Dante nodded, throat dry as sand. He eased out the old, no-frills sword Cally'd given him and pulled his cloak up to his eyes. The fire was nothing but glowing embers. He waited in the darkness, eyes slitted, ears straining. What if he'd been wrong? He dropped his left palm to his blade and slid it along its edge, cheek twitching against the sharp bite of cold steel. Blood seeped into his closed fist, warm and wet, and with it came the shadows.
Leaves crunched softly as the men filtered into the camp. From between his eyelashes Dante saw their swords glinting in the emberlight. They fanned out, splitting between the three prone forms, two on each. How close could he let them get? Fifteen feet, then ten, boots ruffling the dirt, eyes bright in the shadows of their faces. His throat tensed against a scream. They were standing over him then, looking down on him, processing how they'd turn him into a lump of lifeless meat. One of them raised his blade and Robert's voice roared up then and Dante leapt to his feet. Robert rolled away from the downward slice of a sword and in the same motion lashed his own across the calf of the attacker. The man dropped with a shout of shock and pain.
The two men on Dante cried out, then pressed forward. Dante leveled his sword in front of him and flicked the blood pooled in his left hand at the nearer of the two. Where it landed the shadows followed, sizzling against the man's skin and sinking to his innards. The man sunk without a word. The remaining attacker made a quick thrust and Dante fell back, offering a weak counter. The man deflected it, eyes grim in the starlight.
From the corner of his eye he saw Blays retreat to Robert's side as Robert curled past a thrust and laid open the man's back. A flicker from Dante's front and he jerked up his sword to prevent his head from being struck from his shoulders. Someone screamed and a gorge of fire opened up at the spot he'd last seen Blays and Robert. Steel clashed in a staccato smack of swings and backswings. Dante dropped to a knee to dodge another blow. His attacker hefted his blade, then grimaced and screamed as the skeletal predator sank its razor teeth into his hamstring. Dante gripped his hilt with both hands and slashed out as short and fast as he could manage. The first hit cut open the man's forearm and he dropped his sword. The next three put him down.
He turned. He didn't see Robert. Blays faced off against a tall, long-limbed man dressed in the plain black uniform of the others and a caped figure draped in chainmail and trimmed in silver thread. Except for a dancing white flare on Dante's eyes, the fire that had flashed up moments before was gone. He saw Robert then, stretched out on top of the two men he'd slain. He wasn't moving. Blays unleashed a flood of obscenities and charged toward the mailed man, bowling back the one remaining swordsman. Dante felt a cold pulse of nether from the mailed man. The man pointed at Blays and Dante planted his feet and struck the attacker with a column of shadow. The small dark sphere in the man's hand evaporated with an angry hiss and he yanked his hand back, shaking it, glaring at Dante with eyes full of unfairness.
Blays and the last swordsman had squared off, trading blow for blow, but the swordsman's size and range fell back in the face of Blays' rage. He swung heedlessly, sword whipping through the air with the full strength of his arm, and just as Dante thought the boy had overextended he drew his sword level with his ear, muscling the swordsman's downward counter behind his head, then stabbed straight forward into the man's neck. The man gurgled blood and fell face first into the embers.
"How did you know we were coming?" the man in chainmail asked in a tone of open surprise. Dante answered with a spike of nether that would have split the body of any other man. This man's face creased as he cupped his hands as if to catch a ball and split the shadows to either side of his body. His nostrils flared. "Who taught you that?"
"You learn fast when someone's trying to kill you every week," Dante said. He saw Blays advancing, sword angled from his body.
"Rest easy then. This will be the last attempt we need."
He swung his arms at Blays as if he were heaving a sack of wheat and it was all Dante could do to divert the fires to boil away into the sky. Blays bent like a sapling in a gale but somehow kept his balance enough to swing a swift, light backhand that clipped off the last knuckle of the man's middle finger. For the first time in the battle Dante saw fear cross the man's face.
