He roared, and a group of bears peeled away from the main group and attacked the Tartars right flank. Lyra could feel his desire to be there among them, but all the time her nerves were screaming: On! On! and her mind was filled with pictures of Roger and Lord Asriel; and lorek Byrnison knew, and turned up the mountain and away from the fight, leaving his bears to hold back the Tartars.
Lyra jumped down and stood beside him to look. He was standing at the edge of a chasm. Whether it was a crevasse in the ice or a fissure in the rock was hard to say, and made little difference in any case; all that mattered was that it plunged downward into unfathomable gloom.
If she went on, it would have to be by herself.
Lyra was alone.
Because from the direction in which theyd flown, she saw many others coming to join them; and in midair with them there was a group of gleaming lights; and across the broad expanse of the Svalbard plain, under the radiance of the Aurora, she heard a sound she dreaded. It was the harsh throb of a gas engine.
The zeppelin, with Mrs. Coulter and her troops on board, was catching up.
Lyra turned to lorek Byrnison.
And Lord Asriels tracks ran on beyond the bridge and further up the mountain.
After a minute she opened her eyes and crawled up away from the edge. There was no way back. She stood and raised her hand to the watching bear. lorek Byrnison stood on his hind legs to acknowledge her, and then turned and made off down the mountain in a swift run to help his subjects in the battle with Mrs. Coulter and the soldiers from the zeppelin.
The fire thrower worked again: this time a mass of blazing sulfur hurtled directly upward to strike the gondola and burst in a cascade of flaming fragments on all sides. The zeppelin banked to the left, and roared away in a wide arc before making again for the group of bears working swiftly beside the apparatus. As it neared, the arm of the fire thrower creaked downward; the machine rifle coughed and spat, and two bears fell, to a low growl from lorek Byrnison; and when the aircraft was nearly overhead, a bear shouted an order, and the spring-loaded arm shot upward again.
Her heart thumping painfully with love, she turned away and set her foot on the bridge. The snow creaked under her, and Pantalaimon flew up and over the bridge, to settle in the snow on the far side and encourage her onward. Step after step she took, and wondered with every step whether it would be better to run swiftly and leap for the other side, or go slowly as she was doing and tread as lightly as possible. Halfway across there came another loud creak from the snow; a piece fell off near her feet and tumbled into the abyss, and the bridge settled down another few inches against the crack.
She stood perfectly still. Pantalaimon was crouched, leopard-formed, ready to leap down and reach for her.
This bridge had clearly felt the strain of the sledges weight, for a crack ran across it close to the other edge of the chasm, and the surface on the near side of the crack had settled down a foot or so. It might support the weight of a child: it would certainly not stand under the weight of an armored bear.
Then it became clear that they had a powerful weapon in the zeppelin too: a machine rifle mounted on the nose of the gondola. Lyra saw sparks flying up from some of the bears armor, and saw them huddle over beneath its protection, before she heard the rattle of the bullets. She cried out in fear.
“Alive or dead, I will find him.”
The pilot either had never seen a fire hurler before, or was underestimating its power, for he flew straight on toward the bears without climbing or turning a fraction to either side.
If she was relieved by that, her relief didnt last more than a few moments.
“The tracks go on,” said lorek Byrnison. “But I cannot.”
“Goodbye, Lyra Silvertongue,” he said.
They spoke no more for some time. Lyra felt herself moving into a kind of trance beyond sleep and waking: a state of conscious dreaming, almost, in which she was dreaming that she was being carried by bears to a city in the stars.
On they climbed. Lyra strained her eyes to look ahead, but not even Pantalaimons owl eyes could see any movement on the flank of the mountain they were climbing. Lord Asriels sledge tracks were clear, however, and lorek followed them swiftly, loping through the snow and kicking it high behind them as he ran. Whatever happened behind now was simply that: behind. Lyra had left it. She felt she was leaving the world altogether, so remote and intent she was, so high they were climbing, so strange and uncanny was the light that bathedthem.
lorek growled an order and the bears moved at once into another formation. In the lurid flicker from the sky Lyra watched as they swiftly unloaded their fire hurler. The advance guard of the witch flight had seen them too, and began to swoop downward and rain arrows on them, but for the most part the bears trusted to their armor and worked swiftly to erect the apparatus: a long arm extending upward at an angle, a cup or bowl a yard across, and a great iron tank wreathed in smoke and steam.
The witches were swooping so thickly above them that three fellin flames at the first shot alone, but it was soon clear that the real target was the zeppelin.
This time the sulfur hurtled against the envelope of the zeppelins gas bag. The rigid frame held a skin of oiled silk in place to contain the hydrogen, and although this was tough enough to withstand minor scratches, a hundredweight of blazing rock was too much for it. The silk ripped straight through, and sulfur and hydrogen leaped to meet each other in a catastrophe of flame.
And the tracks of Lord Asriels sledge ran to the brink... and on, across a bridge of compacted snow.
“On,” said lorek. “They will hold out for a long time.”
But the soldiers on board, and the others too (though Lyra was too far away by now to spot Mrs. Coulter, she knew she was there), wasted no time. With the help of the witches they dragged the machine gun out and set it up, and began to fight in earnest on the ground.
Lyra crouched low beside a rock, watching for a witch dive. A few shot at her, but the arrows fell wide; and then Lyra, looking up at the sky, saw the greater part of the witch flight peel off and turn back.
As she watched, a bright flame gushed out, and a team of bears swung into practiced action. Two of them hauled the long arm of the fire thrower down, another scooped shovelfuls of fire into the bowl, and at an order they released it, to hurl the flaming sulfur high into the dark sky.
She was going to say something about it to lorek Byrnison, when he slowed down and came to a halt.
“And if you see Serafina Pekkala...”
“I will tell her what you did.”
“Thank you, lorek,” she said.
The bridge held. She took another step, then another, and then she felt something settling down below her feet and leaped for the far side with all her strength. She landed belly-down in the snow as the entire length of the bridge fell into the crevasse with a soft whoosh behind her.
“I got to go across,” she said. “Thank you for all you done. I dont know whats going to happen when I get to him. We might all die, whether I get to him or not. But if I come back, Ill come and see you to thank you properly, King lorek Byrnison.”
“lorek,” she said, “will you find Lee Scoresby?”
She laid a hand on his head. He let it lie there and nodded gently.
At once the silk became transparent; the entire skeleton of the zeppelin was visible, dark against an inferno of orange and red and yellow, hanging in the air for what seemed like an impossibly long time before drifting to the ground almost reluctantly. Little figures black against the snow and the fire came tottering or running from it, and witches flew down to help drag them away from the flames. Within a minute of the zeppelins hitting the ground it was a mass of twisted metal, a pall of smoke, and a few scraps of fluttering fire.
“Theyre safe,” said lorek Byrnison. “Cant pierce armor with little bullets.”
lorek Byrnison gave swift orders. It was clear that the bears were practiced at witch fighting, for they had moved at once into a defensive formation, and the witches moved just as smoothly into attack. They could only shoot accurately from close range, and in order not to waste arrows they would swoop down, fire at the lowest part of their dive, and turn upward at once. But when they reached the lowest point, and their hands were busy with bow and arrow, they were vulnerable, and the bears would explode upward with raking paws to drag them down. More than one fell, and was quickly dispatched.
Pantalaimons claws were in her furs, holding tight.
