Sam remembered exactly what the sign said. Pretending he had an amazing ability to see through fogged-up windscreens, he recited the familiar warning to the others. It was important for them to know.

PERIMETER COMMAND

NORTHERN ARMY GROUP

Unauthorized egress from the Perimeter Zone is strictly forbidden.

Anyone attempting to cross the Perimeter Zone will be shot without warning.

Authorized travelers must report to the Perimeter Command H.Q.

REMEMBER—NO WARNING WILL BE MADE

A moment of silence met this recitation, as the seriousness of it sank in. Then a babble of questions broke out, but Sam didn’t answer. He had thought the driver had run away because he was afraid of being so close to the Wall. But what if he had brought them there on purpose? And why had he run away from the two red-capped military policemen who were walking up from their sentry box?

Sameth’s family had many enemies in the Old Kingdom.

Some were human, and might be able to pass as harmless in Ancelstierre. Some were not, but they might be powerful enough to cross the Wall and get this little distance south.

Especially on a day when the wind blew from the north.

Not bothering to get his raincoat, Sam jumped down from the bus and hurried over to where the two military policemen had just met Mr. Cochrane. Or rather, to where the MP

sergeant had started to shout at Cochrane.

“Get everyone off that bus and get them moving back as quick as you can,” the sergeant shouted. “Run as far as you can, then walk. Got it?”

“Why?” asked Mr. Cochrane, bristling. Like most of the teachers and staff at Somersby, he wasn’t from the North, and he had no idea about the Wall, the Perimeter, or the Old Kingdom. He had always treated Sameth as he treated the school’s other Prince, who was an albino from far-off Karshmel—like an adopted child who wasn’t quite a member of the family.

“Just do it!” ordered the sergeant. He seemed nervous, Sameth noted. His revolver holster was open, and he kept looking around at the trees. Like most soldiers on the Perimeter—but totally unlike any other units of the Ancelstierran Army—he also wore a long sword-bayonet on his left hip, and a mail coat over his khaki battledress, though he’d kept his MP’s red cap, rather than wearing the usual neck—and nasal-barred helmet of the Perimeter garrison. Sam noted that neither of the two men had a Charter mark on his forehead.

“That’s not good enough,” Cochrane protested. “I insist on speaking to an officer. I can’t have my boys running about in the rain!”

“We’d better do as the sergeant says,” said Sam, coming up behind him. “There is something in the wood—and it’s getting closer.”

“Who are you?” demanded the sergeant, drawing his sword. The lance-corporal with him instantly followed suit,

and started to sidle around behind. Both of them were looking at Sam’s forehead, and the Charter mark that was just visible under his Cricket XI cap.

“Prince Sameth of the Old Kingdom,” said Sam. “I suggest you call Major Dwyer of the Scouts, or General Tindall’s headquarters, and tell them I’m here—and that there are at least three Dead Hands in the woods over there.”

“That’s torn it!” swore the sergeant. “We knew something was up with this wind. How did they get—Well, it doesn’t matter. Harris, double back to the post and alert HQ. Tell them we’ve got Prince Sameth, a bunch of schoolkids, and at least three category-A intruders. Use a pigeon and the rocket. The phone’ll be out for sure. Move!”

The lance-corporal was gone before the sergeant’s mouth shut, and just as Cochrane began.

“Sameth! What are you going on about?”

“There’s no time to explain,” replied Sam urgently. He could sense Dead Hands—bodies infused with spirits called from Death—moving through the forest, parallel to the road. They didn’t seem to have sensed the living yet, but once they did, they would be there within minutes. “We have to get everyone out of here—we have to get as far away from the Wall as we can.”

“But . . . But . . .” blustered Cochrane, red-faced and astounded at the impertinence of one of his own boys ordering him around. He would have said more, if the sergeant hadn’t drawn his revolver and calmly said, “Get them going now, sir, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
Chapter Fifteen. The Dead Are Many

Five minutes later, the entire team was out in the rain, on the road, jogging south. At Sameth’s suggestion, they had armed themselves with cricket bats, metal-tipped cricket stumps, and cricket balls. The MP sergeant ran with them, his revolver continuing to silence Cochrane’s protests. The boys took it all as a bit of a joke at first, with much bravado and carrying-on. But as it got darker and the rain got heavier, they grew quieter. The jokes stopped altogether when four quick shots were heard behind them, and then a distant, anguished scream.

