City of Masks (25 page)

Allifur and Corfin had their hands behind their backs and only reluctantly presented them for Tarix’s inspection. Garet squatted to get a better look.

“Is that a shield?” he asked, tapping the oval of metal on the girl’s arm. “It’s so small . . . and it’s on your left arm!”

Tarix knelt on one knee and examined the weapon. The socket of Allifur’s wrist fit snugly into a metal and leather cup near the end of the shield. Leather loops held the length of it tight against her arm, and a strange arrangement of strapping disappeared through a slit in her sleeve.

“Goes around,” Allifur whispered, and traced a line from her shoulder to under her right arm. “Can’t fall off that way, Dasanat says.”

Tarix looked at Corfin, who had a braced dagger in his belt, not a blunt training weapon, but a well-sharpened blade.

“Master Forlinect let us take them,” he said, staring down at his toes. “He don’t want nobody to go out without a weapon.” He looked up and smiled proudly. “The others got only staffs!”

Allifur nodded.

Tarix stood up again and looked at the two. The red light of the morning cast her face in sharp shadows so that she seemed cut from stone. So did her voice. “Understand this, you are not to use those toys unless you are attacked and your lives are in danger. And you two will do what I say, or I’ll order Ratal to eat up the both of you!”

Allifur and Corfin both nodded vigorously, Allifur with the hint of a smile and Corfin with a wary eye on Ratal.

Tarix seemed in no mood for further conversation, so Garet talked with fellow Greens Riga and Aralon as they walked to the gates of the Sixteenth Ward.

“They’re going to kick out that Mask, I hear,” Aralon said. He twirled the head of his axe as they walked. “Good riddance, I say.”

Riga glared at him. She stuck her spear out to stop the rotation of the axe. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, no matter what they’ve done! When I was a child, my mother used to scare me witless with that threat. ‘Stop fighting with your brother or it’s exile for you, and the beasts will eat you up!’ Nobody’s been exiled for centuries, so why do it now? She could be put on a chain gang and made to work, or even locked in a cell beneath the Palace. That’s enough as far as I’m concerned.”

Aralon snorted and said, “You’re so bossy, I bet your whole family wanted you exiled.”

Garet didn’t listen to the ensuing insults, but looked to where Tarix trudged ahead of him. The Red looked as if more than a bad knee slowed her pace.

When they came to the Gate, the guard told them that Kitoroth’s team had already entered and made their way to the Outer Gate.

“Heaven guard you this day, Banes,” he told them, and closed the gate when they were all through.

The day was monotonous. The back and forth hurt their feet and wore on their patience. At last, Tarix called a break, first for Kitoroth’s team, then her own. They found a place by the Outer Gate where they could eat lunch, and the children and ancients of the nearby buildings brought out enough that even Ratal was satisfied.

Tarix seemed to have walked off her grim mood, for she elbowed Garet as he tried to finish a bowl of chicken and greens that could have graced a Palace table.

“Perhaps this is the work of our unknown adversaries too. If the demons can’t kill us, they’ll feed us to death!”

Garet laughed up some of his lunch, and Ratal pounded him on the back until he could choke it down again.

The shadows were lengthening when Tarix held up her hand. They were in the stockyards, and the noise from the barns had taken on an urgent quality. In a flash of memory, Garet saw the animals on his father’s farm panicking as a hidden demon approached his family’s home. He took the rope-hammer off its hook and looked to the others. They were readying their weapons as well. Ratal swung his new iron bound staff, one that was even heavier than his last, and grunted.

“At last,” he said, and Aralon hefted his axe and smiled.

Riga and Garet looked at each other. Neither felt any joy at an approaching demon. Tarix looked around and shuddered.

“A bad place,” she said. “Too much open ground. A really big beast can build up great speed in a charge.”

Her left hand drifted down to her braced knee, and Garet remembered that it was in a similar stockyard that she had been run over by a Basher Demon and put in a wheeled chair for five years before Banerict and Dasanat helped her walk again.

