Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1 - Chapter 10: Chapter 10

Hap had known Koen for two years. They hadn't been separated since they met, had been through everything together, had come to the point where they were so used to each other's habits that they could pre-empt what they would each do in a given situation. He would have thought that that meant conversation would dry up after too long, having said everything there was to talk about and knowing each other so well.
Yet his apprentice still seemed to have so much to say.
"If you lit a Fleshmonger's mane on fire, what would it smell like?"
"In all likelihood, burnt hair," Hap replied. "I wouldn't advise you try it."
He sighed as Koen hopped over several crates and landed neatly on the other side. Hap's leg pained him more by the day, and seemed worse when he watched Koen bounding about with all the energy of a youth that seemed like a distant memory to him. His walking stick tapping on the road was the only sound all around, echoing off the warehouse walls on either side of them.
The only noise aside from the incessant chatter, that was.
"So its poison wouldn't smell of anything if you burnt it?"
"I doubt you'd notice anything within the three seconds it would take to knock you out," Hap said.
"Oh yeah." Koen stopped leaping over barrels and cargo crates, enthusiasm dimmed, and slowed to match Hap's pace. "There is that."
Hap rolled his eyes and turned the corner, not looking back to see if Koen cottoned on that he had changed direction. The buzzing presence of his aura was all he needed to keep tabs on the boy, and it never left his shoulder, bombarding him with an energy that made him feel tired in comparison.
"Where are we going again?" Koen asked. "And did we have to come through here?"
"If you hadn't made such a stink about travelling through the Barrens, we wouldn't have," Hap said. "And I seem to remember you promising not to complain about the alternative route before we left."
"Your memory's failing," Koen said, even as the lie showed up as a shimmer of mirth in his aura. "I did no such thing."
Hap grunted. He didn't like coming in through the West Gate any more than Koen did. Several square miles of steelworks, stonemasons and warehouses surrounded the gate, meaning that anyone who tried to pass through who wasn't a tradesman was treated with even more suspicion than at any other. Unspoken had a hard enough time getting in as it was.
He suspected Koen's reasoning was less complex; his apprentice just hated silence, and the steel district had it in plentiful supply at night.
"As for your question," Hap said, sensing Koen grow fidgety and moving to intercept another spiel of rhetorical nonsense, "I said we would meet Nika here when the seasons turned. He's staying in the city this year."
"He never stays in the dark season."
"And I think everyone has told him that since he decided to," Hap said, "Don't make a nuisance of yourself."
"I wasn't going to ask him," Koen said, indignant. "I was just saying. What's different this year?"
"I suspect the usual," Hap said, checking the position of the East Moon over the top of the warehouse. It was around midnight.
Koen cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck through his hood. "Yddris?"
Hap inclined his head.
"Not surprised it took so long this time," Koen said. "I thought Nika was actually going to..."
"Koen," Hap said. He didn't raise his voice, but Koen fell silent immediately. "Enough."
For the first time since they had left the Guildtown, Koen was quiet for a long while. Somewhere a few streets away, a dog howled. The faint hiss of a forge fire going out drifted over the flat roofs and settled in the air. Hap's senses twinged as a demon crept through a weak point in the city wall not far away, and then again as one of his brethren met it head on with a pulse of magic. Koen turned his head that way, tensing, but Hap kept on and eventually the boy relaxed.
"So many demons," Koen murmured. "It seems too early for this many."
"That's either a bad sign or a really bad sign," Hap replied. Koen snorted softly.
"Where's the difference?"
"If they're coming in early because the food is scarce, it means there'll be a lot more to come. Plus side is half of them'll starve." Hap sighed. "Otherwise it just means it's been a really good breeding year."
Koen let out a long sigh between his teeth as they broke free of the steel district and entered a large housing quarter. It wasn't the most affluent in the city, mostly workmen's cottages, blackened from forge smoke and stone dust. Despite that, Hap didn't think it had seemed quite so filthy last time he had passed through, and at the end of the next street they found why. His senses were bombarded by the aura of pain and shock in the air around those who sat or lay in the street staring at nothing, or weeping, or praying, so suddenly that he closed them off in surprise. Koen flinched beside him.
