FANN

Fann had been on his way to the wall when the battle started. Well, he'd been going in that direction. There was supposed to be a strategy meeting. He wondered what percentage of strategy meetings throughout history had been called off by a sudden and unexpected battle? He bet it was more than people expected. I mean how would you even check something like that? For that matter if the enemy came in during or just before a strategy meeting it would probably be a good idea to pretend you weren't having one, because that's a lot of info the enemy could use right?

Fann talked too much when he was nervous, to himself if there was nobody better around.

The bandits charged for the...honestly, calling them gaps in the wall sounded optimistic. The wall was just gone. A few wild pillars of it still stood, irregularly shaped slabs that had happened to hold together, but it couldn't really be called a barrier. Even calling it a boundary marker seemed a little excessive.

The bandits charged...and died.

The knights were all there, minus Rimni. Fann supposed that, technically, Andry hadn't said he was one of them yet but Fann had started thinking of him as a knight all the same. And he did his share of the work, same as the rest of them. Sonic blasts tore the enemy apart. The grass grabbed at their legs just before they were bludgeoned with J'vann's wooden bludgeon. Arrows fired faster and dropped more bandits than even Fann would have believed. Flurries of spear thrusts sent men to the ground clutching fresh holes in their guts. Fan's own sword sliced through enemies as easily as if they were air, trailing arcs of blood and piles of neatly severed limbs.

But for all the enemies they each felled, none of them came close to Tyram.

The Dragon Knight had become an avatar of death. One of the battle's iron rules became that whenever Tyram moved, someone died. In the past few days they had all seen Tyram fight, and they had all sparred with him, but none of them had ever seen him move with that lethal clockwork precision. Blood and gore covered his arms and spattered his chest and he didn't seem to notice, just moved on to the next man in line. When the bandits finally broke and fell back, Fann was sure Tyram was the reason more than any of the rest of them.

Something bothered him about the way Tyram was fighting, but he didn't have time to think about it. There was a lull, but the battle wasn't over yet.

“What happened to everyone who was on the wall?” Sasha asked, wiping aside a few stray strands of hair that clung to her forehead.

“I don't know,” Fann said. “Hey J'vann, are you sure...”

“I have fought with worse injures,” J'vann said. “I am also more concerned for the souls who were standing on the wall when it was destroyed.”

“It was only the lookouts,” Chaddim said, marching up with the rest of the villagers. “They're in a bad way, but we'll do what we can. And we're organized now. We'll handle the rank and file. But you six are the only ones who've got a chance against the Brothers Sloth. Can you break through to them?”

“I guess we'll have to try,” Andry said. “I don't like the idea of taking them on one on one though.”

“Well there are six of us,” Verro pointed out. “And three of them. Two to one, we can split them up. Sound like a plan?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Fann said. “Everybody ready? Tyram?”

For a second Fann didn't think Tyram was going to answer. Then he shrugged. Not a dismissive gesture, more like the shifting of his shoulders to better accommodate some kind of heavy weight.

“I'm ready,” Tyram said. “Let go finish this.”

“We'll take care of the rest, like I said,” Chaddim told them. “I just can't figure it out. This is a terrible attack. If you six can beat the Brother's Sloth, or even hold them off long enough for the whole town to mob them with the artillery we built, they've got no chance. I feel like Jalgoz has to have something else up his sleeve.”

RIMNI

Rimni's senses were on high alert for another invisible bandit but he sensed nothing, just the confusion of the battle. Grimly determined villagers running to where they could do the most good—or at least where they thought they could do the most good. Andry had a point about one thing, even if he was a coward. A fight on a big field wasn't really what Rimni was good at. He'd been born in a city, and raised in a city, except for the two years he spent in the forest with J'vann.

Of course the others would probably say he wasn't actually raised yet. They didn't trust him at all, just because he was a kid. He wondered if they would still say that after he told the which city he came from?

He tracked the source of the firework to a little yellow house being used as storage for supplies, which didn't maker any sense. Alright, maybe they could have poisoned something but you usually wait to attack after you poison the food, right? You wouldn't want to send a signal about it either. Rimni knew thatmuch about big battles.

It occurred to him you might not want to send up a big obvious signal right on top of the thing you were gonna mess with. That made sense. But the only reason for a signal like that was to say you'd done something, or you were ready to do something. And the only other really important building close by was the big empty shed where...

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Where they were keeping the prisoners.

The prisoners had been completely forgotten in the confusion. Even the guards had run off to join the fighting. Alright, they were chained up in there but with nobody watching them...and had anyone thought to make the one Verro caught give up his Regalia? It actually wasn't common practice to do that with prisoners since it was so hard to get a Regalia out of somebody unwilling to give it up, but then most prisoners were being held in something a lot sturdier than an oversize barn.

Rimni slipped through a small window up by the peaked roof and crawled out onto the rafters, looking down to see exactly what he'd feared. Well very close to it, anyway. That Arlo pudgy guy didn't have his regalia active, but most of the bandits were up and milling around.

“Alright,” one of the bandits said to the others. “Everybody ready? Let's go out there and show this town what it really means to mess with our gang!”

“I am still not sure if this is a good idea that I am unsure of,” Arlo said.

“Ah can it Arlo!” another bandit growled at him. “I know you're a weird guy, but blow open the door and get us out of here?”

“What you are asking is not so simple a task you are asking me to do,” Arlo said. “The explosion would harm many of us in here. And I am still wondering--”

“What about the boss?” Another bandit snarled. “Don't you have any loyalty?”

