In a moment she leapt up to the rocks, and the man sprang away from Mrs. Coulter, both of them moving as quickly as grasshoppers. The three children had no time to be astonished. The man was concerned: he felt his companion’s shoulder and arm tenderly, and embraced her swiftly before calling to Will.
“You! Boy!” he said, and although his voice was small in volume, it was as deep as a grown man’s. “Have you got the knife?”
“Of course I have,” said Will. If they didn’t know it was broken, he wasn’t going to tell them.
“You and the girl will have to follow us. Who is the other child?”
“Ama, from the village,” said Will.
“Tell her to return there. Move now, before the Swiss come.”
Will didn’t hesitate. Whatever these two intended, he and Lyra could still get away through the window he’d opened behind the bush on the path below.
So he helped her up and watched curiously as the two small figures leapt on—what? Birds? No, dragonflies, as large as seagulls, which had been waiting in the darkness. Then they darted forward to the cave mouth, where Mrs. Coulter lay. She was half-stunned with pain and drowsy from the Chevalier’s sting, but she reached up as they went past her, and cried:
“Lyra! Lyra, my daughter, my dear one! Lyra, don’t go! Don’t go!”
Lyra looked down at her, anguished; but then she stepped over her mother’s body and loosened Mrs. Coulter’s feeble clutch from her ankle. The woman was sobbing now; Will saw the tears glistening on her cheeks.
Crouching just beside the cave mouth, the three children waited until there was a brief pause in the shooting, and then followed the dragonflies as they darted down the path. The light had changed: as well as the cold anbaric gleam from the zeppelins’ floodlights, there was the leaping orange of flames.
Will looked back once. In the glare Mrs. Coulter’s face was a mask of tragic passion, and her dæmon clung piteously to her as she knelt and held out her arms, crying:
“Lyra! Lyra, my love! My heart’s treasure, my little child, my only one! Oh, Lyra, Lyra, don’t go, don’t leave me! My darling daughter—you’re tearing my heart—”
And a great and furious sob shook Lyra herself, for, after all, Mrs. Coulter was the only mother she would ever have, and Will saw a cascade of tears run down the girl’s cheeks.
But he had to be ruthless. He pulled at Lyra’s hand, and as the dragonfly rider darted close to his head, urging them to hurry, he led her at a crouching run down the path and away from the cave. In Will’s left hand, bleeding again from the blow he’d landed on the monkey, was Mrs. Coulter’s pistol.
“Make for the top of the cliff,” said the dragonfly rider, “and give yourself up to the Africans. They’re your best hope.”
Mindful of those sharp spurs, Will said nothing, though he hadn’t the least intention of obeying. There was only one place he was making for, and that was the window behind the bush; so he kept his head low and ran fast, and Lyra and Ama ran behind him.
“Halt!”
There was a man, three men, blocking the path ahead—uniformed—white men with crossbows and snarling wolf-dog dæmons—the Swiss Guard.
“Iorek!” cried Will at once. “Iorek Byrnison!” He could hear the bear crashing and snarling not far away, and hear the screams and cries of the soldiers unlucky enough to meet him.
But someone else came from nowhere to help them: Balthamos, in a blur of desperation, hurled himself between the children and the soldiers. The men fell back, amazed, as this apparition shimmered into being in front of them.
But they were trained warriors, and a moment later their dæmons leapt at the angel, savage teeth flashing white in the gloom—and Balthamos flinched: he cried out in fear and shame, and shrank back. Then he sprang upward, beating his wings hard. Will watched in dismay as the figure of his guide and friend soared up to vanish out of sight among the treetops.
Lyra was following it all with still-dazed eyes. It had taken no more than two or three seconds, but it was enough for the Swiss to regroup, and now their leader was raising his crossbow, and Will had no choice: he swung up the pistol and clamped his right hand to the butt and pulled the trigger, and the blast shook his bones, but the bullet found the man’s heart.
The soldier fell back as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Simultaneously the two little spies launched themselves at the other two, leaping from the dragonflies at their victims before Will could blink. The woman found a neck, the man a wrist, and each made a quick backward stab with a heel. A choking, anguished gasp, and the two Swiss died, their dæmons vanishing in mid-howl.
Will leapt over the bodies, and Lyra went with him, running hard and fast with Pantalaimon racing wildcat-formed at their heels. Where’s Ama? Will thought, and he saw her in the same moment dodging down a different path. Now she’ll be safe, he thought, and a second later he saw the pale gleam of the window deep behind the bushes. He seized Lyra’s arm and pulled her toward it. Their faces were scratched, their clothes were snagged, their ankles twisted on roots and rocks, but they found the window and tumbled through, into the other world, onto the bone-white rocks under the glaring moon, where only the scraping of the insects broke the immense silence.
And the first thing Will did was to hold his stomach and retch, heaving and heaving with a mortal horror. That was two men now that he’d killed, not to mention the youth in the Tower of the Angels . . . Will did not want this. His body revolted at what his instinct had made him do, and the result was a dry, sour, agonizing spell of kneeling and vomiting until his stomach and his heart were empty.