her balance and fell, the taper dropping from her hand.
Though she must have been shocked and bruised by the fall, the maid did not lie there. Even as the creature bunched its muscles for the last dash to the gap, the young woman picked up the still-burning taper and threw it the last few feet into the centre of the dark section.
It caught instantly, fed by a pool of paraffin that had collected in the dip in the ground. Blue fire flashed over the hay and flames licked up towards the yellow moon.
The creature shrieked in frustration, its hooked heels throwing up great clods of grass and soil as it checked its headlong rush. For a moment it looked as if it might try to jump the fire, but instead it turned and loped back to the ha-ha, disappearing out of sight.
Nick and Ripton stopped and bent over double, resting their hands on their knees, panting as they tried to recover from their desperate sprint.
“It doesn’t like fire,” Ripton coughed out after a minute. “But we haven’t got enough hay to keep this circle going for more than an hour or so. What happens then?”
“I don’t know,” said Nick. He was acutely aware of his ignorance. None of this would be happening if the creature hadn’t drunk his blood. His blood, pumping furiously around his body that very second but a mystery to him. He knew nothing about its peculiar properties. He didn’t even know what it could do, or why it had been so strong that the creature needed to dilute it with the blood of others.
“Can you do any of that Old Kingdom magic the Scouts talk about?”
“No,” said Nick. “I…I’m rather useless, I’m afraid. I’ve been planning to go to the Old Kingdom…to learn about, well, a lot of things. But I haven’t managed to get there yet.”
“So we’re pretty well stuffed,” said Ripton. “When the fire burns down, that thing will just waltz in here and kill us all.”
“We might get help,” said Nick.
Ripton snorted. “Not the help we need. I told you. Bullets don’t hurt it. I doubt even an artillery shell would do anything, if a gunner could hit something moving that fast.”
“Keep your voice down,” Nick muttered. Most of the people inside the ring were huddled right in the centre, as much to get away from the drifting smoke of the fires as for the psychological ease of being further away from the creature. But a knot of half a dozen guests and servants was only a dozen yards away, the servants helping the kitchen maid up and the guests getting in the way. “I meant Old Kingdom help. I sent a message with Malthan. A telegram for him to send to some people who can get a message to the Old Kingdom quickly.”
Ripton bent his head and mumbled something.
“What? What did you say?”
“Malthan never made it past the village,” Ripton muttered. “I handed him over to two of Hodgeman’s particular pals at the crossroads. Orders. I had to do it, to maintain my cover.”
Nick was silent, his thoughts on the sad, frightened, greedy little man who was now probably dead in a ditch not too many miles away.
“Hodgeman said you’d never follow up what happened to Malthan,” said Ripton. “He said your sort never did. You were just throwing your weight around, he said.”
“I would have checked,” said Nick. “I would have left no stone unturned. Believe me.”
He looked around at the ring of fire. Sections of it were already dying down, generating lots of smoke but little flame. If Malthan had managed to send the telegram six or more hours ago, there might have been a slim chance that the Abhorsen…or Lirael…or somebody competent to deal with the creature would have been able to get there before they ran out of things to burn.
“Hodgeman’s dead now, anyway. He was one of the first that thing got.”
“I sent another message,” said Nick. “I bribed Danjers’s valet to go down to the village and send a telegram.”
“Nowhere to send one from there,” said Ripton. “Planned that way, of course. D13 keeping control of communications. The closest telephone would be at Colonel Wrale’s house and that’s ten miles away.”
“I don’t suppose he would have managed it anyway—”
Nick broke off and peered at the closer group of people and then at the central muddle, wiping his eyes as a tendril of smoke wafted across.
“Where is Danjers? I don’t remember seeing him at the dinner table and he’s pretty hard to miss. What’s the butler’s name again?”
“Whitecrake,” said Ripton, but Nick was already striding over to the butler who was issuing orders to his footmen, who in turn were busy feeding the fires with more straw.
“Whitecrake!” Nick called before he had closed the distance between them. “Where is Mr Danjers?”
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