Sentry

When the raiders come down the valley road, the farmers run for the hills and the children run for the altar, and one figure walks the other way. Plate on the shoulders, a shield on the arm, a plain sword at the hip. The Sentry does not run, because running would leave someone behind.

The Sentries of the city of cedar are not lords or captains. Most of them were plowmen and stonecutters before they were anything else, and many still are. What sets them apart is a single stubborn idea, passed down from the oldest days: that when evil comes for the weak, someone should be standing in the way. They train for years to become that someone. They learn to read a giant's swing before it starts, to turn a blade with the edge of a shield, to plant their feet so deep that a war-beast breaks against them like a wave on a rock.

And they learn the strangest lesson of all, the one that makes them what they are. Every blow aimed at a Sentry, whether it lands or is turned aside, draws the enemy's fury closer. The harder the enemy tries to break them, the more completely the enemy forgets everyone else. Sentries do not hold the line by shouting. They hold it by being impossible to ignore.

You are the first into every fight and the last to leave it. You challenge the strongest foe, plant your shield, and let it break itself on you while your companions do their work. When a healer is threatened, you step between. When a whole pack charges, one great shout turns every head toward you. When the company falters, your presence hardens them, and blows that should have killed them glance away.

The Sentry makes everyone else braver, and a company that has one rarely loses.

You want to be the reason your friends come home. You find joy in a perfect block, in an enemy that has forgotten everyone but you, in a whole battle turning around the one place where you would not move. Nobody sings about the wall. But nobody gets through it, either.