Last Guardian

by David Gemmell

  “Welcome, madam. Might I offer you some wine?”

  A handsome man, he was even more striking in the light from the fire—his swept-back hair gleaming, his sharp powerful features almost savage. “No, thank you,” she said. He led her to a chair, waited as she sat, and then returned to his own.

  “The land you wish to lease is of little use to me. But tell me, Frey McAdam, why you approached me. You will know that no one has title to land. A man takes what he can hold. You could merely have driven your wagon to a spot of your choosing and built a home.”

  “Were I rich, Meneer, with fifty riders, I would have done just that. But I am not. It remains your land, and if I am troubled, I will come to you for assistance. You have men riding the high pastures, and it is known that brigands rarely trouble you. I hope the same will be true of me.”

  “You have learned a great deal in your short time here. You are obviously a woman of great intelligence. I find it rare that a woman should combine beauty with wit.”

  “How curious, I find exactly the same thing with men.”

  He chuckled. “Will you dine with me?”

  “I don’t think so. Is the price agreed?”

  “I will waive the price in return for dinner.”

  “Let us be clear, sir. This is a business arrangement.” She opened the small bag she carried and counted out thirty silver coins. “That is for the first year. And now I must be leaving.”

  “I am disappointed,” he said, rising with her. “I had great hopes.”

  “Hold on to them, Meneer. They are all any of us have.”

  After Beth had gone, Shannow sat up. He could still smell the perfume of her body on the sheets and feel the afterwarmth of her presence. Never before had he experienced a phenomenon like her. Donna Taybard had been soft, gentle, and passive, deeply loving and wonderfully comforting. But Beth … there had been with her a power, an almost primordial hunger that had both drained him physically and elevated him emotionally.

  He eased himself from the bed and stood. For a moment he swayed, and the room spun, but he held on, breathing deeply until it passed. He had wanted to dress and walk out into the air, but he knew he was too weak. A child with a short stick could have laid him low in this condition. Reluctantly he returned to his bed. The bread and cheese were still on the tray nearby, and he ate them, discovering to his surprise that he was ravenous. He slept for several hours and awoke refreshed.

  A light knock came at the door. He hoped it was Beth. “Come in!” he called.

  Clem Steiner stepped into view.

  “Now there’s a sight,” said Steiner, grinning. “The Jerusalem Man laid up and shaved. You don’t look half as formidable without that silver-forked beard, Shannow.” The young man reversed a chair and sat facing the Jerusalem Man. Shannow looked into the other man’s eyes.

  “What is it you want, Steiner?”

  “I want something you can’t give me. It’s something I shall have to take from you, and that’s a shame, because I like you, Shannow.”

  “You make more noise than a pig with wind. And you are too damned young to understand it. What I have—whatever it is—is beyond you, boy. It always will be. You get it only when you don’t want it. Never when you do.”

  “Easy for you to say, Shannow. Look at you, the most famous man I’ve ever seen. And who’s heard of me?”

  “You want to see the price of fame, Steiner? Look in my saddlebags. Two worn-out shirts, two Bibles, and four pistols. You see a wife anywhere, Steiner? A family? A home? Fame? I wasn’t looking for fame. And I wouldn’t care a jot if it all left me—and it will, Steiner. Because I’ll keep traveling, and I’ll find a place where they’ve never heard of the Jerusalem Man.”

  “You could have been rich,” said Steiner. “You could have been like some king of olden times. But you threw it away, Shannow. On you fame has been wasted. But I know what to do with it.”

  “You know nothing, boy.”

  “I haven’t been called ‘boy’ in a long time. And I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t like the rain, boy, but there’s not much I can do about it.”

  Steiner pushed himself to his feet. “You really know how to push a man, don’t you, Shannow? You really know how to goad.”

  “Hungry to kill me, Steiner? Your fame would be sky-high. Meet the man who shot Shannow in his bed.”

  Steiner relaxed and returned to his seat. “I’m learning. I won’t shoot you down in the dark, Shannow, or in the back. I’ll give it to you straight. Out on the street.”

