Marcus Stoneguard's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The first gargoyle to open its eyes fell forward off the parapet. Marcus caught its wing before it dropped. The stone was warm and shaking. Three centuries of sleep had left the gargoyle boneless as a wet cloth. Down the wall, six more were waking the same way, groaning, swaying, one already on its knees. Below them, the vines shifted in wide sheets as something long and heavy climbed. Marcus counted the waking line. Seven, then nine, then eleven. Not enough, and none of them steady. The nearest one blinked at him without recognition. "Post," Marcus said. "You're on the wall. Third course, north face. Hold." The gargoyle's mouth moved but no sound came. A tremor ran through the parapet as something struck the stone twenty feet below. Mortar dust puffed from the seams. Pebble Groutstone climbed up from a crack near Marcus's boot. "They're drunk," he said. "Sleep does that. Two minutes, maybe three, before their legs work." He looked down over the edge. "You don't have two minutes." "Then give me something." "Bugs in the third course. Been there four generations. They know the wall's shakes better than you." Pebble whistled low into the seam. A cluster of pill bugs rolled out onto the stone, small and round, wrapped in what looked like scraps of knitted cloth. "They'll feel where he grips. Watch them." A small voice came from Marcus's shoulder. "I can hold a light for a few seconds. Not more." He turned. A bug the size of his thumb stood on his pauldron, cape trailing, a faint glow starting at her back. Glimmer Shellsworth. She had climbed the wall to reach a field east of here and stopped when she saw the gargoyles stirring. "A few seconds is what I have. Tell me where to aim it." Marcus watched the pill bugs scatter along one line of stones. They bunched at a single seam and froze. "There," he said. "That's his hand." "Then that's where I'll point." Glimmer stepped onto the parapet's edge. Her light bloomed, thin and white, and fell straight down onto a coil of black smoke gripping the wall. The smoke flinched. Inside it, something solid twisted away from the glare. "Now," Pebble said. Marcus grabbed the nearest waking gargoyle by the jaw and turned its face toward the lit patch. "Vashkareth," he said. "There. Strike." The gargoyle's eyes cleared. It shoved off the parapet and dropped, wings snapping open halfway down. Two others followed, ragged but falling in the right direction. Stone hit stone hit smoke. The dragon's shadow tore loose from the wall and slid twenty feet down the vines before it caught again. Glimmer's light went out. She sat down hard on Marcus's shoulder. "That's all I had." Below, the shadow gathered itself. It began to climb again, slower now, and higher up the wall a fourth gargoyle finally stood on its own feet.