Ink and Bone

‘Show us,’ Wolfe told the girl, and she scampered off, faster than Jess would have believed possible for her thin, starved frame. The ice slimed the grass, and it crunched and slipped beneath his feet, but he kept up as Santi’s men broke into a trot, then a run, in pursuit of the girl. They all kept up. He kept a hand on Morgan’s arm to make sure they didn’t lose her.

Portero lagged a bit behind, and he was the first to be caught. It wasn’t his fault; Jess didn’t see the men lurking behind the brick building on their left until they poured out, howling. Portero spun to face them, pulling his gun, but three of them were on him before he could fire more than once, and Jess saw two of them pulling him down.

Santi’s men pivoted in a practised, almost elegant formation and went at the attackers. There were only six or seven of them, but they were hard men, killers, and even as Jess grabbed Portero’s wrists to drag him out of the fight he knew it was too late.

Someone had stabbed him.

He watched Portero gasp for breath, his face turning a horrible shade of cream, and the blood that bubbled from his mouth seemed the brightest crimson Jess had ever seen.

Then he stopped breathing. His eyes fixed, his pupils relaxed, and the only thing that moved on him was the slow crawl of blood down his cheek and onto the icy grass.

Someone was pulling at Jess’s shoulder. Thomas. It was Thomas who screamed in his ear words that Jess couldn’t fully process. Get up, he thought stupidly at Portero. Get up, you lazy bastard. Portero had never been his friend, but he couldn’t just leave him. Not like this.

Thomas rolled Portero over, grabbed his pack, and pulled it off. Portero’s arms flopped limply as he fell back to the ground, and Jess tried to straighten him, but he was off balance because someone was pulling him by the shoulder in a grip hard enough to make his bones creak, and the day seemed smeared and oddly silent …

… Until it all snapped back, hard and loud and chaotic, and he was ru

There was a low stone wall at the edge of the cemetery, and their guide was on the other side of it, screaming at them to hurry. Wolfe was the first to it, and vaulted up on it at the run; Glain’s long legs scrambled her up to the top, where she crouched. Khalila stumbled, but Wolfe and Glain pulled her up and over. Each of them got the same help, boosted up, scrambling over. Jess went near the end, and only realised when Glain flinched that he’d smeared her with Portero’s sticky blood, and then he was over, tumbling down a hill and up to his feet with the unwieldy weight of the pack on his back to overbalance him yet again when the cobbles of the street below proved slick.

The exterior gate the girl was talking about was one of those that had been closed, locked and reinforced with steam-powered bulwarks; a gate that Oxford must have once hoped to use to launch their own attack when it had been built. One that had been heavily defended by a guard station of redcoats. Frederick’s men had taken the guard station, shattered the layers of locks, and cranked the gate open. Not without resistance, though, and not without massive losses judging from the men dead around them; Oxford redcoats were now desperately trying to retake the controls. The battle raged ahead, and it was no longer just Frederick’s lot versus the soldiers; Oxford citizens had smelt a rare chance for escape, and they were fighting to get out before the gates cranked shut again. It was total madness, a boil of bodies and screams. Santi’s soldiers pushed through to form a narrow corridor for Wolfe and his students, but it was a fragile protection, and wouldn’t last.

‘Go!’ Frederick shouted from atop a fallen block of stone, and fired into the face of a man lunging towards him. Santi’s soldiers slammed back a rush of people trying to cut ahead of them. ‘We’ll hold it!’

One of Frederick’s men just ahead and to the left of Jess was felled with a club, and a wild-eyed woman stumbled over his body. She had a red-faced, screaming child in her arms, and she shoved the baby at Jess. ‘Take her!’ the woman shrieked at him.

Jess didn’t remember doing it, but suddenly the baby was squirming in his arms, and the mother was dragged aside to stumble and fall beneath another wave of desperate men and women surging forward. He pushed his way on. I shouldn’t have the baby. I can’t put her down. I can’t take her with me. I can’t …

Jess spun as someone clawed at his shoulder, and saw a boy about his own age with a knife; he slammed a fist into the boy’s chin and sent him flying backward. The baby in his arms was wiggling so hard it was difficult to hang on, but he needed one hand free to deal with those coming at him. Frederick’s lines were collapsing fast now, and the Oxford citizens were surging for the open gate … but the huge wings of the gate were cranking closed again. Oxford defenders had activated the steam engine.

They had to get through before it shut. He saw that the other students were ahead of him. Glain was scrambling over a mass of fallen bodies, and dragging Morgan with her.

‘Run, damn you!’

He turned at the shout in his ear and saw Wolfe next to him, armed with a gun; he took methodical, fast shots, and was half-covered in blood. The crowd was screaming around them, pure chaos and fury, and somehow Jess stayed on his feet as he was pushed and buffeted. The gates squeezed forward. Screams of those on either side of them turned from fury to terror. Wolfe grabbed Jess’s shoulder and shoved him into what seemed a solid wall of bodies. Some fell, and Jess realised now that there were bullets being fired from outside. The Welsh.

He almost turned back, but Wolfe’s hand relentlessly drove him forward, over fallen bodies, and a woman dropped right in front of him, face forward in the mud. Jess leapt over her.

Behind him, the screaming grew worse as people were caught in the closing gate, unable to retreat, jammed too tightly together to rush forward.

Jess was out into the mud and icy wind, with Wolfe right next to him.

They were out.

Santi’s men – so few left now – formed around them and pushed them forward. There was an awful keening shriek of metal as the gate pushed closed through the bodies of those caught.

Jess didn’t look back. He couldn’t.

Santi drove them together in a defensive band. He had the Library flag out and slammed it to its full height above their heads. His soldiers were slapping their Library symbols back on their chests and on each other. Out here in the mud, nothing moved but them.

The screams and shouts from within the Oxford walls were growing faint.

‘What have you done?’

Wolfe was standing right in front of him. Jess stared, uncomprehending, until he realised that Wolfe was looking down at the child in his arms.

The baby.

She was still alive and squirming. Somehow, amazingly, she’d survived. He had no idea how. He didn’t know how he’d made it through. How any of them had.

‘We can’t take her,’ Wolfe said. His voice was tight and strained, his expression very bleak. ‘Put her down.’

‘Down?’ The mud he was standing in was almost knee deep. She’d sink without a trace. ‘Where?’

There was a party of Welsh soldiers ru