“Spread out,” she said. “Don’t give it more than one person as a target. It will charge any group. You two hang back and separate,” she added, looking at the Black Sashes.

They could feel it now, the fear that had set the cows and horses to running about in their enclosures, tossing their heads, and biting at their stable mates.

The guards from the Outer Gate came running past them, followed by herders and field workers, with a chain gang of manure shovelers shuffling awkwardly behind them. Last came a Ward Guard, weaponless and stumbling away from terror. If he could still run, Garet knew, the beast was yet outside the Wall.

“Let’s get to the gate,” Tarix said. That last guard had lingered to close the barrier and thrown the iron bar into its locking brackets.

“That’s luck,” Tarix said. “And with a little bit more, the beast will be something smaller than that monster we fought in the Fifth Ward. Ratal on my left, Garet, stay on my right. Riga and Dorict stand past Ratal, and Aralon, get beside Garet.”

She turned her head and called to the Black Sashes. “Corfin, you go running back and get Kitoroth up here. Go now. Allifur, make sure the stockyard gate is shut behind him and see if there is anyone else left inside the barns.”

The fear was heightened, and Garet felt that the only thing between them and the demon was the outer Wall, and that had never been a barrier to the kind of danger that approached. The gate creaked, pushing the bar until that great beam bent a little in the middle. There was a pause as the pressure eased, then, as if the wooden panels breathed, they stretched in again, then back. Each flexing of the gate brought a screech of metal as the hinges worked their way out of the stone.

“It’s big!” Tarix shouted. “Ratal, move back to that side. You two with me on this side, we’ll strike as it comes past us.”

Garet let out enough rope to strike from a distance and moved away from the other Green to make space for his throw.

The first of the hinges gave way, then another, and the door leaned inward. In the space between the arched stone and the top of the door, they could see the massive head of a Basher Demon, its horns swept up and out, its black eyes fixed on splintering wood. It drew back and howled its rage. Then it charged.

The door burst into fragments, showering the Banes with sharp splinters and jagged boards. Aralon was down, bleeding from hand and head, but Garet couldn’t go to him, for the Basher was continuing on, past Tarix, who didn’t move, though she seemed uninjured. Ratal whacked at it with his staff, and the beast veered, giving Garet a clear enough view of its longer front legs to launch his own attack.

The missile at the end of the line swung around one set of claws but not the other. Garet wedged the pick end of the line between two flagstones and held on, trying to stop it, for only then could the others attack in some safety.

One traps, and the others attack, just like Mandarack taught us.

The Basher turned, wrenching at the rope, but it held, and Ratal, Dorict, and Riga came at it from behind, trying to take the back legs out from under it. The Basher ignored them, even when Riga jammed her spear against its side and pushed as hard as she could to try and pierce its natural armour. The beast’s attention was firmly on its tangled paw, and, when it finally discerned that it could not pull away, it came towards Garet, head down and snapping its great beak.

Tarix was nowhere to be seen, and Aralon was still on the ground. The rope-bound foot came down on the flagstones beside Garet’s leg. The other fell beside his head. He wrenched at the pick, trying to free it so that he could at least hack at the creature’s eyes, but the Basher’s weight on the line had forced it too tightly into the crack. The nightmare head came down, and Garet could only kick at it.

“Tarix!” he cried, but the Red did not appear.

Allifur did. She came in a swirl of motion, turning in a full, whipping circle to bring the sharp edge of the shield right into the demon’s mouth. It hit where the top and bottom of the beak joined, breaking rows of needle teeth and cutting into the muscles of the jaw.

The Basher Demon reared, spreading its mouth lopsidedly wide, and then Tarix was beside him, screaming at the beast and shoving her trident as far down its throat as it would go. The shaft was ripped from her hands, but then Ratal came in swinging his weighted staff in a blow that Garet could scarce believe. The strength of it would have taken the head right off a lesser demon, but it did almost as well for the Basher, crushing its throat and knocking it backwards to lay thrashing on the ground.

