Sider Ament regained consciousness slowly. He rose out of his slumber in a lethargic waking that seemed to take forever. But the pain and his memories of what had brought him to this state helped speed his efforts, and mustering what strength of body and will he could, he dragged himself back into the light.

He opened his eyes and looked around.

The first thing he saw was the corpse of his attacker, its body blown open and bloodied, its head thrown back and gone rigid in its death throes. He stared at it a moment, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, to imagine what sort of weapon could do such damage.

Then he noticed the splints and bandages that wrapped various parts of his own body. His tattered gray robes had been cut away in several places, exposing part of his torso and his damaged left arm. The bulk of the pain he was experiencing seemed centered on those two places in particular, but the rest of him had not been spared.

His pack lay to one side, untouched.

His right hand still gripped his black staff.

“Awake at last, are you?” a voice boomed. “Welcome back to the land of the living!”

A man moved into view from behind him. He was big and powerfully built, his face bronzed by sun and wind, his features crosshatched with scars and his hands missing several fingers. It was difficult to determine his age, but he had clearly seen the years of his youth come and go awhile back. He was dressed in black, his clothing a mix of thick leather and heavy metal fastenings, the material as scarred and beaten as he was.

He smiled cheerfully at Sider and knelt down next to him, long black hair falling down about his face in tangled hunks. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t wake up. I thought maybe my bandaging job wasn’t enough to save you.”

Sider wet his lips. “Good enough, thanks. Do you have any water?”

The big man rose and walked back to where the other couldn’t see him and then returned carrying a soft leather pouch. He held it up to Sider’s lips and let the water trickle down his throat. “Just a little,” he said. “Until I’m sure your injuries aren’t any worse than what they seem, we don’t want to rush things.”

Sider nodded and drank gratefully.

“There, that’s enough,” the other said, taking the skin away. He rocked back on his heels. “You ought to be dead, you know. Even with my help. I saw what that beastie did to you. Ugly stuff. But you took a couple of blows that would have crushed an ordinary man and barely flinched. So you must not be so ordinary, huh?”

Sider closed his eyes. “What do you call that thing I killed? Does it have a name?”

“It’s called an Agenahl. A brute, but smart enough to outthink you if you’re not careful.”

“So I discovered. Are there a lot of them?”

The big man shook his head. “Not so many anymore. They’re freaks, mutants left over from the Great Wars. Me and others like me are working hard at making them extinct, but it’s not so easy.” He paused. “Usually, they hunt in mating pairs. Odd to find a mature one traveling alone.”

Sider nodded. “I killed its mate several days back, then came looking for this one to finish the job. I didn’t want it leading any others back to where I come from.”

“Smart of you. If they find a place they like, plenty of food they can hunt, they bring all their friends and relatives to the feast.” He paused. “You come from somewhere in those mountains east, do you?”

Sider hesitated, and then nodded. “Quite a ways off.”

“Never been back there. No reason to go. My work is all down here, on the flats and in the woods, working for the fastholds. You look like you might do work of that sort.”

“What sort of work would that be?”

“Mercenary. Work for hire. You do any of that? Never mind, don’t answer. I’m asking questions when I should be thinking of fixing you some food. You hungry? Like a little something to eat? Storm passed us by awhile back, moving north, so we don’t have to worry about shelter right away. How about it?”

With Sider’s tacit blessing, the big man set about building a fire and cooking a mix of beans and vegetables and salted meat he fetched from his backpack. It was one of the best meals Sider could remember, and he ate it all in spite of his injuries. He accepted a bit of root the other man offered, as well, an herb that he was told would help dull the pain, but needed to be taken on a full stomach to avoid cramps. Sider found that it worked.

“My name’s Deladion Inch,” the other offered when the meal was done and they were back to conversing.

“Sider Ament,” Sider replied, offering his hand.

Inch shook it. “So what do you call that piece of black wood you’re carrying? I tried to take it out of your hand while I was working on you—just to make things easier, not to try to steal it, you understand—but you had a death grip on it. It started glowing when I touched it. I didn’t think that was a good sign, given what I saw it do to the Agenahl.”

