The Endless Knight: The Seekers Trilogy (The Watchers Series Book 6)

by T. C. Edge

“Sorry, I got caught up with something,” I say, as she comes over and ticks me off the list. Her eyes then rise to Ajax as he joins, and I have to stifle a laugh at the new face he’s bringing along with him. “And who’s this?” she asks.

  “Er, this is my friend…Gerard,” I say. “He wants to join up too.”

  “Um, OK, the more the merrier really,” says the clerk. “Good morning Gerard, can I have your second name please?”

  Ajax was never brilliant at thinking on the spot. For a second I see his mind turning inside out, searching for a name, before I’m forced to answer for him.

  “It’s Smith,” I say, the most obvious name I can think of dancing into my head.

  “Right, excellent. You’re all signed up, Gerard. There are trucks waiting beyond the walls to take us down to the valley. Find any spot you like, and get comfortable.”

  She passes a warm smile to us before moving back towards the front of the group, and we make our way over the plateau and towards the perimeter wall. Ahead, the gate is beginning to grind open, revealing a convoy of buses waiting beyond.

  “Gerard…really?” asks Ajax as we walk.

  I shrug. “It’s all I could think of. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’re not sticking around with these people.”

  “Right, well, now’s the time you tell me exactly what I’m getting myself into. You realise our parents are going to go spare knowing we’ve gone missing. And Vesuvia…”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, calming him. “Drake knows what he’s getting us into. “I’ll explain everything on the bus, OK.”

  “Fine,” he says. “I’ll trust you, because I’m not having you go out there alone. But, for the record, I’m not exactly happy about this.”

  I look into his eyes, burning behind his funny new face, and can’t help but laugh at the disconnect.

  “Noted,” is all I say, before quickening my step to escape his blazing gaze.

  As we climb onto our bus, we make sure to find ourselves a spare two seats to get some privacy. When the convoy begins rumbling, accompanied by a military escort, the noise of the many loud engines and grinding tyres is enough to hide our conversation. As others engage in their own discussions around us, I quickly catch Ajax up on exactly what’s been going on.

  The only thing I leave out is the true identity of the prime Seeker. That, for now, is something I will not reveal, keen as I am to remain loyal to my father’s wishes as much as I can.

  Of course, it appears that, once more, Drake has taken the lead as my main co-conspirator, Jackson relegated into second position behind him. Personally, I’m looking forward to the day when we can all catch up onto the same page again. All this cloak and dagger stuff, all this sneaking around, it’s starting to take its toll on me.

  Having Ajax alongside me, however, is a real boon. As I tell him what’s been happening, I begin to feel the weight being lifted, some of the burden passed to him.

  Still, he clearly doesn’t completely agree with the plan.

  “So, let me get this straight,” he whispers. “We’re heading into the regions, where war is raging, to meet the most powerful Watcher in the world. A boy who wants nothing more than to kill us, and who was, I might add, bred for exactly that! And, we’re doing all this alone…without bringing along the most powerful Watcher on our side… my dad? Am I right so far?”

  “Pretty concise, yep,” I say nonchalantly.

  “And…the big question, really, is…WHY?! Why aren’t we getting every damn Watcher we have and taking the guy out? If we took him out now, we’d take out the others no problem…”

  “Because that’s not what Drake wants, and it’s not what I want.”

  “Well why not? What do you think you’re gonna do, have a cosy little chat with him? I just don’t get it, Theo. He’s the enemy, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but maybe…I don’t know. Look, my vision had me alone with him. That’s how we have to play it out.”

  “Right, and what about me? Am I in your vision?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well then, maybe you don’t know what you’re seeing. Maybe the other three Seekers are gonna come pouring out of the woodwork and kill us both. Jeez, Theo, I thought you had a proper plan here.”

  “Just trust me, OK. And, if you can’t do that, trust Drake. Remember the Watcher Wars? He knew we needed to be there, and look what happened. He’s got a sense for this, AJ, that we can’t see and don’t understand. But I trust him, and so should you.”

