The Wall | Page 2

with the tip of his long knife and lifted it to his lips, holding it
poised before his mouth a moment before finally clamping square,
yellowed teeth about it and pulling it free with a jerk.
"It wasn't the sun," Sartas retorted petulantly.
Tavarius shrugged, then wiped a trail of juice from his chin with the
back of one hand and said, "Be careful, lad." He waggled the blade of
his knife back and forth in the young man's direction, frowning with
intense sagacity. "You'd be wise to consider spending less time out
there in the heat of day, tramping back and forth as though you were
guarding the King's own jewels. All that sweating and panting. And for
what?" He snorted and shook his head. "Such devotion may well be

admirable in some quarters, boy, but you'll curry no favor here with
that sort of attitude."
"But it's why we're here!" Sartas protested.
There was laughter again from the company of guards, and muted
chatter that didn't carry as far as the flame.
"We're here at the King's pleasure," said Tavarius, making no attempt
to disguise his contempt. He grunted and made a face. "We're here for
that and because the citizens of Cysteria don't believe themselves safe
from a myth. They imagine barbarian hordes waiting on the other side
of yon wall, just waiting to pour across were we not here to ensure that
such a thing doesn't occur." He leaned back on his haunches, rested his
elbows on his knees and stared listlessly into the fire. "In truth," he
concluded, "we're nothing more than a sop to the unreasoned fears of
an ignorant people."
Sartas frowned and regarded the old guard with some bafflement. "You
talk as though you don't believe," he said.
"Believe what?" Tavarius demanded scornfully. "That what we do here
has any meaning?" He gestured broadly, theatrically, a certain degree
of anger and impatience in the sweep of his arm. "What meaning is
there to marching six days across the dry and choking dust of the desert
to walk the ramparts of a wall whose purpose scholars have debated for
centuries?" he continued. "What purpose is there in spending six
months out here, in the middle of nowhere, away from our families,
from the warm beds of our wives and the laughing faces of our children
because our king chooses to subscribe to myth and legend?"
"My father was a guard on the Wall," said Sartas with much hubris, as
though that somehow spoke to all these issues raised.
But Tavarius merely nodded and said, "As was mine. As were the
fathers of all who are accorded the 'honor' of being guardians of the
Wall. You wouldn't be here if your father hadn't once walked the wall."

"Then you don't think it an honor?" said Sartas.
"Once," the old guard lamented, "I dreamed with boyish exuberance of
the day when I would take my place as one of the guardians of the Wall,
when I would serve as my father had served, and as his father before
him. In the cities they revere the guardians of the Wall, and think it a
great sacrifice that men would risk themselves as first line in the
defense of the realm. And once, when I was young, I took pride in their
admiration. I thought I deserved it. I thought I had earned it. But one
can only stomach so much undeserved praise, until, like milk soured by
the summer storm, it begins to have a bitter, unpalatable taste."
"My father was never ashamed of what he did," Sartas proclaimed
loftily.
"Perhaps not," Tavarius agreed. "But he'd be rare among those who
have walked this wall if he hadn't felt some dissatisfaction for having
wasted a good part of his life waiting for ghosts to arise and threaten
the great lands of Cysteria."
"Your notions are all well and good," said Sartas, "but surely they
ignore the fact of the Wall itself. If there's no threat, Tavarius, then
what purpose has the Wall? Surely it wasn't built simply to exist."
"And can you say that it wasn't?" the old man challenged. "Perhaps,
indeed, it was. But if there was a purpose, then it's long forgotten; and
it might well be other than what myth and legend have assigned it."
"Clearly it's here to protect us," Sartas said with conviction; but
Tavarius merely stared across the open flames at him and slowly shook
his head.
"Clearly, eh? There's nothing clear about it, boy. In time you'll become
disabused of such fancy," the old guard assured him. "The Wall is here
as might be a mountain or a river. Who are we, that we might so
arrogantly presume to understand the intentions of its builders? Perhaps
they intended nothing more than