chapter iv

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

    The hill she thought was Clove was a mile or two to the north. She’d stopped to look at its dark bulk, rising rocky and treeless from the snow-cround, 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 oher 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 clag on bare stone in the middle of the road, she bent down aly brushed the snow away.

    The hand beloo a young man, who wore a standard-issue coat of mail over an Aierran 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 beewelve 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 Fate. Even so, Sabriel had a strong disination to ehe 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 ung the grip that his right hand still had on his sword hilt—perhaps he had not been taken totally unawares after all. Theood and drew the Charter marks of fire, sing, 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. Seds later it was out and only ash remained, ash staining a corselet of blaed mail.

    Sabriel took the soldier’s sword from the pile of ashes and thrust it through the melted snow, into the dark earth beh. 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 ay disc .

    Shifting her skis again to rebalance she bent down and hooked the  of the identity dis 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  and disc were maemade in Aierre and so uo withstand the Charter Magic fire. The disc crumbled into ash as Sabriel raised it to eye level and the  fell into its po links, p between Sabriel’s fingers like small steel s.

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

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

    “Travel withret,” she added. “Do not look back.”

    Sabriel took her own advice as she skied away.

    There was an ay 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, andbbr></abbr> the Borderlands he articularly 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 i<tt></tt>ng home . . .

    Half a mile on she slowed and stopped to look up at Clove again, neck cricked back to watch where the sun struck between the clouds, lighting up the yellranite 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 tration totally tered upon some small mouse or vole creeping across the snow.

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

    Sabriel shivered, and looked at the hill again.

    Acc to Horys<df</dfn>e’s map, the path to Clove lay in a narrow gully between two bluffs.

    She could see quite clearly where it must be, but the dead lay in that dire. 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 Clove before nightfall.

    She thought about what lay ahead for a moment, then chose a promise 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 m, but it seemed like weeks ago and a world away.

    That done, she started to pick her way down the ter 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 oeep, rocky slopes of Clove.

    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 .

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

    That path raween 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. Half, where the bluffs almost ground together, the stream had dug itself a she, 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 Aierran patrol here, tumbled on the dark olive-black wood of the bridge, with the water murmurih and the red stone arg overhead.

    There were seven of them along the bridge’s length. Uhe 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 guarahat 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 beh artly iced over, shallow and sluggish, but it was clear the soldiers had sought refuge over it.

    Running water was a good prote 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 thee everything they could do, despite their last hope, they could be dead in just another.

    Once again, she felt the temptation of the neao 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 Magieancers used for their lackluster revenants, who retained little of their inal intelligend 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 neancer 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 resped, in the process, clear the bridge.

    It was o dusk, and dark already in the shadow of the ge, but she ighe little voiside her that was urgio leave the bodies and run for the open space of the hilltop.

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

    A slight magic, but oh ued sequences, for, as she left the bodies behind, an answering light burned into brillian the upper post of the bridge. It faded into red embers almost immediately, but left three glowing Charter marks. One was strao 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 o holding a on—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, the dark. A voice came from nowhere, close to Sabriel’s ear. A man’s voice, husky with fear, backed by the sound of clashing ons, 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 Mordit! This is Sergeant Gerren. Tell el . . .”

    Whatever he wao tell el Horyse was lost in the moment of his owh. Sabriel stood still, listening, as if there might be more.

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

    She touched the bridge post again, just with one finger, ahe 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.

    Sabri<mark>??</mark>el took a few more breaths, stilled her stomach, and forced herself to listen once more.

    One of the Greater Dead was ba Life, and that was something her father was sworn to stop. It was almost certain that this emergend Abhorsen’s disappearance were ected.

    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 Clove 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.

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