The Gray Man hesitated, still not certain how much he wanted to tell his newfound companion, even if he had saved his life. It wasn’t his manner to reveal anything more than he had to about anything. He instinctively liked this man, but he really didn’t know anything about him. Trusting people you didn’t know was never a good idea.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about giving anything away,” Inch declared before Sider could make up his mind. “I know magic when I see it. It’s still around, even after all these years of people living like animals and beating one another to death with clubs. Don’t trust it, myself. But others do, and some seem able to make it work. I guess you must be one. What’s different about you is the staff. I was just curious about it, is all.”

“The staff was given to me by my predecessor, one in a long line of bearers,” Sider replied, making up his mind to trust Dedalion Inch that far. “It’s complicated. In the old days, those bearers would have been called Knights of the Word. Do you know the name?”

The big man shook his head. “Never heard of them. People did talk about the Word in the old days. A few still do. Not many, though. No reason for it. But tell me more about the staff.” He paused. “Look, I know you think I’m being more than a little too curious about something I shouldn’t. But I like weapons. I use them all the time in my line of work and see others use them, too, and I’ve never seen anything like that staff.”

Sider shrugged. “There isn’t another like it, so far as I know. There used to be two in the valley where I live, but one was destroyed. Now there’s only this one, and I’m the only one who can use it. So it’s not of much use to anyone else.”

The big man seemed to think about that for a moment. Then he grinned, reached over his shoulder and pulled a wicked-looking black-barreled weapon from a sheath strapped across his back. “Ever see one of these?”

The Gray Man shook his head. “But I’ve heard about weapons like it that date back to the time of the Great Wars. They were used by government armies and then later by rogue militias after the armies were destroyed. They fired metal projectiles of some sort, didn’t they?”

“Shells filled with metal bits.” The big man reached in his pocket and pulled one out. \ It was about three inches long and an inch thick, metal-jacketed and banded with red circles. “One of these, fired from this gun, will blow a fist-sized hole completely through you. Nothing stands up to it. Not even Agenahls. You have the last of those black staffs? Well, I have the last of these. A Tyson Flechette, best gun ever made. Passed down through various families until it came to my dad and then to me. I take good care of this sweetheart.”

He handed it over to Sider to examine. The Gray Man hesitated and then accepted the gesture with a nod. He looked at the flechette, remembering what he had heard about them from the people in the valley who claimed their ancestors had brought a handful with them before the mists sealed everyone in. But all those weapons had become rusted or broken over the years or simply been put away and forgotten. The shells, he remembered, lost potency over time and eventually became worthless. They were all gone, too.

“You can have your magic,” Deladion Inch declared. “I’ll take my flechette. It’s never let me down, and it never will.”

He seemed pretty certain about this. Sider handed the weapon back. “Well, I don’t know much about it, except that it saved my life. Seems to have worked well enough for you.”

The big man nodded. “Every time. I got some other stuff, too—other weapons and explosives. Thing is, I know how to take care of this kind of equipment, how to maintain it in good, working condition so it does what its supposed to do. Most people, they think you don’t have to do anything but point and shoot whenever you feel like doing so and that’s all it takes. Those people are all dead or on their way to being dead. Not me.” He grinned. “How about you, Sider? You have to do anything to protect that black staff of yours? Does it need any special treatment?”

There it was again, Deladion Inch’s insistence on knowing about the staff. Sider studied him a moment and then said, “I usually don’t talk about such things, Inch. It’s not that I don’t trust people; it’s just a habit. But you saved my life and you seem a good sort. So I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll tell you about the staff if you’ll tell me about the world you’ve been living in. Because I don’t know about your world. I’ve been shut away in the mountains for so long that I haven’t any idea what’s going on out here. Those Agenahls? Never saw or heard of one before today. I don’t know what things are like, and I need to.”

The big man stared. “You don’t know anything? Not anything at all?”

“No more than what I’ve seen since I left the mountains two days ago. No more than what I’ve heard you talk about.”

Deladion Inch shook his head. “That would be funny if it weren’t so sad. You’re lucky you’re still alive, even given my help.” He paused, studying Sider. “So what you suggest is that we spend some time together swapping information—me about this world and what lives in it, you about your staff and its magic? That about it?”

