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DargonZine Volume 18 Issue 08
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D D A A R R G O O N N N Z I N N N E || Volume 18
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D D AAAA RRR G GG O O N N N Z I N N N E || Number 8
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DargonZine Distributed: 12/10/05
Volume 18, Number 8 Circulation: 647
========================================================================
Contents
Editorial Ornoth D.A. Liscomb
Echoes off the Stone R. F. Niro Sy 12, 1018
Out of the Rubble 1 P. Atchley, Sy 12, 1018
Dave Fallon,
and R. F. Niro
========================================================================
DargonZine is the publication vehicle of The Dargon Project, Inc.,
a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the Internet.
We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the project.
Please address all correspondence to <dargon@dargonzine.org> or visit
us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site
at ftp://users.primushost.com/members/d/a/dargon/. Issues and public
discussions are posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.mag.dargon.
DargonZine 18-8, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright December, 2005 by
The Dargon Project, Inc. Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb <ornoth@rcn.com>,
Assistant Editor: Liam Donahue <bdonahue@fuse.net>.
DargonZine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-
NonCommercial License. This license allows you to make and distribute
unaltered copies of DargonZine, complete with the original attributions
of authorship, so long as it is not used for commercial purposes.
Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden.
To view a detailed copy of this license, please visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0 or send a letter to
Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford CA, 94305 USA.
========================================================================
Editorial
by Ornoth D.A. Liscomb
<ornoth@rcn.com>
Welcome to what appears to be the official Rich Niro issue of
DargonZine. Rich had been with us for five years when he left the group
this past September. During that time he printed three stories: "The
Target that Eludes Me", "Spine", and "Touching Ol", a story he completed
when its original author and Rich's close friend, Victor Cardoso, left
the project for a while.
However, having attended the 2003 Dargon Writers' Summit, Rich was
also involved in the Black Idol story arc that we're currently printing.
Although he's no longer an active DargonZine writer, this issue includes
two of the Black Idol stories that he worked on.
The first is "Echoes off the Stone". Back in 2003, when we divvied
up the arc stories, Rich agreed to write the pivotal story where the
barge carrying the cursed idol of Gow arrived in Dargon. Although Nick
Wansbutter added some finishing touches to get it ready for printing,
Echoes was largely as you see it here when Rich left the project.
The three-chapter "Out of the Rubble" has a more complex history.
It began life as P. Atchley's arc story, a tale about Sian Allyn and her
adoptive children that showed the human side of Dargon after the barge's
arrival. In fact, this first chapter is primarily Ms. Atchley's work.
However, during a brief hiatus from the group, she turned the story over
to Rich, who added the healer's plot that will appear in part two. The
final chapter they wrote together, after Ms. Atchley had returned.
However, both she and Rich had to leave the group before the
stories were completed. At that point, Dave Fallon stepped in, whose
"Lost Opportunity 1" you saw earlier in the arc. Because of that, "Out
of the Rubble" is the first (but definitely not the last) story in
DargonZine's long history to have three authors in its byline.
Despite the number of times its authorship changed hands, I think
you'll find it to be among the best stories in the whole Black Idol
series. It also illustrates how cooperative the arc has been, and how
far we've come since the 90's Beinison War, when the magazine struggled
for years to recover when two key writers left the group before that arc
was completed.
Life events sometimes make it difficult for people to participate
in Dargon's writing project. Rich is a teacher, which leaves very little
time for pursuits such as writing. This year he also became head coach
of his school's track team, which placed even more demands on his time.
As if that wasn't enough, this summer he and his wife moved to a new
house and also just had their first baby boy. Things are pretty hectic
in the Niro household, which is why he left the group, but we all wish
him well.
Oddly, it's been that kind of year for many of our writers. Jon
Evans stepped down from the Assistant Editor role after getting married
and buying a new house, and his first child is due to arrive any day
now. Ironically, Liam Donahue, who became Assistant Editor when Jon
stepped down, has also gotten married and bought a new house! Nick
Wansbutter got married and is expecting his first baby; Trey Holliday,
one of our promising new writers, got engaged; Jim Owens and Rena
Deutsch have also both bought new houses; and several folks have new
jobs.
It's undoubtedly trite to say that our writers are a family, but in
many ways it's true. It's difficult to work so closely together without
forming some kind of emotional bond with other people, and our annual
Writers' Summits really cement those friendships into deep, lasting
relationships. Looking back on 2005, our group has a lot to celebrate,
both within the magazine and without. So congrats and best wishes to
Rich Niro, to all our writers, and to our readers as well, as we
continue the Black Idol story arc and celebrate the end of an amazing
21st year of bringing you fiction on the Internet.
========================================================================
Echoes off the Stone
by R. F. Niro
<OrionFarr@aol.com>
Sy 12, 1018
Gilvelle Marser wished he could wave his arms in mystic circles,
waggle his fingers in arcane gestures, and utter words of power that
would all result in the barge beneath his feet moving faster. He looked
up at the mid-morning sun for what he figured was the sixth or seventh
time in the past ten menes. He knew he was an architect, not a mage,
though; he had no control over the forces of nature. Already, the
transit upriver had taken twice as long as normal.
He scowled and looked down at the water surrounding the barge. The
Coldwell River, swollen by a sennight of late summer storms, flowed
swiftly around the flat-bottomed craft, retarding its progress. A team
of horses on the riverbank, connected to the barge by a trio of thick
hawsers, strained against their harnesses to fight the current.
"You're worrying again, Gil," the barge captain, Yollen Carru, said
as he came to stand at the architect's side. "If it's any consolation,
our float back down the river will be considerably faster than usual.
Although the current will likely make the barge a little tricky to
moor."
"I've already waited a sennight to get out here. You'd think I
could wait another half a bell to get a look at the damage. I had
expected to be repairing the cracks by now." Gilvelle turned his gaze
down towards the barge's captain, nearly twenty years his senior and two
hands shorter, and scowled about the whole situation. Days earlier, on
one of his regular inspections as Duke Clifton's chief architect,
Gilvelle had spotted a large fissure in a central pylon of Dargon's
'causeway', so-called despite actually being a bridge connecting the two
sides of the city by virtue of a historical quirk. The steady rains had
made it impossible for a barge to navigate safely up to the causeway to
assess the severity of the damage, until the sky had cleared the
previous night.
"We'll get there in due time. Events don't always move at the pace
we'd like. I know your da' taught you something about patience." Yollen
grinned, showing his jagged teeth yellowed by time.
Gilvelle could not help but smile at the joke and hear the subtle
barb. Yollen had been a friend of Tarell Marser, Gilvelle's father,
since before Gilvelle was born. Tarell had passed away five winters
back, but Gilvelle had found himself regularly using Yollen's barge as a
platform from which to repair damage to the causeway after a few harsh
winters.
Gilvelle ran his hand through his brown, wavy hair, which was just
beginning to gray at the edges. He shrugged. Before he'd taken this job,
there hadn't been any trace of white. "You're right, my esteemed barge
captain. I just wish I knew how bad this crack is."
"It's been a rough year on the river so far," Yollen commented. "I
don't think I've ever seen as bad a spring runoff, never mind this
summer flood."
