Page 33 of Inferno

“Where are you headed to, lad?” Bril asked, blunt, but not rude. “There’s a hellhound loose in the forest. Not safe out here right now.”

“I’m heading to Nerik’s house,” Yorin told him. “It’s just a few minutes up the lane. I’ll go straight there.” Given how close he was, it would be safer to head for Nerik’s house than to go all the way back through the forest to get back to town.

“Fine then,” Bril agreed. “But don’t dally. A hellhound will set you on fire as soon as look at you.”

Yorin nodded, not needing the warning to know the danger he was in. He’d heard plenty of tales over the years, from both the warriors and the serving women, of the damage a hellhound could cause. Keeping his knife handy – even though it wouldn’t do him much good against a hellhound – Yorin rushed off up the lane, moving at a swift jog. It was surprisingly easy to forget about the gate, to get caught up in the details and dramas of everyday life. But if one got too complacent, life always seemed to find a way to deliver a kick in the pants as a reminder.

Ironically, the townsfolk were more aware of the fact that they lived on the doorstep of the gateway to hell during the half of the cycle when the gate was closed. During the twenty-three days it was open, the warriors all stayed on the battlefield, with only a very occasional trip into town by the captain, if something untoward happened, or one might see a cart carrying a warrior to the hospital now and then. But when the gate was closed, the city was teaming with warriors, all telling exaggerated tales of their exploits, displaying swords or armour they’d taken from the demons they killed, or sometimes even bringing the heads of the demons back to display as trophies. Yorin found the latter to be quite revolting, but plenty of folk in town seemed to be genuinely impressed by it.

Soon enough, he reached Nerik’s gate, and he made a point of closing it behind him. A hellhound was probably perfectly capable of jumping the gate, but it made him feel marginally better to have something physical between him and the creature – assuming that the hellhound was still in this part of the forest. According to the warriors, the dog-like demons were amazingly fast and could run for hours without stopping. All the more reason for them to catch it quickly, if they could, he supposed.

The garden was far more cheerful today than the night before, with the sky having cleared up to a bright blue, marred by only the occasional white, fluffy cloud. Yorin couldn’t help but admire the flowers and herbs as he meandered up the garden path; lavender, rosemary, chives, roses, a lilac bush… the gentle waft of scent from the plants was delightful, even as Yorin kept an eye and an ear out for any movement beyond the garden fence. He remembered that when they’d left that morning, the wood rack in Nerik’s kitchen had been almost empty, so he ducked around the side of the house, meaning to pick up an armful of wood to take inside.

When he got to the woodshed, though, he paused, frowning as he noticed the way it was laid out. Last night, it had been too dark and far too wet for him to pay attention to anything more than grabbing what he needed and getting back inside. But today, he stopped and stared, rather puzzled by the excessively neat and orderly way the wood was arranged. There were a dozen stacks, each supported by metal posts, and each stack contained a very specific size of wood. At one end, there were baskets of kindling, tiny twigs and small sticks with a handful of dry leaves at the end. Then the next pile was slightly larger sticks, then larger still, about the thickness of Yorin’s thumb. Then small branches, all the way up to thick chunks of wood that would have been split from a sizable log.

He’d never seen anything like it in his life. The average household sorted their wood into a vague estimation of ‘small, medium and large’, along with a barrel of kindling. Why on earth would Nerik feel the need to organise his wood supply to such a specific arrangement? It must make the task take at least twice as long as it needed to.

Yorin stood there, wondering whether he should ask Nerik about it at some point, or just let it go. It was hardly important, after all. But at the same time, he’d heard stories of an old man who lived to the south of town who was just as particular about certain things. Every item in his house had a specific place, from the doormat, to the cushions on the sofa, to the way he lined up his shoes at night. He also had odd little rituals, like touching the door handle three times before he left the house, or turning a cup around three times before he would drink from it. According to the rumours, he got very angry with anyone who touched any of his things or moved the doormat so much as half an inch to the right or left.

Was Nerik like that? And if so, would that be a problem for their relationship? Yorin couldn’t remember Nerik having done anything else like that, aside from the wood pile, so maybe he was just overreacting?

But by the same token, Yorin reflected, there were plenty of people who would have said he was overly organised when it came to his fabrics and threads. He kept everything in order of colour, not just the blues with the blues and the greens with the greens, but in order of shade, from lightest to darkest. It would have been easy to argue that that level of detail wasn’t necessary. Any customer could see if a fabric was light blue or dark blue, after all. But that was the way he’d always done it, and truth be told, he had no inclination to stop.

