Beck's Guard pt. 2

         Caloused hands slid over the scarred black box. It was actually green, but so dark a hue that in the almost lightless command barracks of Central Guard color was impossible. Even the hands that softly undid it’s metal latches were near invisible. It was still light outside, but no window broke the irregular cinder block outline of wall. The man wore dark clothes, coveralls, gloves, a layer of thick grease covered his face and soft cloth was tied over the thick wooden soles of his boots.
         Teige looked up, his face caught for a moment in a stray beam of light leaking from the empty barracks room beyond. No hint of the rusting coat of mail all knew him to wear was visible. It had been removed earlier.
         Central Guard was abandoned. For the most part it held as the meeting chamber of the cities five guard units, a central barracks, garrison command rooms, kitchens and storehouses. In the tunnels and store rooms below, beside aging and rotten weapons, casks of broken and forgotten supplies, waited the wonders of the old world. What few yet remained. He would go there next.
         For now his attention was drawn to this thick black-green box, made of material that was not quite stone, not quite leather, but some element in between. On the surface the case was dry, and cracking, revealing an core in the weathered seams which sparked like coal, and yet withstood badgering, remaining strong and waterproof. It had been used in only three battles in the time Camain’s Guard had held it’s contents. Two of those so far gone in memory no one remembered their cause. The third was The Fall. His grandfather had been there, hardly a boy himself at the time, and never spoken of it afterward. As though it were some horrifying memory his mind refused to see. As Teige thought now, after years of training and useless border skirmishes, that perhaps it was.
         The Fall had been so long ago now that it too was nearly gone from history. A memory well-nigh forgotten except in the eyes of those that had seen it for themselves. People dying in the streets, war towers in the distance casting their great stones and flaming bags of napalm. The terrible thunder as the Liège rams at last penetrated the gates. Teige had not been there, nor his father--- neither yet born--- and his grandfather never spoke of it, but there were others with looser tongues. An uncle, the veterans in their home upon the hill, patrons at the pub where he worked as a child growing up.
         His grandfather had spoken once, and only once, of those days, but not of the battle itself. One deep night when the stars shone above and the temple fires burned in the distance. When ale had loosened his tongue and sweet meat filled the pit of his stomach, and the rot that would kill him in less than a year still remained hidden inside. But most of all of it, Teige suspected it had been because it was the night that his father died. Patter Beck had never been a Sgt. His career in The Guard had only just begun when the central tower in the training grounds collapsed. Him and several other of his squad who had been climbing the outer wall were crushed in the debris, more than twenty more were injured in the fall, and four of those had died later. His grandfather had spoken that night, of the things he had seen in the central tower, the wonder of Central Command. Great gleaming steel panels with lights all aglow. Red, green, blue, flickering and blinking. Of the glass screens, floating empty over the wall and ceiling. Glowing with a light of their own as they presented unclear images of the lands around, overhead views and flat, strangely colored graphs of hillsides and lakes, as though taken from some great height. He had seen the talky then, rushing orders to those too important to be risked in the battles breaking below. He had seen it used. His commanding officer, Sgt. Briggs, had been head of Cities Garrisons then, and it had been him who talked to those men in the field. Those who were flanking the enemy. Those who returned from the hall of cities and held the disruptors above them like some great talisman.
         Teige removed the talky from it’s stiff black cushioning, a squarish metal canister with flat round protrusions at each end and a long flexible tenai. The spot next to it in the case was empty. He had made sure Myre and Jolin had taken the second talky with them. Once his small party cleared the outer gates he would need to learn what lay ahead.
         Everything recovered from the tower had been moved to Central Guard. In the sixty years since, Teige suspected most had lain all but forgotten. He could only imagine what wonders lay about, only waiting to be discovered. Part of his mind was intrigued by this waste, the utter squander of which such talismans were laid to waste and rot, but the other side, the warrior side, the soldier, forced him to put it from him. Regular checks were still performed on a weekly basis. Anything misplaced or missing would be reported immediately. He couldn’t take the chance, and he hadn’t the time. He intended to be out of the city before that happened.
         He slid the talky back in place and resealed the box. Two days before when he had removed the first talky it had been too dangerous to take the case. Now he stood, and tucked it under one arm before checking the hall beyond. The chamber was empty save for row upon row of rotting cots and double bunks, the only light provided by smoking torches along each wall. If war did come, as Teige and many others had already come to believe, Camain would be in dire straits. He thought now, looking on the utter disarray, disorder and rot that had come to this once important center, that it would fall in less than a day.
         And still it had taken him and Blue more than two weeks to talk the Council into allowing the retrieval of the disruptors, and then only under the facade that they might be of some advantageous use in the cities social and economical standing. Even Charp, the current head of cities garrisons, had refused their request, knowing too what was to come, and believing the risk to be too great.
         Teige walked through the door into the empty barracks, careful as he passed the endless rows of empty cots that he did not knock anything askew. One hand clenched tightly behind his back now, gripping and ungripping into a fist as he fought yet another wave of fatigue and a sharp stabbing pain that coursed down his tortured limb. They were growing nearer now, more frequent and less controlable, but he would bear. He could hear his knuckles popping.
         The other arm remained tight at his side, nearly hiding the now clearly green container. A dark, flat foresty green (with dark shapes that may have once been letters running along one edge). He passed through a second set of doors and into the hall beyond. There were more lights here, more than the barracks he had just left. Briefly he imagined he could hear the inspection crew that was approaching from the opposite direction, but knew they weren’t due yet for another half an hour.
         A few yards further and he took a door to his left, a heavy oak plank that appeared to have been hewn from one massive tree. All beyond that was darkness. There were no lights here. None of the few eclectic powered ones that still blessed the halls of the council chambers, or the more common oil torches. Dust climbed over his boots, across the black cloth that he had tied there, cobwebs brushed at his face and hands. Invisible creatures shrieked and skidded on into the darkness. The steps of the winding stairwell passed. Forever spiraling downward.