"And if it's not the summer floods and spring thaw, and the tree
trunks, and rocks and such that they carry, it's the winter ice working
at the stone." Gilvelle scowled. "One of these days the damage to the
causeway is going to be more than cosmetic."
Before Gilvelle could respond, the barge lurched beneath his feet
and he was tossed in the air. The breath exploded out of Gilvelle's
lungs as he landed. For a moment, the architect lay on the deck,
laboring to draw air back into his body.
"Gil, are you hurt?" Yollen entered into his line of sight. At
first, Gilvelle was surprised to see the barge captain still on his
feet, but then he remembered that the man had spent nearly his whole
life on the rolling surfaces of ships and barges.
Gilvelle took stock for a moment and rose to a sitting position. He
found that none of his joints protested any worse than they had when he
had stepped from bed that morning. He shook his head and found it clear.
"I think I'm fine. What happened?"
Yollen shrugged, the creases on his forehead easing up. He looked
around the barge. "One of our hawsers slipped. We've been having trouble
with them all morning," Yollen said. The older man pointed to one of the
thick ropes that had suddenly gone slack between the barge and shore and
was dipping into the reeds at the water's edge. "You sure you're
alright?"
"Yes, yes. I'll be fine." Gilvelle wasn't completely sure, but took
his friend's proffered hand and rose unsteadily to his feet. "Yollen,
I'm fine. Really. Is everyone else alright?"
"They seem fine." Yollen motioned towards Gilvelle's three masons,
who were picking themselves up off the deck and dusting themselves off.
Adjarn, the leader of the trio, waved reassuringly when he saw the two
men looking his way. Yollen returned the wave. Turning back to Gilvelle,
he said, "I'm going to see what we can do with those ropes. Cjan needs
to do better work than that. I won't have Dargon's chief architect
maimed on my barge, if I can help it. That wouldn't be very good for
business."
"No, I guess it wouldn't," the architect chuckled. "Just don't be
hard on the lad."
"Don't worry, he has only been with me for three fortnights; the
current today is a new challenge for him. He just needs some
encouragement and a gentle reminder."
Yollen strode off towards three of his crewmen. Gilvelle watched
the barge captain's progress, giving himself time to collect his wits.
As Yollen approached the barge men, who were talking amongst
themselves, the youngest of the three, probably not twenty winters old,
pointed at the line which snaked over the bow of the boat and wound
around a stout post. As the young man gestured, he said something to
Yollen that Gilvelle couldn't hear. The youngster brushed back the blond
hair that fell over his eyes and glanced quickly in Gilvelle's
direction.
While Gilvelle watched, Yollen dismissed the other two crewmen and
cupped his hand around the back of the youngster's neck and leaned in to
talk. Again, Gilvelle couldn't hear anything that was said, but he could
tell from the crewman's posture that his captain was giving one of his
typical speeches, likely the one on the importance of details. Many
times over the years, Gilvelle had heard him present different versions
of the same speech.
After a mene of discussion, Yollen gave the sailor a strong pat on
the back and the two began inspecting the loose hawser, tracing its
length back towards the bow.
Gilvelle considered his friend. Yollen had a reputation at the
docks for taking crewmembers that few other captains would have and
molding them into competent sailors. He was known to be tough but fair
with these perennial losers. Few of them had betrayed his trust or
misused the opportunity he gave them. When it came down to it, Gilvelle
could be sure that the young man would do his best to ensure that the
hawser would not slip again.
The chief architect turned back towards the causeway to run through
the steps they'd take for assessing the damage to the pylon and the
steps they'd take to repair it. Gilvelle liked to plan for every
contingency.
"What's that, in the reeds?!" Yollen yelled.
Gilvelle spun in response to the shout. He was in time to see the
barge captain, with remarkable agility for a man of his age, take three
quick strides to reach the port side.
Yollen waved at the teamsters on the riverbank and pointed at an
indistinct shape drifting in the thick weeds along the water's edge on
the commercial side of the city, close to where the hawser dangled. As
Gilvelle watched, one of the men crossed behind the horses and carefully
ascended the muddy slope to the shoreline.
The man stopped abruptly at the water's edge. He stood staring at
the shape for several moments then backed up unsteadily. "Ol's balls,
it's a body," he yelled. Another of the teamsters approached and looked
into the reeds.
"He's dead, that's for certes. Looks to've been floating in here
for a while. Captain, what do we do with it?"
Even from the barge, Gilvelle caught a scent of the decay. He
fought back the gag reflex with a strong swallow.
"Send one of your men for the guard," Yollen called back. "It's not
our problem to solve; it's theirs."
The man nodded at the advice, but looked at the body one more time
before he departed. "He's only got one arm."
Gilvelle's breath caught in his throat and he glanced up to see the
same shock registering on the barge crewmen's, his masons', and the
teamsters' faces.
A young bargeman, his face ashen, came to Gilvelle's side. "The
duke's been away from the city for more'n a sennight. Could this be --?"
"He can't be dead. It couldn't be him. A one-armed body in the
river means nothing." Gilvelle and Yollen stood at the stern of the
barge, which was now moored inside one of the central arches of Dargon's
causeway.
In the bell that followed, Yollen's barge crew had anchored the
barge and Gilvelle's three masons had begun to assemble a low
scaffolding on the footing of the bridge's pylon.
"Aye, probably, but people like the sensational." Yollen pointed
up.
A murmur from the crowd on the causeway above reminded Gilvelle
that the barge crew and the masons were not the only ones who were
interested in the body. With a sigh, Gilvelle tilted his head to get a
glimpse of the throng that had assembled on top of the causeway. He
could see a few of its foremost members leaning over the stonework
edges, raising their fists in excitement. Behind them, he suspected he
would have found other, more fearful souls wringing their hands with
anxiety. He was glad that he could not hear their actual words. There
was little worse than doing your job with an audience. "This mob isn't
helping," Gilvelle said.
"Quite a scene." The barge captain nodded. "You'd think this was
the Melrin festival, with all the people who've come out. Can you blame
them, after a sennight of rain?" The captain waved to the throngs above.
"And a crowd is what you'll get when people think there's a chance Duke
Clifton might be dead."
Gilvelle looked up again to see some of the crowd wave back.
Happily, most of the spontaneous gathering was focusing on the guardsmen
half a furlong upriver, but a few found the work on the barge equally
interesting.
Turning his own gaze upriver, Gilvelle saw a trio of guardsmen
leaning out of a small boat, trying to fish the body from within the
dense reeds on the commercial side of the river. As had been
consistently happening for the past twenty menes, when the men tried to
lever the corpse into the boat, it became snagged in the plants and was
pulled from their grasp by a strong eddy. Beyond the three men, another
guard stood on the river bank, his hands on his hips. His disgust was
clearly evident.
Gilvelle grumbled again. "They're not making my job any easier. If
they'd finish what they're doing, we'd all be better off. This
distraction is putting us further behind schedule."
"Have you ever tried to pull a bloated corpse from a raging river?"
Yollen grinned. "At least Sergeant Cepero had the good sense to send a
half dozen of his men up to the causeway to try to keep some order."
