To Hold the Bridge

by Garth Nix

  He leaned forward to set his lips to the horn, ready to blow the alert, when he saw that it was split at the mouth, riven in two. At the same time, he tasted hot metal that blistered his tongue. The horn had been split by magic, and that was no mean feat, unseen from below.

  Or was it done unseen? Morghan thought. Is there someone else up here, in the fog?

  Morghan stepped back and almost fell over before he managed to spread his feet and steady himself. Despite his pain and weariness he was thinking faster now, aware that he might have very little time.

  One of the several hundred new Charter marks he had learned over the winter was the one that was the scream of the saffron-tailed kite, only the Bridgemistress wound into it another mark, one of magnification, that made the scream louder, more than a hundred times louder.

  But they were difficult marks, not old familiar ones that he knew well. He might well meet the death of his grandmother, seeking to find and wield such marks when he was already so weary.

  So be it, thought Morghan. Better to die here than in an alley in Belisaere. I have had my winter, and it is enough.

  He kneeled down and rested his hands on the hilt of his sword, setting the point deep in a crack between the flagstones. Then he went into the Charter once more, knowing it was one time too many, that his weary body could not bear to harness the power he sought. Not and live to speak of it.

  The first mark, the cry of the bird, he found easily, and he let it slide from his hands into the sword. The second was more difficult, and his vision swam and his breath grew ever more ragged before at last he pushed through a swarm of too-bright marks and caught the one he sought, and sent it into the blade too.

  With the spell ready, and his strength fading fast, Morghan left the flow of the Charter and brought himself back to the foggy battlements. Slowly, ever so slowly, he rose to his feet and prepared to lift his sword, to send his signal flying to the night sky above the fog.

  But the blade was stuck. Morghan pulled at it, and almost had it free when he saw that he was no longer alone. Someone … or something … was slipping over the battlements. It stopped to fix its gaze upon him, and then came stalking toward him.

  Morghan knew what it was at once, for it was part of his lessons. It was why the company’s guards carried poleaxes, to fight such a thing of stone, impervious to lighter weapons. Carved from solid rock to match the fetish of one of the tribes of the far steppe and infused with a Free Magic spirit to make it live and move, this was a Spirit-Walker.

  It moved toward him, not lumbering as one might expect a statue to do, but more like a stalking insect, all sharp starts and flurries. It was manlike in the sense that it had two legs and two arms, but the legs were long, and the arms jointed backward and ended in wedges of sharpened stone.

  One cruel wedge shot forward. Morghan twisted aside, too slowly, and his hauberk was sliced open as if it were no more than thin cloth, and he felt the sudden pain of a deep wound. At the same time, he wrenched his sword free and thrust it forward in riposte, though he knew no mere blade could harm a Spirit-Walker.

  The riposte missed, but drawing back, the tip of the sword touched the Spirit-Walker on its backward-jointed elbow.

  Morghan felt the connection to his very bones. He felt the ancient, malevolent spirit inside, striving to do as it was bid and slay him, and he felt the stone that it inhabited, and at once knew every fissure, every faint crack and weakness.

  ‘Go,’ whispered Morghan to his spell, and he fell backward, all strength gone.

  The marks left the blade, and not hundreds but thousands of saffron-tailed kites screamed their hunting scream inside the Spirit-Walker’s stony flesh, the sound resonating and echoing along every crack, growing and expanding, fighting to get out.

  The Spirit-Walker took one further step, then exploded into powder as the distress call of the bastion echoed through the river valley, to the North Fort, and the ferry stations, and up the road and beyond the hills, to Navis and even to the very walls of Belisaere.

  The great scream blew away the fog, and under sudden moon and starlight, a necromancer cursed and hurried back along the boardwalk. His Dead bashed once more at the door, then fell, the spirits too weak to sustain themselves in Life without their master. Hundreds of nomad tribesmen, spread out along the bridge, heard what they thought was the death-cry of their Spirit-Walker. They saw their necromancer flee and turned to run with him. The great raid upon the southern lands, so long in the making, had failed before it had really begun.