Riga ran to Aralon and lifted him up. There were long splinters sticking out of his arm and scalp, giving him the appearance of a dazed hedgehog. Allifur held out her hand to help Garet to his feet. He smiled at her and clapped her on the shoulder.

“Well killed, Bane,” he said, and she smiled back, a fierce grin that changed everything about her.

Tarix stood, staring down at the Basher. Her trident was still sticking out of the monster’s mouth.

“Were you hurt by the broken door, Master?” Garet asked. He looked at her but saw no blood upon her clothes.

“No,” she said. “I froze.” She turned to him, distraught. “Garet, I froze when that beast came in! It was like before. I dream about it so often, the gate breaking and the Basher stomping over me. The pain of it . . .” and here she stopped and knelt on her good knee, holding the other in both hands. There, with Garet’s arm around her, she wept.

Allifur, Riga, and Aralon looked on, unsure what to do, but Ratal came over and lifted his Master to her feet.

“You did not freeze,” he said in a magisterial voice. Coming from that height, it had the ring of Heaven’s Truth.

Tarix scowled and wiped her eyes. “But I did freeze, Ratal. I . . . failed you all.”

Ratal shook his head. “You did not freeze, Master, and if anyone says you did, I will have a talk with them,” he said, and tapped his staff gently on the paving stones, breaking only two of them.

Tarix looked to Garet, who smiled, and to Allifur, who nodded in agreement and raised her shield. The Red looked back at Ratal, glared, and reached up to grab his ears and pull him down so that she could kiss him on the forehead.

“Ratal, you are an irritating, frustrating, stubborn treasure of a Bane, and I would not trade you to another team for rubies and silk! And I promise that if we ever face another Basher, I’ll let you take the lead again.”

Ratal grinned and went over to Aralon. He took the shaky Green’s arm and led him over to the demon.

“Come on, you. Rest time is over. Pull out those splinters, and let’s split this beast’s skull open so we can remove the jewel and get back on patrol.”

Garet’s back shivered. Something was wrong. The fear wasn’t stable, it was increasing. He looked at Allifur. The child was shaking like a leaf.

“Heaven shield us,” said Riga. “Look up there.”

They looked to where she pointed. Atop a nearby warehouse was a Shrieker Demon, leaning over the gutter edge as if it could hardly wait to descend and attack them.

Allifur screeched, and they turned to see her backing away from a Rat Demon that emerged from the alley between two barns. Garet ran up beside her, still weaponless, but ready to kick the thing to death if need be.

Ratal wrenched the trident out of the Basher’s mouth and tossed it to Tarix. Aralon stumbled over to Garet and handed him his axe.

“Here, I can’t use this thing one-handed,” he said.

Garet hefted the double-bladed weapon, but before he could advance on the chittering creature, he felt the ground shift under his feet. Alarmed, he recognized the threat.

“There’s a demon under us, get back!” he yelled, and he pulled Allifur away as the paving stones shivered and fell into a sudden and growing pit.

Garet, Allifur, and Aralon were on one side of the hole. Tarix, Ratal, and Riga were on the other. And something moved in the soft earth at the bottom of the pit.

Tarix shouted out orders. “Ratal, you and Riga take the Shrieker. Aralon and Allifur deal with that Rat. Garet, you and I will kill anything that comes out of that hole. Understood?”

The Shrieker was halfway down the warehouse wall, and the Rat Demon was twisting back and forth, looking for a way past Allifur’s darting shield. Aralon had pried up a small paver and was circling around behind it.

Garet raised the axe as a heavily clawed hand emerged from the mess of dirt and broken stone. Then something changed.

There was a shift in the air, a quick ripple in the blanket of terror covering the Ward. The Shrieker lifted its beak and sniffed. Suddenly, it cried out, its telltale scream splitting the air and causing the youngest Bane to cover her ears. It moved like lightning, but away from them, back up the warehouse wall and across the roof. The Rat Demon did the same, fleeing into the alley and disappearing in a heartbeat. There was a rumbling in the ground, and the dirt in the bottom of the pit was still.