"Don't try to make light of the situation. This is your fault, old
man. Your eyes are too sharp for your age." Gilvelle shook his head in
frustration. "How long do you think it'll take them to identify the
body?"
"I suspect it would be difficult to tell who the person is. He has
likely been dead for a day or more. It's up to the guards to figure all
of that out," Yollen shrugged.
"I talked to Lansing last sennight when I reported this damage."
Gilvelle said. Lansing Bartol, a bard and Duke Clifton Dargon's good
friend, was overseeing the city in the duke's absence. Gilvelle thought
of his patron and silently hoped for the best. "He said the duke would
be away for some time, but didn't mention why."
The barge man raised his eyebrows at Gilvelle's comment.
Gilvelle decided not to pursue the subject any further. "Yollen,
I'm going to check on Adjarn. It's about time we take a look at the
cracks." Gilvelle finished speaking and strode to the pylon side of the
barge.
The younger pair of the masons were standing on the scaffolding,
fastening boards to the uppermost of the two tiers. Adjarn supervised
from the barge's deck.
Gilvelle gently grabbed his chief mason's arm. "How does it look?"
"Still not sure, chief," the stout man said, turning to the
engineer. "Why don't we hop up and take a look?"
Adjarn used the wooden slats of the assembly as steps and began
hoisting himself off the rolling surface of the barge. The thick mason,
just a few years younger than Gilvelle, moved his bulk up the two levels
seemingly without effort. Gilvelle quickly mimicked the man's motions.
The workspace, made of roughly hewn boards, only shook slightly as they
climbed. Gilvelle was pleased with the workmanship and also happy that
his job as the city's main architect kept him active enough so that the
ascent did not wind him.
"Good work so far," Gilvelle said to the two apprentice masons as
he reached the lower platform. The two were standing at the outside edge
of the scaffolding when Adjarn and Gilvelle arrived. Byale, a tall and
gangly blond man, and Emmela, a dark-haired and dimpled girl, smiled at
the compliment. The apprentices waited until the older men stepped out
of their way and then descended back to the barge, likely to get the
masonry tools.
Gilvelle surveyed the pylon, looking over the damage. He saw that
there were three cracks, not just one. The highest fissure was also the
largest and the one he had seen on his survey. "What do you think?" he
asked his chief mason after a moment.
"The two smaller cracks should patch easily." Adjarn gestured at a
pair of two-to-three cubit long gouges in the masonry, both nearly level
with the floor of the scaffolding. "The top one looks deeper and we
don't have a great angle to see from here. I can't tell."
Gilvelle followed Adjarn's gaze up to the crack a cubit above their
heads. It was over twice as long as the two smaller slits and ran nearly
halfway across the bridge support. He could tell from where he stood
that it sloped downwards.
"That crack is pretty high up," Gilvelle commented, as much to
himself as to the stonemason. Most scrapes in the masonry appeared
lower, where barges regularly hit the supports on their travels to
Dargon's docks.
"I know, Gil. It's likely a frost crack we didn't see during our
spring inspection. The waters have been pretty high and could have been
working at it. The floods have been carrying an incredible amount of
debris, too. The rainwater pouring off the causeway could have washed
away damaged stone and widened the opening. You know it's hard to say
exactly what causes any crack."
"Aye." Gilvelle nodded. He didn't always need to know the causes;
his job was to treat the results. "Do you think it reaches the fill in
the middle?"
"I don't know." The stout and swarthy mason shrugged, flexing his
bull-like neck and huge arms with the motion. "It's one of the biggest
cracks I've ever seen, but I think I'm going to have to go up another
level to get a good look into it."
"If water gets into the fill and begins to erode the mixture we
could have a serious problem on our hands. The spans on either side
could be putting their weight on an increasingly empty chamber."
"Gil, why do you always have to consider the worst prospects in any
situation?" Adjarn smiled lopsidedly at him.
"You know that's my job. Duke Clifton has given me the
responsibility of keeping all his holdings in good shape."
"I do know that, but the pylon collapsing isn't too likely." Adjarn
smiled again warmly and began mounting the rungs to the next level. "You
know, chief, when I told my little ones I would be working on the
causeway today, they were worried about me. They're convinced that an
uayab lives under all bridges and that it'd steal me and eat me for
dinner."
Gilvelle pursed his lips. He could not understand why anyone would
want to deal with the kind of uncertainty and confusion that having
children brought to someone's life. He knew Adjarn was a dedicated
father who loved his three small children dearly, though, so he humored
his friend. "What did you tell them?"
"I told them the truth. I told them ..." Adjarn stopped speaking
for a moment as he lay down on the planks to slide his hand into the
crevice. From where Gilvelle stood, he could only see him get his
fingers halfway in. "... that there was no uayab under the causeway
because the river is too deep for uayabs to live in. I explained that
uayabs only live under bridges that cover small streams. They like to be
able to reach their tentacles from the shallow water onto the bridge
top."
Gilvelle shook his head in wonder. He was glad he wouldn't have to
deal with children of his own. Long ago he'd decided that he would
remain committed to his job. To do it right, he needed to devote all of
his time and energy.
"It's deep, chief. I can't find the back edge. It is rough enough
that mortar should hold well, though," Adjarn said after a moment.
"How long will it take to repair?"
Adjarn was quiet for a moment. "It'll take us about a bell to patch
the smaller ones. Probably another one or two to fill this gap. I'll do
it myself. We should be back to shore in less than three bells," he
said.
Gilvelle scowled. That would take them well into the afternoon. He
probably would still make it to down to the docks before dark, but it
would be late before he could reach the keep and give a report.
"Alright, do what you can," he told the mason.
In response, Adjarn leaned over and began instructing Byale and
Emmela about the mortar and tools they would need to fix the crack.
Leaving Adjarn to his job, Gilvelle stepped over and put his hand
against the uneven surface of the pylon. The stone was rough to his
touch, some of the texture from its original quarrying, while other
pockmarks showed the handiwork of the seasons. It was cold under his
palm. He pulled his hand away. "Too bad," he thought. "It would have
been nice to know if the bridge was worn out or still strong and vital."
"Chief, a Bit for your thoughts," Adjarn said, patting Gilvelle's
shoulder. The chief architect had not heard the mason descend.
"Sorry. I was just wondering how many more years this bridge will
stand." Gilvelle turned away from the pylon.
"Plenty more, if you and I have anything to say about it. It's
weathered uncountable days and likely will see many more after both you
and I are gone." Adjarn laughed.
"I know," Gilvelle turned to his friend. "But nothing lasts
forever. What, finally, will bring the stone and the magic of this
bridge crumbling down into the river?"
Adjarn opened his mouth, as if to give one of his regular jovial
replies, but looked at Gilvelle and stopped. Then he became pensive.
"That's a tough question, chief. It's like asking what happens to us
after our time on Makdiar is done. How can we know? I know some of the
religions think there's a better place after this. I'm not so sure. I'd
love to just end up having some of my pieces become part of stone like
this." Adjarn patted the causeway pylon.
The two men stood quietly for another mene. Gilvelle watched the
two apprentices passing tools up to the lowest level of the scaffolding.
