The Wall | Page 6

of the officers, because they usually ended a few blows after they had started Indeed, there was little energy for much more than this; and nobody wanted to risk six months wages because of some meaningless dispute.
Tavarius had seen it all time and time before. And like the Wall and the desert, he'd grown rather tired of it. He could well understand the few who reached a point where they could bear it no more. On every tour there was at least one such individual. Men who would go racing to the Wall and try to scale the unscalable. Some would fall to their deaths; others would fall upon their swords.
But in all his years of service, Tavarius had never seen anything like Sartas.
"It's inhuman," Karn growled, eyes flashing with indignation. He stood outside their tent in the early morning hours, shielding his eyes with an upraised had as he looked towards the Wall. "A month he's been there. He's like an infernal machine. Back and forth. Back and forth. Never faltering, even in the worst of the sun. He's driving me to drink, I tell you."
"It wouldn't take much to do that," said Tavarius.
Karn ignored this remark and said, "Just look at him. It ain't human."
"I wager there's never been his like before," Tavarius agreed. "The King would be proud of that one."
Karn grunted noisily. "He's as mad as those idiots who try to climb the bloody thing," he stated.
"Or perhaps just dedicated."
"Is there a difference?"
"We forget our youth, my friend. Once we, too, were dedicated enough to stand long hours on that Wall."
"But never so long as this!" Karn exclaimed. "We soon enough saw the truth and came to our senses. But him--" He sniffed disapprovingly.
"That doesn't make for insanity. Perhaps just for a man with deeper convictions than we ever had."
"Such convictions will as like get him killed," Karn muttered. "He takes his food and water from line and bucket, despite our constant entreaties that he come down. He hasn't spoken to a soul since the last of the new recruits came down. The last save himself, that is."
Tavarius drew a breath, let it out in a long sigh. "If he won't come down, then perhaps it behooves one of us to go up there and talk to him."
"Any volunteers?" Karn chortled. "There's not likely a man in this camp who cares what happens to him, Tav. 'Cepting maybe you."
Tavarius shrugged. "Then it must be me," he said, forcing a grin.
******
Because there'd never been a desire to give potential assailants an easy route over the Wall to Cysterian lands, there had never been any stairs made to the ledge. In the same manner that food and water were hoisted by rope and pulley to the ledge far above the desert plain, Tavarius was hauled upwards to his meeting with Sartas. And although it was a trip he'd made many times in his life, he found himself somewhat apprehensive this time as the thick line ran through the block with much creaking and squeaking, and the smooth wall slipped by in fits and starts as the men below hauled the rope in, hand over hand.
At length he reached the wood derrick that leaned out from the ledge and swung himself inwards, alighting with practiced ease on the stone. He was a good kilometer from where Sartas maintained his vigil, so he started off at an easy pace, not especially eager for this encounter. As he walked he kept going over in his mind the things he would say, but he knew that once he was there he'd probably forget them all.
He found Sartas seated near a fire, nursing a cup of hot cha as he stared resolutely out across the desert. The sun was low in the west, so the shadows of everything down on the plain were long and thin daggers of black pointed towards the heart of the east. The scattered clouds flamed with color near the sun, but were a steely gray on the opposite horizon. In the spaces between them a few stars shone, the harbingers of the thousands that would later fill the night like the lights of a city seen from afar.
Tavarius squatted down by the fire, across from Sartas, the steaming pot of cha between them. "Mind?" he asked, indicating the pot.
"We're all brothers here," Sartas replied evenly.
Tavarius took a metal cup from his belt and held it towards the pot. He used his knife to tilt the pot, letting the hot brew slosh into his cup. "A beautiful evening," he remarked casually as he brought the cha to his lips and blew on it. The steam bent and fluttered under the impetus of his breath, then rose straight again in the windless air. He could feel the heat of it