  “Where everyone can see?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And then what will you do?”

  “I’ll see you get a great funeral with tall black horses and a fine stone to mark your grave. Then I’ll travel, and maybe I’ll become a king. Tell me, why did you pull that stunt with Maddox? You could have blown each other apart.”

  “But we didn’t, did we?”

  “No. He almost killed you. Bad misjudgment, Shannow. It’s not like what I’ve heard of you. Has the speed gone? Are you getting old?”

  “Yes to both questions,” answered Shannow. Easing himself up on the pillow, he turned his gaze to the window, ignoring the young man. But Steiner chuckled and reached out to pat Shannow’s arm.

  “Time to retire, Shannow—if only they’d let you.”

  “The thought has occurred to me.”

  “But not for long, I’ll bet. What would you do? Grub around on the land, waiting for someone who recognizes you? Waiting for the bullet or the knife? Always staring at the distant hills, wondering if Jerusalem was just beyond the horizon? No. You’ll go out with guns blazing on some street, or plain, or valley.”

  “Like they all do?” put in Shannow softly.

  “Like we all do,” Steiner agreed. “But the names live on. History remembers.”

  “Sometimes. You ever hear of Pendarric?”

  “No. Was he a shootist?”

  “He was one of the greatest kings who ever lived. He changed the world, Steiner; he conquered it, and he destroyed it. He brought about the First Fall.”

  “What of it?”

  “You’d never heard of him. That’s how well history remembers. Tell me a name you do remember.”

  “Cory Tyler.”

  “The brigand who built himself a small empire in the north; shot through the head by a woman he’d spurned. Describe him, Steiner. Tell what he dreamed of. Tell me where he came from.”

  “I never saw him.”

  “Then what difference does his name make? It is just a sound whispered into the air. In years to come some other foolish boy may wish to be like Clement Steiner. He will not know whether you were tall or short, fat or thin, young or old, but he will chant the name like a talisman.”

  Steiner smiled and rose. “Maybe so. But I will kill you, Shannow. I’ll make my own tracks.”

  18

  NU-KHASISATRA COULD SEE that something was seriously wrong with the wagon convoy long before he reached it. The sun was up, yet there was little movement from among the twenty-six wagons. A body lay close to the convoy, and Nu could see other corpses laid side by side some thirty paces away.

  He stopped and decided to pass them by, but a voice called out to him from the long grass beside the track, and Nu turned to see a young woman lying in a gully; she was cradling a babe in her arms. Her words were unintelligible, the language coarse and unknown to Nu. Her face was pinched and drawn, and red open sores scarred her cheeks and throat. For a moment Nu drew back in horror, then he looked into her eyes and saw the fear and the pain. He took his stone and moved to her side. She was terribly thin, and as Nu laid his hand on her shoulder, he could feel the sharpness of her bones beneath the gray woolen dress she wore. As he touched her, the whispered words she spoke became instantly clear to him. “Help me. For the sake of God, help me!” He touched the stone to her brow, and the sores vanished instantly, as did the hollow dark rings below her large blue eyes. “My babe,” she said,
lifting the tiny bundle toward Nu.

  “I can do nothing,” he told her sadly, staring at the corpse. A terrible moaning cry came from the woman, and she hugged the child to her. Nu stood and helped her to her feet, leading her back to the wagons. Some twenty paces ahead on the road a man was lying on his back, dead eyes staring up at the sky. They passed him by. As they entered the camp, an elderly woman with iron-gray hair ran toward him. “Get back!” she shouted. “There is plague here.”

  “I know,” he told her. “I … I am a healer.”

  “There’s nothing more to be done,” said the woman. Then she noticed the girl. “Ella? Dear God, Ella. You are well?”

  “He couldn’t save my baby,” whispered Ella. “He was too late for my little Mary.”

  “What is your name, friend?” asked the woman, taking his arm.

  “Nu-Khasisatra.”