Sameth and the sergeant exchanged a look that combined fear and a dreadful knowledge. The shots and the scream must have come from Lance-Corporal Harris, who had gone back to the post.

“Is there a stream or other running water near here?” panted Sameth, mindful of the warning rhyme he’d known since childhood about the Dead. The sergeant shook his head but didn’t answer. He kept glancing back over his shoulder, almost losing his balance as they ran. A little while after they heard the scream, he saw what he was looking for and pointed it out to Sameth: three red parachute flares drifting down from a few miles north.

“Harris must have got the pigeon off, at least,” he puffed. “Or maybe the telephone worked, since his pistol did. They’ll have the reserve company and a platoon of Scouts out here soon, sir.”

“I hope so,” replied Sameth. He could sense the Dead on the road behind them now, coming up quickly. There seemed to be no hope of safety anywhere ahead. No stout farmhouse or barn, or a stream, whose running water the Dead couldn’t cross. In fact, the road went down to become a sunken lane, even darker and more closed in, a perfect site for an ambush. As Sam thought of that, he felt his sense of Death suddenly alter. It disoriented him at first, till he realized what it was. A Dead spirit had just risen in front of them, somewhere in the darkness around the high-banked road. Worse than that, it was new, brought out of Death at that very moment. These were no self-willed Dead spirits that had infiltrated through the Perimeter. They were Dead Hands, raised by a necromancer on the Ancelstierran side of the Wall. Controlled by the necromancer’s mind, they were much more dangerous than rogue spirits.

“Stop!” screamed Sam, his voice cutting through the beat of rain and footsteps on the asphalt. “They’re ahead of us. We have to leave the road!”

“Who are ahead, boy?” shouted Cochrane, furious again.

“This has gone quite far enough. . . .”

His voice faltered as a figure stumbled out of the shadows ahead, out into the middle of the road. It was human, or had once been human, but now its arms were hanging threads of flesh, and its head was mostly bare skull, all deep eye hollows and shining teeth. It was unquestionably dead, and the reek of decomposition rolled off it, over the soft smell of the rain. Clods of earth fell from it as it moved, showing that it

had just dug itself out of the ground.

“Left!” shouted Sam, pointing. “Everyone go left!”

His shout broke the silent tableau into action, boys leaping over the stone wall that bordered the road. Cochrane was one of the first over, throwing his umbrella aside.

The Dead thing moved, too, breaking into a shambling run as it sensed the Life it craved. The sergeant propped himself against the wall and waited till it was ten feet away. Then he emptied his heavy .455 revolver into the creature’s torso, five shots in quick succession, accompanied by a gasp of relief that the weapon actually worked.

The creature was knocked back and finally down, but the sergeant didn’t wait. He’d been on the Perimeter long enough to know that it would get back up again. Bullets could stop Dead Hands, but only if the creatures were shredded to pieces. White phosphorus grenades worked better, burning them to ash—when they worked. Guns and grenades and all such standards of Ancelstierran military technology tended to fail the closer they got to the Wall and the Old Kingdom.

“Up the hill!” shouted Sam, pointing to a rise in the ground ahead, where the forest thinned out. If they could make it there, at least they could see what was coming and have the slight advantage of high ground.

A harsh, inhuman cry rose behind them as they ran, a sound like a broken bellows accidentally trodden on, more squeal than scream. Sam knew it came from the desiccated lungs of a Dead Hand. This one was farther to the right than the one the sergeant had shot. At the same time, he sensed others, moving around to the right and left, beginning to encircle the hill.

“There’s a necromancer back there,” he said as they ran.

