Guardians Watch

by Eric T Knight

  Elihu patted her on the back gently. “All these years among the Takare and you have not yet learned that what you want counts for nothing in the whims of the gods.”

  The warriors returned several days later, in the middle of the afternoon on a day when the wind blew scudding clouds across the sun and rain fell periodically. They pulled behind them a small cart loaded high with weapons.

  “More of them died,” Rehobim said to the Takare who gathered in the meadow. He pulled a sword from the pile and tossed it to a young woman, another refugee who had come in during his absence. “Nearly fifty more who will never bleed our people again.” He tossed an axe to a middle-aged Takare, his long hair showing streaks of gray. He looked startled but caught the weapon with practiced ease. Youlin’s past walks and the ceaseless training were paying off.

  “They had surrounded a farmhouse,” Jakal said. He was a young man, a refugee from Fallen Rock Shelter. He had only been in camp for a few days before heading out with Rehobim’s warriors on this latest mission. “They never saw us coming. We killed most of them before they even turned around. They never thought to look behind them.” He joined Rehobim in handing out the weapons.

  Youlin walked up as the last weapons were distributed and looked into the cart. “What are these?” she asked, pulling a clay jug from the bottom of the cart. It was one of six, heavily wrapped in blankets to protect it from breaking.

  “Something the farmer was happy to share,” Jakal said with a laugh. From the tone of the laugh, Shakre had a feeling that the farmer had not been entirely happy with the transaction.

  Youlin opened the jug and pulled the cork. Taking a sniff, she wrinkled her nose and frowned. “Spirits,” she said, turning the jug upside down and beginning to pour it out.

  In flash, Rehobim had snatched it away. He loomed over her. “This is not yours.”

  “It is not our way,” she replied, not backing down. “It is a demon that destroys us from within.”

  “It is a harmless escape, and one our fighters deserve,” Rehobim said, putting the cork back in.

  Youlin looked as if she would retort, but then turned away, pulling her hood up to hide her face as she walked away.

  Later, after it was dark, Shakre and Elihu were sitting near the fire. Rehobim and a handful of his closest followers were in a knot on the other side of the fire, passing one of the clay jugs around. Their faces were flushed, their eyes bright. They laughed often, and laughed harder when one of them, a young woman named Hareed, stood up to go relieve herself and fell flat on her face.

  Youlin sat back from the fire on a log that had been dragged up for a seat. She had her hood up, obscuring her face, but Shakre was certain she was watching the warriors as they got steadily drunker. She had a feeling that, in this area at least, she and Youlin agreed. Youlin sought to return the Takare to their martial past, and that past was at odds with the loss of control that drinking brought with it.

  Elihu came up and sat beside her. She watched him as he stared at the warriors and noticed that the cheerful gleam did not leave his eyes. No shadow crossed his face at all.

  “How do you do that?” she asked finally.

  He turned his gaze on her. “Do what?” he asked innocently, though there was a glint in his eyes that said he knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “Watch that and stay cheerful,” she said, gesturing at the warriors. “Not just that, but all of this. Your people have lost their homeland. They teeter on the edge of destruction and you still smile.”

  “Why not stay cheerful?” he asked. “If I rage and cry it will change nothing. My tears will not stop Melekath or cause Kasai to disband its army. They will not feed my people or guide them through the forest they are lost in. So I choose differently. Since it makes no difference, I choose the path that makes me feel better.”

  Shakre sighed. “I wish that didn’t make sense, but it does.”

  Elihu shifted his gaze back to the drinking warriors. “How do I know anyway? I see this path they take and it appears to lead to a cliff. But does it really? I cannot yet see the cliff. Perhaps there is a branch in the path that will lead them away from the cliff to safety. No. I have spoken my piece. I have tried to divert them and they choose to continue on. Now I choose to walk with them. I respect their choice and I recognize that I do not know all the answers.”

