Iorek reached the top of a little rise in the ground and paused. Ahead of them the broken ground sloped down toward a grove about a quarter of a mile away. Somewhere beyond that a battery of great guns was firing shell after shell, howling high overhead, and someone was firing flares, too, that burst just under the clouds and drifted down toward the trees, making them blaze with cold green light as a fine target for the guns.
And fighting for control of the grove itself were a score or more Specters, being held back by a ragged band of ghosts. As soon as they saw that little group of trees, Lyra and Will both knew that their daemons were in there, and that if they didn’t reach them soon, they would die. More Specters were arriving there every minute, streaming over the ridge from the right. Will and Lyra could see them very clearly now.
An explosion just over the ridge shook the ground and flung stones and clods of earth high into the air. Lyra cried out, and Will had to clutch his chest.
“Hold on,” Iorek growled, and began to charge.
A flare burst high above, and another and another, drifting slowly downward with a magnesium‑bright glare. Another shell burst, closer this time, and they felt the shock of the air and a second or two later the sting of earth and stones on their faces. Iorek didn’t falter, but they found it hard to hold on. They couldn’t dig their fingers into his fur – they had to grip the armor between their knees, and his back was so broad that both of them kept slipping.
“Look!” cried Lyra, pointing up as another shell burst nearby.
A dozen witches were making for the flares, carrying thick‑leaved, bushy branches, and with them they brushed the glaring lights aside, sweeping them away into the sky beyond. Darkness fell over the grove again, hiding it from the guns.
And now the grove was only a few yards away. Will and Lyra both felt their missing selves close by – an excitement, a wild hope chilled with fear, because the Specters were thick among the trees and they would have to go in directly among them, and the very sight of them evoked that nauseating weakness at the heart.
“They’re afraid of the knife,” said a voice beside them, and the bear‑king stopped so suddenly that Will and Lyra tumbled off his back.
“Lee!” said Iorek. “Lee, my comrade, I have never seen this before. You are dead – what am I speaking to?”
“Iorek, old feller, you don’t know the half of it. We’ll take over now – the Specters aren’t afraid of bears. Lyra, Will – come this way, and hold up that knife – ”
The blue hawk swooped once more to Lyra’s fist, and the gray‑haired lady said, “Don’t waste a second – go in and find your daemons and escape! There’s more danger coming.”
“Thank you, Lady! Thank you all!” said Lyra, and the hawk took wing.
Will could see Lee Scoresby’s ghost dimly beside them, urging them into the grove, but they had to say farewell to Iorek Byrnison.
“Iorek, my dear, there en’t words – bless you, bless you!”
“Thank you, King Iorek,” said Will.
“No time. Go. Go!”
He pushed them away with his armored head. Will plunged after Lee Scoresby’s ghost into the undergrowth, slashing to right and left with the knife. The light here was broken and muted, and the shadows were thick, tangled, confusing.
“Keep close,” he called to Lyra, and then cried out as a bramble sliced across his cheek.
All around them there was movement, noise, and struggle. The shadows moved to and fro like branches in a high wind. They might have been ghosts: both children felt the little dashes of cold they knew so well. Then they heard voices all around:
“This way!”
“Over here!”
“Keep going – we’re holding them off!”
“Not far now!”
And then came a cry in a voice that Lyra knew and loved better than any other:
“Oh, come quick! Quick, Lyra!”
“Pan, darling – I’m here – ”
She hurled herself into the dark, sobbing and shaking, and Will tore down branches and ivy and slashed at brambles and nettles, while all around them the ghost‑voices rose in a clamor of encouragement and warning.
But the Specters had found their target, too, and they pressed in through the snagging tangle of bush and briar and root and branch, meeting no more resistance than smoke. A dozen, a score of the pallid malignities seemed to pour in toward the center of the grove, where John Parry’s ghost marshaled his companions to fight them off.
Will and Lyra were both trembling and weak with fear, exhaustion, nausea, and pain, but giving up was inconceivable. Lyra tore at the brambles with her bare hands, Will slashed and hacked to left and right, as around them the combat of the shadowy beings became more and more savage.
“There!” cried Lee. “See ‘em? By that big rock – ”
A wildcat, two wildcats, spitting and hissing and slashing. Both were daemons, and Will felt that if there were time he’d easily be able to tell which was Pantalaimon; but there wasn’t time, because a Specter eased horribly out of the nearest patch of shadow and glided toward the daemons.
Will leapt over the last obstacle, a fallen tree trunk, and plunged the knife into the unresisting shimmer in the air. He felt his arm go numb, but he clenched his teeth as he was clenching his fingers around the hilt, and the pale form seemed to boil away and melt back into the darkness again.
Almost there; and the daemons were mad with fear, because more Specters and still more came pressing through the trees, and only the valiant ghosts were holding them back.
“Can you cut through?” said John Parry’s ghost.
Will held up the knife, and had to stop as a racking bout of nausea shook him from head to toe. There was nothing left in his stomach, and the spasm hurt dreadfully. Lyra beside him was in the same state. Lee’s ghost, seeing why, leapt for the daemons and wrestled with the pale thing that was coming through the rock from behind them.
“Will – please – ” said Lyra, gasping.
In went the knife, along, down, back. Lee Scoresby’s ghost looked through and saw a wide, quiet prairie under a brilliant moon, so very like his own homeland that he thought he’d been blessed.
Will leapt across the clearing and seized the nearest daemon while Lyra scooped up the other.
And even in that horrible urgency, even at that moment of utmost peril, each of them felt the same little shock of excitement: for Lyra was holding Will’s daemon, the nameless wildcat, and Will was carrying Pantalaimon.
They tore their glance away from each other’s eyes.
“Good‑bye, Mr. Scoresby!” Lyra cried, looking around for him. “I wish – oh, thank you, thank you – good‑bye!”
“Good‑bye, my dear child – good‑bye, Will – go well!”
Lyra scrambled through, but Will stood still and looked into the eyes of his father’s ghost, brilliant in the shadows. Before he left him, there was something he had to say.
Will said to his father’s ghost, “You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldn’t argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I can’t choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now I’m free.”
His father’s smile was full of pride and tenderness. “Well done, my boy. Well done indeed,” he said.
Will couldn’t see him anymore. He turned and climbed through after Lyra.
And now that their purpose was achieved, now the children had found their daemons and escaped, the dead warriors allowed their atoms to relax and drift apart, at long, long last.
Out of the little grove, away from the baffled Specters, out of the valley, past the mighty form of his old companion the armor‑clad bear, the last little scrap of the consciousness that had been the aeronaut Lee Scoresby floated upward, just as his great balloon had done so many times. Untroubled by the flares and the bursting shells, deaf to the explosions and the shouts and cries of anger and warning and pain, conscious only of his movement upward, the last of Lee Scoresby passed through the heavy clouds and came out under the brilliant stars, where the atoms of his beloved daemon, Hester, were waiting for him.