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 running, his arm gripped tightly in Dario Santiago's hand. Thomas loped next to him, and Khalila, and all the others. When Jess looked back over his shoulder he saw that Santi's men had broken free of the conflict and were coursing after them, with a growing mob on their trail like rabid wolves.
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 running towards them across the muddy open ground. They were all armed. 'Halt!' one of them shouted, and the men and women all came to a quick stop in the mud with their weapons trained on the Library party. 'Surrender anyone not in your party! You have thirty seconds to comply!'
'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 winning?' Jess said. He felt sick inside, and angry, and he needed to hit the only target in reach.
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 connections won't save you a second time.
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.
There was blood. It was spreading fast.
'Jess!' He hadn't realised that he'd fallen until Morgan's hands were slapping his cheeks. 'Jess, wake up - someone! He's bleeding!'
'I'm fine,' Jess mumbled. He was aware that he wasn't, really. His head felt oddly stuffed, and he just wanted to rest. Close his eyes. As he grew warmer, the blood flowed faster, and took the pain away with it.
He was flat on his back now, with no sense of transition, and there were faces leaning towards him. They looked strange. Thomas looked very strange, all out of proportion, and Jess wanted to laugh but he couldn't quite manage it. Wolfe was next to him, too, and barking orders that made no sense, something about a surgeon. Someone needed a surgeon.
He blinked, and it was night. The lights were low, the heater still casting warmth. He was tucked onto a camp bed, wrapped in a thick pile of blankets, and when he clumsily tried to move, pain paralysed him. He managed to lift up the covers with his left hand. He was almost bare beneath it, and a glaring white bandage wrapped tightly from his waist and up onto his ribs. 'Oh,' he said. 'Right. I remember.'
His head fell back against the pillow, and he heard someone
stir nearby. It was Thomas, who sat up and leant forward. 'Stay still,' his friend said. 'Someone stabbed you. The only thing that kept you alive was the cold, Wolfe said.'
'I know,' Jess said. He felt oddly disconnected, still. 'Someone gave me medicine.'
'Dario is jealous. He only got bandages. You have narcotics.'
'It doesn't feel like winning,' Jess said. 'Is everyone else all right?'
'You're our worst.' Thomas's face shut down. 'The worst who lived. You saw Portero?'
'I remember.' Jess thought he'd never forget it. Any of it. Not Portero's killing, not the run for the gate, not the child in his arms that he'd had to give up. 'You heard anything about my cousin?'
'Nothing. They're still fighting inside the city. Not many have managed to make it. Dario thinks the Welsh will declare victory soon and spare the survivors; they have made their point to the English king. They could have killed everyone.'
Glain wasn't far away, and now she sat up, too. 'Not like English hands aren't bloody,' she said. 'This started with the slaughter of the Welsh during the Glyndwr uprising. Men, women, children ... cut down by the tens of thousands.'
'So killing each other is--'
'Stop,' Jess said wearily. 'It doesn't matter why, or who, or how long it's been going on. We're the Library. Left our countries behind, remember? Neutral. Where's Wolfe?'
'Off with the Welsh general.'
'And Morgan?'
'I'm here.' He turned his head, and saw Morgan, on a bed a few down. 'You frightened us. What were you thinking, not telling anyone you'd been stabbed?'
'I didn't know I had been,' he said. 'It didn't hurt at the time.'
She shook her head and stared up at the dark, fluttering fabric of the tent above their heads. He couldn't see much of her expression. What he could looked angry.
'I told her to rest,' Thomas said. 'She hit me when I told her to leave you alone.'
'I just wanted to see how he was doing. You were in my way,' she said. 'And you're too big to go around.'
'She has a point,' Jess said. He wanted to laugh, but he knew it would be too painful. The impulse faded quickly. 'So we survived.'
Thomas patted Jess on the shoulder, too hard. 'Go back to sleep, English. Wolfe said we can rest a while before we leave. He wants to be sure you can make the trip safely first.'