City of Demons (8 page)

Marick continued, “I doubt that you'll have to give up your horse tonight though.” He looked at the low angle of the sun. “I'm sure Salick will convince the Master to halt for the night if we find shelter.”

“Why?” asked Garet. “Wouldn't it be better to be in a safe place, rather than camp out here and meet another demon?”

Marick stretched his short body into an uncanny imitation of the lean Salick. Speaking through his nose, he lectured Garet, “My dear boy, you are not thinking like a Demonbane. It is our job to kill demons, not hide from them!” With a grin, the boy continued in his normal tone. “And better any demon runs into us than some poor farmer chasing his cows. Besides, Mandarack may fight like a demon himself, but he's older than time, and had best take it easy.”

Anything further that Marick might have said was cut off by two slim hands coming up from behind him and grabbing his ears. He started to twist, but the fingers only squeezed tighter.

“Ow! Salick! What are you trying to do? I can't be a Bane if I've got no ears, can I?” he protested as the tall girl dragged him to his feet.

“Well, my little Bane, if you've got time to gossip, I suppose I'll just have to find a job for you.” Her eyes were narrowed and her cheeks red. Garet guessed that she had overheard Marick's remarks about Mandarack. “Something to get your mind off your betters, I think.” She handed him the hatchet. “Start finding wood for tonight's fire. You can carry it beside the horses until we reach some shelter.”

Marick, instead of protesting at the unfairness of his punishment, merely winked at Garet and whispered to him, “That'll teach me to keep my mouth shut or my eyes open.” The boy trotted off to where the trees straggled over the lip of the river valley.

Unpredictable
, thought Garet. He could never guess what Marick's reaction would be in any situation, but he found himself liking the young Bane more and more. What would it have been like to have him for a brother instead of Galit and Gitel? More practical jokes maybe. But they might have been ones you could laugh at too, and maybe you could play one yourself and get a laugh back instead of a beating.

Salick interrupted his thoughts. “Don't listen to Marick's foolishness. He rattles on like the Ar in spring flood!”

Garet had to ask, “Is Master Mandarack really all right?” The old Bane was responsible for this new life of companionship and adventure. What would happen to him if Mandarack died?

Salick puffed up, ready to attack and then seemed to deflate. She answered in a lowered voice. “Marick was right about one thing, the Master is no longer young.” She glanced around to make sure they were alone. “It's true that I worry about him; he takes too much on himself. If we don't look after him, well...we should find a place to rest for the night.”

Garet was surprised at the trust she was showing in him, to reveal so much of her fears. “He's like your father, isn't he?” he ventured.

Salick gave a half-hearted bristle and grumbled, “Better than my own father, anyway.” She stomped off towards the horses and called to Dorict to help her re-load the bags.

And mine too
, Garet thought.

They rode on for the rest of the afternoon but found no likely place to rest. Now many of the homesteads were a mess of tumbled turf walls and charred roof-beams. Others had a stink of death about them that hurried the small party on. As the sun dipped towards the west, they came upon a farmhouse that appeared to have escaped the demons' attacks. Larger than most, the simple corral typical of Midland farms was here replaced by a substantial barn and several sheds. The house itself was timber framed with thick walls made of pressed mud and clay. The outside was whitewashed and glowed in the low rays of the sun. Instead of thatch, curved red tiles covered the roof. Everything spoke of prosperity and comfort, down to the broad vegetable garden flanking the painted wooden door.

“No dead cattle, no corpses. A cheerful place to rest. Shall we, Master?” Marick asked as he trotted alongside the horses, branches bundled under each arm.

Mandarack nodded and dismounted slowly from his horse. Garet guessed that the effort of killing the demon and travelling across these plains had indeed taken a toll on the old man's body.

“It will do. Salick, scout the area. Take Garet with you.” The Banemaster walked towards the well, but Marick dropped the wood with a crash and ran ahead of him to lower the bucket and draw up water for his master to drink.

The truth is in the deed
, thought Garet. No matter what the impudent boy said, he loved his master as much as Salick did. He dismounted and followed his tutor in a wide circle around the farm. Salick stopped often to examine tracks on the ground, but to Garet they looked like the tracks of cows and dogs. Reassured, they moved on to examine the barn then returned to the house.

A resident cat acted as their host that evening, giving its haughty approval to their presence by rubbing against their legs and hopping into their laps at the least convenient moments. Marick put his wood in the hearth and lit the fire while Dorict searched for some food. Luckily, the speed of the owner's departure meant that some provisions had been left behind. The stout boy, much cheered by what he found, began peeling potatoes and carrots.

Garet was used to kitchen work and lent a hand. The vegetables were soon cubed and boiled in a blackened pot over the fire while Dorict rolled out flour and water into thin disks. “If we had some herbs,” the young Bane told Garet, “and some honey, I could show you the bread we eat in Shirath.”

“There's green onions in the garden,” Garet offered. He pulled some from the wreckage of the hastily dug plot, another sign of the speed with which the farmer had left. The chopped green stems were added to the flat bread, along with a touch of sugar that Salick had found in the bottom of a crock. Dorict set them in a frying pan that he had heated in the centre of the coals, and a wonderful aroma soon filled the abandoned house. They sat down to a better supper than Garet had tasted since their journey began.

Filled to the brim with Dorict's cooking, the Banes sought an early bed. Mandarack took his blanket to a back room that must have once housed the farmer and his wife. Salick, Dorict, and Marick arranged cushions and rugs around the banked fire and soon drifted off to sleep. Garet had a problem. The cat was firmly planted in his lap and showed no signs of moving. After waiting until all his companions were breathing deeply, he gently lifted the cat down to the still form of Marick. The creature gave him one unfathomable look from its green eyes and then snuggled against the boy's chest.