  At the ferry station, Amiel cast a spell that sent a night-bird of dull Charter marks flying faster than any bird to the Glacier of the Clayr, and then another, like as a twin, winged south to Navis. But even as the magical birds left her hand, she was running for her horse and shouting orders, with Limath at her heels, spitting out the over-large mouthful of cake he had just wedged in his mouth.

  Atop the bastion, Morghan looked at the stars, now so clear in the sky. They looked welcoming to him, something he had not thought about before. If he had the strength, he would have raised a hand to them, but he could not. Besides, he could feel the river calling to him, could hear the roar of the Greenwash – or perhaps it was some other river, for it did not sound entirely the same…

  ‘You are not allowed to die, cadet,’ said a voice near at hand.

  Morghan slowly moved one eye to see who was speaking to him.

  It was Terril, who was crawling over to him. Her hand moved across his face and climbed to his forehead, and two fingers touched the Charter Mark there. He felt some small spark of power flow from her, a faint thread that nevertheless was strong enough to arrest the pull of the unseen river and lessen the attraction of the distant stars.

  ‘I said you are not allowed to die, Cadet Morghan! Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Second,’ whispered Morghan. He did understand, and in that moment, he knew that he would not die. Terril held him back, and Terril was the company, and the company was the bridge, and he was part of it, and always would be, and one day he would be a Second and a Bridgemaster, too, for he had not failed the test.

  He had held the bridge.

  Creatures of Darkness and Light

  Vampire Weather

  ‘YOU BE HOME BY FIVE, Amos,’ said his mother. ‘I saw Theodore on my way back, and he says it’s going to be vampire weather.’

  Amos nodded, and fingered the chain of crosses he wore around his neck. Eleven small silver-washed iron crosses, spread two fingersbreadths apart on a leather thong, so they went all the way around. His great-uncle told him once that they used to only wear crosses at the front, till a vampire took to biting the back of people’s necks, like a dog worrying at a rat.

  He took his hat from the stand near the door. It was made of heavy black felt, and the rim was wound with silver thread. He looked at his coat and thought about not wearing it, because the day was still warm, even if Theodore said there was going to be a fog later, and Theodore always knew.

  ‘And wear your bracers and coat!’ shouted his mother from the kitchen, even though she couldn’t see him.

  Amos sighed and slipped on the heavy leather wrist bracers, pulling the straps tight with his teeth. Then he put on his coat. It was even heavier than it looked, because there were silver dollars sewn into the cuffs and shoulders. It was all right in winter, but any other time all that weight of wool and silver was just too hot.

  Amos had never even seen a vampire. But he knew they were out there. His own father had narrowly escaped one, before Amos was born. His great-uncle, Old Franz, had a terrible tangle of white scars across his hand, the mark of the burning pitch that he had desperately flung at a vampire in a vain attempt to save his first wife and oldest daughter.

  The minister often spoke of the dangers of vampires, as well as the more insidious spiritual threat of things like the internet, television, and any books that weren’t on the approved list. Apart from the vampires, Amos was quite interested in seeing the dangers the mi
nister talked about, but he didn’t suppose he ever would. Even when he finished school next year, his life wouldn’t change much. He’d just spend more time helping out at the sawmill, though there would also be the prospect of building his own house and taking a wife. He hoped his wife would come from some other community of the faith. He didn’t like the idea of marrying one of the half-dozen girls he’d grown up with. But, as with everything, his parents would choose for him, in consultation with the minister and the elders of the chapel.

  Amos felt the heat as he stepped off the porch and into the sun. But looking up the mountainside, a great white, wet cloud was already beginning to descend. Theodore was right as usual. Within an hour the village would be blanketed in fog.

  But an hour left Amos plenty of time to complete his task. He set off down the road, tipping his hat to Young Franz, who was fixing the shingles on his father’s roof.

