Kesla laughed and punched him lightly on the shoulder. Garet stumbled forward. The Gold was a strong woman. She pushed herself harder than most and cut her hair scandalously short so that it wouldn’t interfere with her duties.
“From mine too,” she told him.
“And mine,” Ratal added, unnecessarily, since he had become a Bane a few years after Kesla.
“I would have to add my own experience to that impressive total,” Tarix said. “I’ve seen records that show greater and lesser numbers of demons over time, but nothing like this. Lately the beasts have been very . . . enthusiastic.”
“I wonder why,” Garet said, mostly to himself.
Kesla rubbed his head. “When you find out, let us know.”
“Is there reason in such horrors?” Ratal mused, and the others looked at him.
“Wondering is contagious, it seems,” Kesla said.
They arrived at the Bridge Gates, greeted the guards, and passed over. Garet looked down, trying to see the sewer outlets where the Snake Demon had entered, but it was all darkness.
The Palace Plaza was even quieter than the night before. At first no lights showed save the lamps from the Palace and the Bridge Gates. The Banes had brought their own lanterns and lit them now. Then they spotted small lights moving in the distance, passing between the Temple and the Palace.
“That would be Forlinect’s patrol just starting in on the Sixth Ward. Well, let’s make our Plaza sweep and then get over there,” Tarix said. She tapped the end of her trident against the brace strengthening her leg. “We’ll see if this mix of iron and flesh can last the night.”
“We’ll do the Plaza,” Ratal said. “You meet us by the Ward gate.”
“Respectful, isn’t he,” Kesla said. “Giving orders to a Master!”
Ratal got a punch from her, one that looked a lot harder than the one she had bestowed upon Garet. She glared at the Gold and then turned to Tarix.
“Fool as he is, Master, it might be the best for this first night. There’s nothing here or we would have sensed it already, so if you don’t mind, the three of us will do this and meet you at the gate.”
Tarix stopped laughing long enough to nod. She put a hand on Ratal’s shoulder, the unbruised one.
“Ratal, Heaven has willed that you learn manners the hard way, under your senior’s gentle instruction. Go. Sweep the Plaza, and I will meet you at the Ward Gate.”
Kesla sent Garet and Ratal to the right, for the warren of market stalls was a two-person job at the very least. She trotted left towards the three domes of the Temple, her flail rocking on one shoulder.
Ratal shouldered his own weapon, a long iron-bound staff, the squared head studded with short spikes. It looked like a slow thing to wield, but Garet had seen the young man catch a Shrieker in mid-leap and smash it against a wall. Manners or not, Ratal was a good Bane to have on patrol.
They divided the market into halves and wound their way, alley by alley, through the tents and stalls. They found nothing amiss, save a loose flap on a tent covered with drawings of the sun and moon. The sign proclaimed the owner was a seer. He smiled, for this was Mistress Alanick’s fortune-telling stall. He had met the old woman on his first day in the city, and she had been of great help in securing a certain meeting with the King. He tied the flap tight and moved on.
Kesla was right, there’s nothing here or we’d have sensed the fear already.
If he felt any unease, it was that Tarix would be unable to complete tonight’s sweep, even though her leg was much improved from when he first had seen her, sitting in a wheeled chair. If she couldn’t patrol, Branet might demand that she give up her Golds and Greens to another master. Garet sent a prayer up into the star-sprayed sky above that his life would not be upended yet again.
Ratal whistled to get his attention, and Garet brought his concentration back to the duties of the night. The market finished, Ratal sent him around the front of the Palace while he took the rear. There were guards standing in front of the doors, one under each light, but they didn’t move as Garet passed by. Alarmed at first, Garet paused to study them. After a moment, he realized that they had mastered the skill of sleeping while standing up, or rather leaning against the wall. He coughed and walked on while they woke and looked blearily around.
“Anything?” Kesla asked when they met again at the west end of the Palace.
