chapter iv

Sabriel found the first dead Ancelstierran soldier about six miles from the Wall, in the last, fading hours of the afternoon.

The hill she thought was Cloven Crest was a mile or two to the north. She’d stopped to look at its dark bulk, rising rocky and treeless from the snow-covered ground, its peak temporarily hidden in one of the light, puffy clouds that occasionally let forth a shower of snow or sleet.

If she hadn’t stopped, she would probably have missed the frosted-white hand that peeked out of a drift on the other side of the road. But as soon as she saw that, her attention focused and Sabriel felt the familiar pang of death.

Crossing over, her skis clacking on bare stone in the middle of the road, she bent down and gently brushed the snow away.

The hand belonged to a young man, who wore a standard-issue coat of mail over an Ancelstierran uniform of khaki serge. He was blond and grey-eyed, and Sabriel thought he had been surprised, for there was no fear in his frozen expression. She touched his forehead with one finger, closed his sightless eyes, and laid two fingers against his open mouth. He had been dead twelve days, she felt. There were no obvious signs as to what had killed him. To learn more than that, she would have to follow the young man into Death. Even after twelve days, it was unlikely he had gone further than the Fourth Gate. Even so, Sabriel had a strong disinclination to enter the realm of the dead until she absolutely had to. Whatever had trapped—or killed—her father could easily be waiting to ambush her there. This dead soldier could even be a lure.

Quashing her natural curiosity to find out exactly what had happened, Sabriel folded the man’s arms across his chest, after first unclenching the grip that his right hand still had on his sword hilt—perhaps he had not been taken totally unawares after all. Then she stood and drew the Charter marks of fire, cleansing, peace and sleep in the air above the corpse, while whispering the sounds of those same marks. It was a litany that every Charter Mage knew, and it had the usual effect. A glowing ember sparked up between the man’s folded arms, multiplied into many stabbing, darting flames, then fire whooshed the full length of the body. Seconds later it was out and only ash remained, ash staining a corselet of blackened mail.

Sabriel took the soldier’s sword from the pile of ashes and thrust it through the melted snow, into the dark earth beneath. It stuck fast, upright, the hilt casting a shadow like a cross upon the ashes. Something glinted in the shadow and, belatedly, Sabriel remembered that the soldier would have worn an identity disc or tag.

Shifting her skis again to rebalance she bent down and hooked the chain of the identity disc on one finger, pulling it up to read the name of the man who had met his end here, alone in the snow. But both the chain and disc were machinemade in Ancelstierre and so unable to withstand the Charter Magic fire. The disc crumbled into ash as Sabriel raised it to eye level and the chain fell into its component links, pouring between Sabriel’s fingers like small steel coins.

“Perhaps they’ll know you from your sword,”

said Sabriel. Her voice sounded strange in the quiet of the snowy wilderness and, behind each word, her breath rolled out like a small, wet fog.

“Travel without regret,” she added. “Do not look back.”

Sabriel took her own advice as she skied away.

There was an anxiety in her now that had been mostly academic before and every sense was alert, watchful. She had always been told that the Old Kingdom was dangerous, and the Borderlands near the Wall particularly so. But that intellectual knowledge was tempered by her vague childhood memories of happiness, of being with her father and the band of Travelers.

Now, the reality of the danger was slowly coming home . . .

Half a mile on she slowed and stopped to look up at Cloven Crest again, neck cricked back to watch where the sun struck between the clouds, lighting up the yellow-red granite of the bluffs.

She was in cloud shadow herself, so the hill looked like an attractive destination. As she looked, it started to snow again, and two snowflakes fell upon her forehead, melting into her eyes. She blinked and the melted snow traced tear trails down her cheeks. Through misted eyes, she saw a bird of prey—a hawk or kite—launch itself from the bluffs and hover, its concentration totally centered upon some small mouse or vole creeping across the snow.

The kite dropped like a cast stone, and a few seconds later, Sabriel felt some small life snuffed out. At the same time, she also felt the tug of human death. Somewhere ahead, near where the kite dined, more people lay dead.

Sabriel shivered, and looked at the hill again.

According to Horyse’s map, the path to Cloven Crest lay in a narrow gully between two bluffs.

She could see quite clearly where it must be, but the dead lay in that direction. Whatever had killed them might also still be there.

There was sunlight on the bluffs, but the wind was driving snow clouds across the sun and Sabriel guessed it was only an hour or so till dusk. She’d lost time freeing the soldier’s spirit, and now had no choice but to hurry on if she wished to reach Cloven Crest before nightfall.

She thought about what lay ahead for a moment, then chose a compromise between speed and caution. Stabbing her poles into the snow, she released her bindings, stepped out of her skis and then quickly fastened skis and poles together to be strapped diagonally across her backpack. She tied them on carefully, remembering how they’d fallen and broken her Charterspell on the parade ground—only that morning, but it seemed like weeks ago and a world away.

That done, she started to pick her way down the center of the road, keeping away from the gutter drifts. She’d have to leave the road fairly soon, but it looked like there was little snow on the steep, rocky slopes of Cloven Crest.

