Guardians Watch

by Eric T Knight

  A long line of men followed Rome back to the Tender camp. “Here they are,” he told Quyloc. “What do we do now?”

  “We start with the FirstMother. We’re going to need her.” Nalene was no longer sitting up, but lying flat on her back. Her breathing was shallow.

  “Come here,” Rome said to Felint. “You better sit down.”

  The old veteran unbuckled his sword belt and laid it down. He seemed steady, calm. He sat down on the ground beside Nalene. Rome crouched down beside him.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Whatever happens,” he replied, “it was my choice.”

  “Put your hand on her sulbit,” Quyloc told him.

  Felint leaned forward and put his hand on the creature, which was lying still on the FirstMother’s chest. At first the thing didn’t respond, and Rome wondered if it was already too late. But then it twitched. Its head came up and swiveled around. The tiny mouth opened and latched onto Felint’s hand.

  Felint went rigid at the contact. “Oh,” he said softly.

  As the sulbit fed on him, Felint’s eyes rolled back in his head and he flopped over on his side. He began twitching, his legs kicking out.

  After a minute his twitching stopped and he went very still.

  “That’s enough! He’s going to die!” Rome grabbed onto Felint and tried to pull him back, but when he touched him a powerful shock went through him. He tried to jerk away and realized he couldn’t let go. A terrible feeling went through him. He felt as though he was falling into a bottomless pit. A sense of desperate emptiness enveloped him. He could see Quyloc reaching for him, but his friend seemed very distant and small. He couldn’t speak.

  Then he was free and lying on his back, gasping. Quyloc was bent over him, the spear in his hand. Quyloc helped him sit up.

  “What did you do? How did…?”

  “I used the spear to break the connection.”

  Rome remembered Felint suddenly and rolled up onto his knees. The old veteran was laying nearby, his eyes open and staring sightlessly at the sky. A heaviness settled on Rome. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, closing his eyes.

  “It’s working,” Quyloc said. “Look.”

  Rome turned to the FirstMother. Quyloc was right. Her breathing was better and the blisters had begun to recede. Much of the yellowness was gone from the sulbit’s skin. She turned her head to the side and her eyes opened.

  “Where…?” she murmured.

  “She needs more,” Quyloc said, waving the next soldier in line forward. He was a young man, with a pale wisp of a beard and narrow shoulders and he hesitated, but then he clenched his fists and came forward.

  “Let me go next,” Rome said, trying to move over and sit beside the FirstMother. But he was weak as a kitten and Quyloc easily pushed him back.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t take a chance on losing you.”

  “He’s right, Macht,” the young soldier said. “Be no army without you.”

  So Rome had to sit and watch while the drama repeated itself. But this time the FirstMother was conscious while it was happening, and when the young soldier flopped onto his side she grabbed onto her sulbit with one hand.

  “Stop,” she told it, then repeated it more loudly. Reluctantly, the creature let go. Quyloc motioned to a couple of soldiers and they dragged the young soldier off to the side. His eyes were closed, but he was still breathing.

  The FirstMother sat up. The blisters were mostly gone and her breathing sounded normal. “One more,” she said. When the next soldier in line didn’t move fast enough she snapped at him, “Quickly! We have to help the others!”

  She pulled her sulbit away before the man was unconscious and pushed herself to her feet. Her color was again normal and her sulbit had resumed its ivory hue. She turned toward the waiting soldiers. “One of you to each Tender. Now!”

  They nearly tripped over each other, hurrying to obey. “You know what to do!” she called out to them.

  “One at a time would be better,” Rome said, standing and moving up to her. “That way—”

  “Get out of my way,” she snapped. “I don’t have time to argue with you. I’ll save as many as I can. That’s the best I can do.” She hurried over to one of the unconscious women.

  “I’ll do what I can too,” Quyloc said. “Maybe you should go lie down. You don’t look well.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until this is done.”

  Quyloc shrugged and walked off.