"Close it off, boy. We'll need to concentrate," Hap said gently. Koen nodded, and then pointed.
"Is that Nika?"
It was.
Nika's lithe, willowy figure advanced on them like a wraith from the end of the road where he had been dressing wounds, his cloak almost blending with thick plumes of dark ash borne on the wind from the next street along.
"A pack of Rock Wights. Scattered a coal fire in the attack and set three houses alight." The Unspoken's voice was tired. "Put the fire out, chased the Wights off. I need help getting a few of these to the Medica, I only have my field kit with me."
He never had been one for long greetings. Or any greetings at all, really.
Hap shook his head, leaning hard on his walking stick. "Just tell us what you need us to do."
"There's one on Harmony Lane," Nika said, "Do you know where that is, Koen?"
"Vaguely. I can find it."
"Could you run up there and ask them to send help? They'll need to bring a wagon."
"I absolutely can," the boy replied with an audible grin, "Long time no see, Nika."
Nika gave a weary laugh. "It is good to see you both."
Koen punched his arm across his chest and held one finger to his temple in acknowledgement before running off down the road and disappearing around a corner.
Hap muttered, "I think he's draining all that energy from me. Like a leech." He turned to the man beside him, who swayed for a moment before steadying himself. Hap put a firm hand on Nika's elbow. "You need to sit down, Nika. Have you treated...."
"I've treated everything I can do anything about," Nika interrupted. "I'm out of supplies."
"Then sit," Hap insisted. He eased his friend down on to one of the blankets that had been laid out on the cobbles and pulled a small flask of whisky from his belt, but Nika shook his head and pushed it away. With another long sigh, Hap unscrewed the top and took a long swig that burned on its way down. It wasn't enough to un-see the stares of the victims lining the road, or the two body-shaped lumps under bloodstained white cloths that lay nearby, each surrounded by more benumbed, staring people who looked just as dead as the corpses they guarded. It wasn't enough to drown out the countless scenes he had witnessed just like this over the four decades since the Gift had chosen him.
But it felt good and the whisky had been expensive, so he drank it anyway.
"He's avoiding me," Nika said after a moment.
Hap frowned. "Are you sure?"
"I know he knows I'm here. We were a street apart last night. I got distracted by a demon and he ran." Nika sighed. "Coward."
"He's many things, but he's never been a coward."
"He's always been a coward," Nika countered. "You can throw a blade through the eye of a needle and still be a coward."
Hap grunted. He had never pretended he understood the relationship between Yddris and Nika, and he didn't feel any more enlightened now. He kept his mouth shut. It was generally the advisable thing to do.
Koen returned minutes later, lumbered with two large packs of supplies and rolling a barrel ahead of him. With a groan, Nika got back to his feet.
"Would you be able to distribute water, Hap?" he asked. "Is the wagon coming?"
"It's coming," Koen said. "Give them more than thirty seconds to get here."
Nika didn't respond to the sarcasm, but as the man turned away Hap delivered a sharp clip to Koen's ear. "Not the time for that, boy."
"Sorry. Wait, let me." Koen righted the barrel before Hap had the chance, digging in the pack for a set of metal tumblers and beginning to hand them out to the stragglers making their way over. Some shambled along like living corpses, and others almost took Koen's hand with the cup in their desperation for a drink. There were mostly women and children present in the crowd. Their husbands and fathers hung back, grimy from smoke and soot, and muttered amongst themselves. A collective shudder went through the gathering as a demon howled in the mountains.
Hap cautiously re-opened his senses. The Wights were far away and the presence of Unspoken was holding the smaller scavengers off, but where there had been fire and where there had been death it always paid to be cautious.
The caution was well-placed.
