the golaths. The gray-skinned creatures came rushing from the city on their knuckles, thumping along the catwalk, curved reaping hooks and strange clubs in their hands.
The children heard their grunts, so they screamed and redoubled their pace. A pair of young Gwardeen skyriders came flying along on graaks, their course bringing them near the catwalk. Fallion could see fear on their faces.
“Pirates!” one of them shouted needlessly. “Pirates are coming. There’s a worldship just off the coast!”
A worldship? Fallion wondered. Eight hundred years past, Fallion the Bold had created huge rafts to bear his army across the oceans to fight the toth. Those strange rafts had been dubbed worldships. But none of their kind had been seen in centuries.
Now he recalled the denuded forests on Syndyllian, and he realized what Shadoath had been up to. She had been building vessels to carry armies to Mystarria.
Valya reached him, and with her longer legs could well have raced ahead. Instead she pulled even with him.
He could hear the golaths coming, glanced back to see a dozen of them only a couple hundred yards back.
The Ends of the Earth are not far enough.
“Go,” Fallion told her. “Get on a graak and head inland to safety. The Gwardeen can protect you.”
“What about you?” Valya asked.
“I’ll hold them back.”
Valya stood there a moment, obviously fighting her desire. She didn’t want him to stand alone.
“You go,” Valya said. “You’re the one Shadoath is after. If she gets you now, all of our efforts will have been wasted!”
Fallion knew that she was right, but he wasn’t prepared to let Valya die in his place.
Fallion peered up the catwalk the last quarter of a mile. Ahead he could see the graakerie, huge white graaks nesting in trees devoid of leaves. Here, even the trees were white, stained by guano.
A high stone wall surrounded the Gwardeen Wood itself. The only easy way into the fort was over the catwalk.
As the children raced ahead, Fallion saw a young man run out from a small wooden gate, Denorra. He was watching them, waiting. He had a hatchet in hand and looked as if he’d cut the rope that held the last little span of bridge.
“Hurry!” Denorra shouted.
Fallion heard an animal cry, excited grunts and shouts. He glanced back. A golath with tremendous endowments of speed and brawn was rushing toward them, taking fifteen feet to a stride. He made as if to pass a pair of his slower kin, and merely leapt ten feet in the air.
Valya drew a boot dagger, but Fallion knew that it would be useless.
“Cut the ropes!” he shouted to Denorra even as he suddenly hit a span of bridge held only by rope.
He raced for all that he was worth, stretching each stride to its fullest, his lungs pumping. Valya matched him stride for stride. They were in the shadow of the fortress now. He heard the thump of heavy feet rushing behind him, became aware of two large graaks rising up from the tower. A few arrows and stones came flying over his head, thudding onto the deck.
The children were fighting back!
The golath warrior grunted and wheezed, its iron boots pounding the walkway only paces behind.
An arrow whipped over Fallion’s head, and thwacked its iron tip into golath hide. But a golath with endowments wasn’t likely to be stopped by a single arrow.
“Jump!” Fallion shouted to Valya just as Denorra swung the ax down on a rope.
They hit the ground together, and the left half of the bridge dropped from under them. Fallion grabbed on to the rope that held the right half of the bridge up. Valya got only a single hand on it.
The golath cursed, just feet behind, and grasped onto the rope.
Fallion held there for a second, swung up so that his feet hit the landing near Denorra, even as the young boy swung wildly, trying to cut the second rope.
The golath cursed, and a pair of children rushed out of the fortress with long spears. The oldest, a girl of eleven, blurred past Fallion and stabbed at the golath, hindering its progress.
Fallion grabbed Valya and pulled her to safety just as Denorra swung one last time, severing the rope.
The golath cried out in rage as it fell into the sea.
Valya turned and caught her breath, stared in shock for half a second. On the far side of the causeway, golaths growled and cursed. Some threw double-sided blades that spun in the air like whirligigs falling from a maple tree. One blade spun just overhead, then Fallion, Valya, and the rest of the children raced into the fortress.
It wasn’t much of a fortress. The stone walls would keep a determined force warrior out for only a few minutes; inside there were only a couple of small rooms to give shelter from the weather.
A dozen young Gwardeen boys and girls cared for the graaks. The oldest of them, besides Fallion, was only twelve. These were children of mixed Inkarran blood, with skin as white as bone and hair of pale silver or cinnabar. Fallion was the closest thing to an adult.
The Gwardeen were hastily throwing bridles onto the graaks. Most of the children were already mounted. Indeed, Draken had saddled a beast, and a young recruit was clinging to it tightly. Her name was Nix, and she was only five years old.
“But how do I steer?” Nix was crying.
“Just lean the direction that you want to go,” Draken said, “and gouge with your heels. The mounts will head that way.”
“But what if I fall?”
“You won’t fall if you don’t lean too far,” Draken replied.
Fallion wondered why the children hadn’t left yet, but then realized that they had been waiting for him.
“Draken,” Fallion shouted. “Go inland. Take a message to Marshal Bellantine at Stillwater. Warn him what we’re up against. Tell him that we’ll await his command at the Toth Queen’s Hideout. Afterward…go home.”
Draken peered hard at him. Fallion was sending him to safety, he knew, and Draken resented that. But Fallion was also sending him on a vital mission. He nodded his acceptance.
With that, Draken leapt onto his own reptile and gouged its sides. In a thunder of wings it jumped into the air, and several other riders followed.
Fallion rushed forward to the landing platform as some boys led two more graaks forward, the huge reptiles waddling clumsily, tipping their wings in the air.
Fallion peered about. Eight hundred years ago, Fallion’s forefathers had left the Gwardeen on vigil, commanding them to watch for the return of the toth.
Since that time, it seemed to Fallion, the famed Gwardeen had dwindled to little more than a club for youngsters who liked to ride graaks.
Most of the older Gwardeen were out making a living, marrying and having babies, planting gardens, growing old and dying together-the way that people should.
Few of them took their ancestors’ promise of eternal vigilance seriously.
The Ends of the Earth are not far enough, Fallion thought.
A young man of eleven brought a bridled graak forward, a large male, a powerful thing that smelled as strong as he looked. It glared down at Fallion, as if daring him to ride. His name was Banther.
Valya stood at the edge of the platform. She looked at Fallion, as if begging him to ride this monster, leave her to a tamer beast.
“You’ll need a large one,” Fallion told her, “and Banther is not as dangerous as he looks.”
The large sea graaks could carry an adult, and a small woman like Valya would not be hard in most cases, but they would be flying high into the mountains where the air was thin and the flight steep. She needed a sturdy mount.
“He’s yours,” the boy told her, “if you dare.”
Valya raced forward, as she’d seen other skyriders do, and planted her foot in a crook at the back of the graak’s knee, then leapt and pushed off. Her second step took her to the graak’s thigh, and she leapt from there onto its long neck.
