FIC: The Night Watch (The Three Lands: Empty Danger Hand side story) 3/9

[duskpeterson]

They are the elite unit of the Northern Army, and their power is growing. But what they need is more than power: they need wisdom. ¶ Novella chapter: 1,083 words. ¶ Tags: historical fantasy, soldiers, comradeship, ethics. ¶ Serialized chapters and permalink.

CHAPTER THREE

The Koretian borderland, nine years after the beginning of the Marcadian rebellion.

Xylon and Meleager were nearly back to the patrol quarters when Meleager uttered a sharp curse and began to run.

Xylon followed at his heels, dodging the remains of the Battle of Blackpass. He did not need to turn his head to know what Meleager had sighted. For anything else, Meleager would have sent out the Immediate Danger whistle. But there was no point in using the whistle-code when their danger was the man who had taught them that code.

They reached the hut together, and together they grabbed the sides of the open door, panting as they caught their breaths. For the briefest moment, the scene in the room was frozen in Xylon's mind like a frieze.

On one side of the room, Orvin was showing a drawing of his wife and newborn son to Revis. Revis was looking at it politely, as though he and all the other members of the day watch hadn't seen it hundreds of times before. The "newborn" in the drawing was now nearing his ninth birthday.

On the other side of the room, Northcott and Ulric talked quietly as they shared wine. All of the patrol guards in the day watch were wine-friends to one another – a most unusual multiplication of bonds, but all of them were united by their fear of the leader of the night watch.

The night watch was in the corner. They kept to themselves for the most part, and rarely spoke a word, as though all human speech had been bled from them during their nightly patrols with the Lieutenant.

Then all the guards in the room sighted Meleager and Xylon, panting in the doorway. Northcott rose to his feet, his hand instinctively gripping the hilt of his belt-dagger. "He's here?"

Meleager nodded as he and Xylon stumbled into the room. There was no time for words, for suddenly the Lieutenant was there.

He was flanked by guards.

Xylon felt every drop of blood in his body drain away. He could scarcely believe he was still conscious. They had all anticipated this, for so many years. Every one of them, at one time or another, had awoken screaming from a nightmare of this happening.

But they hadn't expected it today. It hadn't occurred to them that the Commander would deal with them, not by sending them to the gallows, but by placing them in the hands of the Lieutenant.

The Lieutenant's gaze swept over them. His pupils had a trick of swallowing up all color in his eyes when he was contemplating his prisoners. The faintest of smiles could be seen on his face at such times. But he wasn't black-eyed and smiling yet. Not yet. He simply looked at them, his gaze pausing upon each man.

Somehow, Xylon managed to meet the Lieutenant's gaze without lowering his own, and without falling to his knees. Then, as the Lieutenant's gaze shifted, Xylon looked to the side to see how the other guards were reacting.

What he saw caused his chest to swell with pride. All of them, to a man, were meeting the Lieutenant's gaze squarely – not denying what they had done, not begging for mercy. It was the most courageous act that Xylon thought had ever occurred in the Three Lands of the Great Peninsula. He felt a sharp blade of regret that this was the last day he would spend with his fellow patrol guards. The last day any of them would spend in the Land of the Living. . . .

Or perhaps not. The Lieutenant preferred to keep his prisoners lingering in pain.

At that thought, Xylon's head began to swim. Dimly, through the dazzle of his doom, he heard someone say, "What shall we take?"

"The trunk." The Lieutenant's voice, always cold, sounded oddly matter-of-fact.

"Just that, sir?"

"Yes."

Bewildered by this dialogue, Xylon managed to steady himself in time to see the two men flanking the Lieutenant move forward. They took hold of the trunk that contained the Lieutenant's belongings and began to wrestle the trunk out of the room. They were not guards, Xylon suddenly realized. They were army servants.

He would have looked again at the others, to see how they were taking this, but at that moment, the Lieutenant stepped toward them. With his last reserve of courage, Xylon kept himself from fruitlessly fleeing into the corner of the room.

The Lieutenant's goal was not Xylon. He stopped in front of Northcott. Northcott looked him straight in the eyes. Sweat covered Northcott's face. Xylon thought it was a wonder that Northcott was still conscious.

Suddenly, the Lieutenant flicked something at Northcott. In an apparently reflexive manner, Northcott began to duck, then caught what was flicked at him. He held it up to the light.

It was the Lieutenant's army seal-ring – the symbol of his leadership of the patrol.

His voice still cold, the Lieutenant said to Northcott, "I trust that you will uphold the standards I have established for the Home Division Patrol."

Northcott's swallow was so audible that Xylon could hear it, half a room away. But Northcott said in a voice almost steady, "Yes, sir. I certainly will."

And that was all. The Lieutenant turned away without a word and left the quarters, following in the wake of his belongings.

Revis burst into tears.

Ulric took a quick look outside to check that all was clear, then hurried over to the side of his patrolling partner, offering Revis comfort by roughly pounding him on the back. Startled out of his tears, Revis began to hiccup with laughter.

"Oh, gods," said Orvin softly, in what was clearly a prayer. "Oh, may the silent gods be thanked. He didn't kill us."

"The Commander didn't remove us from the Lieutenant," said Meleager slowly, taking in what had happened. "He removed the Lieutenant from us."

"So now you'll be leading the night watch, Northcott," said Adelric, with a note of clear satisfaction.

"And reporting directly to the Commander," reflected Lathrop, one of the other night guards. "I wonder what that will be like."

Northcott, though, had turned his attention to the man who, until a few moments ago, had been his patrolling partner. "Xylon?" he said.

Xylon managed somehow to find the words that had been welling up inside him, like blood from a wound. "What will the Home Division Patrol be like without the Lieutenant?"