Right at the edge of his consciousness, he sensed something move. It was far off, deep among the alleys of the steel district, but as Hap focused it began to speed up, loping in their direction on hands and feet human enough in shape to be unsettling. Nika and Koen, with their senses still closed to the pain and suffering so they could concentrate, didn't look up from their work as the creature's hollow, wailing cry reverberated over the rooftops.
Hap reached over and tugged Koen's sleeve, dropping his voice so as not to panic the civilians.
"That one we just heard is coming this way. Tell Nika."
"But that was a Firebull..." Koen said, and then trailed off. The cup he had been filling fell with a plop into the barrel as he took off down the road towards Nika.
"Where's he going?" someone demanded. The woman flinched as Hap turned to her, but stood her ground. Three young girls clung to her skirts, peering at him with pale eyes.
"To talk to my colleague," Hap said, in a pleasant voice that didn't betray his growing anxiousness. The demon was fast. It would be on top of them in a couple of minutes. "Go and rest, ma'am, help is on its way."
Another hollow howl, and this time it was close enough to alert the crowd that it was heading in their direction. A wave of panic rushed down the road. People scrambled to their feet, grabbing blankets and children and disappearing down the road towards Harmony Lane. Those who couldn't move were carried or left behind, or else were already too numb to realise or care about the danger they were in.
"I didn't sense it coming," Nika snapped, stalking to Hap and bending over to scoop handfuls of water into his mouth from the barrel. Water poured from beneath his hood as he gasped, "I've been so busy making sure no one else dies and now this happens."
"Just thank Kiel's gold back tooth that you weren't alone when it sensed the fire," Hap replied. "Three of us are more than enough."
"Big money," Koen offered. "Not many can register a Firebull death in the records."
"Three of us are more than enough to deter it, boy, but don't get your hopes up about killing it," Hap chided. "Our priority is making sure we're not registering any of them with the death priests."
They glanced over at the panicking crowd. It would be no use trying to organise an ordered evacuation now. Many were still sitting, lumbered with heavy wounds, broken limbs, or unconscious loved ones. Though only three houses had burned, the Wights had done a lot of damage before Nika had arrived. They were so spread out that it would only be possible to protect them all if no one did anything stupid, and one could never count on that. Hap's stomach made a sickening lurch that carried the familiarity of decades of watching people die on demon talons.
A crash.
All heads turned in the direction of the sound and deathly silence fell over the road. The silhouette of the bull on the roof of one of the damaged homes was rimmed with pale moonlight that glittered in its many eyes. For that moment, it seemed as though the whole city held its breath.
Nika was the first to move. His footfalls were soft, movements agile, as a blade glinted for a split second in one hand before it flew and landed with a meaty thunk in hide like untreated leather. The demon wailed and dropped from the roof into the heat of the dead house fire, vanishing into the smoke. Koen's magic blazed in a flash of green as the boy's nerves overcame him.
"Calm," Hap murmured.
"We never covered Firebulls," Koen said in an uncharacteristically small voice. "I forgot how big they were."
Crunching echoed from the wreckage, interspersed by loud grunting. Hap leaned over.
"They love bathing in embers, so that'll distract it for a while," he said, "but as soon as it's had enough it'll look for nearby food." He nodded towards the road. The wagon from the Medica stood there just out of sight, its driver cowering behind the frame. "So I need you to guard that wagon while the Sisters load patients onto it."
Koen hesitated, eyeing the wagon and its load. Inside, a line of three women sat with their heads bowed and hands clasped. Their hair was braided, and the lower halves of their faces were covered with blue cloth. They sat still as statues there, seemingly ignorant of the demon rolling in the burnt-out homes a few yards from them.
"Or you could help Nika tackle the bull and I'll do it," Hap added.
The next time he glanced round, Koen was gone. He chuckled, and then sighed, leaning his walking stick against the wall of the house behind him and peeling off his gloves. His back ached in protest as he straightened and went to join Nika. He was getting too old for it all. He would see Koen through his apprenticeship, and then he would retire and live out the rest of his days at the Guildtown in relative comfort.
