The Wall | Page 3

to separate the here from the there."

"That's ridiculous!"
"Is it now? And what purpose has the moon, which in its cycles
vanishes from the sky to leave darkness cut only by the flames of a fire
and the feeble glow of the myriad stars? And is such a notion any more
unreasoned than the whims of a king who would have us trek through
the heat of desert sands to walk these lonely ramparts, marching
mindlessly back and forth, waiting for the attack of an enemy we've
neither seen nor heard in all the many years the guard have walked?"
Tavarius snorted loudly and kicked aside his plate in disgust.
"Centuries, lad," his voice boomed. "For thousands of years this wall
has stood beneath sun and sky, watching the turn of the years,
unscarred by wind and sand. Countless kings have come and gone. Ten
times a thousand men have tread upon its stone. And ten times a
thousand have gone to their graves, wondering what it was they were
doing when they stood here and wielded shield and spear.
"Think of it, Sartas: thousands of years; and in that time men like you
and I have been engaged in a war of nerves with an enemy no more
substantial than the ether of spirits. Ghosts. It's no small wonder the
King pays good coin for those who would venture so far from home for
such foolishness, because he couldn't keep a man doing it again and
again, year after year if the money weren't good."
"I don't need money to persuade me of the value of defending our lands
and our people," Sartas said boldly as he jumped to his feet and stood
towering above the scattered company of guards. "Perhaps it's you have
been too long for the sun, Tavarius." And with that he turned and
stalked off along the broad ledge that ran the length of the Wall,
quickly swallowed by the darkness.
"They're all the same," said Karn as he settled down beside Tavarius.
"Bursting with the pride of being the first born of a guardian and
becoming one themselves. Full of the misguided idealism of youth." He
hawked and spat into the fire, the gob of spittle making a brief hiss
against the hot embers. "They're so sure of themselves. They think they
know everything before they've had time to learn anything."

Tavarius grinned. "As did we, when we first came to serve upon this
stone," he reminded his friend.
Karn laughed ruefully. "It seems so long ago."
"It was, my friend. We're old; and perhaps our impatience with the
likes of Sartas is merely resentment of his youth and all the many years
that he has before him. The years in which he'll learn the mistakes
we've now forgotten."
"Aye. We've grown old together on this blighted rock, you and I," Karn
observed. He scratched his beard and sniffed loudly. "But he'll not be
long for this cursed place if someone doesn't knock some sense into
that thick skull of his."
Tavarius gave his friend a sober look, then smiled thinly. He turned and
looked out through the darkness that Sartas had disappeared into and
said, "The Wall will soon break his spirit, my friend. It always does.
And when it has done with him, he'll come back to the fires and we'll
all talk and drink and dream of home. As did our fathers, and their
fathers before them, since the first days men walked upon these cursed
stones."
"And if he doesn't come back?"
"Then he'll live lonely with his voices."
******
It had been a week, and Tavarius had watched Sartas, unbroken,
dutifully striding the Wall, spear and shield in hand, armor always
polished bright enough for royal inspection. A week of such scorching
temperatures that the seasoned members of the guard no longer camped
on the hot gray-black stone of the Wall's wide ledge, but sat, instead,
sprawled in the shade of their open-aired tents, sleeping and drinking
and doing little else. They seldom ventured forth onto the searing desert
sands, except to fetch water from one of the deep wells; and their duties
to the King had been consigned to the occasional foray up onto the

Wall, where they took much delight in deriding and teasing the handful
of new recruits. The latter, like Sartas, still took seriously the task of
protecting the lands of Cysteria. The veterans would laugh and jeer,
mocking their younger colleagues, and proclaiming loudly that only
fools would wear such hot and heavy armor and bear the stifling heat of
the Wall's burning stone to guard against the unknown, the unseen, and
the unlikely.
"He's a stubborn one, that one," said Karn, gesturing with his goblet of
watered wine. He glanced over at Tavarius, who sat