He could hear the whole array of human noises from the causeway over
their head: calls of greeting, grunts of assent or dissent, coughs of
annoyance. Emmela called up that they were ready to begin patching.
"Adjarn, I'll leave you to your work," Gilvelle said. "I'll be down
on the deck if you need me." Gilvelle turned around and climbed down
from the scaffolding.
Once he was standing on the barge surface again, his job done for
the moment, Gilvelle looked upriver. In the distance he could see a
number of good-sized barges carrying goods and passengers down the river
towards the causeway.
"How does the work look?" Yollen asked, approaching and breaking
into Gilvelle's thoughts. "With the water running so high and fast, I'd
expect that the daily barge rush will be beginning soon. That could make
the work here a little trickier for you."
Gilvelle nodded in agreement. "What's one more complication among
many? Besides, barges passing by while we work is at least a
complication we're well used to," the chief architect said, trying to
sound cheerful. The afternoon was the busiest time for traffic to
Dargon. If they were close enough, most barge captains would sail into
the evening and land in Dargon for a night at its taverns. If they
couldn't make it by dark, the river barges tied up outside of Dargon at
one of the camps and arrived the next day. "Adjarn says at least two
bells or so of work. That last crack is deep."
"If it's any help, the guard finally fished the body out of the
river while you were up with Adjarn," Yollen said. "They took it away,
likely to the guardhouse."
"Did Sergeant Cepero seem worried when he left?" Gilvelle asked.
"Couldn't say, really. Seemed his normal self, but left with a pair
of his men with the cart fairly quick," Yollen replied, looking up.
Gilvelle followed Yollen's gaze to the brilliantly blue sky, seeing
a flock of screegulls wheeling aimlessly overhead, occasionally passing
between them and the glowing orb of the sun. As the two men looked on, a
wayward bird flew into the side of the causeway, offered a confused cry,
and limply plummeted thirty cubits to the water below. "You don't see
that everyday," Yollen said.
The chief architect grunted a noncommittal response. He was
watching the bird's body carried away by the swift running river. It did
a single spin in a small eddy before sinking beneath the surface.
"Look out!" Yollen said. Gilvelle turned to see the man still
looking up. The barge captain stepped back nimbly. The movement was just
in time, as a watery mass from above landed where he had been standing
and soaked Gilvelle. The architect sputtered in confusion, using his
sleeves to wipe the mess from his eyes. When he was able to look down at
himself, he found his left shoulder and arm soaked with a lumpy and
watery mixture that disturbingly resembled vomit. The warmth was
disgusting and the cloying smell even worse. Gilvelle's fears were
confirmed when he looked up to see that a green-faced man was sheepishly
waving what looked like an apology down at him.
"Let me get you some rags." Yollen ambled over to the small shack
situated on the port side stern of the barge and went in.
Gil sighed again and looked back down at his clothing. He splashed
water on himself from the river in an attempt to clean off the vomit and
wished the day would end. A short distance upriver, the large barge he'd
seen earlier turned slightly so that it would pass beneath one of the
arches of the causeway.
The fifth bell of day rang out from the Harbormaster's Building.
Between the loud rings, Gilvelle heard the bleating of a flock of sheep,
along with a change in smoothness of the river water flowing past their
barge. A heartbeat after these things registered in his mind, Adjarn
shouted, "Chief, we've got trouble!"
Yollen, leaving from the shack with an arm full of rags, yelled.
"Ol's balls! She's gonna hit, and fast."
Gilvelle looked up and gaped at what he saw. The incoming barge,
men and women scrambling all over its deck, was sliding sideways towards
the pylon on which they worked. Gilvelle saw that the unwieldy craft was
reinforced at the corners with stout brackets of metal. The crew were
working hard to keep it away, but Gilvelle could already tell from its
speed that it was too late.
"Adjarn, get down!" Gilvelle jumped towards his masons. He could
hear Yollen bellowing orders to his crew.
The barge struck the causeway support with a tremendous crash. The
thunder of splintering wood and the shriek of metal scraping against
rock echoed off the causeway. Gilvelle was thrown off his feet.
He landed on his hands and knees. He could tell that both his palms
and legs earned serious scrapes from the fall. As he caught himself, his
analytical mind took in the sights around him.
The wayward barge was doomed. The front end stopped suddenly, while
the back end continued its forward thrust. The middle was forced
upwards, buckling the barge and tearing it into two pieces.
The collision was even more catastrophic for the causeway. Gilvelle
watched the pylon shudder with the impact. The initial concussion caused
the stonework of the support to bulge and shake, destroying the
scaffolding attached to it. Adjarn and his two apprentices were tossed
into the churning river water. Gilvelle tried to watch where they went
after that, but lost track of them in the chaos. They were not the only
debris in the air. He turned back to see the damaged arch cracking at
multiple points, disintegrating. The upriver half of the stone pylon
toppled. Gilvelle realized the causeway was going to collapse. He rolled
over and hopped to his feet.
He immediately saw that Yollen had come to the same conclusion. He
and one of his men hastily sawed at the lines that held their anchor
ropes in place. One anchor released easily, but the other resisted. The
final ropes began to split, but not before the toppling pillar destroyed
the integrity of the arch over their heads. The bridge fell around them.
The architect started to run, but quickly realized there was
nowhere to go. He looked around to find a wake caused by the crashing
debris approaching. It threw the inward side of their barge into the
air. He was tossed and landed on his back again. He saw chunks of stone
descending towards him.
He covered his head, but felt the barge beginning to spin around
the remaining front anchor. The wake that threw him to the deck must
have set them in motion, he realized. The first stones crashed into the
river where their barge had been only a moment earlier. Rocks plunged
towards the river and barge, one of the pieces of masonry smashing the
starboard side of the craft. It shuddered with the impact and the sound
of splintering wood peppered the chief architect. "We're not moving fast
enough," Gilvelle thought.
He found himself rolled against the port side of the barge,
crashing into the gunwale and then into the small cabin. His shoulder
ached from the impact, but the pain was secondary to his fear. There was
so much noise that Gilvelle could not pick out any one sound to focus
on. He could see more stonework, pulled down as pieces of the span fell,
striking the water in huge plumes of spray, seemingly all around them.
He tensed as he saw the front half of the pillar topple over sideways,
landing on the remains of the bow of the other barge, shattering it even
further.
At that moment, Gilvelle felt sunlight on his face again. Yollen's
vessel had pivoted around the one last down-river anchor rope, coming
out from under the rain of rubble. Gilvelle tried to stand, but found he
could not as the barge continued its wild spin. From his prone position,
Gilvelle saw moving shapes within the falling stonework.
"The crowd on the bridge," he remembered. "Oh Stevene, they were
trapped in this!" He saw people plummeting with the rubble, others
hanging and calling loudly, panic coloring their voices as they dangled,
and some scrambling on the edges of the gap created in one of the center
spans in the bridge.
Where were the others? Gilvelle looked around frantically for
Yollen. He was amazed to see the old man, legs spread wide to compensate
for the barge's jarring motion, still yelling orders at a pair of the
boat's crew. These two scrambled on their hands and knees to finish
cutting the last anchor line. Downstream, he saw heads bobbing in the
water, clinging to a piece of wood from one of the barges. He hoped they
were his masons.