That comfort seemed a distant prospect.
"I'm hoping it just came for the fire," Nika murmured, as Hap drew alongside him, "But I'm also thinking that that's too much to hope for."
They paused as a ceiling beam collapsed into a cloud of char, highlighting briefly the giant frame of the demon nestled the remaining embers. It wasn't the biggest bull Hap had ever seen, but it wasn't small, either. The fact that there was one at all was worrying. Bulls didn't come into the city often, and if they did it was usually because they were half-starved already, sometime in the depths of the dark season. The dark season hadn't even made it all the way in yet, and this particular bull looked much too healthy.
"It shouldn't be here," Hap said. "I've never seen one come into a settlement so early in the year."
"Yes, well," Nika replied, tensing as the demon grumbled and rolled over again with an echoing thump. "There shouldn't be any portals either, but we've already had one of those this season. A Firebull seems positively tame in comparison."
Hap blinked, focus shattered. He stared at the side of Nika's head.
"Oh, did you miss that?" Nika asked without looking round. "Guess it hasn't made it too far out of the city, then. Big portal opened over the market, dropped in two otherworlders and a Listener. They were pardoned by the Assembly yesterday and everyone's tying themselves in knots over who opened it if it wasn't them."
"A Listener?"
"Attacked them on their side of the portal," Nika replied. "No one knows how it got there, either. Watch out, it's getting bored."
Hap turned as the bull hauled itself out of the wreckage. One of the uglier breeds, with a face like a horse that had run repeatedly into a wall. Four black eyes regarded them from beneath the vestigial nubs that passed for its horns, and its dark hide was plastered with pale stone dust that rose in a cloud behind it as it launched towards them on all fours. It barely hesitated; not familiar with Unspoken, probably from far out on the plains.
Hap only had a second to be thankful before the demon was upon them.
He dived to one side and Nika to the other. Behind them, the street lit up green as Koen moved to place a wall of magic around the wagon. Hap also summoned a rush of energy, trailing it in a wide arc behind him and drawing a quick Rune in the air. The arc contorted, broke free, and rushed at the demon's legs; with the hiss of heat on flesh and another howl, the demon faltered and fell to the ground. Faint screams from watching civilians pierced the crash that followed.
Incensed, the demon recovered its feet quickly and lunged, aiming for Hap. A dark figure appeared at its other side, skipped lightly over its back while it was distracted, and pinned the thread of green it had been trailing behind it to the ground before dancing out of the way. As he reversed, Nika pulled the thread tight, burning a deep path across the demon's spine.
It didn't howl this time. Instead, smoke boiled from its nostrils and the sides of its mouth as it prepared to launch gouts of flame.
Hap only had a moment to move, and he cursed the pain in his leg with the name of every deity that came to mind as it fumbled. He pounded towards the demon, trailing flame from the edge of his cloak. Koen cried out somewhere nearby.
The thread was a simple conjuration, but for a brief moment it evaded him. He jumped, hands empty, until his magic sputtered to life and a thread unravelled from his palms like a spool of wool. He felt Nika pin it from behind and breathed, finding his centre, as his foot hit the bony ridge of the demon's spine and propelled him to its other side.
Pinned crosswise, the demon could only spurt flames until it burned itself out, which Hap was all too eager to let it do. As he released the thread, Koen ran over with his walking stick and a small bucket of water, which he sloshed over Hap's feet to put out his burning cloak. Hap grimaced and offered the boy a sour look, but Koen seemed unperturbed.
"Let me take over," he said. He was already panting from the exertion of maintaining the shield.
Hap sighed and knuckled his lower back, taking the stick and turning away. "No, boy, it's fine. Not yet. Let an old man have his fun." Shaken though he was, a ripple of his old enthusiasm went through him as his magic flared in his hands without difficulty this time. He smiled faintly, and murmured, "I've still got some life in me yet."