  Rome stayed until the end. It hurt to watch, but he didn’t look away. Despite Quyloc’s and the FirstMother’s efforts, a half dozen men died saving the Tenders.

  “But only one of the Tenders died,” Quyloc said, as they walked away from the Tender camp. The sun had gone down. Fires were burning around the Qarathian camp. The silhouettes of men on the wall on watch were visible against the starry sky. “That’s what matters.”

  “I know you’re right,” Rome replied. He felt mostly normal once again, though terribly tired. “But it doesn’t feel that way.”

  As they passed by one of the fires a soldier called out to him. “Are they going to be all right, Macht, the Tenders?”

  Rome walked over to the fire and looked down at the men sitting around it. “We only lost one. But not all of the soldiers survived.” He started to say something more, but the man spoke first.

  “That’s war for you. Some die. It ain’t the worst way to go, is it? They died to save a lot of people. We’d have already lost if it wasn’t for them women.” The other soldiers nodded their agreement.

  Rome just stared at them for a moment, then turned away.

  “See?” Quyloc said. “I told you so.”

  Fifty-four

  It was late in the day and Netra was in the heart of the Gur al Krin. Huge red and orange sand dunes loomed all around. The wind had died, but earlier the gusts had been fierce and twice she had seen whirlwinds of fire in the distance, though they had not come close to her. She was in an area where the dunes gave way to a large, flattened area, almost a depression. Huge stones were sprayed around a gaping crater in the ground; clearly something of great size and power had burst up from underneath. The stones were too regular to be natural.

  She walked to the lip of the crater and looked down. No light made it to the bottom. She looked around, wondering why the Mother had come to this place. Had she been checking on the prison? Had Melekath lured her here?

  Come to me, my daughter, my chosen. Quickly. Free me and we will defeat Melekath together.

  The urgency in the Mother’s voice went through Netra like a jolt of electricity. Her questions forgotten, she began her descent.

  Far behind her, still lost in the distance, but slowly closing the gap, came Shorn, his head down, running through the heavy sand with his tireless gait. He had lost Netra’s tracks long ago, when the wind started blowing, but strangely he had found he did not need them. He could feel which way she had gone. It was as if they were connected on some level he could not fathom. Perhaps it was a result of when she saved his life.

  Ultimately, though, it did not matter. What mattered was that he be there. She was going to need him. He knew it as surely as he had ever known anything in his life.

  He would not fail her.

  Fifty-five

  Nalene awakened the next morning with a headache. She sat up. The sun was not yet up, but it was light. She looked at her sulbit and was surprised at how much bigger it was. Its body was thick enough that she would have had trouble encircling it with both hands. Its head wasn’t as blunt, a narrow snout starting to emerge. Its legs and tail were longer too. It looked somewhat like a hairless rat, but with no ears and the toes on its front legs were so long they were almost fingers.

  It must have been all the Song that made it grow so much. Not for the first time she wondered what it would become when it finished growing. She shook the thought away and got up. There were bigger things to worry about now.

  Other than the headach
e, she felt surprisingly good. There was no sign of the poison at all. She thought of the man who had died to save her and felt a stab of guilt that made her angry. He was a soldier. It was his job to die if necessary. Her death would have been a terrible defeat in the battle against Melekath. All that mattered was winning the war, not who died along the way.

  But for some reason he made her think of Lenda and she could not escape the feeling that if she’d only been smarter, what happened to both could have been avoided. She should have known Lenda was too weak for a sulbit. She should have known those people were poisoned.

  She saw the tall young Tender, Bronwyn, sit up, rubbing her eyes, and she walked over to her. “You did well yesterday,” she said. “Without your help I would have dropped the barrier.”

  Bronwyn stood up. “Thank you, FirstMother.”

  “You’re stronger than the rest of them, except for perhaps Mulin. Stay close to me. I may need you again.”

  “I am only happy to serve, FirstMother.”

  One of the guards came running up then. “They’re coming again,” he said simply.

  “Get them up,” Nalene told Bronwyn. Bronwyn hurried off, calling to the others, shaking those who were slow to move.