  My words seem to break down his doubts a little bit. At the least, they’re enough to quieten him and bring him a little more onto my side.

  “Fine,” he says, eventually. “I’ll play this out. But if we die because of this, then I’m gonna be pretty damn annoyed!”

  “Fair enough,” I say, patting him on the back. “Good to have you on board.”

  He grunts with displeasure, as the bus winds down the mountain, the valleys below growing clearer and more verdant. I turn my eyes to the window, not wanting to continue the debate for now, and watch as the world changes and the high mountains rise as we descend to their foundations. And there, in the sprawling basin between the ragged peaks, the sight of hundreds of tents and huts appear, and thousands of tiny people littered among them. And beyond, another camp, this one filled with military colours, thousands of soldiers from the Deadlands and regions gathering here for an assault and the protection of the mountain passes.

  I see sprawling fields of vehicles too, both for civilians and the military, used by the people to get here. Army jeeps and tanks and other armoured cars and artillery units. I even see aircraft, too, set aside along an airfield, the numbers of men and machinery in far greater concentrations than I’ve ever witnessed before.

  In the bus, I notice that everything has gone silent now, but for the growling engines and grinding tyres. All voices have dropped, all conversations ended as the volunteers look out in wonder at the world below. And, to my great relief, the sight appears enough to distract Ajax too, his eyes staring as they search the plains beneath us, his lips hanging a little open and murmuring words of wonder.

  As we continue down, my mind turns to the next task of getting away. Spying the shape of the clerk, sat down at the front of the bus, I stand and make my way towards her. Her eyes rise to mine as I appear.

  “Hi, ma’am,” I say, drawing her attention from the window. “I was just wondering…my friend and I want to help on the Deadlands, looking for stragglers. Can we do that?”

  “Well, you look a bit young, Brandon. How old are you? Can you drive?”

  “We’re both 18,” I lie, “and can both drive. It’s just, we know the lands really well, and would be more useful out there than helping in the camps.”

  “You’re 18?”

  “Yes,” I say, nodding.

  She seems slightly doubtful, owing to the more youthful complexions our morph marks have given us, smoothing our lines and scars and adding a bit more puppy fat here and there. Without them, I doubt she’d have any such concerns. Nevertheless, our large frames appear sufficient to convince her, both of us much larger than the average man.

  “OK, Brandon, I don’t see why not. If you know the lands, you’ll know it’s dangerous out there, but I’ll put you down on the list. There will be a briefing when we reach the valleys that will take you through everything you’ll need to know.”

  “Thank you,” I say, before returning to my seat.

  When I sit back down, Ajax quizzes me on what happened.

  “Just making sure we get a car down to the Deadlands,” I say. “We have to get across the wall by tomorrow night, remember. There’s no time to mess about here.”

  Ajax doesn’t ask anything more. I’m getting a sense of buyer’s remorse from him already, a feeling that he’s regretting coming along. If I know my friend like I think I do, however, I know that he’ll come around soon enough.

  Before too long, the path is levelling out and we’re crunching over the rocky grou
nd that signals the beginning of the open plains of the valley floor. Here it’s still cool, the valley way up in the mountains and above the desert floor. Ahead, the sprawling sea of tents and troops and trucks await, our little convoy coming to a stop at the main entrance to the temporary mountain base.

  We’re ordered out, and are quickly separated into two groups: one intended for helping in the camp; the other for the more perilous task of searching the Deadlands for travellers in need of our help. Ajax and I join the second, a smaller bunch of hardy folk, all of us ordered into a large tent for the briefing the clerk mentioned.

  I’m grateful by how efficient it all is, the morning still yet to turn to afternoon as we’re hastily taken through things by the team leader, a Major named Vilius from the Petram army. He tells us briefly of the perils we’ll face, before we’re paired up and given radios used to call anything in. Ajax and I are thankfully put together, and we’re all led out into the vehicle field to be assigned our cars. Then, we’re all passed maps and targeted areas that each of us are permitted to visit, certain zones that need to be covered before we return each night. By the looks of things, some more seasoned ‘searchers’, as they call our breed, are allowed to stay at particular safe zones further field. All newbies, however, need to merely stick to their specific search fields before returning each night, where they will make camp right here in the valley base.