  “That’s it? You’ll just do nothing?”

  “I didn’t say that. I will wait, and I will watch. It may be that tomorrow or the next day a fork in the path will appear and a nudge will start them down it. But until then, I choose to smile.”

  Shakre laid her head on his shoulder. “You did it again,” she whispered. “And don’t say ‘Do what?’”

  In answer he touched her hair and she sat and watched her adopted people. Really watched them, turning off the inner judgment that cried out, and just observing. What she saw were people running from the darkness inside them. They hid it from each other and from themselves, but there were quiet moments when they grew still, when they thought no one was watching and then the darkness slipped out. Times when the laughter died and the emptiness stole in in its place. Something slipped inside her then and she understood all at once. They had lost their homes. Their entire world was turned upside down. And now they had killed. However justified they might feel, all could feel one hard cold fact in their hearts: they had taken life. Killing took its toll. The alcohol helped blunt the memories and make them tolerable.

  Shakre sat up, turning her head to tell Elihu of her realization, and all at once the scene shifted and she was once again seeing through the wind.

  She looked down on a sprawling camp, dozens of fires spread over a small valley, soldiers gathered around each one. She saw the glint of weapons being oiled and sharpened. In the center of the camp stood a cluster of figures dressed in gray robes. She knew in a heartbeat they were eyeless ones. They stood before a central figure, taller than the rest, his body lean as a blade. Achsiel. She would know him anywhere, even from far above. As she watched they went to their knees, hands outstretched to him. The air shimmered and glowed above him and he held his hands out to them in benediction, spreading the glow to them. Then she lost her hold and tumbled back to earth.

  Shakre opened her eyes and realized she was lying on the ground, Elihu bent over her. Others loomed over his shoulder. “I’m okay,” she said. “Help me sit up.”

  “What happened?” Rehobim said, pushing his way through the people who had gathered around Shakre and glaring down at her suspiciously.

  “She saw through the wind,” Elihu said. “It has happened several times now.”

  “Why was I not told of this?” he demanded. Shakre noticed that he was weaving slightly.

  “It began while you were gone,” Elihu replied mildly. “And you seemed busy tonight.” He gestured toward the clay jug, sitting on the far side of the fire.

  Rehobim crouched. Shakre could smell the liquor on his breath. “What did you see?”

  “I saw an army. They were camped in a valley. With them were maybe half a dozen of the eyeless ones, including the one who led the attack on our village. Achsiel.”

  Rehobim hissed and stood up, wobbling for a second until he caught his balance. “I want that one,” he said. “I will have his head on a stake.” His words were slurred ever so slightly. “Where is this army?”

  “I don’t know,” Shakre said.

  Rehobim stared angrily into her eyes. “Yes, you do. The moon is full. You must have seen something. Think.”

  Shakre started to refuse him once again, but then closed her mouth. What did she see? She replayed the vision in her mind. There it was, just a flash before the connection was broken, outlined against the distant horizon.

  “I saw the Plateau,” she said. “There was a long, high ridge of broken rock, coming from the mountains. It reached almost to the edge of the Plateau. Oh,” she said. “I know it now. It’s a pass. I think it’s called Guardians Watch.” She had looked on
it from above years before, when the wind drove her mindlessly across the Plateau.

  “Were they on this side of the pass, or the other side?”

  Shakre closed her eyes, concentrating. “On the other side.”

  “How close are they to it?”

  “It is distant still. They have not begun the climb into the foothills.”

  “Then we still have time,” Rehobim said, climbing to his feet. “We can catch them before they reach the pass if we leave in the morning and move fast.”

  “No!” Shakre cried, struggling to her feet. Rehobim turned back on her with a hard glint in his eyes. “There are too many.”

  Silence met her words and then eyes swung to Rehobim for his response.

  “Kasai knows of us,” she blurted out, hoping to say something, anything to get through to him.