  “Well, Meneer New, there are more than seventy people bad sick here and only four of us that are holding the plague at bay. I pray to God you are a healer.”

  Nu looked around him. Death was everywhere. Some bodies lay uncovered, flies settling on the still-weeping sores, while others had blankets casually tossed over them. Several paces to his right he saw a child’s arm protruding from a large section of sackcloth. Moans and cries came from the wagons, and here and there helpers—themselves stricken—staggered from victim to victim, giving aid where they could, helping the sick drink a little water. Nu swallowed hard as the elderly woman touched his arm. “Come,” she said. He looked down at her hand and saw the ugly red blotches that stained her lower arm. Taking his stone, he reached out and stroked her hair. “God’s love,” he told her. The sores disappeared.

  She stared down at her arms, feeling the rush of strength, as if she had just awakened from a deep refreshing sleep. “Thank you,” she whispered. “God’s blessing on you. But come quickly, for there are others in sore need.”

  She led him to a wagon where a woman and four children lay under sweat-soaked blankets. Nu laid the stone on each of them, and the fever passed. From wagon to wagon he moved, healing the sick and watching as the black veins in the stone swelled. When dusk came, he had healed more than thirty of the company. The elderly woman, whose name was Martha, busied herself preparing food for the survivors, and Nu was left to himself. Under the moonlight he studied the stone. There was more black than gold now, and under cover of darkness he slipped away into the night.

  He had had no choice, he told himself. If ever he was to see Pashad and the children again, he had to leave some power in the stone. But with each step he took, his heart became heavier.

  At last he sat down under the bright moonlight and prayed. “What would you have me do?” he asked. “What are these people to me? You are the giver of life, the bringer of death. It was you who brought this plague to them. Why can you not take it away?” There was no answer, but he recalled his boyhood days in the temple under the great teacher Rizzhak.

  He could see the old man’s hooded eyes and hawk nose, the white straggly beard. And he remembered the story Rizzhak had told of heaven and hell:

  “I prayed to the Lord of All Things to let me see both paradise and the torment of Belial. And in my vision I saw a door. I opened it, and there, in a great room, was a sumptuous feast placed on a great table. But all the guests were wailing, for the spoons in their hands had long, long handles, and though they could reach the food, the spoons were too long for them to place it in their mouths. And they were cursing God and starving. I closed the door and asked to see paradise. Yet it was the same door that stayed before me. I opened it, and inside was an identical feast, and all the guests had the same long-handled spoons. But they were feeding each other and praising God in the thousand names known only to the angels.”

  Nu stared up at the moon and thought of Pashad. He sighed and stood.

  Back at the wagons he moved among the sick, healing them all. He labored long into the night, and at the dawn he stared down at the stone in his hand. It was black now, with not a trace of gold.

  Martha came and sat beside him, giving him a cup in which was a dark, bitter drink.

  “I’ve heard of them,” she said, “but I never saw one before. It was a Daniel Stone. Is it used up?”

  “Yes,” said Nu, dropping it to the ground in front of the fire.

  “It saved many lives, Meneer New. And I thank you for it.”

  Nu said nothing.

  He was thinking of Pashad …

  Beth McAdam was thoughtful and silent as she steered the wagon south over the rolling grasslands toward the Wall. The children were sitting on the tailboard squabbling, but the noise passed her by. Shannow was making good progress but still was confined to his room at the Traveler’s Rest, and the Parson had been a frequent caller at their campsite in the tent town. Now there was Edric Scayse, tall and confident, courteous and gallant. He had taken her to dinner twice and had amused her with stories of his upbringing in the far north.

  “They have cities there now, and elected leaders,” he had told her. “Some of the areas have formed treaties with neighboring groups, and there was talk last year of a confederation.”

  “They won’t get together,” said Beth. “People don’t. They’ll row over everything and fight over nothing.”