  It’s a well co-ordinated operation, but one that Ajax and I aren’t actually going to be part of. I just have to hope that the area we’re meant to canvass isn’t going to reveal someone who might need our help. Help that will never come.

  Because, as soon as we get behind the wheel, and begin grinding away down to the desert floor in our rusted old jeep, the orders of the Major go right out of the window. Starting in a large convoy, as soon as the red desert appears before us at the base of the mountains, we spread out and go off in our separate ways.

  In only minutes, cars are being swallowed up by the dust spat up by their tyres, or disappearing behind chunks of rock, churning through the tundra in a bid to find any poor soul lost in the unforgiving wilderness.

  The heat is immediate, that suffocating, brutal blanket of warmth that wraps itself around you and doesn’t let up. Right now, as the heat of the day begins to build, and after so long spent in the mountain air of Petram, or the manufactured cool of Eden, I feel my body quickly react, sweat pouring from pores, my throat drying as fast as it can be wetted by water.

  And for a little while, as we set our path ahead to the East and pray the car doesn’t fail in the heat, we do little talking. A grumpiness settles inside the car, neither of us willing to draw attention to it and choosing instead to just sit and stare at the endless red and orange that now dominates our view.

  The only distraction in the car becomes the radio, crackling occasionally as people report in their findings. After a little while, I turn it off, and toss it into the back seat, turning my mind from those behind us, and setting it only on those ahead.

  I take the wheel first, driving for several hours, before Ajax offers to take over. It’s a sign that he’s coming round, that he’s in this with me now. So I accept, and we stop to swap seats, before continuing along our path.

  “You sure we’re going the right way?” he asks me, following my directions. “Do you know which town we have to go to…beyond Knight’s Wall?”

  “Yes,” I say, giving him a little white lie.

  Frankly, to tell him ‘no, I have no idea which town’, would be counterproductive right now. Really, I don’t have the energy to explain to him at the moment that whatever town we end up in, that’ll be the town we’ll find the Seeker.

  I have to trust Drake on that matter, despite having my own doubts about it. Because right now, we’re acting on faith alone. Faith that my visions aren’t playing tricks on me. Faith that this Seeker will, in fact, be alone himself, and Ajax and I won’t perish at his hand. Faith that we’re going to get something out of this mission, that Drake’s cryptic foresight is going to turn out to yield some reward.

  It’s a lot to put down to faith, really. A lot to put down to hope.

  But, at a time like this, with our backs against the wall, it’s not an opportunity we can pass up.

  11

  Quarrels in the Heat

  We drive until the sun goes down. And then we drive some more.

  The air cools, but not drastically so, not after spending our days in the mountains. Everything is relative and the night air down here on the desert floor is still like a furnace compared to that of Petram.

  Still, we find that it’s cooler outside of the car than in, and so set about locating an area of rocks on which to sleep. Thankfully, I came prepared, partially at least. I never expected to have a companion on this trip, and so brought along a single fold out mat that I intended to sleep on.

  Given Ajax’s chagrin, I offer it to him. Being stubborn as a mule, he refuses to accept. Unfortunately, I’m similarly inclined, so the mat spends the duration of the evening unused.

  Instead, we use the many clothes we’ve shed in order to form our own little beds. Having come from the mountain, we have plenty of layers to spare, and with no need for a covering, are able to manufacture suitably comfortable nests for the night.

  I suspect both of our sleeps with be short, though. Not only is the heat tricky to master, but the sun is set to rise early, bringing a harsh yellow light to our eyes in a matter of hours. Thankfully, we’ve grown used to waking early, and still have a long way to go, so that’s not really a problem that concerns me.

