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‘Put her down,’ Wolfe said.
‘I can’t!’
‘You must, Jess.’ His voice had gone soft. Gentle. ‘They’ll kill us all if you don’t. You’re violating the accords.’
Jess looked around for somewhere to leave the baby. There was nothing. Nothing that wasn’t churned bloody mud. ‘I can’t,’ he whispered. He felt ice cold now, inside and out, and he couldn’t stop shaking. ‘I can’t just—’
‘Fifteen seconds!’
Wolfe took the baby from Jess’s arms and turned towards the Welsh soldiers. ‘Let me talk to General Warlow.’
‘Five seconds, Scholar! Put that down! Four! Three!’
Wolfe held up one hand to stop the count, walked to the churned, bloody mud outside of the gate. He put the child down on top of the body of a dead woman lying there. The child screamed and reached for him with chubby arms, and Wolfe hesitated, crouched over her. Jess couldn’t see his face.
‘SCHOLAR!’ the Welsh commander shouted. ‘Step back to your group! I want to see bracelets, every one of you, right now, or we shoot!’
One by one, the students held up their wrists. Jess numbly followed suit, but he couldn’t look away from Wolfe, who still hadn’t moved from where he was crouched by the child.
‘Scholar!’ That wasn’t the Welsh. It was from inside the gate.
Wolfe grabbed the child and ran that way. There was a gap in the gate, because the metal doors were still jammed on the bodies. Despite the continued shudder and whine of the engine, it was still open a little.
Just enough.
Jess’s cousin Frederick – bloody, wounded, and somehow still alive – was on the other side, stretching out his arms.
Wolfe gave him the girl. She barely fit through the gap.
‘Get out however you can,’ Wolfe said. ‘Hurry. I’ll keep them talking as long as I can.’
Frederick backed away, turned, and ran.
There was a damp crack as the flesh and bones of the dead finally failed, and the gate slammed shut.
Wolfe spun towards the Welsh troops and held up his arm. The gold bracelet flashed, and to Jess’s eyes, it almost looked like a warning, not a surrender. ‘Safe passage,’ Wolfe said. ‘Now.’
The Welshman didn’t look happy, but gestured for Wolfe to follow, and led his troops back at a jog towards the Welsh lines.
Wounded, bloody, exhausted, Jess and his fellows struggled after, stumbling and slipping in the mud, clinging to each other for help and comfort. So few of Santi’s men and women had made it, Jess realised. He’d never even learnt their names. Santi was wounded, but he was still supporting one of his soldiers as they limped their way towards safety.
Good luck, Frederick, Jess thought. He hadn’t expected his cousin to be their unlikely saviour, or to take that little girl. Selflessness wasn’t a Brightwell family trait. He hoped it wouldn’t end up costing Frederick his life.
A shout went up from the Welsh lines; it was an eerie, savage sound, and Thomas lurched forward towards Wolfe. ‘What is that?’ he asked. Wolfe kept moving, head down.
‘Signal to attack,’ Dario panted when Wolfe didn’t answer. ‘The assault’s started.’
They were coming, those lines of troops. The first wave was racing towards them in armoured carriers, and for a moment Jess thought, horribly, that they would simply be run down, lost in the mud, but the vehicle heading for them changed its angle and charged past, throwing up mud head-high to flop over them in a stinking wave. Inside the carrier, the Welsh soldiers were cheering.
Jess looked up to see a container arcing over their heads. Something bright and burning and eerily green within.
It fell inside the walls of Oxford.
And Oxford began to burn.
Beside Jess, Khalila burst into tears and hid her face in her hands. Glain stood stock-still, staring at the destruction as more ballista-fired bottles of Greek Fire landed and bloomed into hideous, toxic life.
‘Happy you’re wi
Her gaze fell to lock on his. She didn’t say anything. She turned and flailed on through the mud.
Jess, having hurt her, felt even sicker than before.
He grimly followed, hearing the distant high wailing from inside the walls of Oxford as the slaughter continued.
EPHEMERA
Codex message from Scholar Christopher Wolfe to the Artifex Magnus:
Two students and twelve High Garda dead.
We were lucky. Luckier than you’d prefer, as I am still alive.
The Welsh have refused to provide us escort back to Aylesbury, and the roads are too dangerous with our losses. We will make our way instead to London.
If you ever wanted to prove that the Library is full of cold-hearted bastards who value books above lives, we have done that for you.
Response from the Artifex Magnus to Christopher Wolfe:
I know someone warned you not to go back to Aylesbury. You’re only delaying the inevitable, and this is a battle you won’t win. I advise you to pick another.
Let the girl go to her fate, which¸ I assure you, is sealed; there is ample evidence from Scholar Tyler and other discovered correspondence that the postulant Hault is, in fact, an Obscurist. A fact that you most likely already knew. If I prove it, you know it will be the last inch of your rope.
Family co
CHAPTER TEN
The Welsh encampment was mostly empty, but there were still enough troops around to take them into custody as one by one the Library party stumbled in. At least that meant being taken inside a tent and out of the sleet; it felt like luxury, and as Jess sank down on the tarpaulin-covered ground he began to realise just how cold he really was. His fingers were almost blue, and his shivering was constant. His clothes were soaked through and crackling with ice.
Morgan was pushed into place beside him. One of the Welsh soldiers came around with cups steaming with hot coffee, and Jess gulped it down so fast he hardly even felt the burn on his tongue. It helped steady him, and by the second cup he began to be more aware of those around him … like Morgan, who was still shivering. ‘Can we get a blanket?’ Jess asked the man who’d delivered the coffee. ‘She’s half-frozen.’
‘So are you, by the looks,’ the man said. ‘Blankets on the way.’ His brisk, impartial kindness suddenly struck Jess hard, and all out of proportion. He gulped down more coffee to hide his gratitude.
Morgan was trembling so much the coffee sputtered in the cup as she tried to raise it to her lips. Jess reached over to steady it. That was a mistake. She flinched from his touch, and slopped the hot liquid over both of them.
‘Sorry,’ Jess said. ‘I was only trying to help.’
‘I can manage,’ she said, and tried again. This time she gulped down a mouthful with only a little lost over the sides. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’ He hadn’t, he thought, been any kind of a hero, or even particularly brave. He’d just desperately wanted out.
She looked away and hunched her shoulders, and somehow, in that gesture, he remembered her falling against him in that courtyard, as she’d realised just how alone she was. ‘For not dying, I suppose.’
He didn’t know how to answer that, so he didn’t.
The Welsh soldier was back with an armload of blankets, and as Jess reached out for his, he winced from a sudden, lancing pain. Strange. He hadn’t felt anything until that moment. He could see wounds on the others: a slashing cut on Dario’s arm, an injured left wrist for Glain, and Khalila had a bullet hole in her arm, but she’d been lucky; it had missed bone and done only minor muscle damage.
Jess felt a strange twinge in his side. He twisted to look down, and went suddenly, weirdly faint. There was a hole. He hadn’t even felt it, but from the looks of the wound, someone had tried to skewer him with a knife. It hurt.