The Watchmen turned around extra slowly. Yann stiffened when he saw how close he and his fellow travelers stood to the town’s walls. Giant metal gates led into the town, but those gates remained firmly locked to keep out any unwanted visitors.

  Armed men lined the top of the wall—and they all aimed their weapons at the Watch.

  These people didn’t use the kind of weapons Yann knew about. The townsfolk had set up some kind of iron turrets all along the wall with long barrels pointing down at the travelers.

  The townsfolk had also constructed projectile launchers with missiles thicker than Yann’s arm aimed outward the countryside.

  “Put your weapons down,” Yvan murmured. “Show them we aren’t here to threaten them.”

  He lowered his sword to the ground at his feet and slowly raised his hands. Yann had to summon all his willpower to put down his glaive, but townspeople would have been able to obliterate the Watch considering the weapons these people had.

  “We aren’t here to threaten you!” Yvan called out. “We belong to the Black Watch! We were trying to protect you from that wizard who was about to attack your town! If you don’t want us here, we’ll back away and leave the area—but if he came here to attack you once, he’ll do it again.” Yvan pointed to the instability in the distance.

  A bunch of the men up there glanced in that direction, but they didn’t take their weapons off the Watchmen.

  The other Watchmen threw or put down their weapons one after the other. Eliska kept hold of her staff. It didn’t act as a weapon without her magic.

  Anríq hung his club on his belt and slung his axe back across his back. He didn’t put either weapon down nor did he raise his hands in surrender.

  A tall man with dark hair stepped up on something behind the wall so he could see better. “Who are you?!” he demanded. “Where do you come from?”

  “My name is Yvan Dilnao, Commander of the Watch from a town called Middleborough. We suffered a Darkling attack and the town was lost to the Layers. We’ve been traveling the Coil ever since.” Yvan pointed behind him. “That glowing halo you saw is a Dark wizard causing all this instability. We’ve been trying to find a way to defeat him.”

  “Why are you traveling with a Barbarian?” the man demanded. “We don’t allow his kind here.”

  “He’s a Servant-healer,” Yvan called back. “He defends the defenseless and heals the sick. He’s here to defeat the Voyant, too. If you take us, he can help you. He’s a good man and a powerful warrior.”

  The men on the wall held a hasty murmured conversation. “Are you sure we should stay here?” Niyazi asked Yvan in an undertone. “Didn’t we just decide our presence would put the town in danger?”

  “It looks to me like the town is already in danger if the Voyant is going after it,” Neils pointed out. “We can at least try to help defend them.”

  The tall man jumped down behind the wall, and a second later, the big entrance gates opened.

  The tall man and a dozen other men came out all armed with some very different weapons. These looked like long metal tubes with wooden handles.

  The men kept the wooden ends jammed into their shoulders and aimed the tubes at the Watchmen. These must have been some other kind of projectile weapon like a smaller version of those missile launchers up there.

  The men of this town all wore plain canvas pants, boots with pointed toes, and fabric vests over long-sleeved shirts despite the heat.

  The townspeople surrounded the Watchmen and aimed their weapons inward to threaten the travelers. Yvan stayed where he was with his hands up.

  The tall guy scrutinized Yvan and then the guy’s gaze dipped to Yvan’s insignia. “We haven’t seen the Black Watch in decades. We thought they were all wiped out.”

  “Not completely,” Yvan replied. “We’ve been trying to find a town that needed the Watch. If you don’t want to let us in, we’ll stay in the area and do what we can to defend you from out here.”

  “No one can defend us,” the guy returned. “We’ve been fending off Darkling attacks for years and now the landscape is going crazy.”

  Yvan sighed and nodded. “It’s the same everywhere we go. The Voyant Mendicat is the one causing all of this.” He jerked his thumb toward Marine. “Our friends have been trying to find a way to defeat him, but we haven’t figured it out yet.”

  The townspeople inspected the party for another second before the guy nodded. “You better come inside. We need the Black Watch.” He waved to his people. “Put your guns down.”

  The townmen lowered their weapons. Yann resisted the urge to bombard these people with questions about what kind of weapons they were using.

  None of the townspeople tried to stop Yvan from picking up his sword. Niyazi and Vidal both picked up their axes. Yann dared to pick up his glaive.

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  The tall man waved Yvan forward and led the way through the gate.

  The Watchmen froze on the threshold. None of them noticed the townspeople shutting the gates with the Watchmen inside.

  Yann stared in stunned amazement at the town hidden behind the wall. Motorized vehicles rumbled through paved streets. Machines he didn’t understand chugged and puffed all over the place.

  Lighted screens flickered behind the windows of houses all around him. Pictures, faces, and scenes flashed across those screens along with lettering and even music.

  The houses looked nothing like anything he’d ever seen in his life. They dwarfed any house in Middleborough. All these machines, screens, and vehicles made his head swim.

  The people inside the town wore a curious combination of clothing, too. Some more of the men much fancier versions of the same pants, boots, and vests.

  Others wore cylindrical top hats, brocade jackets, and carried decorative walking sticks.

  The women wore elaborate, ruffled dresses that bunched up behind their waists. All the women visible from the street carried tiny umbrellas that could only have been decorative, too, because it wasn’t raining.

  The women all wore hats, but these were tiny, frilly, ridiculous affairs perched high on towers of curls. Yann didn’t understand their aesthetic appeal at all. Their clothes and appearance made them look incapable of doing anything.

  Their skirts fell all the way to the ground and hid the women’s feet entirely. The women took extra pains not to show their feet and legs even when they walked.