The last anchor rope finally separated and the barge slid away from
the wounded causeway. Gilvelle rolled again at the new motion. He braced
his prone form between the wall of the shack and the side of the boat as
it bucked beneath him. After a few moments, the craft steadied. Gilvelle
caught his breath, checking his body for serious damage. Relieved to
find that he didn't have any injuries worse than cuts and bruises, he
began to lever himself to his feet. He had only partially completed this
maneuver when he heard a resounding crunch as the barge struck something
solid. The sudden stop flipped Gilvelle onto his back, the pain causing
him to exhale sharply. He felt as though he's been pounded in the back
with a great hammer and he gasped in short bits of air.
Catching his breath once again, he looked up to find that the
current paired with the eddies caused by the bridge collapse had sent
the barge off towards shore, where it had struck a sand bar and beached
on the commercial side of the city, well below the causeway, near the
swamp. Gilvelle leapt to his feet, ignoring the protests of his
not-so-young body. He saw that Yollen was still standing and he and his
crew were working to secure the barge.
The engineer found himself frozen in place. He didn't know what to
do. A thousand courses of action ran through his mind. He couldn't
decide on any one of them. All he could feel was shock and disbelief.
How could this have happened? Was it his fault? What could he do to
help? He realized immediately that he was just one of many people caught
up in this tragedy.
"Gil, are you alright?" Yollen called, coming over to stand next to
him.
"I'm in one piece, at least," the chief architect said, trying to
shake the confusion out of his head. "I need to find Adjarn and the
others." He looked downriver.
"There's nothing you can do. The river's running too fast. You'll
never be able to catch up with them on foot before they reach the
harbor. We can only hope that someone down at the docks sees them and
helps." Yollen rubbed his beard. "I'll send a man down to try to find
them."
Gilvelle nodded. Yollen was right. As the man turned and called to
one of his crewmen, Gilvelle realized that he still didn't know what to
do. He started forward and, then stopped.
"I'm going back to the causeway," he said to the barge captain.
This time he started forward and didn't stop. Gilvelle jumped over the
side of the barge and began running the furlong back upriver.
The riverbank soil shifted under his feet as he ran. At one point,
it caused him to stumble, his bent knee leaving an impression behind in
the beach detritus. He could see the panicked crowd, the mass resolving
itself into individuals as he got closer. Most surged away from the
broken spans straddling the middle of the bridge, while others, mostly
guardsmen, fought against the tide of people. Some of the city guard had
already been present when the crash had happened.
Gilvelle reached the end of the causeway, where the crowd was still
milling about. He turned sideways to move by an old man making a gesture
of supplication to Ol. He passed a woman who turned in slow circles
calling out for her husband or son, tears streaming down her face.
Gilvelle slid through more breaks in the chaos to reach the edge of the
bridge. Jumping up on the raised, narrow stonework that lined the side
of the causeway, he increased his speed again, starting to struggle for
breath. An errant elbow almost took him out at the knees, but like a
young swordsman, he jumped over the offending limb and kept his forward
progress. He didn't know what he could do to help, but the blood surged
through his veins and kept him moving.
The crowd began to thin after only a dozen cubits and he leapt from
the stonework back onto the bridge spans. It took him another thirty or
so strides before he reached the gathering at the edge of the damage. As
he approached, he could tell that in the ten menes since the crash, the
guardsmen had already been hard at work.
Gilvelle grabbed the one of the guard. "What can I do?"
"You can tell us if the rest of the causeway is stable. We've
already got a lot of rescuers up here and down below," the man said.
Sensing the urgency in the other man's tone, Gilvelle immediately
went to work, surveying the scene. The crash had left a gap of thirty or
forty cubits on the upriver side of the bridge. He studied the span
across the way. The stone had broken halfway between two of the pylons
and left a large hanging ledge. The exposed side of the causeway surface
was rife with cracks, and pieces fell off as the chief architect
watched. The support behind it looked secure, though, showing no major
surface damage.
Gilvelle turned his attention to the near edge, under his feet. It
was cracked and jagged in places, but had crumbled close to another
support and hardly any dangled over the gap.
What remained in between, a quarter of the original width, at the
most, was cracked and looked none too secure. As he watched, a guardsman
carefully moved out a few cubits onto the strip, cautiously navigating
the broken stone as he tugged the end of a rope along.
He made his report to the guardsman he had spoken with earlier and
finished with, "I can't tell the state of the pillar beneath our feet. I
will need to look."
"Will the remaining causeway hold someone's weight?" the guard
asked.
"That's hard to say. Long term, I don't think it's secure, but I
think it could hold people for now." Gilvelle made his best guess,
hoping that he wasn't wrong.
"I'll get my men to clear the other side." He grabbed one of the
other guardsmen, a slender young soldier, wide-eyed at the situation,
and explained what needed to be done. The boy saluted, hopped up on the
remaining span, and nimbly loped across, taking care to keep his balance
on the damaged roadway. Gilvelle held his breath the entire time it took
the man to cross the gap.
"I need to go out there, too," Gilvelle said.
"Be careful. We've lost too many already today."
Gilvelle paused at the jagged end of the causeway, remembering it
as it had been: a masterpiece of stonework. It had stood for centuries
as a testament to the effort that its construction had taken. It had
been his job to maintain it. He forced the thought away.
He looked over the edge at the chaos below. He knew that in this
section of the river the water was deep, but not so deep that the debris
would be completely submerged. The causeway had been located here in
order to take advantage of the gradual slope of the shore. In the
middle, though, the bottom was over twenty cubits down.
Stone blocks were scattered around the remaining half of the former
pylon, likely resting on the edges of its footing. Gilvelle knew that
the base of each pillar sloped down towards the bottom, leaving enough
clearance for shallow-draft vessels like barges.
Amid the piles were trapped townspeople, some waving frantically.
Around them climbed the first rescuers. Already the guardsmen had
commandeered another barge that had been coming downriver, and were
positioning it as a platform for rescue operations. Some of the rescuers
even swam around, diving under the surface. They seemed to be looking
for people trapped underwater. Gilvelle tried to ignore the screams for
help and tense commands of the rescuers. The workers moved with a
definite intensity and economy of motion. Gilvelle reminded himself that
another falling section could injure searchers as well as the already
trapped.
The chaos felt surreal to Gilvelle. Not a half bell ago it had been
just another normal day in Dargon, albeit an ill-fated one. Now, it was
anything but normal.
Gilvelle decided he needed to continue his work, taking a tentative
step onto the damaged bridge span. He took another stride, avoiding a
deep crack in the stone. Inhaling deeply, he decided he needed to move
faster; there could be lives at stake, both those below and those above.
Focusing on the task at hand, he moved out ten cubits and looked back at
the support. He became worried immediately. From where Gilvelle stood,
he realized his initial assessment had been wrong. He could see stone
crumbling from a partially hidden crack at the top of the supporting
pillar. He got even more worried as he watched a larger chunk begin to
slide from the top of the support.
