Strangest of all was the utter absence of fear. He`d been very afraid this morning. Afraid the wizard`s plan wouldn`t work, that the dragon would kill them. Afraid of going through the Threshold and coming back empty-handed. The Heartwyld Horde, in all its abominable might, had been the scariest thing he`d ever seen — aside, perhaps, from the look on Ginny`s face when she hit her head on a cupboard door he`d left open by accident.
But now... all Clay felt was a sense of profound certainty, as if things — dire though they seemed — were exactly as they should be. He was among friends, shoulder to shoulder with his bandmates, who just so happened to be the four best men he`d ever had the privelege of knowing.
As individuals they were each of them fallible, discordant as notes without harmony. But as a band they were something more, something perfect in its own intangible way.
So no — he wasn`t afraid. He was, in fact, grinning from ear to ear, basking in the music of the men around him, listening with bittersweet sorrow as the end drew near.

"Rose, listen to me. Do you remember the stories I used to tell when you were little."
Rose looked down at her feet. "Of course I do."
"You never asked me if they were true. You believed whatever I told you, no matter how incredible it was."
The light beneath Rose was beginning to fade. Her apparition flickered as she spoke. "I was a little girl."
"And you`re not anymore. I know that. But I need you to believe in one more story, Rose." If Gabe`s voice had been stone before, now it was harder, colder, the mask of iceo n a mountain`s wind-scarred face. "I am coming to Castia," he said. "I am going to save you."

"You must have hated us," Clay reasoned. You must hate us still, he left unsaid.
Ganelon shrugged. "Yeah, maybe. For a while."
"A while?"
Finally Ganelon stopped. "Yeah, like, ten years or so. I hated Matrick for wanting to settle down with that brat princess. I hated Moog for wasting time trying to cure the rot instead of spending time with the one person he was trying to save. You know what the cure for the rot is, by the way? Don`t fucking come here. Ever. I hated Gabe for buying into that monster-love bullshit Valery was spouting all the time, and I — actually, you know what? I never hated you, Slowhand."
Clay swallowed. "No?"
"No. But I did wonder where you`d gotten to, why you weren`t there, when the Sultana`s men came for me. I`ve had less friends in this world than I have fingers, but I counted you among them. You`re honest, and brave, and too damn loyal for your own good. Hell, you`re just about the best man I`ve ever known, and so I ghought: What kind of monster must I be, that even Clay Cooper gave up on me?"
Clay gaped, speechless. He cast his eyes to the blackened earth, overcome by shame and sweeping guilt. I was tired, he might have said. Tired of fighting, of killing. Tired of Kallorek`s greed, and Matty`s drinking, and Moog`s antics, and Gabriel`s insufferable pride. I wanted to wash my hands clean of it all. And also: I thought you deserved it. You killed a prince, and a lot of innocent men besides. And after ten years of trying to make the world a safer place, I thought it would be safer without you.
He might have said all of this, but instead he said nothing.
"Never mind." Ganelon stalked off, with Clay plodding sullenly behind.

"But what can we do? Moog is dying of the rot! Matty couldn`t climb a flight of fucking stairs, and we expect him to walk a thousand miles? To cross the Heartwyld? To scale a mountain? Even if we do reach Castia... even if we somehow get there in time... what chance do we stand?"
The words none at all stood poised on Clay`s tongue like an actor ready to stride onstage, but he kept the curtain closed. "I don`t know," he said finally. "I really don`t, Gabe. But then again, I don`t know how we did half the stuff we`ve done."
Gabriel wiped at his nose with a mud-soiled lseeve. "What do you mean? What stuff?"
"Coldfire Pass," Clay said. "Hollow Hill. Castadar. How many hopeless battles have we fought?"
"A few..." Gabe admitted.
"And how many did we win?"
His friend considered that a moment. "All of them?"
"All of them," Clay confirmed. "And yeah, sure, we`ve just been robbed by a gang of girls—"
"Twice," said Gabriel.
"Twice, yes, well... we`re a bit rusty. Of course we are. But we`ve beaten the odds before, is what I`m trying to say. Remember Turnstone Keep? Three bands against five hundred bloodthirsty cannibals, and still we survived. We`ve killed how many gods-forsaken murlogs? How many orcs, and ogres, and shit-spawned warlocks bent on destroying the world? Frozen hells, we killed a dragon once."
Gabe frowned. "You mean Akatung? I thought—"
"Okay, we almost killed a dragon once. We definitely hurt him real bad. But he didn`t kill us, did he? We`re still here, still fighting. And Rose is fighting, too, but she`s desperate, and she needs our help. She needs you, Gabe. If you don`t save her from Lastleaf and his fucking horde, no one will." He could see hope kindling inside Gabriel, and so offered the last log at his disposal to the flame. "We were giants once, remember? Kings of the Wyld."

Clay had heard it said that some couples were like fire and ice, but although Gabe and Val held opposing ideologies they were more like identical clashing swords. On fire. In an ice storm. What had begun as a playful interrogation by Gabriel for the amusement of his guests became an intense discussion, then a heated argument, then a violent shouting match, during which Valery made a second attempt at burnign down Saga`s war wagon by hurling a lamp at Gabriel`s head.
By morning they were madly in love.