"What was that?" he cried, skipping back a couple steps to try another strike. Blays stepped forward, wary as a cat. Dante held his breath and focused on a point six feet above the man's head. If the man went for Blays now, he could do nothing to stop it. Blays jabbed like a fencer and the man dropped back again. The two were too close for Dante to release the thing above him. The tendril of energy between himself and the summons felt tight as a string tied around his heart. Blays chopped at the man and he actually held out his arm. The sword struck it below the wrist and the metal of the blade and the tight rings of the armor flashed like a storm. Blays yelped and slung away his sword, stumbling back. The man smiled, curled his bloody fingers to finish off the boy, and that was when Dante released it, pouring on the nether till the sheer drain forced him to his knees.
A swirling pillar of white fire leapt down from the point of his focus. An all-consuming crackle roared through the camp like the sky-high bonfires the people lit on Alden's Eve to remind the sun of its strength. In that instant the man's eyes flicked up and his brow wrinkled like he'd splashed mud on a fresh robe. He bellowed and clenched his fists and the pillar faltered but kept on coming, smashing him into the ground. It disappeared as quickly as it had come, wisps of smoke trailing up from a half dozen tiny fires on the man's cloak. Dante took a hesitant step, flinching when the man raised his head.
"Well, now you've done it," the man said, skin sloughing from the left side of his face. "You've gone and killed Will Palomar."
His eyes widened and his breath rattled away. The body relaxed, flopped back against the dirt.
"You've got to help him! Quick!" Blays said.
"He was trying to kill me!"
"Robert, you dunderhead!"
Dante took a woozy step. Not again, he thought, but he clenched his jaw and forced away the gray stealing over his eyes. He crossed to Robert's limp body. Blood wicked through the man's cloak. Dante couldn't tell if it was his or from the two men dead beneath him.
His head pounded like the last time he'd been drunk, both the daze of the during and the misery of the after. He balled his fists and rubbed his eyes. He lowered his ear to Robert's nose and heard shallow, uneven breathing. Half his cloak was singed; bright white blisters stood out on his cheek. Dante pulled back Robert's cloak and saw a deep gash along his ribs leaking blood down his side. Some of the hair had been burned from his chest. Dante wiped his nose.
"What happened?" he said.
"What does it look like? They damn well stabbed him!"
"How bad did he get burnt?"
"Can't you tell?" Blays said, crouching down beside him and clasping his hands together.
"I don't know what I'm doing! I'm not a physician!"
"Well help him, damn it!"
"Okay!" Dante roared. He flexed his fingers and called the shadows. He sensed a reluctance in their substance—a reticent anger, even, for whatever sense that made—but he pressed back until they folded to his will. Remembering how he'd shucked off their weariness in the chase through the woods, he concentrated on the source of Robert's bleeding. For a gross moment he thought he could see beneath the skin to red muscle and white bone. As if it were his own, he could feel the sick tickle of flesh knitting back together. His eyelids fluttered. He forced himself to keep going, arms quaking, chest heaving, then felt himself fading and fell back on his ass, gasping for breath.
"Is he fixed?" Blays said, ripping the shirt off a dead man and daubing it over the blood that had washed down Robert's ribs. Dante tried to say "Kind of" but choked instead. He bent forward, coughing into a closed fist. Robert started coughing too, spitting blackish blood past his lips. He groaned, but his eyes stayed shut.
"Is he going to make it?" Blays said.
"How should I know?" Dante battled down an inappropriate yawn. "I am so tired right now."
"He's moaning. Good sign or bad?"
"I think ideally there should be neither bleeding nor moaning." Dante pressed his palms against his eyes. "What are we going to do here?"
Blays' eyes snapped to his face. "What are you suggesting?"
"I'm
asking
."
"I don't know," Blays said. He laced his hands together and huffed into them. "He can't travel like this."
Dante lowered himself to his elbows. "What if they've got someone else?"
"Then we fight them, too. How did you know they were coming?"
"I heard one of them cough," Dante said. He glanced around the fire, shut his eyes. The skeletal animal was gone.
Blays' eyes drifted toward Dante's pack. "How did they find us?"
"I crept up on them while they were talking. One of them said they'd tracked us. They were confused we were on horseback."
"How would they know?" Blays scratched the top of his head. "Maybe someone recognized us on the road. Passed the word."
