The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  A hush preceded the wagons as the people looked on the faces of the condemned and for an instant imagined themselves seated with the prisoners. Once they'd lumbered past, the catcalls and laughter started up again, louder than before, and in that way Dante followed the progress of the watch. His stomach felt like something were pushing up on it from below. There were too many tall men between him and the path to catch a glimpse of the wagons, but underneath the crowd's babble he thought he could make out the rumble of two separate sets of wheels. Bad sign. He wanted to get close enough to see Blays, but if he moved now he'd never get back his place some twenty yards from the clearing around the Crooked Tree. Half of Whetton must be here. With Falmac's Day, along with the farmers and peasants who tended to show up in direct proportion to the scarcity and brutality of the method of execution—though hangings were enough to do the trick—there could be twice as many men in Whetton today than was normal.

  The wave of silence and the shouts that followed on its heels came nearer. Whips cracked from the direction of the path. He gagged, swallowed. He still had time to leave. No one would know he'd been here but Cally, and Cally would understand. Dante's death, when it came, wouldn't mean anything, wouldn't strike any blow against injustice and the corrupt law of man. He'd just be a body. But as much as his legs were ready to run—and they were shaking so hard he thought he might drive himself into the earth—he knew, if he left now, he would hate himself for all his days. He'd carry a mark so deep it may as well be branded on his forehead. He'd filter all his actions thereafter through the memory of the day he'd let them kill Blays, and in that sense his life would already be told, worthless for however many more years it may last.

  Besides, as Cally might say, just because killing the watch wouldn't do any good didn't mean it wasn't worth doing.

  The quiet took the crowd around him. Wheels creaked in the cold. He heard the snorts of the draft horses, saw a blip of their driver through the shoulders of the men in front of him. The driver's bass voice carried past his ears as all the people thought on the day they'd take their own ride on the wain to the tree at the end of the path; and then they were shouting, jeering, and Dante was shouting too, eyes clenched shut, head thrown back, a wordless cry of defiance. He was ready.

  He pushed up further into the crowd. If these idiots were still in his way when the time came he'd yank out his sword and give it a taste of their blood before it bit into the watchmen. He shoved his way onward, matching glares, refusing to yield, and made his way within ten feet of the inner rim of the masses. Close enough for now. Close enough to crane his head and see the wagons break from the walls of people and into the clear circle around the tree. He started counting men. Six at point in front of the wagons, brown cloaks flapping behind them. Three more to either side. Five more trailing, one bearing the banner of the city, the eagle's black talons clutching the golden shock of wheat. And three—no, make it four—crouched down in the bed of the second wain, hands resting on their hilts, scanning the crowd for anyone with any funny designs on the black-hooded man sitting cross-legged at its center.

  Dante's eyes flicked to the first wagon to count the condemned. Seven. Somehow there were always seven. There among them, blond hair a mat of grease, face smeared with dirt and soot and dried blood, sat Blays.

  Dante stretched on his toes and pulled his cowl a couple inches back from his face, but he didn't dare cry out or wave his hands and the boy didn't look his way. He didn't appear to be seeing anything at all, in fact. Dante'd never seen that look on his face: eyes downcast, face tranquil as a slack sail, body swaying loosely at the jolts and jounces of the wain. He hadn't looked that way when they'd been chased through the forest by three grown men on horseback. He hadn't even looked that way in those days after he'd seen Dante call the shadowsphere in the alley in Bressel—he'd pouted and brooded and kept to himself, but beneath all that he'd kept a spark, an air of confusion and betrayal that lent some moment to his moods. Now, he looked like he were already dead. Dante's knuckles whitened on his staff. Sure, a veritable army of men drawn for honor guard. For their sake he hoped they said a prayer before it began.

  Time blurred. Men jumped off the wagon and hauled the doomed men to their feet. The black-hooded man lowered himself and took down a couple stools. He set them beneath the Crooked Tree and slung two of the nooses draped over his shoulder onto the tree's one straight and level branch. Dante turned his shoulders and wiggled closer. The watch picked out two filthy men whose age he couldn't guess and made them step up on the stools. The hangman fitted the ropes around their necks, setting the knot at the back, behind their heads. With a jerk to his gut, Dante realized these men weren't going to be kicked off a platform so their necks broke like had been the practice of Bressel's most recent hangman, they were going to be turned right off the stools. They looked like they'd have no more than a foot to fall, two at the utmost; Jack Gray, executioner of Bressel, averaged his ropes at eight feet and, so he boasted, varied their length to the build and weight of his client just enough to make sure the spine snapped without yanking the head clean off.

  These men would hang till they strangled. Some of the older men he'd known, men who could remember the hanger before Gray, said it could be five or ten minutes before the legs stopped kicking, that some of the condemned had dangled for a full half hour and been found to have their hearts yet beating. Before they'd made it law that all who hanged must be kept on the line for a full hour after their initial turn, Half-Hanged Kurt had been cut down after forty minutes, buried, then been dug up filthy but breathing when a traveler had heard his cries beneath the dirt. So Jack Gray had brought new methods with his contract.

  Dante was amazed the two men who stood before the crowds offered no resistance as the ropes closed around their throats and and tied them to their fates. Why so spiritless? What could they lose? Now was the time for rage, to exact some minor measure of control in choosing the moments of their deaths. Not this farce, this resigned obeisance. Maybe they deserved what they were about to get. Was that it? Did they feel the same way? Had the fact some fancy-man on a podium had deemed them guilty of their crimes convinced them it was their time to move on? The hooded man finished his preparations and stepped back. A watchman with silver pins flashing on the collar of his cloak took center.

  "You have been tried and condemned in the courts of this land. Any final words or requests?"

  "I ask the mercy of the family of the man I did kill," one man said. "I only wanted food." The crowd booed.

  "Another slug of whiskey!" the second man shouted through his thick brown beard. The crowd laughed, raised flagons and flasks.

  "So it ends," the watchman said. The hangman stepped forward, draped a white cap over the first man's face, then the second. Dante's heart shuddered as he reached into the deep folds of his pockets and gathered up his burden. The captain of the watch reeled off some speech about justice and the obligations of civilization.

  "We take no joy in meting out the fate you've earned yourself," the captain smiled at last. "A moment of silence, please. Pray to the gods. They have been known to grant mercy, even to the wretched."

  He held up a hand and the crowds went quiet. Dante's fingers slid over the fragile bones he'd taken from his pockets. He set Jack Hand's inspirations on what little open ground he found at his feet. The six fleshless rodents raised their eyeless heads at him, clicking their teeth. No going back now. He held his hand close to his chest and gestured toward the tree. They skittered through the clustered legs of the audience, unheard, unseen. For whatever extra insanity it would add he popped the torchstone into his mouth. Someone cried out at the sight of the bleached-bone animals streaking toward the bound men. It would have been more dramatic to wait till Blays' turn had come beneath the judging branch, but he wanted as many men turned loose as he could manage, as much chaos as he could muster to conceal his true intent. More shrieks rose up on the tail of the first. The watchmen glanced around. A couple loosened their swords.
Within seconds the dead rats had leapt on the hands and ankles of the criminals. This was it, the plunge, the toss of the die.

  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.