  In the end, I drift off with thoughts of the following day dominating my mind, and the Seeker’s face the central focus of it all. Mercifully, however, my mind is too busy to discover any local visions of terrible things, and so I fall asleep and wake up with only thoughts of the Seeker in my head.

  The following morning, we continue our journey, spying the sight of refugees on occasion as we go. The sight of swirling dust usually gives them away, a car or two, or even the odd small convoy moving West across the Deadlands in search of safer places to wait out the war.

  Settlements appear here and there too, many of them deserted. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, whether they’ve only recently been abandoned or have been like that for years. Out here, many such places exist, relics of a past age when these lands were less harsh and hostile to human sensibilities, when the lands were better suited to farming and cultivation. Now, so much of the world sits barren and unused, the changing nature of the climate and seasons bringing an end to the old way of life that once endured here.

  Still, we don’t encounter too much, whether old towns or people, given the vastness of the landscape we cross. Soon, however, the world begins to give away signs that we’re progressing, the distant horizon telling of the mountains that help to block the regions from the Deadlands, once supported by Knight’s Wall.

  As we move closer, I feel my body beginning to swell with nerves and anticipation. With each passing minute, the day is growing older, quickly summoning the night to continue in its stead. Soon enough, the moon will make its appearance, barely visible at first as the sun’s rays continue to dominate. And then, as the light fades, I’ll see that half moon, and know that my vision is growing ever closer to completion, to becoming reality.

  So on we go, rumbling closer until the scarred earth of Knight’s Wall appears, little areas still yet to be dismantled. Not too far away, somewhere to the North, the old remains of the Baron’s base, hidden beneath The Titan’s Hand, may still be burning, still spewing up a cloud of black ash. I turn my gaze in that direction, but know we’re too far South to see it.

  It’s an odd feeling, when we cross over the skeleton of the wall, officially leaving the Deadlands behind. Knowing that, not too far away, the regions are engulfed in fighting, tens of thousands of soldiers battling for territory and supremacy across the land. But not here, not in no man’s land.

  Here, the country has remained
largely empty for years, mile upon mile of relics, lonely towns once filled with people, once prosperous. For many years, this entire stretch of land was a battleground between the regions and the rebels, long before my parents joined the cause and fought in the War of the Regions.

  I wonder, sometimes, whether this nation will ever see the back of war. Whether these bouts of peace will ever stretch into something more meaningful. Whether this wanton killing will ever end.

  As my mind wanders, Ajax’s voice pulls me back into the world.

  “Which way then?” he asks, sitting behind the wheel, looking left and right and ahead, at an old crossroad still lingering in the dirt.

  “Er…” I say, taking a moment to think. I have no idea, of course, which way to go. Whatever way I choose will be right.

  “Are you sure you know?” he asks, the car chugging at a standstill. “What’s the name of this town?”

  “Um…”

  Once more, my mind deserts me, still wandering and wavering.

  “Theo, you do know where we’re going, right?”

  “Straight on,” I say quickly. “Just…go straight on.”

  He looks at me curiously before putting the car back in gear and continuing on. We stretch away from the remains of Knight’s Wall, moving further into no man’s land, moving through the dirty scrubland as I search for the nearest town.

  Soon, we’re approaching one, small and barely standing. It doesn’t look right, not big enough for the site from my visions.

  “This is?” asks Ajax, growing suspicious.

  “No,” I say assertively, trying to get him back onside.

  On we go, as I turn my eyes back to the path ahead, and around at the open landscape. Behind us, the blocks of craggy hills rise up to the heavens, giving me something to go by. I think again of the vision, of the shape of the mountains that framed the horizon, and know that we’re not yet far enough from them, that they’re too close and clear.

  We drive further down the ancient, cracked road, trees and old shacks and cars peppered here and there, until the distance to the mountains seems right. I ask Ajax to stop, and get out of the car to take a proper look around. Climbing onto the roof, I give myself a better view of the area, and note that we need to move Northwards a little from here.