  “Don’t be too sure, Beth. Mankind cannot grow without organization. Take the Barta coin—that’s universally accepted now, no matter which community you enter. Old Jacob Barta, who first stamped the coins, had a dream of one nation. Now it looks as if it has a chance. Just imagine what it would be like if laws were as readily accepted as Barta coin.”

  “Wars will just get bigger,” she said with certainty. “It’s the way of things.”

  “We need leaders, Beth, strong men to draw us all together. There’s so much we don’t know about the past that could help us with the future … so much.”

  The lead oxen stumbled, jerking Beth back to the present, and she hauled on the reins, giving the beast time to recover its footing. She was attracted to Scayse, drawn by his strength, but there was something about him that left her with a vague sense of unease. Like the Parson, he had a dangerous, uncertain quality. With Shannow the danger was all on the surface—what one saw was what one got. How much easier life would have been had she found Josiah Broome attractive. But the man was such a blinkered fool.

  “I dread to think of people who look up to men like Jon Shannow,” he had told her one morning as they had waited for the first customers of the day. “Loathsome man! A killer and a warmaker of the worst kind. People like him wreck communities, destroy any sense of civilized behavior. He is a cancer in our midst and should be ordered to leave.”

  “When has he stolen anything?” she had countered, holding the anger from her voice. “When has he been disrespectful? When? When has he killed a man without first being threatened with death himself?”

  “How can you ask such a thing? Did you not see him on the night poor Fenner died? When he stood before the crowd and that man asked him if he thought he could take on all of them? Shannow shot him down without warning; the man did not even have a gun in his hand.”

  “You’ll never understand, Meneer Broome. I am surprised you have lived this long. If Shannow had let the moment pass, they would all have turned on him and he would have been shot to pieces. As it was, he held them, he took the initiative … unlike poor Fenner. I spoke to Shannow about him. Did you know Fenner went to Shannow for advice? The Jerusalem Man told him to give Webber an order and not engage in any conversation; he said that as soon as Webber was allowed to debate Fenner would lose the moment. Fenner understood this, Meneer Broome, but he was betrayed by you and all those with you. Now he is dead.”

  “How dare you accuse me of betrayal? I went there with Fenner; I did my part.”

  “Your part?” she had hissed. “You got him killed and crawled away like a gutless snake.”

  “There was nothing we could do, nothing anyone could do.”

  “Shan
now did it—alone. So don’t criticize him to my face. The man’s worth ten of you.”

  “Get out! You don’t work here anymore. Out, I say!”

  With her job lost, Beth saw Scayse, who agreed to let her move onto the land immediately. He even offered men to help her build her home, but she refused.

  Now she was almost there. The oxen were tired as they labored up the last rise before the land she had leased, and she was ready to give them a breather at the top of the hill. But when they reached it, Beth looked down into the vale and saw five men shaping felled trees into logs. Close by was a roped-off area that had been stamped out to form the dirt floor of a cabin. Beth’s fury rose, and she drew her pistol and stepped down from the wagon, walking back to where her horse was tethered at the rear. Telling the children to stay where they were, she rode down where the men were working. As she approached, one of them put down his hatchet and strolled across to her, doffing his leather hat and grinning.

  “Mornin’, Frey. Nice day for it, what with the sun and the breeze.”

  The pistol came up, and the man’s smile vanished. “What the hell are you doing on my land?” she asked him, cocking the pistol.

  “Hold up, lady,” he said, lifting his hands. “Meneer Scayse asked us to give you a hand with the footings—felling the trees and suchlike. We’ve also taken water bearings to see how the land lies.”

  “I asked for no help,” she told him, the pistol steady in her hands.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that. We ride for Meneer Scayse. He says jump, we don’t say why—we just jump.”

  Beth uncocked the pistol and returned it to her scabbard. “Why did you choose this spot for the cabin?”

  “Well,” he said, the smile returning, “it’s got a good range of open ground to the front and rear, there’s water close by, and the front windows will catch the evening sun.”

  “You chose well. What is your name?”

  “They call me Bull, though my name is rightly Ishmael Kovac.”