Page 20 of Inferno
But as he turned the last corner on the lane that led to Nerik’s cottage, he realised he wasn’t the only visitor Nerik was getting tonight. Stanley stood by Nerik’s gate, a white horse beside him. The horse appeared quite agitated, and it stomped and snorted when it spotted Yorin coming up the lane.
Just as Yorin arrived, Nerik darted out of the house, coat and boots on, and a rucksack strapped to his back. He pulled up short when he saw Yorin, and his face fell.
“Oh, shit, Yorin… Fuck…” Nerik was not typically known to swear, so it was a clear sign of his agitation that he was doing so now. He glanced at Stanley, then at the horse, and cringed. “Shit, I’m really sorry, Yorin. This is Maisey,” he said, patting the horse on the shoulder. “She belongs to old Mr Totser… you probably don’t know him, actually. He lives up on the mountain, halfway between here and Azertel. He’s old, and deaf as a post, and blind in one eye, but he’s got all these really beautiful horses, and he really loves them… except that all his fences are total shite and every time there’s a strong wind or a storm or anything, one of the gates breaks open and a horse escapes, and most of the time they follow the road all the way down here to Stanley’s place. He trained a lot of them, and I guess they kind of think that’s home, or something. So… it’s really bad timing, and I’m really sorry, but I have to take Maisey back home. Mr Totser will be fretting without her, and Stanley said his stable’s full at the moment, so he can’t even keep her for the night.”
“Sorry, lad,” Stanley grunted, his face worn and rugged, much like the rest of him. He had a stocky build, thinning grey hair, trousers that were stained with mud and grease, and boots with holes in the toes. “Can’t be helped.”
“I’m really sorry,” Nerik said again, looking a little like the world was ending, so Yorin forced a smile, shoving his own disappointment down so as not to make Nerik feel any worse.
“It’s okay,” he said, giving Maisey a scratch on the rump. The horse stomped and shied away from him. “Oh, sorry,” he apologised to the horse. “Skittish thing, isn’t she?” Horses were commonplace around Minia, and while Yorin had never owned one himself, it was almost impossible to grow up without ending up in a saddle at some point in time. Strangely, though, Stanley neither made any comment on the horse’s behaviour, nor attempted to soothe her. He just stood there holding the lead rope loosely, and he almost seemed to be glaring at Yorin. He and Stanley barely knew each other, so Yorin hardly thought he could have done anything in the last two minutes to have offended him. Maybe he was just put out about having to bring the horse all the way over to Nerik’s place. Stanley lived on the far side of the gate, and at this point in the cycle, he would have had to circle a fair way south to avoid the battlefield and the risk of running into any stray demons.
Yorin took a closer look at the horse. Her coat was almost pure white, not something that was terribly common in Minia, where most of the horses were brown or grey. She also had a halter on that looked far too fancy to belong to a deaf old man living up on the mountain. “Did you borrow this from one of your clients?” Yorin asked, noting the fine stitching, and even a couple of gemstones woven into the straps.
“Aye,” Stanley said. “Nerik’ll bring it back in the morning. No one’s going to know the difference.”
It was a polite way of telling him to mind his own business, he supposed, and to be honest, none of this was really his problem anyway. Aside from the part where he wouldn’t get to see Nerik tonight. “Well, these things happen,” Yorin said, attempting to be philosophical about it. “Any idea when you’ll be back?”
“Tomorrow evening,” Nerik said, sounding oddly emphatic about it. “It’s a half day up the mountain. I should be able to make it to Totser’s place tonight, if we don’t stop along the way. We’ll get there late, but then I can run a couple of errands in the morning and be back here in time for dinner.”
“Okay. Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” Giving the horse one last glance – she seemed an oddly wary sort, for one that had been trained by Stanley – he headed back down the road. So it seemed he wouldn’t be needing his lantern after all.
◊ ◊ ◊
Nerik waited until Yorin had turned the bend in the road before he spoke again. “Sorry,” he said first, addressing the unicorn. “Yorin’s a human. He doesn’t know about any of this.”
A human touched me, the unicorn said, clear disgust in her tone, for all that the conversation was telepathic.And Maisey? That’s a hideous name.
