Old Kingdom 04: Across the Wall by Garth Nix Page A

their own people farther north.
    Nick throttled back and weaved the motorcycle through the slalom course of bodies, debris from the gate, and the live but shaken soldiers who were staring north. He was just about to accelerate away when someone shouted behind him.
    ‘You on the motorcycle! Stop!’
    Nick felt an urge to open the throttle and let the motorcycle roar away, but his intelligence overruled his instinct. He stopped and looked back, wincing as the thin sole of his left carpet slipper tore on a piece of broken barbed wire.
    The man who had shouted ran up and, greatly surprising Nick, jumped on the pillion seat behind him.
    ‘Get after it!’
    Nick only had a moment to gain a snapshot of his unexpected passenger. He was an officer, not visibly armed, wearing formal dress blues with more miniatures of gallantry medals than he should have, since he looked no more than twenty-one. He had the three pips of a captain on his sleeves and, more important, on his shoulders the metal epaulette tags NPRU, for the Northern Perimeter Reconnaissance Unit, or as it was better known, the Crossing Point Scouts.
    ‘I know you, don’t I?’ shouted the captain over the noise of the engine and rush of the wind. ‘You tried out for the Scouts last week?’
    ‘Uh, no,’ Nick shouted back. He had just realized that he knew his passenger too. It was Francis Tindall, who had been at Forwin Mill as a lieutenant six months ago. ‘I’m afraid I’m … well, I’m Nicholas Sayre.’
    ‘Nick Sayre! I bloody hope this isn’t going to be like last time we met!’
    ‘No! But that creature is a Free Magic thing!’
    ‘Got a hostage, too, from the look of it. Skinny old duffer. Pointless carrying him along. We’ll still shoot.’
    ‘He’s an accomplice. It’s already killed a lot of people down south.’
    ‘Don’t worry, we’ll settle its hash,’ Tindall shouted confidently. ‘You don’t happen to know exactly what kind of Free Magic creature it is? Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it, but I only got a glimpse. Didn’t expect anything like that to run past the window at a dining-in night at Checkpoint Two.’
    ‘No, but it’s bulletproof and it gets power by drinking the blood of Charter Mages.’
    Whatever Tindall said in response was lost in the sound of gunfire up ahead, this time long, repeated bursts of machine-gun fire, and Nick saw red tracer bouncing up into the air.
    ‘Slow down!’ ordered Tindall. ‘Those are the enfilading guns at Lizzy and Pearl. They’ll stop firing when the thing hits the gate at Checkpoint One.’
    Nick obediently slowed. The road was straight ahead of them, but dark, the moon having sunk farther. The red tracer was the only thing visible, crisscrossing the road four or five hundred yards ahead of them.
    Then big guns boomed in unison.
    ‘Star shell,’ said Tindall. ‘Thanks to a southerly wind.’
    A second after he spoke, four small suns burst high above, and everything became stark black and white, either harshly lit or in blackest shadow.
    In the light, Nick saw another deep defensive line of high concertina wire, and another set of gates. He also saw the creature slow not at all, but simply jump up and over thirty feet of wire, smashing its way past the two or three fast but foolish soldiers who tried to stick a bayonet in it as it hit the ground running.
    Dorrance was no longer on its back.
    Nick saw him a moment later, lying in the middle of the road. Braking hard, he lost control of the bike at the last moment, and it flipped up and out, throwing both him and Tindall onto the road, but fortunately not at any speed.
    Nick lay there for a moment, the breath knocked out of him by the impact. After a minute, he slowly got to his feet. Captain Tindall was already standing, but only on one foot.
    ‘Busted ankle,’ he said as he hopped over to Dorrance. ‘Why, it’s that idiot jester Dorrance! What on earth would someone like him be doing with that creature?’
    ‘Serving