The ruin of Contha`s fortress had served as a rallying point during the War of Reclamation. In the shadow of its walls the Company of Kings had driven the remnants of the last Horde back into the Heartwyld Forest. Eventually a settlement sprang up around it, a place where those brave enough to enter the Wyld could gather and supply, and for those who returned to spend their newfound riches or drink away the memory of the horrors they`d barely escaped.
Before long contha`s Camp grew into a proper town. Someone built a wall, and when the town swelled into a big bloated city, someone built a bigger wall. Somewhere along the way the name was shortened to Contha`s, then eventually to Conthas, though it was also called the Free City, for although it was technically within Agria`s borders, the king (in this case, their ond bandmate Matrick) laid no claim to lands so near the savage border. There were no taxes there, no tariff on goods that passed through. Conthas was a bastion of enterprise and opportunity. On of the last wild places in an ever more civilized world.
That being said, Conthas was a shithole, and as far as Clay was concerned the sooner they were rid of it the better.
<...>
No king meant no law; no guards to keep the peace or discourage violence before it got out of hand. No taxes meant no one to clena gutters or lay down stone for roads, and so Clay and Gabriel sloshed through what they hoped was mud as they passed through the wide-open gates into the city whose parents had hired a prostitute as a babysitter and never come home.

Gabe`s old sword, Vellichor, was perhaps the most treasured artifact in all the world. Several thousand years ago (or so the bards generally agreed) a race of rabbit-eared immortals called druins had narrowly escaped the cataclysmic destruction of their own realm by using Vellichor to carve a path into this one, which, at the time, was a land of savage humans and wild monsters. The druins had little trouble subjugating both, and quickly set about establishing a vast empire known as the Dominion.
The druins were led by their Archon, Vespian, who disappeared into the Heartwyld when the Dominion, many centuries later, was overrun by its own monstrous hordes. When Saga encountered him close to thirty years ago, the Archon had been searching desperately for his estranged son. Shortly after, Clay and his bandmates had found Vespian again — mortally wounded, he`d confessed, by the very son he`d been pursuing. The dying druin had given his sword to Gabriel upon one condition: that Gabe use it to kill him.
Gabriel did so, and the Archon, with his final breath, had said something too quiet to hear, in a language too ancient to comprehend. Whatever those words were, Clay was fairly certain they hadn`t been Sell this if you need to.

The Watchmen`s sword was belted on his hip, and Blackheart was slung over his right shoulder.
The shield was named for a rampaging treant who had led a living forest on a monthlong killing spree through southern Agria. Blackhead and his arboreal army had wiped out several villages before laying siege to Hollow Hill. Though a few stalwart defenders remained to protect their homes, Clay and his bandmates had been the only real fighters in town. The ensuing battle, which lasted for almost a week and claimed the life of one of Saga`s numerous unlucky bards, was the subject of more songs that could be sung in a day.
Clay himself had cut down Blackheart, and from the treant`s corpse had hewn the wood from which he`d fashioned his shield. It had saved his life more times than all his bandmates together, and was Clay`s most cherished possession. Its surface told the story of countless trials: here gouged by the razor claws of a harpy broodmother, there mottled by the acid breath of a mechanized bull. Its weight was a familiar comfort, even if the strap was starting to chafe, and the top lip kept scraping the back of his head, and his shoulders ached like a plough horse hitched to a granite wagon.

He said good-bye to Ginny on the hill that ovrelooked the farm. Clay figured she would wave him off at the door, or turn back where the lane ended and the long road began, and he`d dreaded the moment like a man waiting for the black-hooded executioner to wave him onstage — Your turn, pal! But instead she led him on, speaking quietly of small things as they walked hand in hand up the slope. Before long he was nodding away, chuckling at something he wouldn`t be able to recall when he tried to later that night, and had very nearly forgotten he might never hear her voice again, or see her hair catch fire in the morning sun, as it did when they reached the summit and saw the world span gold and green beyond it.
Hours earlier, both of them still awake in the grey dark before dawn, Ginny had warned him she wouldn`t cry when she said good-bye, said it wasn`t in her nature, and that didn`t mean she would miss him any less. But on the hill at sunrise, after telling him again what a good man he was, she went ahead and wept anyway, and so did he. When their tears dried she took his face in both hands and and looked hard into his eyes. "Come home to me, Clay Cooper," she told him.
Come home to me.
Now that he would remember, right up to the end.

Gabriel stalled on the threshold, looking back. Here it comes, thought Clay. The final plea. The scathing remark about how if it were the other way round he would do it for me. Vellichor notwithstanding, words had always been Gabe`s most potent weapon. He`d been their leader, back when. The voice of the band. All he said, though, before walking out and tugging the door closed behind him, was "You`re a good man, Clay Cooper."
Simple words. Kind ones, even. Not the knife he`d been expecting. Not the piercing sword.
They still hurt, though.

Every time he appeared it was hand in hand with some grand scheme to reunite the old band and strike out once again in search of fame, fortune, and decidedly reckless adventure. There was a town down south that needed rescue from a ravaging drake, or a den of walking wolves to be cleared out of the Wailing Forest, or an old lady in some far-flung corner of the realm needed help bringing laundry off the line and only Saga themselves could rise to her aid!
It wasn`t as though Glay needed Ginny breathing down his neck to refuse, to see that Gabriel longed for something unrecoverable, like an old man clinging to memories of his golden youth. Exactly like that, actually. But life, Clay knew, didn`t work that way. It wasn`t a circle; you didn`t go round and round again. It was an arc, its course as inexorable as the sun`s trek across the sky, destined at its highest, brightest moment to begin its fall.

He wore a Watchmen`s green tabard over a shabby leather jerkin, and a weathered sword in a rough old scabbard on his hip. His shield — chipped and scored and scratched through the years by axes and arrows and raking claws — was slung across his back, and his helmet... well, Clay had lost the one the Sergeant had given him last week, just as he`d misplaced the one given to him the month before, and every few months since the day he`d signed on to the Watch almost ten years ago.
A helmet restricted your vision, all but negated your hearing, and more often than not made you look stupid as hell. Clay Cooper didn`t do helmets, and that was that.