Marcus Stoneguard's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

The sixteen gargoyles held the line, awake by choice now. Marcus walked his stretch of wall and felt the same wall under his claws he had known for three hundred years. He knew every crack of it. But past the last tower, the stone bent away into ground he had never seen. His order guarded this piece. He wanted them to guard all of Copsefire. He did not know what lay beyond his own wall. "I need to see it," Marcus said. "The whole wall. All of it." Malthor stood at the parapet, wings folded, the last dragon curled small on his shoulder. He had watched the gargoyles choose Marcus and had not forgotten it. "You've never left this stretch," the king said. Not a question. "No." "Then you don't know what holds it up." Malthor's eyes moved along the vine-heavy wall. "Or what doesn't." Mortimer Bindwell climbed up with his satchel, goggles pushed to his forehead. He had spent the night patching cracked gargoyles with his flexible glue. He looked past the tower, at the bend Marcus feared. "You want the far wall, you walk it first," he said. "Can't guard ground you've never stood on." Aldric Hornkeeper came behind him, the old horn on his belt. "I'll walk with you," he said. "The horn wakes stone. You'll want it if there's more sleeping out there." Marcus stepped past the last tower for the first time. The ground dropped. The wall he had trusted did not run clean and whole around Copsefire. It broke. Ahead stood a ruined gate, its arch shattered, stone piled at its feet. Vines choked what was left. Beyond it a dark keep leaned against the sky, towers snapped, windows black. Marcus stopped. "The wall ends." "The wall was never one wall," Malthor said. "You held the strong piece. The rest fell before you woke." Marcus looked at the broken gate. No gargoyles stood on it. The stone was bare. He walked to the shattered arch and put his claw on it. Cold. Empty. Whatever sentries had guarded here were long gone, or had never been carved at all. "Then Copsefire has holes," Marcus said. "Wide ones. My order guards a wall inside a wall that fell." Aldric raised the horn, then lowered it. "Nothing here to wake. No names in this stone." Mortimer knelt at the rubble and pressed his thumb into a crack. "Old break. Older than your watch." He stood. "Glue won't fix a gate this gone." Marcus stared through the broken arch at the dark keep beyond. For three hundred years he had thought he guarded Copsefire. He had guarded one span of it. The rest lay open, ruined, undefended, and he had never once looked. "Sixteen gargoyles," he said quietly. "And a wall this size." He turned back toward his order. Now he knew the shape of the thing he had to guard. It was far bigger than he was.