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“They’re involved anyway,” interrupted Touchstone. “The only reason that Ancelstierre isn’t like the Old Kingdom is the Wall, and it won’t last once Kerrigor breaks the remaining Stones.”
“They’re only schoolchildren,” Sabriel said sadly. “For all we always thought we were grown women.”
“We need them,” said Touchstone, again.
“Yes,” said Sabriel, turning back towards the knot of men gathered as close as they dared to the cairn. Horyse, and some of the stronger Charter Mages, peering back towards the entrance and the shimmering bronze within.
“The spell failed,” Sabriel said. “But Touchstone has just reminded me where we can get more Charter Mages.”
Horyse looked at her, urgency in his face. “Where?”
“Wyverley College. My old school. The Fifth and Sixth Form magic classes, and their teacher, Magistrix Greenwood. It’s less than a mile away.”
“I don’t think we’ve got time to get a message there, and get them over here,” Horyse began, looking up at the setting sun, then at his watch—which was now going backwards. He looked puzzled for a moment, then ignored it. “But . . . do you think it would be possible to move the sarcophagus?”
Sabriel thought about the protective spell that she’d encountered, then answered. “Yes. Most of the wards were on the cairn, for concealment. There’s nothing to stop us moving the sarcophagus, save the side effects of the Free Magic. If we can stand the sickness, we can shift it—”
“And Wyverly College—it’s an old, solid building?”
“More like a castle than anything,” replied Sabriel, seeing the way he was thinking. “Easier to defend than this hill.”
“Running water . . . No? That would be too much to hope for. Right! Private Macking, run down to Major Tindall and tell him that I want his company ready to move in two minutes. We’re going back to the trucks, then on to Wyverley College—it’s on the map, about a mile . . .”
“South-west,” Sabriel provided.
“South-west. Repeat that back.”
Private Macking repeated the message in a slow drawl, then ran off, clearly keen to get away from the cairn. Horyse turned to the long-service corporal and said, “Corporal Anshey. You look pretty fit. Do you think you could get a rope around that coffin?”
“Reckon so, sir,” replied Corporal Anshey. He detached a coil of rope from his webbing as he spoke, and gestured with his hand to the other soldiers. “Come on you blokes, get yer ropes out.”
Twenty minutes later, the sarcophagus was being lifted by shear-legs and rope aboard a horse-drawn wagon, appropriated from a local farmer. As Sabriel had expected, dragging it within twenty yards of the trucks stopped their engines, put out electric lights and disrupted the telephone.
Curiously, the horse, a placid old mare, didn’t seem overly frightened by the gleaming sarcophagus, despite its bronze surface sluggishly crawling with stomach-churning perversions of Charter marks. She wasn’t a happy horse, but not a panicked one either.
“We’ll have to drive the wagon,” Sabriel said to Touchstone, as the soldiers pushed the suspended coffin aboard with long poles, and collapsed the shear-legs. “I don’t think the Scouts can withstand the sickness much longer.”
Touchstone shuddered. Like everyone else, he was pale, eyes red-rimmed, his nose dripping and teeth chattering. “I’m not sure I can, either.”
Nevertheless, when the last rope was twitched off, and the soldiers hurried away, Touchstone climbed up to the driver’s seat and picked up the reins. Sabriel climbed up next to him, suppressing the feeling that her stomach was about to rise into her mouth. She didn’t look back at the sarcophagus.
Touchstone said “tch-tch” to the horse, and flicked the reins. The mare’s ears went up, and she took up the load, pacing forwards. It was not a quick pace.
“Is this as fast as . . .” Sabriel said anxiously. They had a mile to cover, and the sun was already bloody, a red disc balanced on the line of the horizon.
“It’s a heavy load,” Touchstone answered slowly, quick breaths coming between his words, as if he found it difficult to speak. “We’ll be there before the light goes.”
The sarcophagus seemed to buzz and chuckle behind them. Neither of them mentioned that Kerrigor might arrive, fog-wreathed, before the night did. Sabriel found herself looking behind every few seconds, back along the road. This meant catching glimpses of the vilely shifting surface of the coffin, but she couldn’t help it. The shadows were lengthening, and every time she caught a glimpse of some tree’s pale bark, or a whitewashed mile marker, fear twitched in her gut. Was that fog curling down the road?
Wyverley College seemed much farther than a mile. The sun was only a three-quarter disc by the time they saw the trucks turn off the road, turning up the bricked drive that led to the wrought-iron gates of Wyverley College. Home, thought Sabriel for a moment. But that was no longer true. It had been home for the better part of her life, but that was past. It was the home of her childhood, when she was only Sabriel. Now, she was also Abhorsen. Now, her home lay in the Old Kingdom, as did her responsibilities. But like her, these traveled.
Electric lights burned brightly in the two antique glass lanterns on either side of the gate, but they dimmed to mere sparks as the wagon and its strange cargo drove through. One of the gates was off its hinges, and Sabriel realized the soldiers must have forced their way through. It was unusual for the gates to be locked before full dark. They must have closed them when they heard the bells, Sabriel realized, and that alerted her to something else . . .
“The bell in the village,” she exclaimed, as the wagon passed several parked trucks and wheeled around to stop near the huge, gate-like doors to the main building of the school. “The bell—it’s stopped.”
Touchstone brought the wagon to a halt, and listened, cocking an ear towards the darkening sky. True enough, they could no longer hear the Wyverley village bell.
“It is a mile,” he said, hesitantly. “Perhaps we’re too far, the wind . . .”
“No,” said Sabriel. She felt the air, cool with evening, still on her face. There was no wind. “You could always hear it here. Kerrigor has reached the village. We need to get the sarcophagus inside, quickly!”
She jumped down from the wagon, and ran over to Horyse, who was standing on the steps outside the partially open door, talking to an obscured figure within. As Sabriel got closer, edging through groups of waiting soldiers, she recognized the voice. It was Mrs. Umbrade, the headmistress.
“How dare you barge in here!” she was pronouncing, very pompously. “I am a very close personal friend of Lieutenant-General Farnsley, I’ll have you know—Sabriel!”
The sight of Sabriel in such strange garb and circumstance seemed to momentarily stun Mrs. Umbrade. In that second of fish-mouthed silence, Horyse motioned to his men. Before Mrs. Umbrade could protest, they’d pushed the door wide open, and streams of armed men rushed in, pouring around her startled figure like a flood around an island.
“Mrs. Umbrade!” Sabriel shouted. “I need to talk to Miss Greenwood urgently, and the girls from the Senior Magic classes. You’d better get the rest of the girls and the staff up to the top floors of the North Tower.”
Mrs. Umbrade stood, gulping like a goldfish, till Horyse suddenly loomed over her and snapped, “Move, woman!”
Almost before his mouth closed, she was gone. Sabriel looked back to check that Touchstone was organizing the shifting of the sarcophagus, then followed her in.
The entrance hall was already blocked by a conga line of soldiers, passing boxes in from the trucks outside, stacking them up all along the walls. Khaki-colored boxes marked “.303 Ball” or “B2E2 WP Grenade,” piled up beneath pictures of prizewinning hockey teams, or gilt-lettered boards of merit and scholastic brilliance. The soldiers had also thrown open the doors to the Great Hall, and were busy in there, closing shutters and piling pews up on their ends against the shuttered windows.
Mrs. Umbrade w
