Gods & Dragons: 8 Fantasy Novels

by Daniel Arenson

  Marick started to speak again but stopped as Garet moved stiffly forward. The younger Bane stared unbelievingly as Garet reached out with his free hand and took the jewel from the Midlander. Released from the touch of the powerful stone, the poor man collapsed in a heap, drawing in huge gasps of breath at Garet’s feet. His friends, still under the spell of the jewels, could barely move to help him. A wave of relief passed through Garet as Dorict came up, swept the jewels into their wrappings and quickly lowered them back into the water.

  For the rest of the dying day, the Midlanders huddled in the stern and the Banes stayed in the bow. When they nosed into the riverbank to camp for the night, the Midlanders tied up the boat and moved a good quarter mile away, under a stand of willows, to make their camp. After a quiet dinner, Mandarack, who had roused himself as they landed, told them to make ready for bed while he walked a while on the plains above the river. Salick started up but he motioned her to stay and was up the bank before she could protest.

  As soon as he was out of sight, the four Banes, by some unspoken agreement, all came to the small cooking fire. Dorict spoke directly to Marick, and the usually calm boy was shaking in his anger.

  “Marick, I’ve known you a long time, but this is the cruelest joke you’ve ever played!”

  The younger Bane ducked his head and gave a muffled reply, “I know.” There was a sniffle and Garet saw that he was crying. “I didn’t want to hurt the oaf, just teach him a lesson!”

  Salick, her usual air of stern competence replaced by uncertainty, put her hand on his arm. “I know, Marick, we all did.” She looked at Garet and Dorict and they nodded. “But that’s no excuse—for you or for me.” She put her hands on his temples and lifted his head so that she could look into his reddened eyes. “I should have stopped you,” she confessed and then smiled at the stricken boy, “after all, everyone knows you have no sense.”

  Marick smiled a bit through his tears but shook his head. “I do have some, at least usually enough to know when I’ve gone overboard. It’s my fault, Salick, not yours.” He glanced up the trail Mandarack had taken for his stroll, “But what puzzles me is why did the Master let me go so far.” The little Bane buried his face in his arms again.

  “Marick, he was asleep!” Garet said.

  “No, Marick’s right, Garet.” Dorict was also looking thoughtfully in the direction Mandarack had taken. “He must have known what was going on. Bringing those jewels past him would have woken a first year Black Sash from the dead.”

  “Why would he want me to do that to the Midlanders?” Curiosity had roused Marick from his unaccustomed humility.

  A spark of an idea came to Garet, and he asked Salick, “What’s the biggest danger right now for the Midlanders? Aside from meeting a demon.”

  “Ignorance,” she answered promptly. “They have no idea of how much danger they’re in. Vinir said it took a half-month just to convince them to give up their farms and build walled towns. If they truly knew the risk of living without Demonbanes, they would never have been so stubborn.”

  “Exactly,” Garet agreed, “and our little ‘game’ will be told and re-told to both ends of the river within a week. People will see that if a big brawler like him couldn’t bear the touch of even a tiny part of a dead demon, a ‘trophy,’ then the power of demons is too great to deny.”

  “And the necessity of the Banes,” Dorict added thoughtfully.

  “And so the advice of the Banehall will be heard, rather than ignored.” Salick looked at Garet with grudging respect. “That must be it. The Master planned it all. He used Marick to prepare the Midlands for the Banehalls we will build here.”

  Dorict looked at his young friend. “It must be reassuring to know that even a fool like you has his uses.”

  Marick, still feeling the temporary burden of his sins, refused to answer the jibe. Salick, however, seemed her old, confident self again. Reassured of Mandarack’s infallibility, she bounced up and started shooing them all to their bedrolls. “Everyone to sleep! We’ll want to be rested when we arrive at Old Torrick tomorrow.” She even slapped a yawning Garet on the back. “It’s not the Shirath Banehall, but any hall is a home to us.”

