Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [76]
No sooner had I done so, than I heard the splatter of horses' hooves in the mud, distant but rapidly approaching. Silhouetted against the night were the cloaked riders of the Godly Army, heading straight for me. At their head, a sword was waved aloft, and a triumphant cry sounded: I had been spotted.
For a moment, I was frozen as though I were a rabbit startled by hunting hounds; then I dived from the edge of the road, sliding through gravel and mud to the marshy stream below. There was no time for quiet now, as the Godly Army reined their mounts to a halt at the point I had just vacated. In desperation, I plunged through the water, tearing aside roots and tangled weeds impeding my way. Behind me, I heard this fresh band of pursuers abandoning their horses – useless in the fens – and scrambling after me.
In my unthinking haste, I nearly slogged into the arms of Mollie Maud's gang. I spotted their torches in time the bullies, waist-deep in the marsh, were poking through the vegetation with the muzzles of their pistols – and, stifling a cry of alarm and despair, clawed my way through the reeds in another direction. Shouting arose behind me as the two groups collided; I was given a little respite as muddled fighting broke out amongst them. Pistol shots and shouted curses rang over the landscape; only when they realised that their common quarry was getting away, did they disengage battle and resume their increasingly chaotic, splashing and wallowing searches, exchanging blows whenever their paths crossed.
The confusion among my pursuers had enabled me to put some distance behind me, though I could easily glance over my shoulder and see their various torches weaving through the choked streams. I was nearing exhaustion, praying silently that I could make it to another of the roads before either the bullies or the Godly Army fell upon me. That was the only hope I could devise for myself; my dazed brain could conjure no other strategy than that.
Suddenly I heard more voices raise in angry tones, this time from in front of me. I crouched down behind a clump of reeds and peered ahead. A moan of anguish escaped my lips when I saw that it was the villagers of Dampford, brandishing pitchforks and other brutal implements as they waded through the marsh. Their piscine faces were made even more repellent by the ferocity displayed there; they had apparently regained their courage and had come seething after the sacrifice that had been snatched from them just a short time ago.
The three factions – Mollie Maud's bullies, the Godly Army, and now the villagers – were on all sides of me save one. I plunged in that direction, heedless that it led nowhere except farther into the weedy streams and stagnant pools of the marshland. There was no longer a conscious thought in my head, only blind panic impelling me into flight.
Something in the water tangled about my feet, and I went headlong into a muddy bank. Raising my head from the muck, I heard the overlapping shouts grow louder: some yards away, the villagers had collided with the others. Cries of Fish-face bastards! from the bullies mingled with the Godly Army's Heathens! Devilish spawn! overlaid with the villagers' indecipherable curses. More shots, the clash of sword against scythe, the splash when one body was thrown back from another, torches hissing as they were extinguished by the dark water – thus the renewed battle raged. No alliances were possible among such disparate elements; each man fought against the members of the other parties, and occasionally, in the confusion, his own.
I spat out the mud that had filled my mouth, and panted for breath. It would only be a matter of time before one of the factions prevailed against the others and, with as