Gilvelle jumped into action, running back towards the guards trying
to manage the crowd. "Get them back! Move back!" he yelled as he ran,
waving his arms frantically.
A loud pop echoed from the top of the bridge support. Another large
chunk of upriver roadway slid off. Below, he could see rescuers jumping
into the water or scrambling over the pile of rubble from the fallen
support to get out from under it. That was when Gilvelle saw his own
danger. He was approaching the edge when the rock began its plunge,
shaking the bridge as it let loose. The causeway groaned and rocked
beneath his feet and Gilvelle was tossed into the air. He desperately
grabbed the stonework rail in order to keep from pitching off the side
of the bridge. His fingers and feet found purchase and he held himself
in place with tensed muscles. After a huge splash from below, the
architect was able to raise himself back up and peer into the gap. He
was pleased to see that while the support had taken more damage, it
seemed to have retained most of its integrity. The falling piece had
left a jagged, but less damaged edge. He saw cracks near the base of the
support, but above the water line. None of them seemed exceedingly deep,
but they would require attention before too long.
"I think it will hold, at least for now. It will need repair, but
as long as it isn't hit again or we don't get another bad storm in the
next few bells, we're alright," the chief architect said as he returned
to the guardsman.
Gilvelle and walked off the causeway. He felt like he was walking
through a dream as the calls of the rescuers and the shouts from the
city all faded into the background noise. He found himself walking on
the small, sandy beach that he'd run across earlier. The area was now
being used to treat the first injuries from the crash. He stopped next
to a healer who was wrapping the discolored ankle of a young man, who
looked like a drowned rat. The healer offered the architect a small, sad
smile, barely a lifting of one corner of his mouth. Gilvelle moved on.
Gilvelle could see Yollen's barge beached downstream, near the end
of Dock Street. He walked by a number of people sitting or lying on the
sand. One of them was a mother holding a baby's body tenderly, crying.
Another healer came over and put his hand on the baby's forehead and
then shook his head at the woman. The woman opened her mouth in a silent
shriek. Gilvelle turned away.
Gilvelle found himself looking back towards the remains of the
causeway, where not even a bell earlier he had been standing on the
barge. As he watched the rescue effort on the river, a survivor crawled
out of the rock pile, a half dozen men prying up a boulder that had
pinned him in the rubble. Collapsing after only a few feet, the man was
quickly lifted and passed to a barge for treatment by healers.
"Hey, can you help me carry this guy?" A guardsman grabbed
Gilvelle's arm, motioning to a boat pulled up on the sand. A man's body
was draped over the gunwale.
Gilvelle nodded and came around the side of the small craft,
sloshing through ankle deep water. He realized immediately that the man
was beyond help, his chest crushed and bloodied. Gilvelle and the guard
carried the man to the back of the beach and onto a strip of grass. They
had started a pile that would grow as the afternoon continued.
Nearly two bells later, Gilvelle was back on the roadway next to
the causeway when Yollen called to him. The engineer had been staring at
the reflection of the bridge in the rippling water of the river when he
heard the familiar voice.
"Gil," Yollen came to stand beside him. "I've been looking for you.
"I've got something you need to see." As the barge captain put his hand
on his shoulder, Gilvelle realized that he smelled terrible. His clothes
reeked of a mixture of sweat, stone dust, blood, and bells-old vomit.
Gilvelle looked around slowly, finding himself too exhausted and
sore to do much else. "Where?"
Yollen pointed up to a small, horse-drawn cart waiting further up
the roadway. Yollen began walking towards it and Gilvelle followed
behind. He could see an indistinct shape covered by a blanket in the
back.
They were still a dozen cubits away when Gilvelle realized what it
was. "Who is it?"
"I'm sorry, Gil." A tear trailed down Yollen's cheek. "It's Adjarn.
I thought you'd want to be the one to bring him home to his wife."
Gilvelle stood still. He knew he should cry, but he felt nothing
but the same emptiness he'd felt all afternoon. Finally, he walked over
and put his hand on the blanket. At the same time, he realized that in a
few days thoughts of the good-natured stoneworker would bring grief as
well as emptiness.
"His body turned up a short ways downriver and was picked up by one
of the boats that came to help. He likely never felt a thing when the
stone crushed him," Yollen said, putting his hand on his Gilvelle's
shoulder.
"What about Emmela and Byale?" Gilvelle knew he needed some good
news. "And your crew?"
"The two apprentices were pulled from the river by the docks. I
made sure that they found a ride into town. After their ordeal, I didn't
want them walking home," Yollen answered. "Only one of my men was hurt.
Cjan was thrown overboard, but swam ashore. His arm was broken, but a
healer splinted it and he will be mended in a few months time. He fared
much better than a lot of people."
"If only there hadn't been a crowd on the causeway when it was hit.
How many people do you think were lost?"
"Many dozens, likely ... but it'll be some time before we know the
full count."
"I don't know." Gilvelle felt confused by all the events, but knew
that the accident should not have happened. "I've been working with
stone for decades and I'm telling you that support shouldn't have split
like that. It was weak, yes, but not that brittle."
"Aye, I've seen plenty of barges hit her, maybe even one or two of
my own, and I've never seen anything like that. Maybe conditions were
just right. Maybe there was something more going on."
"Like what?" Gilvelle looked at the old man questioningly.
"I don't know. That's for the priests and soothsayers to say, but
all my old bones tell me is that this wasn't something natural."
"You can't know that, old man."
"No, I can't, but I see in your eyes that you suspect the same
thing. All your experience as a builder tells you that this shouldn't
have happened." The old barge master turned to look at him.
"My background as an engineer tells me that it had to have natural
causes." Gilvelle paused for a moment. "In which case, what if I could
have prevented this? What if we had started the repairs earlier?"
"'What ifs' do no good. I don't think there was anything you could
do. I suspect this was out of your hands, as skilled as they are."
"Straight. Understanding is not as important as acceptance. We may
never know what happened." Gilvelle crossed his arms across his chest.
"We need to move on from here."
"What are you going to do, Gil?"
"What I can. I'm going to take one step at a time, my friend. I
already sent out a call for masons and any mages that are interested in
trying out for the job." Gilvelle turned to see his friend studying him
with a quizzical expression. "I already have a barge and captain in
mind."
"Aye, lad, I would be honored, but I think you'll need more than
one barge. Mine will need a lot of work before it's ready to ply the
river again." Yollen rubbed his beard. "Barges are going to be at a
premium. I have already contacted a few friends about leasing theirs and
their crews. Every one that can be spared will be needed to keep trade
flowing between the two sides of the city until the causeway is
repaired. When do you want to start planning?"
"Tomorrow. Sergeant Cepero says the guard is going to keep men at
both ends of the causeway tonight. Let's take Adjarn home and then find
ourselves a quiet inn in which to toast to our friend." Gilvelle felt
the first tear slide down his cheek.
========================================================================
Out of the Rubble
Part 1
by P. Atchley, Dave Fallon, and R. F. Niro
<deepartha@yahoo.com>, <dfallon23@yahoo.com>, and <OrionFarr@aol.com>
Sy 12, 1018
"That's not fair!"
"So what?"