  Garet fell asleep wondering about this home he had never seen.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OLD TORRICK

  The name, “Old Torrick,” was easy to understand as the city appeared around a last bend in the river. So ancient that it seemed to grow out of the riverbank, the city’s stone walls slumped between slanted towers before almost meeting at a broken gate. Salick had already told Garet that Torrick was the oldest of the five cities of the South. It was also the smallest; barely twenty thousand people lived within its walls, although a few thousand more lived in the rough villages of miners scattered below it, at the foot of the Falls.

  The decrepit appearance of the fortress was sharply contrasted by the bustle of activity around its stone wharves. The barge was soon tied up beside a small flotilla of other such boats, most of them in the process of being unloaded. Most carried tightly bundled sheaves of hay; a few others bore thatch-covered piles of winnowed grain. Men and women, dressed in the rough clothes of labourers, called to each other as they lifted out bags and bales to set them in piles on the wharf.

  Their own crew had disappeared as soon as they scooped up the coins Mandarack had left on the stern bench. They were the same coins Marick had won from them the day before. Garet had no idea how Mandarack had got hold of them, but suspected Salick had arranged it. During the exchange, Marick had hidden as the bent-nosed leader swept up the coins and walked, stiff-backed, down the stone quay with his fellows. The small Bane snaked his head around Salick’s elbow and stuck out his tongue at the departing Midlanders. Salick slapped him on the top of his head in reproof.

  “Ow!” Marick yelped. “There’s no need for that, Salick. You’d have done it yourself if you weren’t so stiff!” Salick raised her hand again, genuinely angry, but Marick was saved by his master.

  “Marick,” Mandarack called from where he was conversing with the dock master, a portly man with a sheaf of linen pages in his hand. “Take the package and run ahead to the Banehall. Wait for us there.”

  Caught between Salick’s hand and his master’s commands, Marick scurried off with the dripping sheepskin. Garet saw him run in wide curves around the workers on his way down the dock.

  The dock master respectfully accepted Mandarack’s signature on one of his sheets and, handing back the ink pot and quill to a child apprentice younger than Marick, strode back to oversee the noisy chaos of the workers. Garet watched him, trailed by the child, thread through the shouting lines of longshoremen, carrying their bags of grain and towers of hay on broad shoulders. As each pile of the plain’s wealth grew on the dock, cargo nets were hauled, bumping and catching, up the inclined blocks of the wall, and the party of Banes followed them, climbing a stone stair wide enough for three to walk abreast.

  Each block in the wall was the height of the already vanished Marick, and Garet wondered at the effort needed to build it. Dorict saw his awed regard. “Torrick needs this wall to keep the river from eating the earth out from under the city.” He motioned down to the river current pushing the barges against each other. “It’s the same with every city in the South. They’re all on the Ar.”

  At the top of the wall, a cobblestone lane peaked and slumped its way to the city gate. Mandarack paused, perhaps to catch his breath, although his face showed no strain at the steep climb, and Salick hovered protectively near him. Garet himself was glad of the chance to lean against the bags of grain stacked at the top of wall and wait for his legs to stop burning. Horseback riding and climbing stairs, he wryly observed, must use the same muscles. After a minute, the old Bane led them slowly to the city’s entrance.

  There was as much activity here as there had been at the wharves. A crazy weaving of scaffolding left only a small path for passing under the gate’s archway. Men and women, many of them wearing round, bronze helm
ets, hauled up a new panel of stout timbers to replace a rotted patch on the ancient gates. The right wing of the gates was in pieces on the ground. More workers were perched on the scaffold, using picks and crowbars to pry out hinges that leaned at odd angles from the stone.

  “Old Torrick had little use for gates these last few hundred years or so.” Salick pointed at the helmeted workers. “Those are miners. It’s good to see that the King of Torrick and his lords are serious enough about rebuilding their defences to disrupt their main source of income!” The workers noticed the Banes and stopped their activity to sketch hasty bows. Mandarack nodded back, and they quickly returned to their tasks.

  “Money’s no good if you’re dead,” Dorict said, and added for Garet’s sake, “The nobility of Torrick is famous for paying more attention to their own purses than the state of their city.” A metallic groan cut off Dorict’s words as the workers freed one of the massive hinges.