  ‘Off to the mailbox?’ called out Young Franz, pausing in his hammer strokes, speaking with the ease of long practice past the three nails he held in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Yes, brother,’ answered Amos. Of course he was, it was one of his duties and he did it every day at almost the same time.

  ‘Get back before the fog closes in,’ warned Young Franz. ‘Theodore says it’s—’

  ‘Vampire weather,’ interrupted Amos. He regretted doing so immediately, even before Young Franz paused and deliberately took the nails out of his mouth and set down his hammer.

  ‘I’m sorry, brother,’ blurted out Amos. ‘Please forgive my incivility.’

  Young Franz, who was not only twice as old as Amos but close to twice as heavy, and all of it muscle, looked down at the young man and nodded slowly.

  ‘You be careful, Amos. You sass me again and I’ll birch your backside from here to the hall, with everyone looking on.’

  ‘Yes, brother, I apologize,’ said Amos. He kept his head down and eyes downcast. What had he been thinking to interrupt the toughest and most short-tempered brother in the village?

  ‘Get on with you, then,’ instructed Young Franz. He kept his eye on Amos, but picked up the nails and put them back in his mouth. Every second nail had a silver washer, to stop a vampire breaking in through the roof, just as every chimney was meshed with silver-washed steel.

  Amos nodded with relief and started back down the road, faster now. The fog was closer, one arm of it already extending down the ridge, stretching out to curl back around toward the village like it usually did, to eventually join up with the slower body of mist that was coming straight down the slope.

  He liked going to the mailbox. It was the closest thing the community had to an interface with the wider world, even if it was only an old diesel drum on a post set back twenty feet from a minor mountain road. Sometimes Amos saw a car go past, impossibly swift compared to the horse buggy he rode in once a month, when they visited with the cousins over in New Hareseth. Once a coach had stopped and a whole bunch of people had gotten out and tried to take his photograph, and he had almost dropped the mail as he tried to run back and keep his face covered at the same time.

  The flag was up on the box, Amos saw as he got closer. That was good, since otherwise he would have to wait for the mail truck to get back out on the main road. Sometimes the postal workers were women, and he wasn’t allowed to see or talk to strange women.

  He hurried to the box and carefully unlocked the padlock with the key that he proudly wore on his watch-chain as a visible symbol that while not quite yet a man, he was no longer considered just a boy.

  There were only three items inside: a crop catalog from an old firm that guaranteed no devil-work with their seeds; and two thick, buff-colored envelopes that Amos knew would be from one of the other communities, somewhere around the world. They all used and reused the same envelopes. The two here might have been a dozen places, and come home again.

  Amos put the mail in his voluminous outer pocket, shut the lid, and clicked the padlock shut. But with the click, he heard another sound. Right behind him, the crunch of gravel underfoot.

  He spun around, looking not ahead but up at the sky. When he saw that the sun was still shining, unobscured by the lowering cloud, he dropped his gaze and saw … a girl.

  ‘Hi,’ said the girl. She was about his age, and really pretty, but Amos backed up to the mailbox.

  She wore no crosses, and her light sundress showed a bare neck and arms, and even a glimpse of her breasts. Amos gulped as she moved and caught the sun, making the dress transparent, so he could see right through it.

  ‘Hi,’ the girl said again, and stepped closer.

  Amos raised his bracer-bound wrists to make a cross.

  ‘Get back!’ he cried. ‘I don’t know how you walk in the sun, vampire, but you can’t take me! My faith is strong!’

  The girl wrinkled her nose, but she stopped.

  ‘I’m not a vampire,’ she said. ‘I’ve been vaccinated like everyone else. Look.’

  She rotated her arm to show the inside of her elbow. There was a tattoo there, some kind of bird thing inside a rectangle, with numbers and letters spelling out a code.

  ‘Vacks … vexination …’ stumbled Amos. ‘That’s devil’s work. If you’re human, you wear crosses, else the vampires get you.’

