One of the gates had been knocked off its hinges, and there were more bodies on the ground just beyond it. These soldiers had been wearing mail coats and helmets, which hadn’t saved them. More soldiers were running out of the pillboxes, and there were several in firing positions to the side of the road, though they’d stopped shooting because of the risk of hitting 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.”