Wychling

Chapter 29

Shimon was getting desperate. Why was it that it would rain like the sea was trying to climb the shores and drown the whole city most days he was out patrolling, but when he actually needed it, all there was, was a light patter?

~Not enough to put out a decent candle. Where is everyone anyway?~

He had sent people to start ringing the emergency bells an hour ago. They were going right across the city now, and yet he still only had fifty people, all of whom lived nearby. The only ones who had bothered to run towards the smoke and help.

The longer he stood here the more he became convinced that this fire wasn't an accident either. It was in a stone building and they had been throwing buckets of water at the ground floor for an hour. Yet still it burned white hot.

~There's no way that a house on this street had enough fuel to sustain this kind of raging inferno, and the way it moves~

Shimon didn't believe in fairy stories like most of these Northerners did, but he couldn't explain this fire with logic. That was a problem for later though. For now, they were tearing down the houses to either side as the red tiled rooftops were funnelling the raging conflagration along the whole row of houses.

~Someone did a really poor job of designing this city, my love~

He had finally managed to get the other side of the fire cut off by pulling down another house, leaving a hole to the street behind. A hole filled with a stubborn fire, that appeared to burn stone, or whatever was in the cellar here.

The large hysterical man had stopped screaming, now sitting staring in mute horror at his home disappearing before him. He was in the way of the teams rushing to fight the fire, but they all skirted around him, unwilling to even approach, and so, awkwardly leaving their neighbour to his all-consuming grief.

~It's a strange people I settled with. They just ignore him hoping someone else will deal with it. So much for community, my love. Still, maybe now isn't the time~

Sad though it was, it was far from being his only problem right now. It was growing dark and though they'd contained the fire, it had sent an enormous inky black cloud into the sky, and he couldn't tell if the angry grey line of light above was a raincloud about to spill it's bounty on the earth, or just the result of the hungry flames billowing smoke from below.

He hoped it was the former, but he may well be here all night. It had been a long time since he slept, and he needed to be relieved, but nobody had turned up.

~What are those idiots doing? It's like they don't care that half the city might burn down!~

He didn't even know who he meant, the rest of the Watch, or every citizen in the City, maybe both. The fact the Watch hadn't turned up dented his pride enormously. There had best be a damn good explanation for that.

Watchmen were supposed to be the heroes of the New Republic. If they just left the poor quarter to burn, he wouldn't be able to look at himself the same way in the uniform. For that matter, the Watchmen would lose enormous face with the populace, and they would be left to turn to the Church of the One God.

~Wouldn't that just be a fine mess?~

He looked at the still raging fire in a grim mood, calculating, scheming and desperately thinking of more and more outlandish schemes to get the inferno under control. He was just about to give orders for houses three doors down to be torn down, sacrificing the three before it, when the unmistakeable sound of masses of people storming down the street to his left, stole the words from his mouth.

He was still blinded by the fire, so he couldn't make out the scene erupting onto his street until it was right in front of him. It was quickly apparent that this wasn't the help he had hoped for. Two figures were being chased by a mob of angry citizens. All seemingly oblivious to the scorching inferno to one side.