“Two sleepy guards,” Garet said.
“And two assistant cooks kissing in the shadows,” Ratal added. He grinned, leaving the others in no doubt that he had frightened them out of their embrace.
“Nothing by the Temple, save priests preparing for the funerals of those kids and guards from the Seventh Ward,” Kesla said. “It will be a sad day tomorrow. Come on, let us make sure they don’t get any busier.”
They met Tarix at the Ward gate. She was sitting on a stool, drinking tea and chatting with a Ward guard.
“I never knew patrols could be so relaxing,” she told him, and stood up. “But it’s back to work. Goodnight, Hoster.”
After months of patrols, Garet knew the ways of each Ward as well as he knew the path to his own room in the Banehall. This one had long tenements stretching almost across the Ward for some distance in. The gates were all on the northeast side. Although they slowed their progress, the Banes didn’t mind. The barriers divided each Ward into spaces small enough to trap and kill demons before they could run wild through the entire population. They checked each gate as they passed, finding it closed and latched as it should be. Either Garet or Ratal then ran down between the three-story tenements to the end of the row and back.
When they were halfway through the Ward, the buildings became smaller, and the passages between them multiplied. Tarix sent each of them off to check a lane while she took the main path between the Lord’s house and a squat block of rooms reserved for the wealthy. Garet found all these gates secured as well, unsurprising since Forlinect’s patrol had just passed. The Red would have noted any open gates, and the Ward lord would receive a stern message from the Hall the next day. It would be deserved. Some demons were incredibly fast, and many could kill on the run. Trapping them was the only way to limit their destruction.
They finished their sweep of the Ward by the outer gate in an area used for warehouses and stockyards. Now they must walk back to the inner gate to get to the next Ward. For a moment, they stood huddled by the outer gate. The cold prickled at them, and Garet shivered for a moment before raising his head to stare at the others.
“Do you feel that?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ratal said. He shifted his staff to grip it with both hands.
“Form a circle and face outwards,” Tarix commanded. “Try to locate it.”
They did so, Garet facing the wall separating the Sixth Ward from the Fifth.
There it was, the little scratch along the nerves, the tightening of his muscles for no reason at all. He closed his eyes as Master Mandarack had taught him, swinging his head slowly back and forth, closing out everything but that slight touch of terror.
“Not this side,” Kesla said.
“Not from where we came either,” Ratal added.
“Nor from the North,” Tarix said. “Garet?”
“The Fifth Ward, on the other side of the wall.”
“We’re in the wrong Ward!” Kesla said. “Do you think Forlinect is nearer?”
Tarix grimaced. “At our speed, by which I mean mine, Forlinect might already be in the same situation we are, on the other side of a wall in the Fourth Ward. But he’d have sensed it too, so maybe we can pin it between us. Come, let’s go out the outer gate and come in the same way to the Fifth.”
Bad leg or no, she ran with the others, out past the trembling guards at the outer gate and towards the entrance to the neighbouring Ward. They pounded on wooden doors that, when opened, would be wide enough for wagons of grain and sledges of timber to pass together. There was no response.
“Claws!” Tarix said. “The fear has likely frozen them. Garet, keep trying. The rest of you look for something to slide between the doors and open the bar.”
Garet pounded the gate with the hammer end of his weapon. He realized that Tarix was right. The slit between the doors was paper thin: too narrow for the pick end of his rope-hammer, or any other weapon they bore. A knife might do it, but he carried none.
He kept hammering until Ratal shouted out, “Here! Over here! A hole in the wall!”
The rest joined him. Something had dug into the stone and mortar to make a tunnel through the great thickness at the base of the wall. The mouth was high enough and wide enough to make Garet swallow. What demon could leave such a trail?
“A Basher Demon?” Kesla asked. She sounded unsure.
Tarix said nothing. She was the first through the tunnel. The rest followed. It took some time before they were through, for the rubble created in its making slowed them down.
