A cold anger stole over Dante's bones as he watched the rats' teeth clashing through the ropes of the condemned. The hangman cried out and bumped one of the men off his stool. His bare feet kicked at the air. One of the rats jumped on his feet and scrabbled up his legs to the noose. It chomped down and within three heartbeats the rope snapped and the man thumped against the ground. Everything began to move at once and Dante whooped like a savage and plowed through the men between him and the clearing. With a terrible thrill he wouldn't unlive for all the world he burst into the open ground. The dead rats were running out of ropes to gnaw through and with a thought he sent them to assault the first guard who'd figured out Something Bad was going down. Blood leapt away from the man's leg as the rats ripped in with tiny claws. He smashed the bones of one with the pommel of his sword, then fell screaming to his knees. The rats swarmed up his body.
Dante rushed into the field, staff in his left hand and sword held high in his right, torchstone gleaming from his open mouth.
"The judgment of the gods has come!" he screamed around the stone at the men who'd be hanged. "Kill them all! Fight for your lives!"
Heads turned his way. The cannier men seized the confusion for their own. One of the guards cut down a distracted prisoner while one of the prisoners punched out a guard and snatched up his sword. Like a school of fish every man moved at once. The watch clustered up and began an advance on the tight circle of condemned men. The vast crowds wailed like a roof-stripping gale as some fell back and others pushed forward for a glimpse of this new chaos.
"Fight, you bastard sons! Fight for your lives! Don't you dare give them up to these dogs cloaked in law!"
Dante closed on their ranks. He threw the staff at the first prisoner to look his way. One of the watch broke rank to intercept him and Dante stretched out his free hand and the man's ribs popped, dropping him mid-step. Blays' shocked laughter bubbled over the shouts and the roar and Dante met the boy's eyes and tossed him his sword. Its point speared the earth and Blays snatched it up and met the first wedge of watchmen, lashing out with the full strength of his arm. Dante spat out the torchstone and dropped it in his pocket. He took his knife from his belt and laid open the palm of his left hand, flashing his teeth at the hot rush of pain. Blood wicked up the lines of his palm and he closed his fist.
He looked up, meaning to join the skirmish beginning in earnest between law and outlaw, and met eyes with a watchman not three feet in front of him. The man's sword whooshed through the air in a downstroke that would cleave his skull. Dante shouted out to the nether, but there was no time. His eyes and nostrils went wide. He thought: so there's nothing up there looking out for us. Perhaps it wasn't all in vain. Blays still lived. Blays could still make it out.
Steel flashed as the stroke fell. Dante heard a hiss like a doused torch and then a gurgle and a wet boom and his face was showered with stinging blood as the guard's sword exploded in what had been his hands. Dante fell back, swiping gunk from his eyes, and the guard raised his spurting stumps and keeled over like a cut tree.
Cally. Hope flared back up in his chest. He rushed to the main battle, feeling sure and invincible as a panther. A line of bodies from both sides marked the border of the struggle. Small, crushed bones lay in disordered piles, but a pair of his rats fought on, digging into the stomach of one of the watchmen. The man doubled over, crushing one of the vermin as it squirmed through the other side of his body. Blays whirled, knocking back their attacks to right and left, but the guard's sheer numbers gave him no room to strike back. Three of the other convicts still survived, one with Dante's staff, one with a guard's sword, the last with just his own bleeding knuckles; before Dante could make a move a watchman lunged in and ran the unarmed man through. He felt as if it were someone else's hands grasping the nether and sending it in a black bolt that squirted the guard's brains from his ear. A knife flipped through the air and into Dante's left biceps and he screamed and went numb to the fingertips. He yanked it free and flung it at a watchman closing on Blays. The man flinched back and Blays swept out and sprayed blood into the air. At least a dozen of the guard left, though, to their mere four, and already he could feel his control of the shadows growing tenuous, threatening to burst from the channel of his body. He risked a backwards glance, saw some of the crowd had fled to the city while others had fallen back to the safer perspective of another dozen steps away. He thought he saw a brown-garbed group pushing their way forward. Their progress was hampered by the countercurrent of the mob, but they couldn't be more than a minute or two away. They'd come fast once they reached the clear ground around the tree. The watchmen facing them noticed it as well and fell back to reform their ranks. The prisoners panted, glancing around themselves, beginning to understand the reprieve Dante'd given them was coming to an end.