“I know. I’m sorry,” Nerik said again. The unicorn’s proper name was Maissette-Ara-Vondulech-Sota-Von. The proper way to address her, if one was a close acquaintance and had permission to be casual, was Maissette-de-Von. Anyone on more formal terms with her should rightly use her full name. “I realise that there’s a lot going on here that’s very undignified.” The halter around her head, for one. “But being this close to the gate is dangerous. I’ll get you up to the colony as soon as possible.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Stanley said, making a quick getaway – not so much because he didn’t like Maissette-de-Von, but because he had work to do. Saving the unicorns was something he was passionate about, but that didn’t negate the fact that he had a stable full of horses at home to feed, muck out and train.
Maissette-de-Von harrumphed, shaking herself irritably.It’s not your fault, she said to Nerik.I knew it was going to be a difficult journey. And the halter is… well, it is what it is, but I do appreciate Stanley using one of his prettier ones.
Nerik took hold of the lead rope and started off up the road, making sure he didn’t tug on it. Unicorns were not dumb animals that needed to be led around like horses. But at the same time, without the rope, he would hardly be able to explain to anyone they met on the journey how he got a horse that was not his own to following him so obediently.
The halter, on the other hand, was not just for show. An obsidian gem was woven into the side of it, and the spell, in this case, disguised both the unicorn’s horn and the usual iridescent glow to her coat, making her look like an ordinary horse.
I’m not just being vain, Maissette-de-Von said, as she clopped along the road beside him.The things we’ve had to endure on the way to the gate have been quite horrifying. So it’s nice to have just a little something special to wear, rather than a plain, dusty old strap. You have no idea how powerless it feels to be so dependant on other people. It’s terrifying. Truly.
“When I crossed the gate, I nearly died,” Nerik told her, having had a dozen or more conversations just like this one with unicorns in the past. And while some of them had genuinely admirable qualities, most of them made the mistake of thinking that their pain and trauma was somehow unique, rather than a commonplace occurrence in a world that was tearing itself apart. “I was dependant on a salas woman and a fenrig man for about two weeks. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t fuel myself. I had no control over my future. So yeah, I get it,” he said, looking Maissette-de-Von in the eye. “It’s horrible. But I’m taking an entire day out of my schedule, abandoning things that I had planned, and losing a handful of coins in the process, just to guide you up the mountain. And Yorin is a friend of mine. He might be human, but he’s a very decent fellow. So I’d appreciate it if you held your tongue a little more when you want to tell me all about how awful humans are.”
Maissette-de-Von didn’t reply for a long moment, and Nerik wondered if he’d stunned her into silence.Humans can be nice? What an odd thought, she said eventually.
Nerik glanced back at her in disbelief. “Stanley rescued you from the warriors and brought you to my house,” he reminded her. “And he’s a human.”
Maissette-de-Von snorted again.Well yes, but I thought he was just a servant to Rimdolen. Rimdolen was another unicorn, one who had decided to stay in Minia and live with Stanley, for the sake of rescuing more unicorns and sending them up the mountain. But far from being master and servant, Stanley and Rimdolen had a very balanced and respectful relationship, and as far as Nerik knew, the two of them had become genuine friends.
Nerik felt his temperature spike at Maissette-de-Von’s thoughtless words, his patience wearing extremely thin. For the gods’ sake, he’d thought he was going to be spending the evening slowly peeling Yorin’s clothes off, not panting up the mountain with a narcissistic unicorn.
“I’ll let him know you said that,” Nerik promised Maissette-de-Von. “And I’m sure next time he meets one of your family, he’ll just turn them over to the warriors to be murdered instead.”
That finally got Maissette-de-Von’s attention.Oh! Well, I… um… please forget I said anything, then.
“We have a long walk up the mountain,” Nerik said, knowing he had a captive audience for now. “So let me explain to you how things work here on this side of the gate. And then maybe you can reconsider whether you should be so quick to judge other people when they’re going to all this effort to save your life…”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The following morning, Nerik woke late, having gone to bed well past what anyone would have considered a reasonable hour. He was sleeping up in the hay shed, in the barn at the edge of the unicorn’s colony, though he’d made sure to push the hay to one side, leaving him plenty of space for just a blanket over the hardwood floor. It was less comfortable, but it gave him the peace of mind that he could sleep through the night without worrying about accidentally burning the shed down.