The Guardsman
by Ryan Zaff
“Dawn at sundown! The king rides home!”
Then sounded the horns, shrill and proud, as the watchmen in their towers shouted this refrain. In the city’s center, the forum bell was rung in its tower, the long toll punctuating every horn blast.
People flocked to the main avenue, young and old, from all over the city. Over a month had passed since the king had left for his summit with their neighbors to the north. The clamor of footsteps and excited murmurs filled the street, from the gates all the way to the citadel.
The gates were unbarred and the portcullis raised, and the king’s party rode in amid cheers from the crowd. The king smiled as he waved to the people from atop his horse. Green was his cloak, and white was his scepter, and his beard was the color of sand. Such a king did not need flattering robes or lustrous adornments to seemingly glow in the daylight. Instead, that light was caught, reflected, and amplified by his twelve standard bearers, the royal guardsmen.
Their golden armor glimmered as though reflecting many stars. Gauntlet was fitted seamlessly to vambrace and pauldron to cuirass, every piece interlocking around each guardsman’s body with neither gaps nor contact between the plates. Ornate were the designs on their greaves and pauldrons, centered around the royal crest, but their breastplates were plain and reflected the sunlight like mirrors. They carried banners that waved splendent in the wind as the procession rode into the center of the city.
It was called the City of Lights, where the sun and stars shone together in the daytime. Sturdy were its walls, and righteous was its citadel. The great steps led down into the forum in the city’s heart, and the wings sat astride the forum to the east and west.
Behind the king’s entourage was a sight that inspired no less amazement: Lying motionless in a wagon, as large as a horse, black wings outstretched, was the body of a sundown bird. All had heard stories of the beasts that had once blotted out the sun. Even as a trophy, the sundown bird commanded awe. Only increased was the praise to the men who had felled it.
Kilian, son of Kenneth, rode in the front of the left column. Cain, his captain, rode opposite him on the right. The two guardsmen brought their horses to a halt at the foot of the citadel’s great steps. One by one, the columns split, spreading out from the middle as they reached the base.
The king looked to one side of the line, then the other, and nodded.
The thirteen men dismounted as one and ascended the steps. Kilian kept his head upright, his eyes locked on the top of the citadel’s doors. He counted his steps. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
All the guardsmen spun, stamped their lifted feet down, and slammed the poles of their banners onto the step below. The poles rang against the concrete as the forum bell tolled its last. The crowd went quiet.
The king stepped forward and began to address his people. Kilian recalled watching addresses like this one in his youth, gazing in awe at the guardsmen and their lord from atop his father’s shoulders.
Twelve men, handpicked from the best of the king’s army, who wore as armor the beacons of the kingdom’s power. Their king, with no armor, was made brighter by the glow around him. There was no greater honor than to reflect the daylight to the king and to the people.
Kilian scanned the crowd. Surely there was another child in that crowd today, seated on his mother’s shoulders, admiring the shining guardsmen and the king.
There.
Kilian locked eyes with his son. The boy grinned and waved.
Kilian saw himself raising his left hand, breaking the solemn posture of the guardsmen, to wave back to his son. But the thought passed as behind a cloud, and he remained at attention.
His son waved again.
The boy’s mother said something to him, and his shoulders slumped a little.
Kilian set his jaw and looked away. His son was old enough. He would understand.
—
Amber sunlight streamed through the windows of the corridor as Kilian walked to his chambers. He was dressed in plain clothes, having placed his armor in its chamber of repose. So venerable was the office of a guardsman, so hallowed was his armor, that it was only to be worn within the royal halls: the armor’s repository, the chamber of the throne; and outside of that, in the presence of the king.
The chambers of the guardsmen lined the southern side of the citadel, each the size of a small home to house both a guardsman and his family. Kilian reached the door to his own and stepped inside.
Immediately, his son Theo ran to him, wrapping his arms around Kilian’s leg. His wife, Margaret, came in from the living room and hugged him. “It’s good to see you, Kilian,” she said, before giving him a kiss.
“Very happy to be home,” Kilian replied. “I love you both.”
Theo had let go and now looked up at him. “Are you going to stay forever now, Papa?”
Theo let Kilian pick him up, like Kilian had done when his son was small. “Theo, do you know why I sometimes go far away?”
“To protect the king!”
“Yes, to protect the king. Now, I do that here in the city, too, but sometimes the way that the king serves his people is by going far away, to other kingdoms. And where he goes, I go. But the king doesn’t celebrate when he leaves. He celebrates when he comes back home. So, I will still have to go far away sometimes. And so will you when you’re big and grown. But it’s all so that I can come home to my wonderful family. I love you all brighter than the sun and stars.”