"I hope the brilliance of your plan doesn't stop here," Blays said, edging up to him.
"There's more of them on the way. We're not going to be able to fight them all."
"That's a no, then," Blays said, crestfallen.
"Affirmative," Dante said.
"Do the thing on them where it goes dark," he whispered. One of the watch tightened his mouth, cursed, then stepped forward and raised his sword against Blays. Steel met steel and both sides stood transfixed, as if waiting for a cue. The watchman made a series of tightly controlled thrusts, forcing Blays back. Blays tried a counter and the man brushed it aside and responded with a stroke that, were Dante in Blays' place, would have taken off his head; Blays leaned back, swiveling his hips to speed his sword enough to meet it, and the man's blade scraped down his and into his arm. As if the sight of the boy's blood were a command, the rest of the watch started forward, points of their swords held in front of them, and Dante coaxed the shadows to plunge them into total darkness. They shrieked blindly. The watchman's attack on Blays had left his stance open, just a hair, and when he heard the cries behind him he hesitated long enough for Blays to wheel his sword down in a three-quarter angle and lay open the man's chest. The watchman staggered back into the pitch.
"Charge!" Blays bellowed, shaking his sword high over his head, then turned and ran away for the wagons. The two other prisoners took a step forward, shouting battle cries, then caught on and swerved to follow Blays' retreat. Thrown by the feint, clearly terrified that their eyes had suddenly stopped working at the command of an archmage who'd come to them in the form of a boy slinging death and destruction over their ranks, the first of the guards didn't emerge from the shadowsphere until the band of rebels had cut the beefy horses free from the wagons. Blays heaved himself up onto the bare back of a black horse and swirled his blade.
"I can't ride!" Dante shouted from the ground.
"Neither can I!" Blays said, face blended in terror and exhilaration. He hugged his body to the neck of the horse and reached a hand down to Dante. Dante grabbed it and they wrestled his weight up on the animal's back. By the time he was set the guards were pouring down the hill toward them. Behind them, another squad rolled out from the road, moving to cut them off.
"This is bullshit!" Blays shouted. He kicked the horse in the ribs and was almost thrown off its back as it galloped straight at the men coming down the hill. He caught his balance just as the first came into striking distance. Blays laid out with his blade, meaning to decapitate the closest man in one clean stroke, and instead his sword caught in the man's skull and yanked back Blays' arm, nearly dismounting him for a second time. "This is hard!"
"Just don't get us killed," Dante said, gripping the horse for dear life. He'd put away his knife and had no other weapons than the shadows. A faintness in his head and chest told him he needed at least a moment's rest before he went to them again. To their rear he saw the two other prisoners trotting their way. The one with the staff was clenching himself against his horse's neck and rapidly falling behind the one who'd picked up a sword. That man kicked his heels, holding the weapon wide away from the horse's heaving flanks like he'd been born armed and in the saddle. Within seconds he closed on them and matched Blays' speed.
"What's next?" he called over.
"What's the hurry?" Blays said, swiping and missing at a ducking watchman. He cursed and started their mount in an awkward circle.
"Horses are faster than they are," Dante suggested loudly in Blays' ear.
"That just means I've got plenty of time to kill a few more first," he said, righting the horse for another pass.
The two groups of guards had merged and were making a slow turn to try to drive them toward the city. Blays set a course for the stragglers and rode one down beneath the horse's thundering hooves. A second watchman turned and raised his sword and Blays cut his arm off at the elbow. He drew the horse up short by the makeshift reins left over from its ties to the wagon and the animal reared back. Dante flattened himself, clamping his legs so hard against its sides he felt sure he or the horse would break. Blays crouched down but lifted his fist and carved a tight arc through the air with the point of his sword.