The fear was jumping higher now. As soon as he got through, Garet let out a loop of rope on the missile end of his weapon, wondering if even this heavy, spiked ball could slow the demon that made such a hole.
“Fan out. Check for wounded and dead,” Tarix said.
“No guards?” Ratal asked Kesla when they met again. His voice sounded unnaturally high, and he stroked his bushy moustache over and over.
“No guardhouse,” Kesla said through gritted teeth. “And a barn has been destroyed as well. Over there, by the Maze.”
Garet looked to where she pointed. A short wall cut off a corner of Fifth Ward. Within was a warren of small buildings, shacks, and hovels. It was said that every part of the Ward looked like this once, but a great fire destroyed all but the Maze two hundred years ago.
“Let us hope it hasn’t gotten into that pest hole,” Tarix said. She told Kesla to lead them to the destroyed buildings.
The small guardhouse was flattened, but the barn had only been rent in the middle, split from roof to foundation by something pushing through. Garet had seen a Basher Demon do worse, but he had never heard of one tunneling though a wall. A Basher would have knocked down the gate or, for all its size, used its claws to climb over anything it couldn’t break down.
The trail of wreckage led through the stockyards. Parts of cows lay scattered, and the fences were now kindling.
“So,” said Ratal, “it doesn’t just eat stone.”
“Maybe not, but look how the paving is torn up,” Kesla said, pointing to huge gouges in the lane leading between the Maze and rows of Ward housing.
They must have been close, for the fear was enough to send trembling along their arms and legs. Ratal swung his staff vigorously. Kesla was more restrained, but she kept shifting her grip on the flail and darting glances into the darkness between the buildings.
Tarix turned her head back and forth. At last she put her lamp on the ground and ran along the Maze wall, ignoring the buildings to her left though they were full of helpless families. The others followed her. Before them rose an imposing house, pillared and fraught with carvings of wealth: fat cows and sheep, pools of swimming fish, stacks of cloth and raw wool, even a forest of trees being cut down. This was the house of Sacourat, Lord of the Fifth Ward, and every light in it was now burning, probably since the first touch of fear woke them from sleep a short time before.
“There!” Tarix cried.
The creature was half in darkness and half in light, but no mere shadow could have hidden this demon. It was big, larger than a Basher but squatter, its wide belly almost dragging on the ground. At the sound of running feet, it turned its head towards them.
“Claws!” Kesla said, and Garet murmured profane agreement, for the head ridges of the demon, usually raised as horns of some kind, were here spread out into flattened plates that protected it from beak to shoulders.
Garet had never seen anything like it.
Adding to his wonder, he realized that its eyes, hidden in twin hollows of the faceplates, were white instead of black.
The Banes stopped twenty feet from the creature. It paused, then turned its back on them. Lunging forward, it pushed its beak into a narrow passage it was trying to enter. The lane was too small, but instead of turning around and seeking another way, the demon reared up on its hind legs and scraped at the corner of the Lord’s house with its claws. There was a screeching as those heavy hooks cut into the building.
Garet looked on in awe.
Those claws are longer than my forearms—and thicker. That’s how it got through the wall!
The demon continued its attack on the Lord’s house, tearing down avalanches of brick and plaster at each swipe.
Ratal ran up and swung his staff at the thing’s hindquarters. The iron head of the weapon made solid contact, but the demon showed no sign of feeling it.
“What now, Master?” the Gold shouted at Tarix.
The creature stopped its demolition and swiveled towards Ratal. The Bane stood, open-mouthed and for a moment too long.
The demon charged.
Kesla pushed Ratal out of the way, and scooped up Tarix with her other arm to go rolling away with her in a tangle of limbs, bruised but safe. There was a crack as Ratal’s staff snapped in two under the demon’s feet. Garet was farther away and ready to jump, but the beast stopped short, twisting its head back and forth, searching for what it wanted to crush.