The Last Guardian

by David Gemmell

  “You think I won’t kill you?” the gunman asked. “Just because you wear a black dress and spout on about God? You’re nothing, man. Nothing!”

  “What I am is a man. And men do not behave as you do. Only the basest animals act in such a manner. You are filth! Vermin! You do not belong in the company of civilized people.”

  “That’s it!” shouted the man, his pistol coming up and his thumb on the hammer. The Parson’s hand swept out from behind his cassock, and his gun roared. The man was hurled backward by the force of the shell as it hit his chest, then a second bullet smashed through his skull.

  “Jesus Christ!” whispered the survivor.

  “A little late for prayers,” the Parson told him. “Step forward and let me see your face.” The man stumbled toward him, and the Parson lifted his hand and removed the man’s hat, allowing the moonlight to illuminate his features.

  “Tomorrow morning you will report to the meadow, where you will help me build my church. Is that not so, Brother?” The gun pushed up under the man’s chin.

  “Whatever you say, Parson.”

  “Good. Now see to the body. It is not fitting that it should lie there to be seen by children in the morning.”

  The Parson moved to Beth. “How are you feeling, Sister?”

  “I’ve had better days,” Beth told him.

  “I shall walk you to your home.”

  “That will not be necessary.”

  “Indeed no. But it will be a pleasure.” He took her arm, and they walked off in the direction of the tent town.

  “I thought your God looked unkindly on killing,” said Beth.

  “Indeed he does, Sister. But the distinction he makes concerns murder. The Bible is full of killing and slaughter, and the Lord understands that among sinful men there will always be violence. There is an apt section in Ecclesiastes: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity. A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal … There is more, and it is very beautiful.”

  “You speak well, Parson. But I’m glad you also shoot well.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice, Sister.”

  “Call me Beth. I never had no brothers. Do you have a name?”

  “Parson is fine. And I like the sound of Beth; it is a good name. Are you married?”

  “I was. Sean died on the journey. But my children are with me. I expect they’re sleeping now—or they damn well better be.”

  They made their way through the tents and wagons until they reached the McAdam campsite. The fire was low, and the children were asleep in their blankets beside the wheels. The oxen had been led to a second meadow, where they grazed with other cattle. Beth stoked up the fire.

  “Will you join me for tea, Parson? I always drink a cup before sleeping.”

  “Thank you,” he answered, sitting cross-legged by the fire. She boiled some water, added herbs and sugar, and poured the mixture into two pottery mugs.

  “You come far?” she asked as they drank.

  “Very far. I heard God calling me, and I answered. But what of you? Where are you bound?”

  “I’ll be staying in the valley. I am going to lease some land from Meneer Scayse—start a farm. I have some seed corn and other such.”

  “Hard work for a woman alone.”

  “I won’t be alone long, Parson. It’s not my way.”

  “No, I can see that,” he answered without embarrassment. “By the way, where did such a charming young mother learn the rudiments of the left hook? It was a splendid blow with all your weight behind it.”

  “My husband, Sean, was a fistfighter. He taught me that—and much more.”

  “He was a lucky man, Beth.”

  “He’s dead, Parson.”

  “Many men live a long lifetime and never meet a woman like you. They, I think, are the unlucky ones. And now I must bid you good night.” He rose and bowed.

  “You come again, Parson. You’re always welcome.”

  “That is nice to know. I hope we will see you in our new church.”

  “Only if you have songs. I like to sing.”

  “We will have songs just for you,” he told her, and walked away into the shadows.

  For a while Beth sat quietly by the dying fire. The Parson was a strong man and extraordinarily handsome with that fine red hair and easy smile. But there was something about him that disturbed her, and she thought about it, trying to pin down her unease. Physically she found him attractive, but there was about him a tightness, a tension that left her wary. Her thoughts strayed to Jon Shannow. Similar men, yet not so. Like thunder and lightning. Both were companion to inner storms. But Shannow was aware of his own dark side. She was not sure about the Parson.

  Beth stripped off her long woolen skirt and white blouse and washed in cold water. Then she slipped into a full-length bed gown and settled down into her blankets. Her hand moved under the pillow, curling around the walnut butt of her pistol.

  And she slept.

  * * *

  During the night, there were two killings and a woman was raped behind a gambling house in the eastern section. Shannow sat silently in the corner of the long bar, drinking a Baker’s and listening to the tales. It seemed the Parson had killed one man who was attacking a woman, but the other shooting was a mystery save for the fact that the dead man had won a large amount of coin playing Carnat at a gambling house run by a man named Webber.

  Shannow had seen it all before: crooked gamblers, thieves, and robbers congregating in a community that had no law. When would the upright citizens ever learn? he wondered. There were around two thousand people in Pilgrim’s Valley and no more than a hundred villains. Yet the brigands swaggered around the town, and the good people stepped aside for them. He stared sourly into the dark depths of the drink before him and knew that he was tempted to cut away the disease afflicting the community, to storm the bastions of the ungodly and root out the evil. Yet he would not.

