Page 53 of Inferno
Zandro stay. Eat fire.
“Fair enough. I should be back in about an hour. I’ll need to restock my fire before I head into town. You should come with me. We can see if there’s anyone who’d like you to live with them on a permanent basis.”
Zandro like Nerik. Like Nerik’s house. Stay here.
“I told you already, I’m away from home far too often for me to be able to look after a fire-dog.”
Zandro look after Zandro. Help Nerik. Protect house.
Nerik sighed. It was an ongoing discussion he’d been having with Zandro. Even that first night, after Yorin had seen them, he’d tried to insist that Zandro was in danger and should leave. But the fire-dog had steadfastly refused. And the fact that Yorin had turned out to be an ally had done nothing to persuade the dog that Nerik had a point.
“Fine. You stay here for now. But you should still come into town with me. Sooner or later, you’ll need to learn your way around. And learn how to avoid the warriors.”
Zandro learn,Zandro said, tucking his ears back in a display of meekness. Nerik didn’t believe it for one moment.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you later.”
Out on the road, Nerik headed at a slow jog towards the main road into Minia. Then, once he was sufficiently far south to avoid the gate, he headed west. The message he had to deliver was for Stanley – a letter from the unicorns, that had helpfully been written down by one of the fenrigs in the colony up on the mountain. It detailed the growing size of the unicorn herd and the fact that they would need to create a second colony soon. There were already a couple of different locations being debated, along with a number of volunteers who were willing to start the new colony, and Retidash, the lead unicorn, wanted to keep Stanley up to date with their progress, given how important a part in the chain he played.
Nerik skirted the edge of the battlefield, keeping inside the tree line, but he was close enough that he could hear the shouts of the warriors, and the screams of the dying. As horrific as it was, the sound was a good reminder of why he did what he did; running up the mountain, and risking his life placing rocks with messages attached at the edge of the gate. Yes, his own life was important, but so many other people were depending on him and others like him to save their lives. And on that note, Nerik remembered that he was going to have to have a serious discussion with Yorin about the infernal colony up in the mountains. As luck would have it, the spark he’d helped create on his last trip had survived, and it was growing strongly. It had a couple more weeks to go before they would know for certain whether it was going to make it long term, but according to the females, it was off to a good start. As a result, they’d replicated the nest of oak twigs for this attempt, hoping that the wood was robust enough to support a growing spark.
One thing at a time, Nerik counselled himself. Deliver the message to Stanley, then start teaching Zandro his way around the city… and then, this afternoon, he could go and distract Yorin from his work and hopefully make him blush half a dozen times. The thought warmed him, and he picked up his pace, heading north-west now, towards Stanley’s farm, slowly leaving the battlefield behind him. But Nerik was just approaching the turnoff to Stanley’s farm when shouts sounded from behind him. He ducked over to the side of the road, not wanting to get caught in the way of a team of warriors… but rather than heavy boots running up the road, he instead heard the sound of frantic hoofbeats.
“Oh, fuck, no,” he muttered to himself. It was not even two days since the last unicorn had come through the gate, but given the sound echoing through the forest towards him, the next one had come early. It wasn’t the thought of another trip up the mountain that had him panicking, but rather the knowledge that Stanley wasn’t likely to be ready for another equine to come charging through his farm.
The system Stanley had set up to rescue the unicorns was quite ingenious. Typically, when they came through the gate, they were on fire; an unfortunate consequence of the fierce heat from the desert. So the challenge Stanley faced was to extinguish their flames, shove a halter on their head – one that was equipped with an obsidian gem to allow them to disguise themselves as a horse – then get the unicorn to activate the gem. Then, only thirty seconds later, when the warriors showed up, Stanley would pretend that he was training a new horse – a perfectly plausible story, given that he did, in fact, train horses for a number of locals – then throw a fit about another unicorn busting up his farm and send the warriors off in the supposed direction that the unicorn had gone.
The main problem with that scenario was successfully extinguishing the unicorn’s flames. Unicorns naturally excreted an oily coating for their fur, and with the typical heat of Chalandros, that oil was highly prone to spontaneous combustion. Thankfully, it didn’t do the unicorns any harm, since their skin and coat were resistant to fire, but it was the sort of thing that would clearly distinguish a unicorn from a horse. No ordinary horse would stand around placidly while being engulfed in flames.
Stanley had set up a system whereby the unicorn could run into a race in his yard and trip a wire that upended three barrels of water suspended over a raceway. The water would extinguish the flames, Stanley would then rush over, grab a halter from a nearby hook and secure it to the unicorn’s head, and then the ruse was more or less complete.
Unless, of course, a new unicorn came through the gate before Stanley had had time to refill all three barrels and re-trigger the trip wire. It took dozens of bucketfuls of water to rig the system, and a lot of hard work to lift that much water to above head height. Which meant that this newcomer was likely in a world of trouble.