As a final precaution, she drew Abhorsen’s sword, then resheathed it, so an inch of blade was free of the scabbard. It would draw fast and easily when she needed it.

Sabriel expected to find the bodies on the road, or near it, but they lay further on. There were many footprints, and churned-up snow, leading from the road towards the path to Cloven Crest.

That path ran between the bluffs, following a route gouged out by a stream falling from some deep spring higher up the hill. The path crossed the stream several times, with stepping-stones or tree trunks across the water to save walkers from wet feet. Halfway up, where the bluffs almost ground together, the stream had dug itself a short gorge, about twelve feet wide, thirty feet long and deep. Here, the pathmakers had been forced to build a bridge along the stream, rather than across it.

Sabriel found the rest of the Ancelstierran patrol here, tumbled on the dark olive-black wood of the bridge, with the water murmuring beneath and the red stone arching overhead.

There were seven of them along the bridge’s length. Unlike the first soldier, it was quite clear what had killed them. They had been hacked apart and, as Sabriel edged closer, she realized they had been beheaded. Worse than that, whoever . . . whatever . . . had killed them had taken their heads away—almost a guarantee that their spirits would return.

Her sword did draw easily. Gingerly, her right hand almost glued to the sword hilt, Sabriel stepped around the first of the splayed-out bodies and onto the bridge. The water beneath was partly iced over, shallow and sluggish, but it was clear the soldiers had sought refuge over it.

Running water was a good protection from dead creatures or things of Free Magic, but this torpid stream would not have dismayed even one of the Lesser Dead. In Spring, fed with melted snow, the stream would burst between the bluffs, and the bridge would be knee-deep in clear, swift water. The soldiers would probably have survived at that time of year.

Sabriel sighed quietly, thinking of how easily seven people could be alive in one instant, and then, despite everything they could do, despite their last hope, they could be dead in just another.

Once again, she felt the temptation of the necromancer, to take the cards nature had dealt, to reshuffle them and deal again. She had the power to make these men live again, laugh again, love again . . .

But without their heads she could only bring them back as “Hands,” a derogatory term that Free Magic necromancers used for their lackluster revenants, who retained little of their original intelligence and none of their initiative. They made useful servants, though, either as reanimated corpses or the more difficult Shadow Hands, where only the spirit was brought back.

Sabriel grimaced as she thought of Shadow Hands. A skilled necromancer could easily raise Shadow Hands from the heads of the newly dead. Similarly, without the heads, she couldn’t give them the final rites and free their spirits.

All she could do was treat the bodies with some respect and, in the process, clear the bridge.

It was near to dusk, and dark already in the shadow of the gorge, but she ignored the little voice inside her that was urging her to leave the bodies and run for the open space of the hilltop.

By the time she finished dragging the bodies back down the path a way, laying them out with their swords plunged in the earth next to their headless bodies, it was dark outside the gorge too. So dark, she had to risk a faint, Charterconjured light, that hung like a pale star above her head, showing the path before dying out.

A slight magic, but one with unexpected consequences, for, as she left the bodies behind, an answering light burned into brilliance on the upper post of the bridge. It faded into red embers almost immediately, but left three glowing Charter marks. One was strange to Sabriel, but, from the other two, she guessed its meaning.

Together, they held a message.

Three of the dead soldiers had the feel of Charter Magic about them, and Sabriel guessed that they were Charter Mages. They would have had the Charter mark on their foreheads. The very last body on the bridge had been one of these men and Sabriel remembered that he had been the only one not holding a weapon—his hands had been clasped around the bridge post.

These marks would certainly hold his message.

Sabriel touched her own forehead Charter mark and then the bridge post. The marks flared again, then went dark. A voice came from nowhere, close to Sabriel’s ear. A man’s voice, husky with fear, backed by the sound of clashing weapons, screaming and total panic.

“One of the Greater Dead! It came behind us, almost from the Wall. We couldn’t turn back. It has servants, Hands, a Mordicant! This is Sergeant Gerren. Tell Colonel . . .”

Whatever he wanted to tell Colonel Horyse was lost in the moment of his own death. Sabriel stood still, listening, as if there might be more.

She felt ill, nauseous, and took several deep breaths. She had forgotten that for all her familiarity with death and the dead, she had never seen or heard anyone actually die. The aftermath she had learnt to deal with . . . but not the event.

She touched the bridge post again, just with one finger, and felt the Charter marks twisting through the grain of the wood. Sergeant Gerren’s message would be there forever for any Charter Mage to hear, till time did its work, and bridge post and bridge rotted or were swept away by flood.

Sabriel took a few more breaths, stilled her stomach, and forced herself to listen once more.

One of the Greater Dead was back in Life, and that was something her father was sworn to stop. It was almost certain that this emergence and Abhorsen’s disappearance were connected.

Once again, the message came, and Sabriel listened.

Then, brushing back her starting tears, she walked on, up the path, away from the bridge and the dead, up towards Cloven Crest and the broken Charter Stone.

The bluffs parted and, in the sky above, stars started to twinkle, as the wind grew braver and swept the snow clouds before it into the west.

The new moon unveiled itself and swelled in brightness, till it cast shadows on the snowflecked ground.