“And there must be a lot of dead bodies, not too far gone.” “A truck full of those Southerlings . . . ran off the road near here, six weeks ago,” said the sergeant, speaking rapidly between breaths. “Nineteen killed. Bit of a . . . mystery where they was going . . . anyway . . . churchwarden at Archell wouldn’t . . . have ‘em . . . the Army crematorium neither . . . so they was buried next to the road.”

“Stupid!” cried Sameth. “It’s too close to the Wall! They should have been burnt!”

“Bloody paper-pushers,” puffed the sergeant, nimbly ducking under a branch. “Regulations say no burying within the . . . Perimeter. But this is . . . outside, see?”

Sameth didn’t answer. They were climbing the hill itself now, and he needed all his breath. He sensed there were at least twelve Dead Hands behind them now, and three or four on each side, going wide. And there was something, some presence that was probably the necromancer, back where the bodies were—or had been—buried.

The top of the hill was clear of trees, save for a few windblown saplings. Before they reached it, the sergeant called a halt, just short of the crest.

“Right! Get in close. Are we missing anyone? How many—”

“Sixteen, including Mr. Cochrane,” said Nick, who was a lightning calculator. Cochrane glared at him but was silent, ducking his head back down as he tried to get his breath back. “Everyone’s here.”

“How long have we got, sir?” the sergeant asked Sam, as they both looked back down into the trees. It was hard to see anything. Visibility was reduced by both the increasingly heavy rain and the onset of night.

“The first two or three will be on us in a few minutes,” said Sameth grimly. “The rain will slow them a little. We’ll have to

knock them down and run stumps through them, to try to keep them pinned. Nick, organize everyone into groups of three. Two batsmen and someone to hold the stumps ready. No, Hood—go with Asmer. When they come, I’ll distract them with a . . . I’ll distract them. Then the batsman must hit as hard as they can straight off, in the legs, and then hammer a stump through each arm and leg.”

Sameth paused as he saw one of the boys eyeing the twoand—a-half-foot-long wooden stump with its metal spike on the end. From the expression on the boy’s face, it was clear he couldn’t imagine hammering it through anything.

“These are not people!” Sam shouted. “They’re already Dead. If you don’t fight them, they will kill us. Think of them as wild animals, and remember, we’re fighting for our lives!” One of the boys started crying, without making a noise, the tears falling silently down his face. At first Sam thought it was the rain, till he noticed the despairing stare that signified complete and utter terror.

He was about to try some more encouraging words when Nick pointed downhill and shouted, “Here they come!”

Three Dead Hands were coming out from the treeline, shambling like drunks, their arms and legs clearly not fully under control. The bodies had been too broken up in the crash, Sam thought, gauging their strength. That was good. It would make them slower and more uncoordinated.

“Nick, your team can take the one on the left,” he commanded, speaking quickly. “Ted, yours the middle, and Jack’s the right. Go for their knees and hammer the stumps home as soon as you get them down. Don’t let them get a grip on you—they’re much stronger than they look. Everyone else—including you, please, Sergeant, and Mr. Cochrane—hold back and help any team that gets in trouble.”

“Yes, sir!” replied the sergeant. Cochrane merely nodded dumbly, staring at the approaching Dead Hands. For the first time in Sam’s memory, the man’s face was not flushed red. It was white, almost as white as the sickeningly pallid flesh of the approaching Dead.

“Wait for my order,” shouted Sam. At the same time, he reached into the Charter. It was impossible to reach in most of Ancelstierre, but this close to the Wall, it was merely difficult, rather like trying to swim down to the bottom of a deep river. Sameth found the Charter and took a moment’s comfort from the familiar touch of it, its permanence and its totality linking him to everything in existence. Then he summoned the marks he wanted, holding them in his mind while he formed their names in his throat. When he had everything ready, he punched out his right hand, three fingers splayed, each finger indicating one of the approaching Dead creatures.

“Anet! Calew! Ferhan!” he spat, and the marks flew from his fingers as shining silver blades, whistling through the air quicker than any eye could follow. Each one struck a Dead Hand, blowing a fist-sized hole straight through decaying flesh. All three staggered back, and one fell down, waving its arms and legs like a beetle thrown on its back.