  “Kasai’s soldiers are little more than children lost in the woods,” Rehobim sneered. “They cannot hide from us. They cannot beat us, though they outnumber us ten to one. We are Takare.”

  “Kasai is a creature countless centuries old,” Shakre insisted. “It has powers we cannot dream of. Do not take it lightly. Even the wind fears it.”

  “The wind is mindless and foolish,” he scoffed. “Kasai is a relic. We are thunder and lightning.”

  “This may be a trap.”

  “You think I haven’t considered this? You think I am a fool as well as a coward?” His face went red and his hand dropped to the hilt of the sword on his hip.

  Shakre spoke quickly to defuse the situation. “You are neither. Everything you have done has proven that.”

  “What would you have me do?” he asked. “Shall we cower here and wait for Kasai to destroy us?”

  She shook her head. “I only ask that you be careful. You have led our people on successful raids. Surely Kasai has noticed you. Eventually it will try and destroy you.”

  “Our people?” he scoffed. “You are not Takare.” Shakre said nothing to this. There was nothing to say. “Go away. I am finished with you.”

  Yet Shakre held her ground and played her last card. “I would like to go with you tomorrow. I am thinking you can use an extra healer with Linir injured.” Linir was a young man from Close Barren Shelter, and already an accomplished healer. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Rehobim who trained as hard as anyone and fought side by side with the rest. He favored the quarterstaff and was blindingly fast. But in the last battle he had slipped on a loose stone and took a deep wound in the abdomen. He would not go anywhere for some days.

  “We still have Unin,” he said brusquely.

  “Yes, but Unin is only one and you plan to take all who can fight with you. It might be you will need another healer.”

  He stared at her suspiciously, but did not answer at first. The tani tooth around his neck glinted in the firelight and his hair was unbound, still wet from washing it in the stream. He wore only his tanned leggings, his chest and feet bare. His face was covered with several fine cuts in various stages of healing. Though they had not seen Shorn again, still he kept up the practice of marking himself after each victory and several of his lieutenants did as well. “We travel very fast and you are not young.”

  “You may leave me behind if I am too slow.”

  “You will not hinder us? You will not try and save burned ones or heal them as you did Jehu?”

  Shakre lowered her head. “I will not.”

  “Swear on your outsider god.”

  “I swear by Xochitl.”

  “Then you may follow. We leave before the sun.” He walked over to the clay jug and took a long drink, clearly done with her.

  Shakre backed down then, and let Elihu guide her off to the shelter they shared. “It is a trap; I can feel it,” she said to him. “Kasai marked me somehow when I saw it at the city. Now it’s feeding me the information it wants us to have. It is aware of us and this is its plan to crush us.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  Shakre sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you well enough to do this?”

  “I have to be. What else can I do?”

  Forty-two

  They set out early the next morning and they moved at a steady run, nearly a hundred and fifty Takare men and women. By mid-morning Shakre was beginning to worry that she would not be able to keep up. Fortunately for her, Werthin ran along beside her. When her steps began to falter he stuck out his hand.

  “Give me your pack.”

  Shakre started to refuse, then shrugged out of the straps and handed it over. This was no time for pride. Losing the extra weight helped, but within an hour her legs were once again like lead, her breath burning in her chest. She had not seen Rehobim, who led them, in hours, and only intermittently did she glimpse the tail end of the line of warriors. Behind her she could hear Werthin, his steps steady and sure. When did she get so old? she wondered.

  Werthin put his hand on her shoulder. “We will walk for a while,” he said.

  “But we’ll be left behind.”

  “It is no matter. We know where they are going. We will catch up.”

  It felt good to walk. They had been steadily climbing for much of the day and this stretch was especially steep, with huge boulders that had fallen from the slopes of the Plateau scattered across the slope. Some had clearly fallen recently, carving a path through the trees as they went. The trees were thinner here but still huge, with moss coating their trunks and streamers of it hanging from the lower limbs. To her left the slope fell away down to a nameless valley floor far below. To her right loomed the bulk of the Plateau, much of its face unclimbable cliffs hundreds of feet high, like some primeval fortress.