Oriel recognized the voices as those of Briam and Finn as she
turned the corner of the house on Murson Street. Her excitement fled as
she stopped and took in the scene. The boys stood less than two cubits
apart glaring at each other, both shaking with anger.
Briam, the shorter and stockier boy, had his fists clenched at his
sides. His brown eyes shone with anger. A strand of his chestnut hair
had fallen towards his nose, serving to emphasize the vein that stood
out on his forehead. Finn was waving his hands in the air. He was half a
head taller, but so slight that he looked small compared to Briam. A
fleck of spittle trailed from the corner of Finn's clenched jaw.
Oriel had been so happy before she rounded the corner. Mayda, the
cook at Dargon Keep to whom she had been apprenticed, had given her the
afternoon off to spend with her adoptive family. On the way home, Oriel
had heard news that she wanted to share with Briam and Finn.
The two boys started arguing again before Oriel could make her
presence known.
"It's a dumb game! You made it up," Briam said.
"It's better than your favorite game: find-the-rat."
Both paused to catch their breath. Oriel was about to jump in when
another voice, one that spoke with authority, broke in.
"Briam! Finn! What is going on here?" Sian Allyn, their guardian,
stood on the small porch of the house, her hands on her hips, and her
hazel eyes ablaze. Kerith, the youngest of the orphans, hung onto the
back of Sian's skirt and peeked around her side. Oriel could tell from
the dirt streaking the seven year-old's face that she had been crying,
probably chased inside by the boys' argument.
"I'm waiting, boys. Which one of you is going to tell me what's
going on here?"
Although she was always kind to them, Sian didn't hesitate to
scold. In the past few fortnights she had been using that tone often,
always directed at Briam and Finn. The last time Oriel had been at home
she'd heard Sian tell Tom Madden, their neighbor, that they were like
two young bulls butting heads. Oriel found it difficult to bear, because
Briam was her closest friend in the world, and Finn always made her
laugh.
Sian continued, "Finn, you're older; you speak first. Then Briam,
you'll get your chance to have your say. If either of you speaks out of
turn, you'll be doing everyone's chores for a sennight and I might even
make up some new, entirely unpleasant ones. Am I understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," both boys replied in unison.
"Finn." Sian crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back to
listen.
Oriel walked over and stood next to Kerith, putting her arm around
the younger girl, as Finn prepared to speak.
In a rush, Finn said, "We were playing the new game I made up. It's
called 'Reach the Keep'. One person gets to be a guard. He stands in the
keep." He pointed at a large square scratched in the dirt.
"He closes his eyes and the other people try to sneak up on him. If
he hears them, he has to point at them. If he catches someone, the
person has to go all the way out of the yard to start again. If the
sneak reaches the keep, he gets to become the guard and make a new rule
for the game. The only rule that's not allowed is for the guard to open
his eyes.
"Briam was the guard and I crawled around from Tom Madden's yard
without him hearing me and reached the keep. Briam got mad when I made a
new rule, but that's the game."
Sian turned to Briam. "Is that true?"
Briam looked down at the ground, kicking the dirt with his foot.
"Yes, we were playing his dumb game, but his rule was that I had to hop
on one leg from now on. Kerith got to run, but I had to hop. That's not
fair!"
"He doesn't play fair either!" Finn broke in. "You're supposed to
sneak up on the guard, but all Briam does is wait in one place until a
wagon comes by and I can't hear, and then he runs as fast as he can into
the keep before I can point at him. That's not how you're supposed to do
it."
Briam's response was instantaneous. "Your game is dumb. I can run
if I want to. You're just mad that I'm faster than you."
"I can run further --"
"Enough!" Sian snapped. "What am I going to do with you two?" She
looked off into the distance for a moment before turning back. "This has
to stop. Both of you were wrong. Finn, you must be fair to everyone or
no one will want to play with you. If you make a rule, it must apply to
everyone. How would you feel if someone made a rule just against you?"
Turning to the stouter boy, she said, "Briam, if it is Finn's game,
he makes the rules. If you want to play with him, you must obey them. If
you don't agree with them, getting angry isn't going to solve the
problem. You need to come to me, or stop and ask Finn how he would feel
if the rule was only for him."
Both boys nodded sullenly.
"Now," she continued, "both of you are going to do all of the
chores together for the next four days. If this behavior continues, I'm
going to increase your work until you have absolutely no time to play.
Is that clear?"
Again, both boys nodded. Oriel could tell that neither was happy
with the situation, but arguing with Sian would only make the penalty
worse.
"Your first task will be to go with the girls to the market and
fill my orders. You will get no extra money and must come straight
back." Sian turned to the two girls. "Oriel, what brings you home today?
It's good to see you."
Oriel explained how Mayda had let her go for the day. She omitted
the news she'd heard on the street, feeling guilty about it, but after
seeing Sian so mad she told herself that she was afraid of what Sian
would say about gossiping.
"Would you go to the market with the boys and Kerith?" Sian asked.
"Yes!"
"Finn, you are in charge of Kerith for the day. You're the oldest
and you have to take care of all of them, straight?" Sian gave Finn a
stern look.
"Straight." Finn grinned. He always managed to shrug off rebukes
quickly.
Sian shook her head with a wry smile and handed some money to
Oriel, who repeated the list of items to buy. "Be sure to get fennel and
verjuice, and Jur-fish for dinner tonight."
"Mayda says you can't eat the inside parts of the Jur-fish." Oriel
winced as the words came out of her mouth. The last time she'd been
home, Sian had voiced her frustration with Oriel's new habit of
prefacing most of her statements with "Mayda says". Thankfully, Sian
didn't seem to notice this time.
"Straight. Run along now. Be back at midday for lunch."
"Can we have leftwiches for lunch, please?" Kerith asked.
"Is there any bread?" Oriel asked. "I could help make some."
"Sian baked some this morning," Kerith said.
"Thank you for the offer, Oriel, but you can go with the others to
the market." She looked at each child appraisingly for a moment, and
then turned and headed back into the house.
The three older children loped off together, followed by the little
girl. Predictably, it was Briam who slowed down and Oriel who held out a
hand to Kerith. Finn only paused when he realized that no one was right
behind him.
As they rounded the corner out of sight of the house, Oriel let the
pent up excitement inside of her bubble out. "Briam, Finn, do you want
to know what I heard on my way from the keep? I heard that they found a
dead body in the river by the causeway. Someone sent a runner to fetch
the keep guards as I was leaving."
Both boys stopped in their tracks. "Why didn't you tell us
earlier?" Finn asked. Immediately, he realized why. "Oh ... Sian
wouldn't have let us leave."
Briam's eyes widened in excitement. "We should go see what's
happening. I bet Sergeant Cepero will be there." Briam loved watching
the guards in action. During the festival last Seber, Rebecca, a healer
and fortune teller, had read a flinger for Briam. Throwing flingers was
a common method used to divine someone's future. Rebecca had told him
that he was destined to join the town guard. Since then, he had taken
every opportunity to watch them work.
"What about food for leftwiches?" Kerith looked imploringly at the
three older children.
"We'll have plenty of time later to go to the market. We'll have to
rush, but Sian will never know we made a side trip." Finn had taken two
steps away before he finished his last sentence.
