Chapter 12: The Yard

The wagon yard was a mile from the keep, outside the city wall.

By the time we reached it, the whole east end was red.

I ran.

I had my trousers on backward and my coat half-buttoned, and I did not care.

Finola stood in the middle of the yard with a bucket and a face black with soot.

"Lyra! The wagons! I couldn't get them all."

"Where are the mules?"

"Out! I got them out! Biscuit bit a man!"

"Good."

Five of my six wagons were already burning.

Fire ran along the canvas and rolled up into the night in sheets.

I picked up a bucket.

A moment later a bar of white-hot pain seared down my left arm.

I screamed and dropped it.

"Lyra!"

The Commander was beside me.

He had gone down on one knee, and his hand was clamped around his own forearm.

"I felt that," he said through his teeth.

"A burn. I grabbed a rail."

"It is the same on my arm."

The pain came again, a raw blistering stripe, and this time it was both of us.

We went down together in the dirt.

The burn doubled between us.

"We can't both be in this," I managed.

"Orrin!" he roared. "Water line! Form a line to the river!"

Soldiers poured into the yard.

They ran buckets hand to hand from the river, through the smoke.

A dozen grey-coated men threw themselves at the burning wagons with blankets.

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