Deciding to overlook the very organised woodshed for now, Yorin went to collect an armful of wood… but then he spied the fallen branch from that morning, still lying in the garden. Perhaps he could just break off the smaller branches and stack the pieces somewhere – not in the woodshed, lest he mess up Nerik’s system, but in a pile in the garden, that Nerik could sort later? It was a small start to what would be a sizable job, but after Nerik had had such a rough night, Yorin was feeling a strong urge to help.

Just a couple of the smaller branches, he decided, while he kept an ear out for the elusive hellhound, and then he’d go and settle down in the safety of Nerik’s living room.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Nerik grumbled to himself as he marched along the roadway, yet more plans aborted for the sake of the endless and incessant need to run about for the Chalandrian refugees, delivering messages and sneaking deliveries and smuggling people and objects here and there. The Chalandrian cause was a noble and vital one, but for the gods’ sake, Nerik wished he could just have a fucking day off now and then.

On a day when he urgently needed to earn some money, and after he’d already spent an entire day – plus more – running up the mountain and back, Gosta had cornered him outside the hospital and ‘asked’ that he run some herbs out to ‘Mr Morris’. This was one errand, though, that he wasn’t getting paid for, and even if it had been a paid job, he would have refused it. Mr Morris was, in fact, a fenrig man who lived out in the forest, and he lived too far away for Nerik to bother delivering anything, if he hadn’t been part of the network of Chalandrians who helped newly-arrived refugees from across the gate. The standard fee for delivering outside the city was two coins, and for the amount of time it took to get to Mr Morris’s house, he’d have demanded at least three, and probably four.

But that was a moot point, since he wasn’t getting paid at all. Instead, he’d taken a weighty satchel of herbs, bandages, tonics and lotions out there, ready to treat all manner of injuries on the Chalandrians who managed to make it that far.

For all his complaining, Nerik knew how important the delivery was – which was why he’d agreed to do it. When he’d first arrived in Minia, he’d spent a couple of weeks with Mr Morris himself – or rather, with Venhandral, as the fenrig’s name was – and without that refuge, he would have certainly died.

But now it was getting late in the afternoon, he had only three coins to show for the day’s efforts, and he hadn’t got to see Yorin even once.

He considered heading back into town just to drop in on the tailor. But if he went, he might end up spending the night in the room above Yorin’s shop – a welcome thought indeed! – but if he was to do that, he’d certainly need to stop at home first and refuel his fire.

One thing at a time, he told himself. Get home first, take care of his fire, and then see how late and how dark it was. And then, if luck was on his side, maybe head back into town.

Luck, however, had different ideas. As Nerik was approaching the turnoff for the lane that led to his house, he had to cross a muddy patch where the rain from last night’s storm had neither drained away nor dried after a warm day. There were plenty of patches like that throughout the forest, and it would have been nothing unusual… except that as Nerik briefly glanced at the ground, he saw that one clear paw print was embedded in the mud. To a human, it would have looked like any other four-legged predator – a fox, perhaps, or a wolf, or even a dog belonging to a human, though there was no accompanying boot print nearby. But to a Chalandrian who had spent the last four years surviving by being alert and attentive to danger at all times, it was clear as day that this mark was the footprint of a fire-dog. The toes were too long and the paw too narrow for it to be anything else.

And it most certainly hadn’t been there when Nerik had passed the mud on his way out into the forest, just a couple of hours ago.

Fuck. That meant there was a fire-dog loose in the forest somewhere, most likely with a handful of soldiers on his trail.

Damn it. One more interruption that he couldn’t afford, at the same time as he absolutely could not ignore this.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Nerik set off in the direction of the paw print. Tracking the fire-dog was easier for an infernal than for a human. He knew how they moved, understood the way their fire worked, and while a human would have been looking for snapped twigs and trampled plants in the undergrowth, along with any more tell-tale paw prints, Nerik instead turned his eyes to the foliage about two metres above the ground. Fire-dogs, in their native form, gave off a smoky sort of heat, and it was easy to see the faint smudges of black amongst the leaves. Nerik had an innate understanding of how heat travelled, and it didn’t take him long to track down the wayward animal.

Oddly enough, the creature had taken a path that led it more or less in the direction of Nerik’s house. Was that deliberate, some message having been relayed to the dog about a safe place to go, or pure chance?

Either way, he took it as a win. If he could find the dog and lead it home, he could give it a safe place to stay for the night, before finding a more long-term home for it tomorrow.

He spotted it a few minutes later, some distance ahead of him. It was cowering beside a fallen tree, half-camouflaged in the branches. A human likely wouldn’t have seen it, but once again, Nerik had an unfair advantage. Infernals and fire-dogs, both being fire elementals, had a long history of working together, and Nerik had known dozens of them back in Chalandros. He was well practiced in picking their lean, dark shapes out of long grasses, piles of wood or even smoke-filled gullies.