LONG AFTER GARET was scrubbed and asleep, another demon came to the city. From the north it crawled, single-minded in its hunger for those within. Unlike the Snake Demon, this one went on all fours, long-limbed and muscular. Its skull ridges were not serrated, but swept back and around like many-pronged ram’s horns. At each step, hooked claws tore up the ground, laying gashes across the furrows plowed just that day. Some scent in the night made it pause and open its short beak. The split tongue tasted the air, found nothing human nearby, and withdrew into the forest of teeth. The demon rattled in its throat like a raven, snapped shut its mouth, and continued its stalking journey to the Outer Wall of the Seventh Ward.
This demon needed no hole through which to slither; it set claws in the rough stone and mortar and climbed quickly for all its bulk, gaining the top in but a few breaths. The entire Ward now lay below it. The cows and sheep in their barns began to moan in their sleep and wake in fear of what they could not see. The youths who watched the livestock shivered and began to run towards the lanes and alleys leading to their homes. The gate guards came out, dropped their spears, then fell trembling upon the ground.
The beast scraped and skittered down to its business.
Save for the demon, only one other figure in the stockyards still moved. A young cowherd sprinted towards the first of the gates separating the stockyards from the Ward proper. She was but a step ahead of the full strength of the demon’s fear, and it clutched at her heels as she sobbed and ran. Her fingers fumbled at the latch, but too late. Terror caught up with her and ran along her bones, stroking each white length and twisting the attached muscles, binding them, and dropping her to her knees.
In falling, she turned and saw the demon approach. Even her eyes would not obey her chattering mind to shut and close off the sight. The monster’s beak was painted with the blood of her friends, others of her age that worked nights in the barns this season. One thick arm dragged the body of a guard by its armor. Seeing her, the demon flung it away. The corpse crashed through a paddock fence and off the haunches of a downed horse. The stallion’s eyes rolled, but it didn’t stir from the ground.
The girl by the gate whimpered. She had run the nightmare race every child of Shirath dreaded, and she had lost. Now, her mind could not turn from this terrible image. Red claws and teeth filled her unwilling sight, and she knew the last thing she saw would be her own blood spraying out and painting them anew.
The beast came nearer, and in her locked perception, she didn’t hear the latch open behind her. A hand grabbed her collar and dragged her through the gate. Figures in black rushed by, towards the demon. Lying stricken on the ground, she had no voice to warn them. If she had, she would have screamed, “What are you doing? You’re not Banes! You’ll all be killed!”
She could only watch them die. But they didn’t.
The first thrust a spear into the demon’s reaching hand. There was a bellow of pain, and the creature swiped at its attacker, only to be cheated when the spear-wielder jumped out of range. A second dashed forward, slicing down with a broad-bladed sword on the demon’s heel. When the beast rounded on him, he leaped back as well.
“Turn, run,” whispered the girl, but the attackers, four of them in all, kept their faces towards the demon.
The spear-wielder attacked again, barely missing one of the beast’s small, black eyes. By form and size, she was a woman, while the others seemed to be men. One of them, a giant of a man, chopped down with an axe as the demon reached for the spear-woman. There was a cracking sound and a spray of blood. The fourth drew his bow and put an arrow in the creature’s back, then another in its good leg. Now they all came at it, shooting, chopping, and thrusting until the demon collapsed under their assault and howled out its pain on the stone-paved ground. The braying call was cut short by a spear that pierced its throat and an axe that split open the massive skull right between the horned ridges.
The attackers backed away. The axe man reached behind him without turning his head and took a small object from the woman. One-handed, he chopped at the massive head again, and again. Leaning his axe against the carcass, he reached into the hole he had made. The watching girl was suddenly sick, her stomach’s contents spilling out on the ground beside her head. Before she had stopped retching, she felt a blessed relief from the fear, as if the demon’s power had been shut behind a door.
The girl stood unsteadily, wiping her mouth and grabbing onto the open gate for support.
‘Thank you, thank you,” she said and reached out a hand to the four in black. At last they turned their backs on the demon to face her, and the girl dropped her hand.
“Your faces!” she said. “You’re not Banes! What are you?”
The woman shifted her bloody spear and raised a finger to stone lips. She nodded at the others and slipped away. Within ten heartbeats, all passed into the shadows of the stockyards and disappeared.