  Nalene looked up. Looming over the Tender camp was the huge block of stone that Rome commanded from. She could just see several figures on it. Off to the left, past a line of low shrubs, was the wall. Soldiers were clustered on top of it. She saw archers bend their bows and release.

  She lowered her defenses and melded with her sulbit. With its help she stretched out her inner senses toward the battlefield, wanting to know what awaited them, if there were any more blinded ones approaching.

  What she sensed made her heart start pounding suddenly.

  A Guardian had come.

  “What in Gorim’s blackest nightmare is that?” Rome said.

  Something had appeared in the fringe of the forest, shouldering aside full grown trees as if they were saplings. The grating crunch of stone on stone accompanied its movements. Rome’s first thought was that if a granite boulder was shattered, and then the pieces put back together very roughly, it would look like this, a thing made from shards of broken stone. Its fists were the size of a man’s torso, its head the size of a boulder. A deep gash ran diagonally across its rough features, cutting across one deep set eye. From the depths of the gash came the reddish glow of molten rock.

  “From its appearance, I think that is Tharn, the Guardian known as the Fist,” Quyloc said.

  Kasai’s soldiers scrambled to get out of its way and those who were too slow were stepped on as the thing made its way uphill toward the wall.

  Arrows and spears arced out from the wall as Tharn drew near, but they had no effect. The soldiers massed on the wall shifted nervously and more than one looked to their leader up above.

  “It looks like it’s made out of stone,” Tairus said.

  “Stone is good,” Rome said, an idea forming. “I have something that works on stone.”

  “Get up, get up!” Nalene was yelling. “A Guardian is coming!”

  The rest of the Tenders were scrambling to their feet, gathering in a loose group near Nalene. They were wild-eyed, close to panicking. Nalene felt the same way herself. The sense of hatred radiating off the creature, even from a distance, was nearly overwhelming.

  “Break into four groups! Meld with your sulbits and bleed off as much Song as you can! Hold for my command!” she shouted at the Tenders. She pointed at Mulin, Perast and Bronwyn. “You three up here with me!” To the guards milling around she said, “Stand close to your assigned Tenders!”

  The Tenders and guards were just reaching their assigned places when the end of the stone wall nearest them essentially exploded, shards and chunks of stone flying everywhere. Soldiers screamed as they were tossed into the air like rag dolls. When the debris settled enough to see, there was a gaping hole in the wall.

  Nalene spun. “Tharn,” she whispered.

  Tharn stomped through the gap, enemy soldiers surging in its wake. It paused in the opening for a moment, the massive, lumpy head swiveling side to side. The lone remaining eye found the Tenders and fixed on them.

  “Tenders!” it roared, its voice easily carrying across the din. “Time to die!”

  Several of the Tenders bolted, but the rest held firm, though they fell back several steps.

  “Give us all you have!” Nalene screamed.

  The Tenders began recklessly bleeding Song off the guards’ flows, so much that within a couple of seconds every one of the guards was on the ground. Song began to stream from the Tenders to Nalene and the three others standing in front with her. She shot them a sideways look. “Don’t release until I tell you to.”

  Nalene felt her skin tingling as the Song diverted to her increased with each passing second. It was more than she’d expected and at first she worried that she couldn’t control it. But there was no time for caution. They would get only one chance and they had to make it count. Nalene fought to tune out the fast-approaching Tharn, the screams of dying soldiers, the frightened women around her, focusing everything on keeping her grip on the Song.

  But even as the power built, she knew that no matter what they did, it would not be enough. Tharn was huge, powerful, a force of nature. Its sheer size was astonishing. The soldiers around it only came up to its waist. Even if she and the other Tenders had ample time to prepare, it wouldn’t make any difference. Tharn would kill them without slowing down.

