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I have no control over them. The mayor and the priest are gone. Perhaps they could have done something, but not me. The people have decided what they think is best to solve our town’s problems. I am powerless over them.”
    “Then why are you here at all?” the soldier shouted to him. “You saw everything they did with her. They asked you if it was legal or not. How can you say now it’s not under your control?”
    “Well, I did advise them on matters of the law, but I know nothing of whether or not this will solve our problems with the living dead. But if the people think it will, they’re entitled to that opinion and they may be right. Who knows what the truth is in this situation?”
    “Yes! We are right. He said so.” The crowd cheered at this, and this time Dante and Bogdana were hit by stones as well.
    Bogdana leaned forward. “We need to get out of here,” she whispered. “There’s nothing you can do for her. You’re just going to get us killed too.”
    His stomach turned over and he flushed crimson, but he knew she was right. The crowd was turning uglier and bolder by the moment, but so far their wrath was mostly directed at the woman and the soldier. Dante and Bogdana still had a good chance at escape, if they didn’t invite more attention to themselves, or get drawn deeper into the crowded square. Dante pulled on the reins and his horse took a couple steps back. A few steps further from the square, and the crowd would be thin enough near them that Dante could yank the reins, turn the horse around, and be out of there.
    The young soldier saw he was being left alone as the woman’s only defense. “No!” he shouted to Dante. “You can’t. You know this isn’t right!”
    “So do they,” Dante shouted. The horse took another step back. They were almost in the clear. “It doesn’t seem to be stopping them.”
    He heard the crackling he had heard at Bogdana’s village, though louder this time. Dante looked up as another one of the flaming projectiles crashed into the top of one of the four, giant oak trees. Some dried, dead leaves left from last year were still on the tree, and these ignited immediately, as the main trunk bent from the impact, then the top part of it snapped off. A flaming mass of branches fell into the crowd near the stake, together with the burning bits of the exploded projectile. The people scattered and screamed, and Dante could see something more than just the flames was tormenting them. They were waving their arms over their heads as they ran, and as some of them crashed into the other onlookers nearer Dante, he saw they were being attacked by a swarm of hornets or wasps. There must have been a nest in the tree, and the creatures were released when it fell to the ground. Thankfully, the enraged insects seemed focused on those they had first attacked, and none of them broke off their pursuit to sting Dante and Bogdana.
    Dante yanked the horse around and looked over his shoulder, back at the pandemonium of the square. The burning branches ignited the oil-soaked wood around the stake. The flames leaped all around the crazed woman, and her clothes were already burning, though oddly she seemed calmer than before. Dante could see the young soldier’s horse was nearly uncontrollable, panicked by the fire and the screaming crowd, and it bucked and reared back, almost throwing him.
    Dante heard the crackling sound again right before one of the church steeples exploded in fiery sparks and masonry dust. With a sound like some giant piece of pottery breaking, the tower fell forward. If the town official had been just a step closer to the church, or a few steps further away, he might have been safe. But he wasn’t, and the top third of the tower fell right on him. Dante felt no inclination to contain a grim smile.
    The madwoman screamed, though not in agony, but in something that chilled and disoriented Dante more, for it sounded like delight or even pleasure. “At night I see a