  The face was broken in places, where the lava had poured down. Twice that day they had been forced to climb over hardened flows that stretched far down into the valley. Those crossings had not been pleasant, the rock pocked with cracks and sharp edges. There were places where the stone had hardened and left air pockets just below the surface, the skin of rock covering them thin enough that anyone stepping on one would plunge through. Worst of all was the sensation she’d felt when she touched the rock with her bare hands. Pain like a dwindling scream lanced up into her arms when she did and she had jerked away, bizarre images dancing behind her eyes. There were things in the stone that did not die easily. It made her think of what Elihu had said about beings maybe living in the stone and water.

  They reached the top of yet another slope and Shakre paused for a moment to catch her breath. Ahead the path dipped, crossed a flattened area, then began to climb again. On the far side she could just see the last of the warriors disappearing from sight. But that was not what held her attention.

  Far ahead and off to her left was a mountain range, undoubtedly the Firkath Mountains. From the mountains a long ridge of broken stone led north, pointing straight at the Landsend Plateau like a finger. Up there, where that ridge met the Plateau, would be Guardians Watch. If she could get there fast enough, before Rehobim led them through it and down the other side, she might still be able to talk him into caution. The pass would be a strong location, and not a place where they could be easily snuck up on or trapped. Perhaps he would listen to her, just this once.

  She forced herself to start running again. To take her mind off the pain, she turned her thoughts to the aranti. She wondered if it really was the same aranti whose eyes she saw through each time. If it was, then it stood to reason it was the one she had ridden when she searched for the survivors of the Takare. Perhaps they had become linked to each other during that time. If only she could learn to reliably call it and make it obey her. To be able to see through its eyes whenever she needed to, and make it look at what she needed to see, would be a powerful help. She remembered Kasai fixing its gaze on her the first time she saw through the wind and shuddered. Perhaps the creature was in its thrall. If that was the case, then trying to control it would be a terrible mistake. There was no way to know for sure, but she decided that it was a risk she w
ould take if she got the chance. There were no safe or easy paths left to her or her adopted people.

  She was concentrating so hard that she missed the dead limb on the ground and tripped over it. She fell to her knees heavily and in a flash Werthin was beside her, helping her up.

  “Thank you,” she said, grateful once more for his help. She stopped and leaned against a boulder to rub her knees. “Will you always be carrying me?” she asked lightly.

  “If I am needed.”

  “How did you carry me all that way, when we fled the Plateau?” she asked.

  “You were not yourself,” he replied. “You weighed no more than a child when I first picked you up. I think part of you was still with the wind.”

  Shakre had only vague memories of that time. “I was. I still do not know how I found my way back.”

  Werthin looked away. “I spoke to you.”

  “You did?”

  “I did not know what else to do. So I spoke to you of our home and our people. I had nothing else.”

  “It worked. I really think your voice was how I found my way back,” she said.

  “You spoke also, but the words were strange. I thought then you were speaking to the wind.”

  “You heard me speaking to the wind?” Shakre asked.

  Werthin shrugged. “I do not know for sure.”

  “Can you remember any of it?”

  He shook his head. “I do not think I could even make the sounds.” He gestured at the sun. “The day runs to its end. If we are to make the pass by dark, we have to go.”

  They started off again and now Shakre had something new to think on. Was it possible she had spoken in the aranti’s language? She had allowed it inside her that day. Who knew what had really happened? She thought back to the day when she had used the aranti to heal Jehu. The wind had been absent when she started, and in her irritation and worry she had simply snapped at it without thinking and it had come to her. She tried to remember what she’d said, but nothing came to her. She’d simply reacted. Which meant the knowledge was buried within her, and the stress of the moment dropped whatever barriers she held up against it.