  Tharn came fast, like a boulder rolling downhill. Its eye was fixed on her, its mouth open in a snarl. It waded through the soldiers in reserve as if they were made of straw, slapping them aside with its huge hands, each blow sending a dozen men sprawling. Some it merely stepped on, crunching their bones like twigs and mashing them into pulp. Those who survived long enough to strike it with swords or axes saw their attacks bounce off and their weapons shatter.

  Nalene stood in a growing nimbus of power, Song racing through her like fire, more and more every second. Already she was dizzy with it. Tharn was only heartbeats away, but still she did not give the order to fire.

  Strangely, she was not afraid. Or rather, the fear she felt was distant, almost alien. Her strongest emotion was a growing anger. She welcomed the anger, let it flow through her and fill her. Anger had ever been her defense against a world that derided and mocked her at every turn. This thing bearing down on her became the epitome of all she hated. It was as if the years of helplessness and frustration all boiled up within her at once, finding focus on Tharn. At that moment she cared nothing for the growing darkness over the land, for Melekath, for Xochitl even. The only thing that mattered was to destroy this thing, to see it crushed and dying.

  “Come on,” she growled, her teeth clenched tightly. “Come and get me. Just a little closer.”

  It loomed over her. She was vaguely aware that Perast was screaming. Her sulbit was glowing like a small sun. She held back a flood with only her hands. There would be no fine control when she released this time, only a massive flood of power.

  She threw up her hand. “Now!” she howled.

  Four huge Song bolts shot out nearly simultaneously. They struck Tharn square in its massive chest. It howled and staggered back a step. One massive hand went to its chest. Where the bolts had struck chunks were torn out and red light flickered in the depths of the holes. For a moment it just stood there, looking down at the wound in disbelief.

  Then it raised its head, threw its arms wide, and bellowed. Nalene and the others staggered back, so weak they could barely stand. Within Nalene, anger gave way to despair. They had failed and now they would all die.

  Bellowing again, Tharn crouched and slammed both fists to the ground. The ground split open with a loud cracking sound and Nalene and the other Tenders were knocked sprawling.

  Stubbornly, Nalene rolled over and made it to her knees. She hurt everywhere. There was blood running down her face, running into her eyes and blinding her. The othe
r Tenders moaned around her. She wiped at the blood, determined to face Tharn as it killed her.

  Tharn’s shadow fell over her and she braced herself, wondering if she would feel the blow when it came or if she would simply die instantly. Would the Mother be waiting for her? Was there anything on the other side?

  Tharn raised its massive fists.

  Then she saw something over Tharn’s shoulder and her eyes widened in surprise.

  Rome was already running when Tharn destroyed the wall. The black axe was in his hands, though he could not remember drawing it. It was light and powerful. It felt like a living thing in his hands.

  He saw Tharn turn towards the Tenders, who were gathered in a group not far from the edge of the block of stone he stood on. As he ran, he gauged the distances, how far he had to go before he could make his leap, how fast Tharn was moving.

  He wasn’t going to make it. Tharn was moving too fast. By the time Rome reached the jumping-off point, Tharn would be too far away.

  Then four Song bolts shot from the FirstMother and the three Tenders beside her, striking Tharn. The Guardian staggered back and paused. It was only for a moment, but it was enough to give Rome his chance.

  As Tharn raised its huge fists to finish off the FirstMother, Rome reached his spot and jumped.

  Nalene looked up from her impending death just in time to see Wulf Rome launch himself from the top of the cliff.

  Tharn roared and swung.

  Rome was in full swing when he reached Tharn, the axe coming around in a whistling arc and striking the Guardian with his full weight behind it. There was a high-pitched shriek from the black axe as it hit Tharn at the base of the neck and bit deep. Tharn howled. Something that looked like lava gouted from the wound, sparking as it hit the air.

  Rome’s feet hit Tharn’s back a fraction of a second after the axe bit. His momentum carried him forward and with his left hand he grabbed onto the top of Tharn’s head to balance himself. With his other hand he pulled the axe back and swung the weapon wildly at the side of the Guardian’s head, striking once, twice, each blow drawing new howls from Tharn, along with sparks and blood like lava.