  “Were there no demons in this city, as in the Midlands for these past six hundred years?” Garet asked the younger boy. They moved under the shadow of the gate and entered an arched, stone tunnel.

  “Not as many as in Shirath,” Salick replied before Dorict could speak. “They were lucky to fight three a year. That’s as many as show up in a bad week in a city like Shirath or Solantor. That’s why the Banehall has less influence here than in the other cities.”

  Garet swallowed. Three demons a week! His distress must have been obvious for Dorict smiled and said, “Don’t worry, there are over two-hundred and forty Banes in Shirath. You won’t have to kill them all yourself!”

  Relieved, Garet turned his attention back to their surroundings. The tunnel seemed to burrow through the thick walls of the fortress before ending in another, this time intact, gate. The walls must be forty paces thick, he marvelled.

  “Salick,” he asked, “does every city have walls this thick to keep out demons?”

  But it was Mandarack who answered, his voice floating back in the gloom of the tunnel. “The Torrickmen from ancient times have not farmed, nor made, but have dug their wealth from the ground. Almost all the copper and iron, and most of the gold of the South come from this city. Such wealth bred enemies before humanity found itself faced with a greater threat. For six-hundred years now there has been no war. Piracy on the seas, occasionally. Bandits from the deserts and mountains, certainly. But no war. These walls, Garet, were built to keep out an older fear.” His voice paused as they passed under a spiked gate, rusted but still ready to drop down on some long-vanished attacker. As they moved deeper into the tunnel, it echoed hollowly off the curved ceiling. “They were built to keep out other men.”

  The inner gate opened out on a large market, larger than the muddy field occupied by Three Roads Village. One-storey shops were built leaning against the inside wall in a ring around the square. Clusters of pole and canvas stalls, advertising everything from sweets to iron goods, filled the centre Aside from a few old men and women lounging in the doors of the outer shops, nothing moved or made enough noise to mask the sighing of the wind. Dust devils played among the colourful canvases draping the stalls.

  Salick stared at one group of stalls, near the south wall, that had been smashed flat. Broken poles stuck out of the torn canvas. A cracked sign lay on top, advertising perfumes.

  “I suppose there’s nothing like a Basher to take the profit out of a market day,” she mused. The wind shifted and a powerful mix of blood and perfume assaulted them. “Gyaah!” Salick retreated from the stench with Garet and Dorict close behind, holding their noses. “The poor Banes who killed that demon must have suffered!” Garet nodded agreement, hands over his mouth and nose, his eyes watering.

  As they followed Mandarack across the deserted market, leaving behind the sickening reek of perfume soured with demon blood, the obvious wealth of the city impressed itself upon the new Bane. A market day here could bring all the Midlanders within a week’s journey, all with money for Torrick’s lords. What would happen now, thought Garet.

  “Salick, if the demons have returned to the Midlands and Old Torrick, won’t the people here have to give up trade for farming?”

  Salick looked at him curiously. “Why would that be? Trading has always gotten them what they wanted. Besides, everyone knows that Torrickmen are too lazy to farm.”

  “Well,” Garet reasoned, “trade will end, or at least be hurt by the loss of farms in the Midlands. What they’re unloading at the docks must be the last of the spring wheat planted last fall; the fall harvest of summer-planted wheat may rot in the fields if people dare not travel too far from towns like Bangt.”

  Dorict agreed. “That’s the truth, Garet. And they’ll get little help elsewhere. What surplus Shirath and the other cities grow is stored for their own use or traded North for fish and tin.”

  “But who here knows how to farm?” Salick mocked. “You can’t take a miner and tell her to grow wheat!”

  For once, Garet refused to retreat into his customary silence; if Salick could argue with Mandarack, he could do the same with her. “If they want to eat next year, they’ll have to,” he retorted and then went on more thoughtfully, “or they might take some of those homeless farmers we saw at Bangt. Or at Three Roads.” He felt a sharp pain in his chest as he thought of his mother and sister crowded into those rough tents. But in fact, he had no way of knowing if his father had even decided to leave the farm and take his family to live behind those wooden walls. They might still be isolated on their farm, easy prey for demons. Thankfully, Salick interrupted his thoughts.