"Gods know there were enough eyes out there."
"I think he's doing better," Blays said cautiously. "His breathing isn't all ragged any more. That was scary."
"That's good."
"Were you just asleep?"
"No," Dante blinked. He struggled to sit up. "If we try to ride, we could kill him. I don't think I could ride right now, either. That's not a lot of options."
Blays nodded, gazing into the low fire. "Risk it?"
"I think we've got to."
"I guess I'll take first watch."
"Okay."
"I'm going to wake you up if he looks any worse," Blays warned.
"Okay."
"Dante's a stupid idiot."
"Okay. What?"
"I said go to sleep already," Blays said. He shredded another shirt and pressed it to Robert's wound.
"Okay," Dante said, and sleep folded over him like a glove.
Dante sat in the dark and waited for the dawn. Long stretches of silence were broken by the night-noises of the woods, hoots and screeches and the furtive shuffling of small animals. At least there was no wind. He couldn't have taken the wind in the trees.
Blays had dragged off the bodies while he'd been asleep. There was that, too. The ground was thick with the shine of dried blood. Clouds obscured the moon and stars. He had no idea how long he'd been asleep. It felt like fifteen minutes, twenty, but Blays had assured him it had been three or four hours. Robert remained asleep. His breathing and pulse sounded...well, they existed. He didn't know what should sound good for a man who should probably be dead. Blays had stoked up the fire, but he didn't think that was causing Robert's sweaty brow or flushed face. Dante ate from the saddlebags and drank a full skin of water, frowning over the unconscious man. He meant to give the nether another shot once he'd absorbed a little food.
He didn't know how to feel about the lie he'd told Blays. For all he knew the attackers had followed their tracks. To find them in the first place, though, the mailed man who'd called himself Will Palomar had followed their feel. The book's feel. Dante's feel. He didn't know which; maybe it was both. He did know their mission was too important to threaten by telling Blays the truth. He needed Blays, needed Robert, needed their eyes and their arms if he was going to get to Narashtovik. They needed him, too, didn't they? Robert would be dead now without his aid. They'd all be dead if he hadn't seen the men plotting their attack. If he hadn't sprung them from the gallows. Not that that should buy their loyalty, exactly, but there was a give and a take here, he wasn't keeping them around for his own ends alone. In any event, they were big boys. They'd made their decision to stick with him. If they thought things were getting too dangerous, they could make the decision to leave.
A couple birds started chirping. A few bugs whirred and thrummed, but most had already died in the frosts. The survivors wouldn't last much longer.
At the first touch of dawn Dante rose, walked around the fire, worked his blood back into his limbs. He still felt tired, but no longer painfully so. He knelt over Robert's unconscious body and closed his eyes and emptied his mind. When he sent the shadows to the long brown scab on his chest he felt nothing. He saw no change in the flesh. He closed his eyes again, reached out to the wound again, but it was as if the nether were passing under a bridge and disappearing before it reached the other side. He set his mouth and tried at least to assuage the fever. He touched Robert's brow. It still felt hot. He sighed.
Dawn broke, gray and gradual. He let Blays sleep. It was clear they wouldn't be going anywhere until Robert had woken or croaked. Maybe it was the false hope of the daylight, but he doubted the temple men would even know their latest agents had failed for at least a few days. There was no use punishing Blays with sitting around waiting for something to happen when he could hold things down for himself. For once Dante didn't feel like reading. He watched the fire burn and thought about the summers in the village.
"What's going on? Why does hell look exactly the same as earth?"
Dante jerked his head. Robert's eyes were open, crinkled in pain.
"You're awake."
"You're brilliant." Robert lifted his head and looked over his bandaged body. "How'd you get the wizard?"
"I smote him with fire," Dante said.
Robert frowned at him. "Can never tell if the youth of today are being serious. A weakness of character, I think."
"You're right. I played dead until he ran away."
Robert's arms shook as he tried to sit up. He lifted his shoulders clear of the ground, then fell back, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment after the impact.
"That was unwise," he said.
Dante bit his teeth together. "Stop making things worse. We're already losing time."