Tom Lloyd: The Dusk Watchman

She finished the flatbread and turned away. She was certain now she’d not been spotted by the watchers, and even more certain she wanted to be clear of them as swiftly as possible.

Time to start the long walk home, Ardela realised, heading for her lodgings to collect her remaining belongings and plan a quiet exit from the Circle City.

Whichever’s true, there’s a reason I’ve forced their hand and that’s something King Emin’ll want to know. Might not be the glorious return I was hoping for, but it’ll have to do.

They stopped only when the ghost-hour came, not speaking except to quarrel and even then fatigue and hunger meant those quickly petered to nothing. General Gaur was the last to dismount. While his men flopped from their saddles and sprawled on the crushed moorland grass, Gaur stared off into the distance. His furred face was matted with blood, his right arm bound in a filthy sling, but he made no sign of noticing his injuries beyond the deeper hurt he bore.

‘Gaur?’

There was no response, though a few soldiers glanced up at him nervously. The beastman had already demonstrated the murderous rage within him that day, and none of them believed it had subsided. Gaur had only ever cared for two living beings, Kohrad and- and the lord they could no longer name. The lord who’d been stolen from them by some monstrous magic of King Emin’s devising, the lord they would have gladly followed to the ivory gates and beyond. They still could not believe he was gone so entirely.

‘Gaur!’ The speaker towered over the Menin soldiers who scrambled to clear his path. Even Larim’s robes were torn and dirty and marked with blood, his own and that of many others. That the Chosen of Larat had survived at all was a testament to his white-eye heritage as much as magery. Of the troops he’d led to attack the south flank of King Emin’s fort, only the Byoran allies at the rear had survived, by abandoning their comrades.

Slowly Gaur turned, aware he was being addressed. ‘Lord Larim,’ he said, his heavy tone even more of a growl than usual.

‘We’ve plans to make.’

Gaur regarded the Chosen of Larat. ‘Why?’

‘Why? Because our current options are death or slavery, and I would prefer to find another.’ Larim gestured to the soldiers with them, perhaps two legions’ worth, now that their former allies had left and headed back towards their home states. ‘I suspect most of them would agree with me.’

There was no reply; Gaur just stared at Larim with an unreadable expression, his tusked jaw still for once, his face empty of emotion.

‘Well? Do you want to live to return home?’

‘Home? What home?’

Larim walked closer. ‘The Ring of Fire is their home, and they look to you to take them there, General.’

The white-eye was bald, his smooth face ageless. He wore a brightly coloured patchwork robe of predominantly yellow and blue, within which were set half-a-dozen glowing magical charms. Though young, Larim had the reptilian air about him that all Larat’s Chosen seemed to possess: an unblinking dispassion that was far from human.

‘Then they will be disappointed,’ Gaur said. ‘My plans are only for revenge.’

‘Revenge?’ Larim laughed. ‘And how do you propose to manage that? There is no revenge to be had here, only more death. Can you not accept that we’ve lost?’

‘I will have revenge for my lord’s death,’ Gaur insisted. He looked away, not interested in listening to any more of Larim’s scorn, but the white-eye walked around Gaur’s horse until he was once more in the general’s field of view.

‘Gaur, you will only die,’ Larim said. He cocked his head at the beastman, puzzled by Gaur’s blind determination. ‘Do you think the Gods will care that your lord’s faithful hound followed him even unto death? Do you think the families of these men will appreciate this sacrifice?’

Larim shook his head when he received no answer and turned to the broken troops surrounding them. ‘Soldiers of the Menin, it’s time for you to decide! Do you want to live and one day, perhaps, return home, or do you wish to follow General Gaur to a pointless death?’

The faces were all turned towards him, but no one spoke. If that perturbed Larim he didn’t show it. ‘You have the night to make your decision. Helrect is the nearest city we have not waged war upon. You can go there, or head south and attempt to meet up with the Fourth Army, but either way you don’t have the numbers to cut a path through. The injured will not make it, but the rest of you can. You may live as mercenaries or die as fools. That is your choice.’

‘And your choice?’ Gaur growled.

Larim turned. ‘Mine? My choice is to survive, of course, to return to what is now mine in the Menin homeland.’

‘To run like a coward and abandon us here?’

‘You are only looking for death,’ Larim said with contempt, ‘and you’ll find it without my help. The Ring of Fire is a long way from here, but Govin and I alone can travel faster than any army might.’ He looked to the side, where his one remaining coterie member stood. The small man with a large head shrank under Gaur’s gaze.

‘The troops of the Hidden Tower were slaughtered in Thotel; I have no allegiance to these men.’ Larim opened his mouth to say something more but then he stopped, an expression of surprise appearing on his face.

A moment later his acolyte reacted in the same way, and both men turned to look west over the moor. Those soldiers who followed their gaze saw nothing, just the advancing gloom of dusk as the sun vanished below the eastern horizon for another day.

‘It seems you don’t need to go looking,’ Larim muttered, reaching inside his robe for a silver pendant that bore the rune of his God, Larat. ‘Death has come to find you.’

At last Gaur looked, but there remained nothing to see, just his exhausted soldiers trying to summon the energy to make camp for the night. And then there was something else: though indistinct in the waning light he could just make out something moving beyond the disordered clumps of troops.

Shouts of alarm erupted from the nearest soldiers; men scrambled to their feet and drew their weapons even as they retreated. Gaur turned to Larim but the mage clearly wasn’t the cause of the disruption: the white-eye appeared apprehensive at whatever was happening out there, and his acolyte, Govin, was clearly terrified.

Gaur mounted again and pulled his axe from his saddle. He urged his horse towards the disruption, ignoring Larim as the mage began to say something in protest. The beastman was too exhausted with grief to feel fear any longer — if this was Death come to claim him, so be it.

Overhead the sky darkened steadily as dusk marched on towards night. Gaur tasted the sharp tang of fear on the wind as his soldiers fell back from whatever it was that had found them. Before long his horse stopped too, tossing its head with anxiety as it smelled something amiss. He spurred the beast hard, but it had no effect, so Gaur dismounted and advanced on foot as Menin soldiers streamed forward and his horse fled.

Some animal sense danced down Gaur’s spine, like the raised hackles of a dog faced with the unnatural. He tightened his grip on the axe even as he started to make out the figure waiting for him: standing still with eyes fixed on Gaur as the gloom shimmered and danced on either side of it. Thick plates of chitin armour glowed a whitish-amber in the waning light, broad shoulders tapered into slender arms, each carrying a long javelin.

He walked on and at last the figure moved, advancing towards him with a few swift, delicate steps. He saw it more clearly now, a reddened body with pale limbs — four legs like a spider’s, jointed up at the height of its waist, and a segmented thorax twitching behind it like a grossly fat tail. The daemon peered at him with two slanted pairs of eyes formed in an X shape about a slit Gaur guessed was a mouth. Its torso was criss-crossed with burnished gold chains, each bearing shifting, arcane symbols that made Gaur’s eyes water to behold.