are Legionaries,” said Hopell stolidly. “We will fight to the end.”
“Yes,” said Nage, “we will. But it may not be an end we like.”
Heavy footsteps sounded outside the door, the beat of a dozen or more officers marching down the corridor, called to the colonel by the trumpet signal.
“Do not speak of my doubts,” said Nage quickly. “It was a moment of uncertainty, no more. We will fight and we will win. The Nithlings will fail before the fort, as they will be defeated elsewhere in the Great Maze by our Glorious Army.”
“Yes, sir!” shouted Hopell. He saluted as the first of the officers marched in, several others hard at their heels.
“Gather round,” said Nage quickly. “We don’t have much time and we must organise a defence. I have received and confirmed an order to open all four Gates – yes, all four gates. Shortly after that happens, I expect the fort to be attacked by several hundred thousand organised Nithlings. We must hold out for twelve hours, when we are ordered to shut the gates again. Whatever else happens – no matter what casualties we suffer – the switch room must be held and the gates must be closed on time.”
“Surely it’s not that bad, sir,” suggested one the centurions with a little giggle. He was a recent replacement, who had spent the last thousand years at GHQ. His cuirass was bare of gallantry medals, but had several stars awarded for efficiency in managing House paperwork. “Once they come out of the Goldgate, they will have to climb up the ramps under a rain of power-spears and firewash from the engines on the bastions, get through the fort’s own gates… We’ll easily hold them. They will not stay organised, anyway. Nithlings always run wild—”
“I am glad of your confidence, centurion,” interrupted Nage. “You may have the honour of commanding the Forlorn Hope I am placing at the base of the ramp.”
The centurion’s bracer clash acknowledging this order was less strident than it should have been, quiet enough that the chime of the Colonel’s watch was louder.
“Twenty minutes. I shall take five to outline my plans and then you will return to your units. I will command from the Switch Room myself. Our battlecry will be—” The colonel hesitated for a moment then said, “Death and the Legion!”
His words were echoed immediately by the gathered officers, their shouts making the tea cups on the colonel’s sideboard rattle.
“Death and the Legion!”
“Hurry up!” Arthur Penhaligon called out. “We have to get to the Front Door before Dame Primus shows up and tries to talk me out of going home.”
“OK, OK,” grumbled Leaf. “I just stopped to look at the view.”
“No time,” said Arthur. He continued to lead the way up Doorstop Hill, moving as quickly as his crab-armoured leg would allow him. His broken bone was still not fully healed.
Leaf started after him, with a glance over her shoulder. They’d run straight out of the elevator that had taken them down… or across… or sideways… from Port Wednesday on the flooded shores of the Border Sea. She hadn’t had any time to look at anything in the Lower House.
“There’s the Front Door!” Arthur pointed up ahead to the huge, free-standing door that stood on the crest of the hill, supported by two white stone gateposts that were about thirty feet apart and forty feet high.
“That’s a door?” asked Leaf. “Must be tough to push it open.”
“It doesn’t exactly open,” said Arthur. “You just walk in. Don’t look at the patterns on it for too long though.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll go crazy,” said Arthur. “Or get stuck looking.”
“You know I’m going to have to look now,” said Leaf. “If you hadn’t said anything I probably wouldn’t have bothered.”
Arthur shook his head. “You can’t help it. Just don’t look too long.”
“Which side do we go to?” Leaf asked when they were only a few yards away. “And do we knock?”
“It doesn’t matter which side,” said Arthur. He tried to look away from the wrought iron curlicues and patterns on the door but couldn’t quite manage it. After a second, the shapes shivered and began to change, each image fixing itself in his head before it morphed into something else.
Arthur shut his eyes and reached out blindly towards Leaf, planning to tug her elbow or the back of her shirt. But she was much closer than he had thought and his questing fingers poked her in the face.
“Ow! Uh… thanks.”
Arthur turned his head away from the door and opened his eyes.
“I guess I was getting hooked,” Leaf said as she rubbed her nose. She kept her eyes averted from the door, instead looking up at the high domed ceiling of silvery metal that reached its apex several hundred feet directly above them. It was night in the Lower House, the only light provided by the strange clouds of glowing purple or orange that drifted across the silver surface.
As Leaf looked up, a beam of light shot down, marking the path of an elevator from another part of the House. It was quickly followed by another two beams striking down from above.
“So do we knock?” Leaf asked again.
“Not yet,” Arthur replied. He looked across at the fading trail of the elevator beams as he spoke, acutely aware that they had probably delivered Dame Primus and her entourage, come to give him a hard time – though he had half expected she would already be ahead of him, having used a Transfer Plate. “We wait for the Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door first.”
Dame Primus would want him to stay or at least hand over the Third Key, which was supposedly needed to keep the Border Sea in check. But Arthur didn’t want to part with the only weapon he had. He had finally accepted that he must go up against the Morrow Days, that avoidance was not an option. The whole gang of Sir Thursday, Lady Friday, Superior Saturday and Lord Sunday would not leave him alone. They would interfere with destructive results in his world or any other world; they would hurt and kill whoever they wanted; they would do whatever they thought would help them retain their Keys and their authority over the House. The only way to stop the Morrow Days was to defeat them.
Arthur knew he had to fight, but he wanted to do it on his own terms. Right now, he wanted to check up on his family and make sure everything was all right back on his own world. Then he’d return to the House and do whatever had to be done to release the Fourth Part of the Will from Sir Thursday and claim the Fourth Key.
They waited in front of the Door for a few minutes, looking at the spires, towers and roofs of the city below. When Arthur had first seen it, the city had been cloaked in fog, but there was no fog now and he could dimly make out a few Denizens wandering about the streets. As he watched, a large group came out of one of the closer buildings, milled around for a few seconds then headed towards the new-mown slopes of Doorstop Hill.
“Maybe we should knock,” he said. “Here comes Dame Primus and the whole crew.”
He took a step towards the Door and, still averting his eyes, rapped smartly on the strange surface. It didn’t feel like wood or iron, or in fact like anything solid at all. His fist sank into it as if he’d knocked on something with the consistency of jelly, and at the same time he felt a tingling through his knuckles that travelled up into his wrist and elbow.
But it did make a knocking sound – a hollow, sustained noise that Arthur could hear echoing inside the door with several seconds’ delay, as if the sound