Sider nodded. “I can’t travel right away, not on my own. I don’t know that I can even find a safe place while I heal. I owe you my life, but that makes you responsible for me. Ever hear of that before? So if you can find us a place to hole up and agree to stay with me for a day or so, I would be grateful. But if you can’t, I’ll understand.”

“Oh, I can stay with you. I can do whatever I choose. And I know where all the safe places are in this part of the country. This is my territory, Sider— I know everything there is to know.” He scratched his chin and shrugged. “All right, I’ll accept your bargain. I like you. And I don’t want to think I had anything to do with you dying out here alone. And you’re right—you wouldn’t know where to begin to find a safe place on your own. Even if you were well enough to travel, I don’t know that you would make it back without help. Not knowing as little as you do.”

Sider said nothing; there was nothing to say.

The big man rose. “All right, then. First thing we need to do is find a place to shelter. Then we can talk. How are you for walking?”

It turned out that Sider wasn’t much even for standing. He tried it with Deladion Inch’s help, but he collapsed almost immediately, dizzy and weak. The big man told him to stay where he was, that there was a better way. He disappeared into the woods but was back again in minutes with a pair of saplings he had cut down. It took him a little less than twenty minutes to rig up a sled consisting of his cloak stretched over and secured to poles that he fashioned from the saplings with an enormous knife. Once the sled was ready, he placed Sider on it, hitched up the ends with his big hands and set out. It was an uncomfortable ride, bumping along over uneven ground strewn with rocks and debris, and Sider wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have been better off walking. But Inch seemed to feel he wasn’t ready for it, voicing again his concerns that there might be internal injuries that he couldn’t know about. So Sider left it alone. He lay back and silently endured, hands clutching the black staff and feeling the magic respond. He knew that healing came more quickly to a bearer of the staff than to ordinary people, and he could already feel himself knitting inside.

The journey lasted a little more than two hours and took them down out of the rocks and into woods that were green and fresh and smelled of living things and sweet water. Sider saw nothing of either water or life, but he could sense that they were there, just out of sight. Breezes blew out of the south, clean and cool. Sunlight dappled the woods and spilled in bright streamers through gaps in the canopy, and Inch hummed and sang to himself as he trudged along.

But every now and then there were hints of darker things, of the past that Sider had expected to find. Smells of decay and harsh chemicals wafted along in the wake of the fresher breezes, there for only a second or two and then gone. He caught glimpses of ruined forest and blasted land through the trunks of the trees his bearer negotiated, barren and stark. Once, off in the distance, he saw the remains of what might have been a fortress reduced to rubble. He took all this in and wished he could scratch the itch of his curiosity by setting out for a closer look. But his healing was not complete and his strength still suspect. He would have to bide his time.

“Not so far now,” Deladion Inch advised after they had traveled for some time, but said nothing more after that.

Finally, they broke clear of the woods and emerged onto flats that were all hardpan and scrub, stretching away for miles until they disappeared into the horizon south. Gullies and ravines had been carved out of the hardpan over time by weather and water, and clusters of rocks formed strange monuments amid the emptiness.

Dominating the whole of this wasteland was a massive walled ruin that climbed from one level to the next, buildings crumbling, roofs collapsed, and doors and windows black holes into the spaces beyond. Towers and parts of the outer walls that were still standing attested to the size of what had once been a huge fortress.

It was the fortress he had seen earlier, Sider realized.

“We’re here,” Deladion Inch declared, setting down the ends of the sled and rolling his shoulders wearily. “You know, you weigh a lot more than I thought you would.”

Sider was still staring at the fortress as he eased himself into a sitting position. It looked like something out of a time he had heard about from those who still kept track of the history of the old world. But it wasn’t from the time of the Great Wars; it was much older than that.

Or newer, he thought suddenly.

“When was this built?” he asked Inch.

The other man shrugged. “Maybe two, three hundred years ago,” he answered confirming what Sider had suspected. “Built by once-men that survived long enough to complete it and then be wiped out by a plague.” He shook his head. “Legend has it the plague killed more than half of whoever was left after the firestorm that killed almost everyone before that.”

He looked back at Sider. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“In there?” Sider gestured toward the ruins.

“Safe enough.”

“Doesn’t look it.”

“What does? In this world, nothing’s really safe. Didn’t you know that?” He laughed. “Let’s take a look inside.”