Marcus Stoneguard's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

The dragon had fallen back down the hill, but Marcus felt no relief. Around him the gargoyles stood too still. Tress lowered her arms. Hoken's head drooped. They had woken to fight a named threat. The threat was gone. Marcus watched their eyes dim, one by one, like coals losing heat. Soon they would climb back to their perches and turn to stone. He had built an army for a single night. "They're leaving me," Marcus said. Malthor stood beside him on the bare stone, wings folded. The king who wore the last dragon on his shoulder studied the sagging line of sentries. "They woke for the dragon. The dragon is gone. Sleep takes them now." He said it flat, then stopped. "Then wake them for something else," Marcus said. "With what? Another name? You ate the roots." Malthor's jaw set. "There's nothing left to shout." Pebble Groutstone climbed from a seam in the wall, moss on his shoulders. The tiny wall troll knew every stone here. He looked at the drooping gargoyles and spoke plain. "They don't need a name. They need a reason to stay." Marcus turned. "They followed me through the fight." "Through the fear," Pebble said. "Fear ends. Then they scatter." Mortimer Bindwell came up the wall with his satchel of vials. He had spent the night patching cracked gargoyles with his glue, the compound that held broken things together and stayed flexible instead of setting hard. He knelt by Tress and pressed paste into a split along her arm. "Same problem I solve every day," he said. "Broken pieces don't hold unless something binds them. Root won't do it twice. Find another bind." Marcus looked at the row of names carved under their claws. Hoken. Vail. Tress. Marn. Twelve more to the east. Each a stone he had woken and would lose. He did not want to fight one dragon. He wanted a wall that never slept again. He climbed onto the parapet so they could all see him. "You were carved to hold this wall," Marcus said. "Not for one night. For every night. I have held it alone three hundred years. I am done holding it alone." He pointed down the hill where the dragon had gone. "It will come back. Others will come. If you sleep, we start over each time and lose. If you stay, we become the thing this wall always needed. A guard that does not close its eyes." Tress's arm lifted. Her eyes brightened. Not from fear. She stepped into the line and stayed. One by one, the others stepped in beside her. Marn. Vail. Hoken. Sixteen stone sentries, choosing. Malthor watched them hold without a name to command them. "So they're yours now," he said. "Not mine." "Ours," Marcus said. "An order. Not soldiers you can put back to sleep." Malthor said nothing. But his eyes moved along the standing line, counting them, and Marcus saw the king begin to measure a rival he had not planned for.