  I no longer lance boils. That was what he had told Boris Haimut. And it was true. A man could take only so much of rejection and the contempt of his fellows. It always began with fine words and promises. “Help us, Mr. Shannow.” “We need you, Mr. Shannow.” “Good work, Mr. Shannow.” “That will show them, sir.” And then … “But do you have to be so violent, Mr. Shannow?” “Is the bloodshed necessary?” “When will you be moving on?”

  But no more. If the town was diseased, it was a problem for those who lived there, who wanted to work there, raise children in the valley. It was up to them to put their house in order.

  He had said as much to the merchants Brisley and Fenner, who had waited for him that morning. Brisley, fat and gregarious, had extolled the virtues of the community, blaming its ills on men like Scayse and Webber.

  “No better than brigands, sir, I assure you. Scayse’s men are arrogant and ill mannered. And as for Webber, the man is a thief and a killer. Four times in the last month men who have won large amounts of money have been slain close to his establishment. And he killed two others in gun battles over alleged cheating. It is insufferable, sir.”

  “Then do something about it,” advised Shannow.

  “That’s what we are doing,” put in Fenner, a dark-eyed young man of slender build. “We have come to you.”

  “You do not need me. Get together twenty men. Go to Webber. Close him down. Order him from the community.”

  “His men are thugs and villains,” said Brisley, wiping the sweat from his face. “They thrive on violence. We are merchants.”

  “You have guns,” said Shannow simply. “Even a merchant can pull a trigger.”

  “With respect, sir,” Fenner interposed, “it takes a certain kind of man to be able to kill a human being in cold blood. Now, I don’t know if killing will be necessary. I hope not. But surely a man with your reputation would find it more easy to stamp his authority on the villains?”

  “In cold blood, Meneer?” responded Shannow. “I do
not consider it in those terms. I am not a wanton slayer, nor am I a kind of respectable brigand. Mostly the men I have killed have died in the act of trying to kill me. The rest have been in the process of willfully attacking others. However, such points are meaningless in the current circumstances. I have no wish to give birth again to seven devils.”

  “You have me at a loss, sir,” said Fenner.

  “Read your Bible, Meneer. Now leave me in peace.”

  Shannow finished his drink and returned to his room. For a while he sat thinking about the problems posed by the wall, but Beth McAdam’s face kept appearing before his mind’s eye.

  “You are a fool, Shannow,” he told himself. Loving Donna Taybard had been a mistake he had come to regret. But it was folly of the worst kind to allow another woman to enter his heart.

  He forced her from his mind and took up his Bible, leafing through to the Gospel of Matthew.

  “When an evil spirit goes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”

  How often had the Jerusalem Man seen the truth of that? In Allion, Cantastay, Berkalin, and a score of other settlements. The brigands had fled before him or been buried because of him. Then he had ridden on, and the evil had returned. Daniel Cade had visited Allion two weeks after Shannow had left, and the town had been ruined by his attack.

  It would not happen here, he decided.

  In Pilgrim’s Valley the Jerusalem Man was merely an observer.

  15

  THE PISTOL COMPETITION had left Shannow short of shells for his Hellborn pistols. There were twenty-three left, including the ten in the cylinders of his guns. Pilgrim’s Valley boasted one gunsmith, and Shannow made his way to the man’s small shop in the eastern section. It was a narrow building lit by lanterns, the wall behind the service area filled with weapons of every kind from flintlock pistols to percussion rifles, flared-barreled blunderbusses alongside sleek gravity-fed weapons with walnut stocks. But there were no pistols like Shannow’s.

  The shop owner was a short, bald elderly man who identified himself as Groves. Shannow drew one of his guns and laid it on the double plank unit that served as a long table between the gunsmith and his customers. Groves sniffed and lifted the weapon, flicking open the gate and ejecting a shell. “Hellborn,” he said. “There are a lot of these in the north now. We’re hoping to get some, but they’re mighty expensive.”

  “I need bullets for it,” said Shannow. “Can you make them?”

  “I’d have no trouble with the molds or the fulminates. But these brass cases? It will not be easy, Mr. Shannow. Nor cheap.”

  “But you can do it?”

  “Leave me five shells with which to experiment. I will do what I can. When are you leaving?”

  “I was due to ride on today.”

  Groves chuckled. “I need at least a week, sir. How many do you require?”

  “One hundred would suffice.”

  “That will cost fifty Bartas. I would appreciate half now.”

  “Your price is very high.”

  “So is the level of my craftsmanship.”

  Shannow paid the man and returned to the hotel, where he found Mason sitting in a comfortable chair by an open window, dozing in the sun.

  “I need the room for another week,” he said.

  Mason blinked and stood. “I thought you were moving on, Meneer Shannow.”

  “I am, sir, but not for a week.”

  “I see. Very well. A week, then.”