Garet crept about looking for another rug to cushion the polished plank floor. He had not had a chance to examine the house before this, what with helping Dorict prepare supper, and he was struck with how familiar the place looked. It had the same basic arrangement as his own home: a long bottom floor, although the lower sleeping quarters were here enclosed by a plastered wall; a loft that had once held beds small enough to be put on the owner's cart when he fled this place; a kitchen hearth no deeper or wider than his mother's; and here and there, an abandoned pot or wooden spoon that touched his heart with their homely familiarity. He reached down and picked up a straw doll, wrapped in a bit of cloth for a dress. Garet held the lost thing and thought of his sister calling his name to come play. He put the doll back where he had found it and, picking up a straw mat rolled up in the corner, turned to join the others in sleep. He saw a gleam in the fire's uncertain light but couldn't tell if the two eyes looking at him were the cat's or Marick's. Whoever they belonged to, they shut again and Garet drifted off to sleep.

The next morning saw the party of Banes finally arrive at the village of Bangt. Mandarack had roused them at dawn, and they had chewed on Dorict's slightly stale disks of bread while riding. The trail widened as it joined other tracks heavy with the prints of cattle and the ruts of laden carts. Here the river they had followed for two days, the Plainscutter, met the North Ar, making it wider and calmer for a part of its journey to the western sea. The foamed staircase of rapids and the sandbars upriver to the east, which confounded even the smallest boats upstream, disappeared. Here, the river matured into a stately, sober current that minded its manners until it quickened again at the great falls near Old Torrick.

At Bangt, plainsmen and traders could cross on barges hauled to the other side by thick ropes. It was a small place, by the standards of the South, but Garet had never seen so many people in his life. Once a village little bigger than Three Roads, Bangt had swelled to become a crowded refugee camp. The appearance of the demons had finally driven the scattered humanity of the plains together. Farming families, who had once dotted the prairie on isolated homesteads, now huddled around the few wooden buildings that made up the original village. Every available patch of ground grew a makeshift tent crafted from canvas, rough-cut boards, or even sheaves of bound wheat. Small children sat in front of these poor shelters, thumbs in mouths, as if still stunned by the loss of their homes. A gang of men and women were pulling logs from rafts nosed into the riverbank. These logs, probably cut in the foothills Garet had so recently left, were being used to raise a wooden palisade around both Bangt and its mass of uprooted humanity.

“Wooden walls!” mocked Marick as the group made its way to the hustle of activity along the river. “A Basher would smash through that in a minute.”

“Look before you talk,” Dorict replied dryly. He pointed to the patch of ground before a completed section of the wall. A group of boys, too young to lift the heavy timbers making up the wall, were busy sharpening six-foot long stakes. The stakes were planted, sharpened ends angling out and up, in a broad belt protecting the palisade. In front of that, another group of teens laboured in a half-dug ditch. “Even a Basher would have a hard time building up enough speed for a charge. We might learn something from these Midlanders.”

“But they've pointed them the wrong way,” Salick noted. “They'll never trap a demon with the spikes facing out, could they, Master?”

Mandarack had paused to examine the defenses. “They build against their fear,” he replied. “When a Banehall is established here, we will teach them how to guard against demons.” He slapped the neck of his horse with the reins, but the party's forward progress was interrupted by the flustered arrival of a young woman, dressed as a Bane and in age a match for Salick.

“Master Mandarack!” She stopped to catch her breath but flashed a smile, first at Salick, then at the younger Banes. “You're here! The barge is ready to take you on to Torrick. Supplies are hard to get.” She waved towards the mass of refugees while gulping for more air. “But there's enough to get you to the Banehall.” Her message delivered, she straightened and stood respectfully, waiting for a reply. She was a typical Southerner, blond hair, tall and slim, with bright, blue eyes. She noticed Garet's examination and smiled again, revealing dimples in her cheeks. Garet blushed and looked away.

One of the great trials of Garet's existence, at least from his point of view, had been the lack of young women in his life. Aside from his mother and sister, he might go weeks without seeing another woman of any age. The other farmers kept their daughters away from Three Roads and from other farmers' sons, so the only example of the other sex he had a chance to see had been the women who worked in the tavern at Three Roads. But they were wolf-like, eyeing the passing traders as if they were dinner, and therefore more frightening than attractive. Trallet, the tavern keeper's wife, was the worst of these. She covered her face in rouge and powders to hide her age, but she achieved only a harsh mockery of youth. Salick, the only other young woman he knew, was Trallet's opposite. She disdained makeup and hid what might have been a pretty face behind such deadly seriousness that he did not dare to think of her romantically. Besides, his relationship with her was now one of student to teacher, a relationship she was unlikely to let him forget.

The young woman standing in front of them now, long braids whipping around her cheeks in the prairie wind, wore neither rouge nor a grim expression. She smiled, not to entice him, but from a pure love of this moment in her life: the blue sky, the excitement of the camp around them, and meeting old friends, for she and Salick now hugged each other and fell to talking. For perhaps the first time in his life, Garet understood just what beauty meant. He blushed even more and busied himself with a perfectly good knot on his horse's rein.

“Vinir! I didn't know you were sent here.” Salick looked happier than Garet had ever seen her. She grabbed Vinir by her shoulders, giving the other Bane a shake.

“Easy there!” Vinir replied, freeing herself and brushing the hair out of her eyes. “I need to complete my duties. Master, is there anything else you'll need?”