  Their long skirts gave the appearance that they weren’t walking at all. They seemed to float along the ground like something from another reality.

  Some of them whispered to each other about the travelers. Yann could just imagine what these people were thinking about Eliska and Marine.

  The tall man distracted everyone by stepping forward. He held out his hand to Yvan. “Welcome to Tenby. My name is Atian Niccao. It’s an honor to meet anyone from the Black Watch.”

  Yvan shook his hand. “This is quite the town you have. I’m interested to learn all about how you do things. This is Niyazi Trahan, Neils Surette, Rien Dugas, and Vidal Rom. This is my son, Yann, and this is Anríq. He’s a friend. You can trust him with your town’s safety.”

  Marine interrupted by stepping forward. “Um…..would you have a computer I can use? I want to do some research into the Voyant’s activities and contact some of the cities that might be monitoring him.”

  Atian frowned at her. “A…what? A….computer? I don’t know that word.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she looked away. “Oh. Sorry. I thought you did.”

  “This is Marine,” Yvan explained. “She belongs to the Guardian Templars. They’ve taken it as their mission to learn as much about the Voyant’s activities so they can defeat him.”

  Atian narrowed his eyes at her and curled his lip at her hair and dress. “She doesn’t look like much, does she?”

  Yvan saved the day by interrupting. “Are you in charge of this town? Do you have a Watch Commander—or something equivalent?”

  “We don’t have any structure like that,” Atian replied. “We organize our defense amongst ourselves. We’ve been stranded out here for years with no contact with the rest of the Coil.”

  “How is that possible when you have all this technology?” Marine asked. “Where do you get your broadcasts from—and your fuel?”

  Yvan raised his hand. “I’m sure that’s none of our business. If you show us where to go, we’ll be happy to take our posts on the wall.”

  “What about them?” Atian cast another critical glance at Eliska and Marine. He tried not to include Anríq in that glance, but he wound up doing it anyway.

  Before Yvan could reply, a different man hustled out of the surrounding neighborhoods somewhere. Yann didn’t see where the guy came from.

  He was a much older man. He couldn’t have been younger than sixty. He wore his grey hair cut in a bowl shape around his ears and he wore a long robe-like jacket down to his knees.

  It had a banded collar like the Watchmen’s uniforms, but his jacket had a deep, midnight-blue color with no insignia.

  He rushed up to the group and went man to man shaking hands with all the Watchmen.

  “The Black Watch!” the man exclaimed. “I haven’t seen a Watchmen in years! Welcome, welcome!”

  The guy came to Anríq, held out his hand….and froze when he realized what he was looking at.

  The guy shuddered, shook his hand, faltered, and then hustled away to shake Yann’s hand instead.

  “It’s wonderful that you’re here!” the old man exclaimed. “We thought we might be the last living people in the Coil.”

  “You aren’t,” Niyazi told him.

  The guy only smiled at him and practically pumped Niyazi’s arm off his shoulder. “Welcome, welcome! It’s always a blessing to see any man of the Watch.”

  “Thank you,” Yvan replied.

  “This is O’akim Mossant,” Atian interjected. “He’s our town mendicant.”

  “Mendicant!” Rien snapped. “Do you work for the Voyant?”

  O’akim frowned at him. “What’s a voyant?”

  “He’s a healer,” Anríq cut in.

  O’akim glanced at him, tried to smile, and failed. He distracted himself by turning back to the Watchmen. His eyes misted over when he gazed at them. “I haven’t seen a member of the Black Watch since I was young. Seeing all of you gives me hope that this town might survive after all.”

  “O’akim has an extensive library of information from all over the Coil,” Atian added. “If you want to do research, he’s your man.”

  Marine rushed in. “Really?! Would you mind if I take a look? I’m a member of the Guardian Templars.”

  O’akim’s eyes shot open. “Are you, really?! This is wonderful! I always hoped I would meet one of the Templars! This is truly a lucky day! Come with me, my dear. I’ll show you everything!”

  He took her hand and led her off down the street. They turned into a side avenue and vanished.

  “We’ll probably never see her again,” Rien muttered.

  “O’akim will take good care of her,” Atian replied. “He has a heart of gold, but he gets lonely without someone to talk to about everything that interests him.” He waved behind him. “Follow me and I’ll show you where to go.”

  Yvan and the other Watchmen followed him. Yann moved closer to Eliska with Anríq on her other side.

  “So…these people have no magic?” Yann whispered. “That mendicant or whatever he was—he’s not magical, is he?”

  Eliska shook her head. “If Anríq and I don’t have magic in this town, no one else will have it, either.” She shot a sidelong glance at some of the nearby house windows. Screens flickered behind every single one of them. “It doesn’t look like they need it.”

  The group got to the wall just then. Atian led Yvan to a metal stairway rising to a scaffold of walkways and platforms built into the wall from behind.

  The men worked up there to man their defenses. Others sat behind the wall cleaning, checking, and working on the smaller tube weapons—guns, Atian called them.

  Yvan followed Atian up the ladder onto the scaffold where they could see over the top. Atian pointed across the countryside toward the wave of instability in the distance.

  It rose off the ground to form a curtain. No one could see the terrain behind it.

  Niyazi, Rien, and Vidal followed him. Neils got halfway up there before he wound up talking to some of the other men nearest him.

  Yvan turned around and waved for Yann to join him. “Here we go,” Yann breathed and set off for the wall with Anríq right behind him.

  End of Chapter 28.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

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