“No,” Arlo said. “I was hired. I did jobs for money that I was earning. I do not make moral judgments. I care mostly for my own safety that I am keeping safe, and I do not think--”

While the bandits argued, Zgratch landed on the rafters beside Rimni. The Vard Imp glared at Rimnie with cruel, beady eyes. He hadn't forgotten his humiliation back at the bandit's base, nor had he forgotten the knights had stolen his favorite victim. He wasn't much happier about being dragged out and ordered to free the prisoners, but it would give him a chance to look for the rabbit to torture and possibly get revenge. Revenge close at hand, he lunged for Rimni, who didn't appear to have noticed him.

But everyone knows what they say about appearances.

When Zgratch's corpse hit the floor of the makeshift prison it was cut in a dozen places, beady eyes wide and glassy, staring up at the ceiling in death. They followed the arc of it's descent up and saw Rimni standing in the rafters. He glared down at them, blood dripping from the tips of his daggers. The light gleamed off his eyes and somehow he seemed taller, thinner.

Hungrier.

“I get it,” Rimni said. “He was supposed to let you all out so you could attack everybody. I can't let you do that. We swore to protect these people, and a knight doesn't break their promise. And I'm a knight.”

“It's that little kid!” one of the bandits said.

“He's got a regalia!” Someone shouted. “Arlo...”

“Oh no!” Arlow said, stepping back into a corner and sitting down. “I will not be fighting him.”

“When did you turn into a coward!?”

“Look at his eyes,” Arlo said. “Are you not seeing the death that is there for all too see?”

“See I really want to go help the other knights,” Rimni said, hopping down and standing on a barrel. There were a few barrels and crates around, either forgotten or left for the prisoners as makeshift furniture. “But I can't let you guys break out and cause trouble. It would be a lot easier if you were all dead, but knights don't kill prisoners. So it would be a big help if you all attacked me.”

An enormous bandit stepped out of the crowd, towering over the rest. He must have been sitting down before or Rimni would have picked him out of the crowd immediately. He had a huge, broken nose and his ears stuck out wide at the side of his head. When he approached, even standing on his barrel the Rat Knight only came up to the man's chest.

“Big Ned!” the bandit's said in awe.

“Big Ned'll handle it!”

“Big Ned!”

“Alright everybody,” Big Ned said. “Everybody forget about Arlo. I can bust the door open. We don't need him anyway if he's so scared of a little kid. Why are you all so nervous about this little pipsqueak anyway?”

“I have a Regalia,” Rimni said. “I'm a knight. I'll admit, I couldn't handle Jalgoz—and I was having a lot of trouble with that invisible guy—but I can take anybody in this room.”

Someone who knew Rimni might have wondered why he wasn't puffing himself up like usual. Why he hadn't switched the story around to make himself more of a hero. Arlo wouldn't have, because he'd seen Rimni's eyes. Rimni had gone past the fantasies and bragging to a cold, sharp place where there was only stark reality, and the naked jaws of death. But he seemed to be the only one in the room who'd noticed, aside from Zgratch. Zgratch had noticed it, very briefly, before the blades punctured his heart.

Big Ned pointed in his face and laughed.

“Just having a Regalia doesn't make you knight, runt!” Ned guffawed. “A kid's a kid, whatever kinda special powers he's got! And I'll have you know I'm next in line for a Regalia! I'll probably get one of the ones they take off your friend's corpses, or maybe I'll just...take...”

Big Ned's eyes crossed as they tried to understand what they were seeing. Rimni didn't appear to have moved, but he must have. Nobody else could have cut Big Ned's finger off. The cut was perfect and clean, the finger spinning in the air.

“AHHHH!” Big Ned bellowed. “What did you do!?”

“I'll show you,” Rimni said. “It was kind of like this.”

He vanished in a blur of motion, and slashes appeared all over Big Ned's body. On his neck, his thigh, under his armpit, all spurting and oozing blood. Rimni reappeared back where he had been standing.

“I don't like bullies,” Rimni said. “And you're all a bunch of bullies. Especially you. And I'm trying to be a knight about this, so I'm going to give you one more chance. I didn't cut any of your arteries, I just cut really really close to them. Any of those cuts a little bit higher or deeper and you'd bleed out and die. If you get too excited you might just pop them yourself. So sit down, stop fighting, and we can all wait for the battle to be over.”

“I...I...” Big Ned's mind reeled from a mixture of pain and confusion as he stared at the tiny little demon—it had to be a demon, it couldn't really be a human kid—who had humiliated him. Desperate for something to hold onto, it fell back into familiar patterns. “I'll kill you!”

Big Ned lunged, arms outstretched.

Rimni's first jump took him forward, between the enormous bandit's arms. As he passed his daggers licked out around him, slicing Big Ned's arms into rough medallions that splatted to the floor. Rimni landed feet first on Big Ned's chest and his daggers flashed again, slicing an X into the huge man's throat. Rimni pushed off, throwing Big Ned to the ground while Rimni alighted daintily on the barrel where he'd been standing. Big Ned lay on the floor, waving his stumps desperately in the air as he choked to death on his own blood.

“Alright,” Rimni said. “Is anyone else going to try and escape?”

The bandits didn't say a word, they just sat back down, doing their best not to look at Big Ned's corpse. Rimni sat down too, right where he'd perched on the barrel, to watch over the entire room.

“Well I'd rather be out in the battle,” Rimni sighed. “But I suppose this is part of being a knight too.”