Standing at the side of the road, Nerik braced himself for a shitstorm of raging equine to come barrelling towards him. And there it was. The unicorn, fully alight and in a complete panic, came galloping along the road. The turnoff for Stanley’s road was just up ahead… but before the unicorn could get there, a pair of warriors darted out of the undergrowth, yelling and waving their swords. It was impossible for a human to outrun a unicorn, so Nerik assumed that this pair had been chasing some other prey – a fire-dog, perhaps, or maybe a deelee that had got the jump on them – and they just happened to be in the right place at the right time to join in the fight against the unicorn.
The unicorn swerved to avoid the warriors, and in doing so, completely missed the turnoff. Gods above, it was pretty much doomed now. It would have no way to extinguish its flames, and as a result, the warriors would be able to track it anywhere, just by following the trail of scorched plant life.
“Watch yourself, Nerik,” a voice called, and Nerik plastered himself against a tree as a group of four more warriors came thundering along the path in hot pursuit of the unicorn. One of the warriors called a thank you as they passed, while Nerik offered a half-hearted wave in response.
But the drama wasn’t over yet. Realising that it had missed the turnoff, the unicorn darted off into the undergrowth, and in doing so, set fire to a section of shrubs. “After it, boys!” one of the warriors yelled, and then the group of them set off through smoking undergrowth in pursuit of the creature.
Nerik considered his options for all of about two seconds. With no clear path to follow, the unicorn’s chances of finding Stanley’s farm were only slightly above zero. And given the trail of fire to follow, the warriors’ chances of finding the unicorn were approaching one hundred per cent.
“Fuck my fucking life,” Nerik muttered to himself, as he dashed off into the undergrowth, following the path the warriors had taken. He had no chance of outrunning them on foot, but there was one way he could move significantly faster than a human. He rushed over to a fallen log, taking a quick glance around to make sure firstly that he was alone, and secondly that he could find this exact log again later. Then he stripped off his clothes and took a couple of extra seconds to fold his treasured shirt carefully, then tucked the clothes and his satchel in under the log. Naked, he unfastened the obsidian gem, then immediately refastened it around his neck. The metal chain would withstand the heat of the fire, and he absolutely couldnotafford to lose it.
That taken care of, he launched himself at the nearest patch of fire. With barely a thought, he immersed himself in the flames, feeling the same exhilarating rush he felt every time he became one with the fire. His essence dissolved and spread, his consciousness splitting and reforming, as he became nothing more than ethereal heat.
Right. Time to catch himself a unicorn.
Leaping from flame to flame, Nerik surged through the undergrowth like a wave. There were the warriors, chugging along behind the unicorn – all six of them now, having picked up the two extras on the way. The unicorn was making good progress in front of them, widening the gap between it and its pursuers. But that gap wouldn’t last long, if the unicorn didn’t know where it was going. The large equines were built for stamina, not speed, and after an initial sprint, the creature would be forced to slow.
Nerik leapt from a low tree branch to a smouldering shrub, then to a patch of dry leaves, weaving through the air like a miniature tornado as he plotted his trajectory from one fuel source to the next. He spotted the unicorn up ahead… but the next question was how to get it to go in the right direction. There was only one solution Nerik could think of, given that he’d had absolutely zero time to plan anything out, and so he simply went with it, surging forward until his essence was sitting right in the middle of the flames coating the unicorn’s back.
What Nerik was about to do next carried an extremely high risk of him being thrown to the ground and trampled on. While they were very similar in many ways, one clear difference between horses and unicorns was that under absolutely no circumstances whatsoever did one ever attempt toridea unicorn. But Nerik was about to do just that. It was the work of a mere moment to subdue the flames, putting out the majority of the unicorn’s body, though its legs and head were still alight. And then Nerik resumed his blackened form, ash and smoke congealing into a bipedal body, right there on the unicorn’s back. He had one shot at this, and even then, there was a strong chance it would fail. He leaned forward, putting his face as close to the unicorn’s ear as possible. “More to the right,” he said, clinging onto the unicorn’s mane.
The unicorn shrieked in surprise, ears flat back against its head, but it swerved to the right a moment later, and Nerik thanked whatever gods were listening that the creature hadn’t tossed him off its back. “Across the river, then up the hill. When you get to the road, turn left.” The unicorn snorted, and Nerik took that to be all the acknowledgement he was going to get.
The river was coming up, wide but shallow, and Nerik held on, tucking his legs up higher. He didn’t want to get splashed, but at the same time, the last thing he needed was to be tossed off while the unicorn was crossing, and it was likely he might slip on a rock or stumble on uneven ground. The unicorn slowed a fraction as it entered the water, sloshing quickly over the sandy banks and surging forward when the water came up to its knees.