These are not conscript hicks. These are Alak regulars, the real fanatics. Now the larger barqots are open and disgorging a phalanx of Ministerial Ghuards. They dwarf the regular infantry around them, striding along the piers.

The armor worn by these Ghuards is worth describing in some detail. It is all or nearly all made of a special paper-light metal, the same kind Wacagan use for their legbands. It’s an uncanny experience seeing the Ghuards in their armor—you begin to wonder if you’ve gone deaf, because, massive as it is, the armor makes almost no noise at all. No thundering footsteps, no clattering. Huge forms sail by you as quiet and easy moving as balloons.

The helmets are traditionally moulded to resemble the heads of berserk jackasses, with ears three feet long bolt upright on top them. The eyes are great blind concavities with a slit for each of the occupant’s eyes recessed at their innermost edges, flanking the false-perspective nose ridge—actually a flat trench, not encroaching on the Ghuard’s field of vision. In a perversely-inspired bid for perfect ugliness, the designers had trapezoidal openings cut on either side of the muzzle, and mail jowls hang flabbily out of these. The rest of the false face is a wedge snout with a horrifying if rather nicely-rendered snarl of projecting axe-head shaped teeth. A narrow, shaggy mane of needles runs in a tapering stripe down the rear of the helmet to the small of the back, rippling hypnotically like the scintillation of a wheeling school of fish.

When have I ever seen a school of fish wheeling?

Those manes must be fantastically expensive and time-consuming to make.

The chest, shoulder, and upper arms are plated over with two layers of armor separated by an air layer. There are two sets of hands—proper man-sized ones, in fine and elastic metal gloves, and colossal mechanical gauntlets that can crush a man in their grip. Strips of mail hang down from ledges at the tops of the thighs. From chains affixed to each armored groin dangles a pair of dull metal balls, bigger than a man’s head and dotted with scratch-shined pimples, which clack meditatively together with every stride. The legs are thick pistoned trunks with ponderous hinges at the ankles, and incongruously prim pointed feet. They puff along in swarms of flies—their hindquarters and thighs are caked with excrement, as the Ghuards exhibit a marked disinclination to divest themselves of the armor once they’ve got it on.

Makemin watches them disembark with a sour, twisted mouth, and crossed arms. I know from his expression he has not been able to recruit more soldiers. I should go down to him, but I find I would rather not move. I sit and I watch. I will go down to him.

*