DOCTOR, HAVING SEEN THAT PROFESSOR MANSFIELD had collapsed, bustled in and, with the assistance of a horde of nurses, whisked the trolley through the wooden doors.

‘She’ll get the care she needs,’ Caroline said. She took Aubrey by the arm and shepherded him out of the preparation area, which had exploded into action as soon as the impasse with Professor Mansfield had been resolved. Screens were dragged aside, trolleys and equipment rushed to bedsides, bandaged soldiers in wheelchairs hurried away.

Aubrey was deep in thought as they hurried back to the chateau. Through adroit nudging and steering, Caroline kept him from colliding with apple trees, water pumps and the many hurrying service people who had turned the estate into a headquarters. She even had to stop his progress with an outflung arm to prevent his running into a maintenance crew that was rushing to one of the new Gannet model ornithopters that had just landed in the large flat area to the west of the chateau.

General Apsley would need to be informed, Aubrey decided, plucking a single decision from the furore in his mind. News of this development needed to get to the Directorate immediately, so Trinovant could prepare for Dr Tremaine’s assault. Not knowing the exact nature of the attack was going to make things difficult, but this warning would give a chance to ready the forces.

Aubrey was jerked out of his planning by the abrupt thumping of thirteen-pounder guns. He looked east, shading his eyes, looking past the line of poles that brought the telegraph line to the chateau. ‘Anti-aircraft artillery?’

Caroline pointed. ‘On the edge of the estate, near the road, the other side of the avenue of trees.’

Before Aubrey could make out the emplacements, he was stunned in two vastly different ways. With astonishment, he saw the target for the anti-aircraft guns while simultaneously feeling as if someone had implanted a hook below his sternum and yanked it skywards.

‘Aubrey!’ Caroline cried as he doubled over, then staggered a few steps. Around them, soldiers began running and shouting, which was never a good thing in Aubrey’s experience. The sudden appearance of helmets did little to reassure him, and the looming presence on the horizon fully justified such preparations.

A skyfleet was steaming towards them.