  “It’s a good idea, Garet. I’ll mention it to the Master when we’re settled in the hall.” She looked at him with a certain surprise. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders…”

  “For a poor Northerner farm boy?” Garet was surprised at the resentment in his voice, but he was tired of being an outsider and was still distracted by his thoughts about his family.

  “That’s not what I meant.” Salick’s voice became as dry as her master’s, and Garet realized he had offended her by rejecting her rare show of approval. “I was going to say that you had a good head on your shoulders for someone who has never had a reason to use it.” She turned on her heel, and Garet knew that their relationship had just taken a giant step backwards. “Keep up now. We don’t want you lost on your first time in a city,” she called over her shoulder as she strode off after Mandarack.

  Garet stood for a moment, cursing himself for lashing out at the very people he now depended on. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” Dorict whispered. “She’ll forgive you when she’s had a chance to think it over. Salick hates to admit mistakes, but she’s fair-minded for all her pride.” The young Bane trotted off after Salick, the saddle bags bouncing on his shoulders.

  With a sigh, Garet ran after him, catching up at the far wall of the market. The party now entered a narrow lane running between rows of narrow, two-storey houses. Ropes strung across the street from the upper stories fluttered with drying sheets, tunics, and stockings. Small children dashed madly under their feet, crossing from one house to another as if they owned them all. Older siblings chased after their little brothers and sisters half-heartedly, if at all. As the Banes passed by, these minders grabbed their charges to force them into wobbly bows and curtsies. Mandarack nodded back with the same dignity and regard he had shown the dock master. The younger Banes copied him as well as they could. Giggles erupted behind them, and the endless chase resumed.

  After many twists and turns, the lane opened onto another square, much smaller than the market plaza. A fountain with a broad, round curb squatted in the middle of the courtyard. Women of all ages crowded around it, washing clothes, yelling at their friends, and shouting for their children to-come-get-the-basket-and-smartly-now! They rivalled the longshoremen on the wharves for their noise and energy. Mandarack, Salick beside him now, led the others past the cheerful din to the biggest building in the square.

  Built of the sa
me rough stone as the walls, the Torrick Banehall took up the whole west side of the courtyard. Red paint peeled from the door frame; half its second storey windows were boarded up; at their feet lay a cracked roof-tile. Mandarack looked grimly at the rundown building.

  “This is disgraceful!” Salick exclaimed. “Every Banehall and every Bane is insulted by this.” She stopped as Mandarack raised his hand.

  “This is not our Hall, Salick,” his voice was harsh, “but, under Heaven, things will soon change here. They must!”

  “Hadn’t you already stopped here on the way into the Midlands?” Garet asked Dorict, too mindful of Salick’s present annoyance with him to risk asking her.

  “No,” the boy replied, staring distastefully at the rundown building. “We were in too much haste and passed by Torrick at night on horseback. You save no time taking a barge against the current!”

  The door burst open, shedding a few more chips of paint, and Marick bounded down the steps. The sheepskin package was gone. “Master! I spoke to Hallmaster Furlenix and a cart is ready to take us back tomorrow. There’s beds for all of us and better food than we’ve had lately, and you’re to make your report to the Hallmaster before you go to your bed!”

  Salick bristled at the impertinence of either Marick, the Hallmaster, or both. Even Dorict narrowed his eyes in anger at the order given to their master. Marick waited, obviously enjoying the effect he had created. Mandarack only gave a slight snort and answered, “Very well, Master Marick.” The usually dry voice held a hint of banter. “Perhaps you could conduct us to our duties.”

  With an elaborate bow, Marick led them into the Banehall. The interior was as shabby as the outside. Mandarack stopped in a spacious room just inside the door. They faced a staircase leading up to the second storey. To the right, a hallway with rows of doors on either side stretched to the end of the building. To the left, an opening led to a dining hall, where Garet could see very young black-sashed Banes laying out plates and bowls.