“I love you too, Papa,” Theo said.
He replayed the scene from the forum in his mind. Theo, waving at him with as bright a smile as Kilian had ever seen. Lowering his hand in confusion.
Kilian bit his lip. I have to make it up to him somehow.
—
It had been two days, and Kilian had made up his mind.
That night, he gently opened the door to his son’s room, letting in just a little light. Theo rolled over to look at him.
“Want to see something incredible?” Kilian whispered.
He took Theo deeper into the citadel, into a corridor lined with suits of armor.
His son’s jaw dropped. “Whoa,” he said softly.
They stopped at the furthest suit on the left. Kilian reached out and began to put it on. Buckles were secured and straps were cinched, but in the artistry of the armor’s construction, not one was visible after each plate had been locked into place.
Kilian lowered the helm onto his head and looked down at his son, still gazing in awe. “Want to go outside?” he asked.
They went out onto the terrace. The lamps of the city flickered below, mirroring the stars above. It was as if they stood on the deck of a great ship crossing the ocean on a peaceful night.
Kilian knelt down and pointed to his armor. The plating, which burned so fiercely golden in sunlight, now shimmered softly in a dance of diamond and obsidian.
“This armor is very special,” Kilian told his son. “It’s easy to look at it and think it glows. But if you look hard enough, you see that all it does is show us the light that is already all around us. This is how I serve our king and our people.”
Theo grinned at him. “You’re amazing, Papa!”
Kilian patted him on the back. “I do my best. Now, you should go back to the house while I put this away.”
Theo nodded and hurried back toward the stairs. Kilian stood up.
And froze when he saw Cain, captain of the guardsmen, staring at him.
Cain stood to Kilian’s left, near another passage into the citadel. Two other guardsmen stood behind him. They were dressed in light suits of silver armor to be worn by guardsmen outside the royal halls. For a moment, the captain glanced at the door through which Theo had disappeared. Then he looked back at Kilian.
“Kilian,” Cain said. His voice was taught. “You realize what you have done. You have broken your oath, defiled your armor, and dishonored your station. Already, your armor ceases to hold the light.”
Looking down at his hands, Kilian saw that this was true. Taken from the royal halls, his armor had begun to corrode, veins of rust tracing through the engraving on his vambraces and creeping across his breastplate. Its luster had already dimmed.
Kilian felt as though two sides of his will were at war: His earlier resolve that he had done the right thing, and the seething anguish that he had made a terrible, irrevocable mistake. “You saw why I have done this, Captain,” he said aloud. “I will make no excuse.”
“I saw,” said Cain. “And I will not question your judgement. You have made your choice.” He began to turn away. “Go to your family. You may no longer wear that armor in service of the king. You can no longer be a guardsman.”
—
The next day, Kilian stood before the doors to the chamber of the throne, the sunlight at his back.
The doors were pushed open by the guards, creaking softly as they did so. The guardsman escorting Kilian nodded, and together they entered.
Four guardsmen in full armor flanked the seats of the royal family. Only one seat was occupied: the throne of the king.
He rose from his throne and gave the hand signal for the guardsmen to retire. Kilian drew in a deep breath. This was to be a private conversation.
The four guardsmen and Kilian’s escort pivoted and filed out on either side of the chamber. The doors were shut, leaving Kilian and the king alone.
Kilian walked until he stood before the throne and dropped to one knee.
The king rose, white scepter in one hand. “Stand, Kilian,” he said, his voice deep and clear. “Speak to me as you did when you last stood by my side.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Kilian said as he rose. Relief flickered through the back of his mind. “I assume you wish to speak to me before I must leave the life of the guardsmen behind. I am open to whatever you wish to say.”
The king nodded. “You broke your oath in order to show your armor to your son?”
“Yes.”
“I understand what it feels like to feel torn between the duties to your office and to your family,” said the king. “Sometimes, I think the guardsmen are the men whom I am closest to in this regard.” He drummed his fingers atop his scepter, eyes on the floor before returning them to Kilian. “Though I regret that you have taken matters out of both of our hands through such drastic action. The course of your life must change now, and I pray for you that it will strengthen your family.”
Kilian swallowed. “Thank you.” He tried to meet the king’s gaze, but found he could not. He turned away. “But when I am honest with myself, I am terrified. What is there for me? I am a disgrace.”
The king stared at him for a long moment. Finally, he asked, “What is it that makes a man a disgrace? Is it the gravity of the sin he commits, or his choice to allow that sin to define him?”
Kilian looked back at the king. He tried to find something to say.
“Tell me again the next time we meet,” the king said.
Kilian nodded. “I will, my lord.”
