Kared's Children - Prologue

The mountain, the plain, and the sky shall guide them.
The descendant with love shall save them.
--Third Book of Oa, The Rhyme of the River

Kared’s Children

Damon Clair tipped the end of his water skin toward the sun and squeezed. The last of the water trickled into his mouth, and he wiped his lips with a thumb. He was hot, still thirsty, sweating, and he probably stank. His uniform chafed in areas he’d rather not have considered. Still, the uniform was his, and its insignia, the stylized sword of the City Guard tightly stitched on his sleeve, an honor he had earned. He was proud of that honor and his uniform-he was glad they were his. But he was glad, too, that nothing unusual had happened on his watch, that the sun was setting, and that soon his replacement would have arrived. In short, he was glad to be who and where he was-or, at least, that’s what he’d kept saying to himself for days.

He had reached the end of his third week as a member of the Guard, and though his position itself wasn’t glamorous, he was a member, and though his pay yet wasn’t high, eventually it would be, and though he’d gained no respect from his colleagues, eventually, maybe, if he earned it, he’d get it; so, with all of those things being true, as he waited in the tower overlooking the back wall of the city, he tried not to think about how bored he was. Instead, distractedly, absently he capped his waterskin, and, as had become his habit, he watched the low, dry, barren hills beyond the wall for movement.

Though he never had seen any, he assumed that new guards had done what he just had done for years-maybe since the walls had been built. Backwatch was one of the traditional posts for "guard rats", as all the new guards were called, and on Damon’s first day out of training, the watch captain had taken one look at him, made the assignment, and hadn’t seemed to think again about it.

Tugging the strap of his waterskin away from his neck, Damon shifted against the aging parapet which supported the massive alarm bell and sighed. He didn’t mind the assignment, not really. Backwatch was peaceful. It let him watch the sailing vessels that glided into port to the east: big, wooden things with rippling sails and men who flicked about on the riggings like gnats. It let him watch the flickering hues of the water and dream of adventure across the sea. And it let him watch the hills, where an animal’s bouncing through the brush was a significant event.

No, he didn’t mind Backwatch. Except that his wasn’t a position he could brag about at the Sheltering Rock, the tavern to which his friend, Southland, liked to drag him, the post wasn’t that much different from what the other guard rats had been given. Southland, for instance, counted horses’ hooves at the stables to make sure no one had snuck into the city and tethered without paying.