The Guard

I sometimes spend time here, up atop the wide stone ramparts of the great watchtower, guarding the passes to the world outside. Those far-off mountains form an endless, broken-topped silhouette against a pale glow that ever-looms over the dread cities and foul hands of the hateful realm beyond. The malignant light creeps across the wastes before the wall, and infuses the ancient stone with a sickly yellow hue, boldly irradiating the fence designed to ward off poisonous intrusion. The glow alights the dark clouds racing overhead, yellow and monstrous under a pitch-sky, which swirl and tumble in grotesque mime, climbing over the mountains and storming over the walls. Stale, tainted winds hurtle across the plain, driving the clouds, and crashing against the stone, whirling and churning at the base of the wall and then toppling over, whistling through castellation and tower eyelets, dragging dust and sand from old mortar and passing on. Rains fall, and the wind whips the rain, and the frantic, icy splinters form dense grey sheets, speeding across the plain and pounding the keep like the tide, rising and then falling away. I shelter atop the wall, leaning under dripping eaves in shadowed doors, watching, but this is not my place, the watch is kept by others.

Standing about the walls, unmoving and unseen, tall men wrapped in darks cloaks that are blenched and dulled, clasped at the collars with white, cracked fingers. They tense, then relax as the wind mounts, then relents endlessly, clawing at limb, tearing through hair and blasting the glazed and crusted eyes of the watchers. The night will not pass, but the watch on the boarder-land will not fail, not until all else has ended and there no need to watch. I come here seldom, only when restless or under threat, and I will pass on, inspecting the guard at other places, to ensure my realm, my sanctum, is secure.