City of Demons (22 page)

“Marick!” Garet cried, rolling to his feet and hurrying over to his friend. “Sorry! Are you hurt? Is there any blood?” He pulled away Marick's hand to reveal a small scratch on the young Bane's head. Biting his lip in contrition, he sat back on his heels and apologized again, “I'm so sorry, Marick. It was an accident. I really do want some company.”

Marick wiped a drop of blood off his forehead and set his hand on the rim of the opening. “That's all right, Midlander. If I were stuck in a room with that lot of babies, and with Farix sticking his long nose into my business all day, I'd be driven to violence as well.” He pulled up his other hand, showing that it held the end of a long pole. “Look at what I've brought you!” He passed the staff to Garet, who held it up in wonder. “Consider it a birthday present.” Marick announced grandly. His hands free, he climbed up on the roof and leaned against the wall. “You told the great seer, Alanick, that you don't know when that day might be, so it might as well be today.”

Garet ran his hand over the training weapon. Two fingers thick and as long as a pitch fork, the pole felt heavy in his hand. He tried to bend it, but it wouldn't flex.

“It's made of ironwood from the hills north of Solantor,” Marick told him. “Even Dorict's head won't break it.”

“How do you know?” Garet asked suspiciously. He ran his hand over the shaft, tapping the wide bronze rings at the ends.

“Oh,” the young Bane replied airily, “a training accident.” He pulled Garet over to the corner of the roof, where the servants who maintained the Hall had left a pile of canvas and pots of dried tar. “Leave it under the canvas when you go back down.” He looked at the clouds, which streaked half the sky in wispy sheets but threatened no rain. “It'll be a month before we get any serious rain. So there'll be no leaks to repair until then, which means that no one beside us will ever come up here.”

“Us?” Garet asked, pausing his examination of his present.

“You need a teacher, don't you?” Marick asked. “And you're unwilling to wait for the moldy rules of the Hall to let you start training with weapons, aren't you?” He waited for a reply, drumming his fingers on the top of the railing.

“I don't want to give Master Adrix another reason to kick me out,” Garet protested, but he ran his eyes along the pole and then stepped forward into a guard position, trying to copy what he had seen the Blues do at the beginning of their practice.

“You were found by Mandarack,” Marick said. “That's enough reason for Adrix to hate you.” He grabbed the end of the pole and pulled it down into the proper angle. “No higher than the top of your head!” He stepped back and crossed his arms. “Now, you'll never please Adrix or his toadies, so you'd best please yourself—and your friends. Step forward!”

Garet took a step forward, pole held steady.

“No, no!” Marick groaned. “Cross-step, don't march. You're not a guardsman on parade; you're a Bane!” He demonstrated a quick step, his right leg going in front of the other and his left hip pointed forward. “Keep your head at the same level, now. Try again.”

They practiced walking back and forth across the roof until they heard the bell signal all the Hall to supper.

“There,” Marick said, clapping his hand on Garet's back. “Even Tarix couldn't train you any better.”

Garet slid the pole under the canvas and straightened up. “Is she your teacher?” he asked.

“Of course!” Marick replied, smiling. “Only the best for the best!” He looked down the trap to make sure the coast was clear. “She may be the Training Master, but she doesn't think she's lowering herself to train mere Blues.” He listened for a moment. “Come on.”

They went down the ladder, closing the trap door behind them. The storeroom below was empty, except for a few pieces of broken furniture that had been dumped here rather than carried down three flights of stairs.

“Aren't you glad I showed you this place?” Marick teased.

“Very,” Garet replied. He cracked open the door to check the hallway. Only a few rooms were occupied on this floor, and the corridor was empty. “You're a good friend, Marick.” He started to leave the room but was stopped by Marick's hand on his arm.

“Thanks, Garet,” he said quietly. His face was serious, and he looked down before he spoke again. “You're like Dorict, he's the only other friend I have here.” He looked back up and his smile returned, although it seemed a bit wistful. “Except for Salick, maybe. I know I'm better at making enemies than friends, so I have to value the few friends that I have.” He slipped out and disappeared down the hall, leaving Garet standing in the doorway.

After a moment, he followed. Marick had already vanished down the stairs into the noisy life of the Banehall.
A quick meal and then back to my lists
, Garet thought, but the knowledge that Marick was willing to help him escape such mindless tasks and train him to be a real Bane was heartening. It gave him the courage he needed to descend into a world run by people like Farix and the Hallmaster.

Garet's tasks soon became, if not lighter, at least more meaningful. Another month had passed since Marick had joined him on the roof to begin his weapons training. Farix eventually excused him from the stamina-building exercises because, Garet suspected, the other Blacks thought he set too hard a pace for the rest of them. He still exercised, but only on the rooftop, sweating through the complex training pole forms Marick had taught him. What time was left over he spent finishing the Demonary and studying for his Blue Sash tests.

He was at his small desk, copying the illustration of a Crawler Demon, taking care to ink in each of its armour plates, when Marick raced into his dormitory room.

“Marick!” he gasped, “You almost stopped my heart!” He pulled out the notes he had jammed under the desk. “I thought it was Farix.”

“Not likely!” his friend said. “Farix never moved this fast in his whole life.”

Garet grinned in agreement. The Gold preferred a stately progression down the rows of beds, stopping only to criticize a wrinkled blanket or a dropped sash. “But what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at practice until lunch?”

“I am at practice,” Marick said, grabbing his arm. “Come on, Tarix wants to meet you.” He pulled Garet up from his desk, barely giving him enough time to hide his notes beneath the mattress. “Come on!”