  Shannow walked to the stable and saddled the stallion. The hostler grinned at him as he rode out, and Shannow waved as he steered the horse to the south, heading for the wall. He rode for two hours, crossing rich grassland and cutting high into the timberline of the hills. He saw cattle grazing and a herd of antelope moving along the line of a stream. The wall grew ever nearer. From the high ground where he rode Shannow could see over the colossal structure and the rolling hills beyond it. There was no sign of life: no cattle, sheep, goats, or deer. Yet the land looked rich and verdant. Angling the stallion downward, he halted on the hillside, drawing his long glass from the saddlebag. He followed the line of the wall to the east, where it disappeared in the blue haze of the mountains; then he swung the glass west. As far as he could see, the wall went on for miles, unbroken and unbreachable; he focused the glass on a section of it half a mile away and saw a group of men camped nearby. Then he continued his descent and rode on. The wall now reared above him, and he estimated its height at more than sixty feet. It was constructed of giant rectangular blocks, each approximately ten feet wide and more than six feet high.

  Shannow dismounted and approached the edifice. He drew his hunting knife and tried to push the blade between two stones, but the fit was too tight and there was no sign of mortar. From the hill above he had judged the wall to be at least ten feet thick. He sheathed his knife and ran his fingers over the blocks, seeking handholds that might permit him to climb. But apart from lichens and curious shells embedded in the surface, there was no purchase.

  He stepped into the saddle and followed the line of the wall west until he reached the campsite, where Boris Haimut was chipping away at one of the blocks with a hammer and chisel. The scholar put down his tools and waved.

  “Fascinating, is it not?” said Haimut, grinning cheerfully. Shannow dismounted, his eyes scanning the small group of men who continued with their work. To the far right he could see the two men who had tried to force him to leave the site of the shipwreck; they avoided his gaze and continued to chip away at the blocks.

  Shannow followed Haimut to the campsite, where a large pot of Baker’s was brewing. Haimut wrapped a cloth around the handle and lifted the pot, filling two mugs. He passed one to Shannow.

  “Have you ever seen anything like it?” asked Haimut, and Shannow shook his head. “Neither have I. There are no windows, no towers, and no gates. It could not have been built for defense; any invading army would simply throw grappling lines over the top and climb it. There are no parapets. Nothing. Just a colossal wall. Take a look at this.” He fished in his pocket and produced a shining shell slightly larger than a Barta coin. Shannow took it, turning it over and holding it to the light. There were many colors glistening within the grooves: purple, yellow, blue, and white.

  “It is very pretty,” Shannow said.

  “Indeed it is. But it is also from the sea, Mr. Shannow. This towering structure was once below the ocean.”

  “This whole land was once under water,” Shannow told him. “There was a civilization here, a great civilization. But the seas rose up and devoured them.”

  “So you are saying this is an Oldworld site?”

  “No. The Oldworld sites are now mostly beneath the seas. I learned several years ago that the earth had toppled not once but twice. The people who lived beyond this wall were destroyed thousands of years ago. I have no way of knowing, but I would guess it happened about the time of the flood described in the Book.”

  “How do you know all this?” asked Haimut.

  Shannow considered telling him the whole truth but dismissed the thought. Whatever credibility he had would disappear if he explained how the long-dead king of Atlantis had come to his rescue in the battle against the Guardians during the Hellborn War.

  “Two years ago, with a friend, I rode into the ruins of a great city. There were statues everywhere, beautifully carved. While there, I met a scholar named Samuel Archer. He was a fine man: strong yet gentle. He had studied the ruins and others like them for many years and had even managed to decipher the language of the ancients. The city was called Balacris; the land was known as Atlantis. I learned much from him before he died.”

  “I’m sorry that he is dead. I would like to ha
ve met him,” said Haimut. “I, too, have seen the inscriptions on gold foil. But to meet a man who could read them … How did he die?”

  “He was beaten to death because he would not work as a slave in a silver mine.”

  Haimut looked away and sipped his Baker’s. “This is not a contented world, Meneer Shannow. We live in strange circumstances, fighting over scraps of knowledge. Everywhere there are isolated communities and no central focus. In the wildlands the brigands rule, and in settled communities there are wars with rivals. There is no peace. It is most galling. Far to the east there is a land where women are not allowed to show their faces in public and men who deny the Book are burned alive. To the north there are communities where child sacrifice has become the norm. Last year I visited an area where women are not allowed to marry; they are owned by the men and used as breed cows for the community. But wherever you go there is violence and death and the rule of the powerful. Have you been to Rivervale?”

  “I have,” replied Shannow. “I lived there once.”

  “Now, that is an oasis. It is ruled by a man named Daniel Cade. They have laws there—good laws—and families can raise their children in peace and prosperity. If only we could all find such a way. You say you lived there? Do you know Daniel Cade?”

  “I know him,” said Shannow. “He is my brother.”

  “Good Lord! I never knew that. I have heard of you, of course. But no one ever spoke of a brother.”

  “We were parted as children. Tell me, what do you hope to achieve here?”

  “Meneer Scayse is looking for a way to breach the wall. He asked me to examine it. And I need the coin in order to be able to return home.”

  “I thought you disapproved of him.”

  “I do. He is—like all men who seek power—eminently selfish. But I cannot afford too many scruples. And I harm no one by examining this edifice.”

  Shannow finished his drink and rose.

  “Will you stay the night, Meneer?” Haimut asked. “It would be good to have some intelligent conversation.”