"Cower then, you sons of bitches!" he yelled, spit flying from his mouth. "I'd kill you all, but you stamp one roach and twenty others take its place!" The horse's front hooves landed and a shock ran up Dante's spine. Blays turned it to the south, where the staff-wielding criminal was spurring his horse through the thin remnants of the crowd. "Rot in hell! Did you hear that? You can all just die!"
He charged forward. The guy with the sword hurried to their front. Dante laughed as the remaining peasants parted like flocks of quail. Young men and women in ragged clothes waved their hands and cheered them on. Blays tipped an imaginary cap and the girls cheered harder.
"What's your name?" one called after him.
"Blays Buckler!" he shouted over his shoulder. "And my friend Dante, greatest sorcerer to walk the earth!"
"That's not very wise," Dante said.
"Ah, we'll never see them again. This way they can write some songs about us. Make the watch feel like jackasses for years to come."
They neared the forest fringe at the edge of the field. Blays laughed and cursed a few gods for good measure. As if they'd taken personal interest, Dante saw a spearpoint of men on horseback break from the crowd and angle to intercept them before the woods.
"Oh, come on!" Blays said, slapping the horse's sweating side. "I didn't mean it!"
Dante whistled to the other two prisoners galloping ahead. The swordsman glanced back, saw the pursuers, then slowed to let Blays fall in beside him.
"Can't outrun them," the man panted, and Dante saw it was true. The horses they'd stolen were so bulky they were practically plowhorses. Next to the saber-thin bodies of the watchmen's horses, the ones they rode were like the jewel-fattened swords kings used to ennoble their bravest and richest knights. The watch would be on them before they reached the woods. And once again, they were outnumbered.
"Don't these people have anything better to do?" Dante muttered.
"Can't you make the earth swallow them up or something?"
"Can't you stab them all in the heart wearing a blindfold and women's drawers?"
"You've got women's drawers?" Blays gave Dante an intensely interested look, eyes going wide when he saw the riders behind them. "Hey, they're really getting close!"
One rider spurred himself ahead of the pack, intent on Dante's undefended back. If they slowed down to fight, the others would catch them. If they rode straight on, the one would run him through. His eyes felt moist. He blanked his mind and touched the nether. It leapt up easily, ready to return. There was no holding back now. Dante shouted at the swordsman on their flank.
"Can you hold that one off?"
"The one, sure," the prisoner said, straightening his arm and slanting his sword at the ground.
"I just need a few seconds." Dante turned his face from the wind trying to tear the breath from his mouth. The man dropped a couple lengths behind them and blocked the path of the lone watchman. They crossed blades and the other five pulled side-by-side with each other and hurried to his aid. Dante's palm had mostly scabbed up and he sucked in air and cut an X across his hand. Shadows flocked to his blood at once, wriggling around his fingers, coating his skin halfway to the elbow. His body went cold. He could see the individual beads of sweat rolling down the faces of the watch, could smell the horse's sweat and the earthy mulch of rotting leaves. He felt as if he could drop down and outrun their horse on his own two legs. Why hadn't he been doing this more? What was there to be afraid of? Lightning in his veins and vision so sharp it was like he could see into time itself. This was everything he'd ever wanted.
"Watch this, Blays. I'm going to do something neat."
He splayed his fingers and released the nether, shaping it to the image in his mind. For a second nothing happened. He looked at his empty hand, expecting sparks or smoke. Nothing. They were going to die, then.
In the gap between the battling pair and the five galloping watchmen a wall of flames erupted from the earth. It roared twenty feet high, then collapsed to half that, a fire so hot it was white. The five men screamed as one. Their horses bleated, reared back, trying to stop the wild rush of their bodies. One man and mount tried to leap through and the fires scorched the skin from its belly. They tumbled apart. Dante saw the silhouette of another man flying forward, thrown by his horse. By the time he cleared the fire he was a corpse.
Dante tried to swallow, but none of his muscles wanted to work. Behind them, before his sight started going gray, he saw the sword-wielding prisoner swing forehand, knocking aside the watchman's blade, then backhand, slicing off his hand, and finally swung his shoulders in a second forehand, sending the man's head spinning into the grass. A low branch rushed past Dante's face.