He led Garet at a gallop down two flights of stairs to the main level of the Hall. The Greens and Golds on the stairs, most just coming back from weary harvest duties in the fields around the city, saw Marick coming and stood aside, a resigned expression on their faces. When they reached the bottom floor, Marick took him down a narrow hall to the Blue Sash gymnasium. Garet saw that Marick was avoiding the more direct route, one that would have taken them by the Masters' Rooms, where Adrix directed the operations of the Banehall.

Tucked in a corner of one of the wings, the gymnasium intruded into the floor above, giving it a spacious feel after the claustrophobia of the hallway. The Blues were clustered at one end of the gym, swinging their poles at bags of sand suspended from a frame. With each hit, the bags made a muffled thump of a sound. Garet could see Dorict at one end, sweating and puffing as he attacked his bag with a grim determination.

“Marick!” a voice called from the middle of the gym. “Bring him over here.”

A woman sat in a strange chair, waiting for them. The chair had four small wheels instead of the usual legs. The Training Master reached down and pushed to one side with a short crutch, forcing the chair to turn in their direction. She surveyed them calmly. Her hair, gold with a few strands of grey, was tied in a tight braid at the back of her neck. Her face had a pleasant, open feel to it but was marked by a scar reaching from her lip to her left ear. Garet, remembering her angry outburst on the night he arrived at the Hall, was relieved to see her smiling as they approached.

“Master,” Marick said, pushing Garet forward and grinning at his stiffness, “this is Garet.”

“Yes, I remember,” she answered. “I saw you on your first night in the Hall.” And seeing Garet's blush, she added, “Garet, you have no cause to be ashamed because of that night.” Her eyes held his, forbidding him to drop his head. “It is we who should be ashamed of how we treated a new Bane.” She broke off her gaze to check on the Blues striking the practice bags. “Charet! Use your hips, not just your shoulders!”

The Blue she had corrected turned and gave a slight bow to acknowledge the order. When he resumed his attack, twisting his hips as directed, the noise each strike made was noticeably louder.

“Come with me, both of you,” she said, picking up a second crutch from her lap and twisting the chair again to align it with a door on the far side of the gym. The sound of wood on sandbags faded as they entered a spacious office. A cluttered desk was placed beside the door, and Tarix carefully maneuvered her chair in front of it. There was little else in the room save training bags, empty of sand, and a rack holding a bewildering variety of long and short weapons. Garet ran his eyes along them greedily. The weapons of a true Bane! Now that he knew something of the origins of the early Banemasters, he was not surprised to see versions of rather homely tools leaning in the rack. Beside the fisher's trident were spears hooked like orchard pruning tools. Flails for threshing grain, their wooden heads now bound in ridged iron, stood with axes and hammers that would not be out of place on a village farm. The one or two weapons that broke with this unglamorous tradition were so bizarre as to not seem to be weapons at all. Slightly dented shields such as Mandarack wielded lay among spiked gloves, weighted nets and hooked ropes. But what he had expected to see, swords and bows, were missing.
If they had started a Banehall in Three Roads
, he wondered,
would copper pots be displayed in the armoury?

The crutches that Garet had seen Tarix use on that first night, longer than the pair she used to move her wheeled chair, leaned against the weapons rack. Tarix followed his gaze. “On good days, I can get around on those,” she said, indicating the crutches. “On bad days, I'm trapped in this.” She patted the arms of the chair and then her legs. Even though they were hidden under the trousers and boots of a Bane, Garet could see that they were not quite straight. He swallowed and quickly looked up when she spoke again. “Five or so years ago, a Basher ran me over in the stockyards of Ward Six. One of the less pleasant consequences of being a Bane.” Her voice held no bitterness or anger. Garet nodded, thinking of the scarred face of Senerix who kept the stores in Torrick Banehall.

“But from what I understand from Marick,” she continued, a slight smile on her face, “all the consequences of you becoming a Bane have been unpleasant.”

“No, not at all, Master,” Garet answered. “I want to be here.” He glanced over at Marick, knowing that the young Bane would be enjoying his discomfort. “My friends are here, and I want to be...” He struggled for the proper word.

“A hero?” Tarix asked. There was no smile on her face now.

“No,” he replied honestly. “I guess that I want to be useful, to be a part of something greater than a farm and a few sheep.”

She nodded at that and picked up a piece of paper from the untidy desk. “Marick tells me that you have been studying the Moret Demonary.” She held a hand up at his look of sudden guilt. “Don't worry, I won't tell Farix.” She picked up a brush and dipped it in an open pot of ink. “What is the main attack of a Horned Demon?” She tapped off the extra ink while she waited for an answer.

“A charge, Master,” Garet answered. “They use their head horns like a bull.”

The brush made a small mark on the paper. Garet could not see what she was writing.

With the brush held ready again, Tarix asked, “And what will a Shrieker do if cornered?”

Garet thought for a moment before answering. “Moret says that a Shrieker will try to climb a wall to escape, but,” he hesitated before gathering his courage to continue, “I have never seen a Shrieker try to escape.” He stood ready for a charge of disrespect towards the ancient scholars of the Hall.

“Neither have I,” Tarix replied. She made another mark. “Shriekers are not only the least common demons, they are also the most aggressive.”

“But Moret says they are the most common!” he protested and then stopped, aghast at having contradicted this imposing Master.
Another mistake to mark down
, he thought with a sigh.

“They are indeed the most common, Garet.” The brush made another mark. “What are the tactics used to fight a Rat Demon?” she asked.

The interrogation went on for half an hour. He was now so familiar with the Demonary that there were only a few questions he could not answer. When she finished with her questions, Tarix thanked Garet for his patience and told Marick to take him to the kitchens, on her authority, to eat a late lunch. Surprised, Garet realized that he had not even heard the bells for the mid-day meal. Tarix handed Marick a scrap of paper with her permission brushed on it and waved them out.