The king reached out his hand, and Kilian took it in his own. They parted, and Kilian began walking toward the doors.
—
Three days later, Kilian leaned on the parapet of the terrace, gazing at the sunset in the distant west. Preparations had been made for his family to move to another home in the city the following morning.
Margaret and Theo were walking through the citadel’s public gardens one last time. Kilian glanced over from his vantage point; he could see them going to cross the forum.
He returned his gaze to the sunset.
A black speck appeared next to the sun. Kilian squinted. The sunset seemed to dim as he felt his hair standing on end.
He knew that sensation.
Kilian straightened and backed away from the parapet as the speck grew into view, casting a shadow across the plains that did not come and go, but formed a trail behind the creature wherever it flew.
His hands shook, but his voice was clear with icy terror as he yelled, “Sundown bird!”
He spun and ran for the nearest passageway into the citadel. His armor was in his chambers, and there was one thing it was still good for: combat.
He burst from his chambers fully clad in his rusting armor and saw minor citadel guards running toward the doors to the forum.
Margaret. Theo.
Kilian rushed to the doors as they were pushed open. There was the sundown bird circling overhead, having pursued its fallen kin, passed over the city’s walls, and found the most exposed targets in the city: Kilian’s own wife and son. Sundown birds did not simply swoop and strike like other birds of prey – they ensnared their victims with the firmament of the night itself, and only when they were paralyzed did the birds go for the kill.
The guardsmen were circling the plaza, entering formation to bring down this bird as they had during their expedition in the north.
Kilian ignored them. Spear in hand, he plunged directly into the deepening darkness. He met Margaret and Theo in the center, Margaret using her own body to shield their son.
He laid a hand on Margaret’s shoulder, and though she was too terrified to speak, her gaze softened a little when she saw he was there. He looked up at the sundown bird, then down at his spear: the very weapon that had killed the first sundown bird days earlier.
Suddenly, the sundown bird stopped circling, breaking from its ritual.
The bird descended, alighting on the stone only paces from where Kilian stood. Its black plumage was silky, as though doused in oil. Solid black eyes set in an owl-like head bored into Kilian. He took his shield off his back as Margaret and Theo huddled behind him, but the sundown bird’s attention was fully on him and the armor he wore.
Pumping its great wings, the sundown bird screamed like the howling wind and lunged with its talons wide. Kilian’s shield rang as he blocked the strike and rolled to avoid being bowled over. He scrambled to his feet and spun to face the bird as it came around again.
It was one thing to match the ebb and flow of a sundown bird’s arcane attack, working with a team to confound it with the light of their armor and exhaust it. It was another thing entirely to face one in direct combat.
Furiously, they fought across the forum. The bird’s beak dented his shield, and its claws raked his armor. Never did he let the beast come between himself and his family.
Yet he was tiring. The sundown bird leered over him, with neither hunger nor malice. Only darkness. It leaped into the air and pumped its wings, knocking Kilian down under the wave of shadow.
Kilian’s spear rang like the forum bell as he slammed its shaft against the concrete, hauling himself up once more.
Then, like candles being lit, twelve fires sprang up in a circle around them one by one. It was the other guardsmen, bearing the last light of the sunset as they closed in to pierce the sundown bird’s protective firmament. The bird realized the danger and spread its wings to take to the sky –
And squawked in rage as Kilian hefted his spear and hurled it into the beast’s left shoulder. He drew his shortsword, leapt onto the bird’s back, and brought the blade down. The sundown bird bucked underneath him before toppling to the ground. It did not move again.
The shadows lifted, bathing the plaza in the golden dusk. Kilian let his shield fall. He climbed off the bird and ran to his family. “Are you all right?”
Margaret nodded. Theo reached out to touch his father’s armor. “You’re amazing, Papa,” he said.
Kilian breathed a sigh of relief. “I do it for you, son.”
They hugged, and it was a long time before they parted.
“Kilian.” It was the king.
Kilian straightened and turned to his lord. Standing at the king’s right hand, Cain gave him a slow nod.
“Not since our founding has one man stood his ground against a sundown bird,” the king said. “Well done.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“I see that you now wear your armor freely in public.”
Kilian swallowed. “I… I am not ashamed to say that I will do whatever I must to protect my wife and son. That is who I am.”
The king gazed at him for a long moment. Then he smiled, bigger than Kilian had ever seen. The king clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man,” he said. “That conviction is why I chose you years ago, and you served well. And while what has been done to your armor can never be undone…you must no longer wear that armor for me, Kilian.” The king inclined his head toward Margaret and Theo. “You must wear it for them.”
Kilian nodded. “I will.”
“Wear it well,” the king said. “Guardsman.”