  ‘Not since maybe the last twenty years,’ said the girl. ‘But like you said, if I am a vampire, how come I’m out in the sun?’

  Amos shook his head. He didn’t know what to do. The girl stood in his path. She was right about the sun, but even though she wasn’t a vampire, she was a girl, an outsider. He shouldn’t be looking at her, or talking to her. But he couldn’t stop looking.

  ‘I don’t have a problem with crosses, either,’ said the girl. She took the three steps to Amos and reached over to touch the crosses around his neck, picking them up one by one, almost fondling them with her long, elegant fingers. Amos stopped breathing and tried to think of prayers he couldn’t remember, prayers to quench lust and … sinful stirrings and …

  He broke away and ran a few yards toward the village. He would have kept going, but the girl laughed. He stopped and looked back.

  ‘Why’re you laughing?’

  She stopped and smiled again.

  ‘Just … men don’t usually run away from me.’

  Amos stood a little straighter. She thought he was a man, which was more than the village girls did.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked the girl. ‘I’m Tangerine.’

  ‘Amos,’ said Amos slowly. ‘My name is Amos.’

  Behind the girl, the fog kept coming down, thick and white and damp.

  ‘It’s good to meet you, Amos. Are you from the village, up the mountain?’

  Amos nodded his head.

  ‘We just moved in along the road,’ said Tangerine. ‘My dad is working at the observatory.’

  Amos nodded again. He knew about the observatory. You could see one of its domes from the northern end of the village, though it was actually on the crest of the other mountain, across the valley.

  ‘You’d better get home before the fog blanks the sun,’ he said. ‘It’s vampire weather.’

  Tangerine smiled again. She smiled more than anyone Amos had ever known.

  ‘I told you, I’m vaccinated,’ she said. ‘No vampire will bite me. Hey, could I come visit with you?’

  Amos shook his head urgently. He couldn’t imagine the punishment he would earn if he came back with an almost naked outsider woman, one who didn’t even wear a cross.

  ‘It’s lonely back home,’ said Tangerine. ‘I mean, no one lives here, and Dad works, there’s just me and my grandmother most of the time.’

  The fog was shrouding the tops of the tallest trees across the road. Amos watched it and even as he spoke he wondered why he wasn’t already running back up the road to home.

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Tangerine. ‘She died a long while back.’

  Amos could smell the fog now, could almost tast
e the wetness on his tongue. There could be vampires right there, hidden in that vanguard of cloud, close enough to spring out and be on him in seconds. But he still found it difficult to tear himself away.

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he said, and bolted, calling over his shoulder, ‘Same time.’

  ‘See you then!’ said Tangerine. She waved, and that image stayed in Amos’s head, her standing like that, her raised arm lifting her breasts, that smile on her face, and her bright hair shining, with the cold white fog behind, like a painted background, to make sure she stood out even more.

  Amos wasn’t home by five, or even half past, and he just barely beat the main body of the fog, which came straight down. The home door was shut and barred by the time he got there, so he had to knock on the lesser door, and he got a cracking slap from his mother when she let him in, and when his father finished his bath he ordered an hour-long penance, which left Amos with his knees sore from kneeling, and made the words he’d been repeating over and over so meaningless that he felt like they were some other language that he’d once known but had somehow forgotten.

  Through it all, he kept thinking of Tangerine, seeing Tangerine, imagining what might happen when he next saw her … and then he’d try to pray harder, to concentrate on those meaningless words, but whatever he did, he couldn’t direct his mind away from those bare arms and legs, the way her unbound hair fell …

  Amos slept very badly, and earned more punishments before breakfast than he’d had in the past month. Even his father, who favored prayer and penance over any other form of correction, was moved to take off his leather belt, though he only held it as an unspoken threat while he delivered a homily on attention and obedience.

  Finally, it was time to get the mail. Amos took no chances that this plum job might be taken from him. If anyone else saw Tangerine he’d never be allowed to go to the mailbox again. So he put on his bracers, coat, and hat without being asked and went to tell his mother he was going.