Briam's response was similar. "Straight, we'll make you two
leftwiches if you go with us."
Kerith looked at Oriel last as if hoping for support, but she
turned away and looked off into the distance, unwilling to oppose the
boys. After the earlier argument, she wasn't about to question any idea
that they both agreed on. Even more, some fascination drew her to the
commotion at the causeway. What harm could come of it? "Kerith, I'll
hold your hand," she finally said.
The children started to walk but then began to jog, and Finn pulled
ahead right away. Briam followed at a leisurely pace, turning back every
once in a while to make sure the girls were close behind him. Soon they
were on the causeway, where a crowd had already gathered. Finn raced
ahead and squeezed in between a buxom matron and a stocky man. Briam
held onto Kerith's other hand, and he and Oriel leaned over the stone
railing on the side of the bridge.
At first, she didn't see anything unusual. A short distance away, a
barge was making its way down the river. Beneath the causeway, some
workers stood on scaffolding above another barge anchored in place
against the river current. They seemed to be performing repairs on one
of the central stone arches of the bridge.
Then she noticed about half-a-furlong upriver, on the banks, were
various members of the town guard. Two of them were in a boat, fishing
around in the reeds. As the children watched, something large and heavy
was dragged out of the water and maneuvered onto a waiting cart.
"Is that a body?" Oriel stared down, squinting.
Briam stared for a while before answering. "It could be. If it is,
he's dead."
"Lift me up so that I can see." Kerith was jumping up and down in
excitement, trying to see over the railing of the bridge, but Oriel and
Briam responded abruptly.
"Stay put."
"Wait, Kerith."
Briam pointed to one of the distant guardsmen who was limping
slightly as he accompanied the cart towards the road. "Look, I think
that's Sergeant Cepero."
"I want to see," Kerith said.
Oriel ignored her. The barge they had originally seen had crept
close to the causeway by then. As they watched, it turned awkwardly to
one side, then straightened, and then immediately spun again in the
opposite direction. The people on its deck scurried about in confusion.
A shout of warning went up from someone on the causeway. The barge
was still moving forward, and as the spectators watched in open-mouthed
shock, it crashed with an explosive bang into one of the middle pylons
of the bridge. All around her, Oriel heard gasps and muffled yelps.
The entire causeway rumbled under her feet as if a giant hand were
shaking it. The stonework shrieked as it cracked right where the
children stood. Oriel frantically turned to look for Kerith, but the
girl had vanished. Around her the crowd stirred to panicked action. Some
strained forward to look, others rushed back towards the ends of the
bridge, many shoving and pushing as they ran. Some started speaking or
calling out, and a few even began to scream in fright.
Oriel's heart sank as she scanned the chaos, searching. Then she
saw the younger girl, clinging to the rough stonework of the railing
right next to the crack. As Oriel moved, she saw pieces of the upriver
side of the bridge break off and fall. The gap in the stonework widened,
extending in little tendrils towards the younger girl. Kerith saw it
too, her eyes wide with terror.
"Kerith! Give me your hand. Now!"
Before Oriel could do anything more than yell, Briam sprang out of
the crowd and pried Kerith's fingers from the railing. Scared, but
realizing that he was helping, the little girl let go of the structure.
Briam wasn't prepared for the sudden lack of resistance and stumbled
backwards, falling heavily to the bridge surface with Kerith in his
arms. As Briam lay panting on the roadway, Oriel leaned over him and
pulled the smaller girl away. Kerith was crying but otherwise seemed
uninjured. She reached over and clung to Oriel, and she felt tears
streaming down her own cheeks as well.
Another tremor shook the causeway. Oriel held Kerith tightly to her
chest and found herself stumbling into a sitting position on the
undamaged roadway. She stared in horror as the crack next to the girls
began to widen. Then the road surface beyond it began to cant away from
them, leaving Briam lying on his back on the sloping surface.
"Briam!" Oriel screamed.
He tried to scramble up, but before he could find his feet, he slid
downwards as the broken part of the bridge tipped toward the river. Arms
flailing, he tried to grab something, but the roadway was tilted at too
much of an angle for him to find a grip. An older man and a guard
reached out to grab Briam's hand, but the bridge was tipping too much,
and he was sliding too fast. As Oriel watched, screaming, Briam reached
the edge and pitched out of sight.
Another crack sounded from the damaged roadway as more stonework
split off and followed Briam down. The rumble picked up speed and roared
ferociously. Nearly the entire sloped span broke off and fell. A
resounding crash echoed from the river below.
"Briam! Briam!" Oriel couldn't stop calling. She was still clinging
to Kerith, who shook and cried piteously. Around the two girls, people
were running. Most were moving away from the center of the causeway, but
a few people stepped carefully towards the gap.
Kerith let out a sudden wail, and only when Oriel heard the younger
girl's voice did she realize that she herself was still screaming
Briam's name.
Someone grabbed her arm. "Hush! Come away from there, child. You
can't do anything to help him." The older man who had tried to help
Briam pulled Oriel away from the edge.
She retreated with Kerith still clutched to her. Tears streaked the
faces of both the girls; Kerith continued to sob while Oriel's weeping
was now silent, but no less panicked. As she stumbled off the causeway,
Finn came rushing from the crowd that had gathered where the roadway met
the riverbank.
"Oriel! Kerith! Come with me. We must get home before Sian finds
out that we were here." He caught Kerith's arm and began marching her
off.
"No, Finn. No!" The small girl struggled in his determined grasp,
but couldn't seem to break free.
His brisk words had caught Oriel off guard, but they helped her
tears stop. She hurried after him, calling, "Wait, Finn. We have to get
Briam. Wait!"
By this time Finn and Kerith were on the ground on the new city
side of the river. He turned to face Oriel and his eyes darted from her
to Kerith and beyond. "Where's Briam?"
"I'm trying to tell you," Oriel cried, wiping the tears off her
face. She felt as if her world was as tilted as the roadway had been
when Briam fell. "We have to go back. He's down there. Look!" She turned
and pointed to the rubble-filled gap.
She began to move back toward the crack when Finn grabbed her hand.
"No, someone has to go back to tell Sian. You have to take Kerith home.
I'll go and look for Briam."
"I can't just leave him!" Oriel tried to shake his hand off, but he
would not let go. "He would never leave if I needed help."
Finn said, "Oriel, it's not safe here. I'm the oldest and Sian put
me in charge, so you have to do what I say. You have to go home."
Enraged at being ordered, Oriel snapped, "Where were you when this
happened? Sian told you to look after Kerith, and if you had been there,
Briam wouldn't have fallen off."
Finn blinked and looked at his feet for an instant. Then he met her
gaze. "Look at Kerith, Oriel. She needs Sian. And I have to go look for
Briam because I'm the one in charge. I wasn't there when the bridge
fell, but I'm here now."
Before Oriel could reply, a guard she did not recognize came up to
them. "What are you kids doing here? You're Mistress Sian's children,
aren't you?" When Kerith nodded, he continued, "She will be looking for
you. You need to go home. Now."
Finn said, "Yes, that's what I was just telling them. I have to go
and look for Briam."
The guard was shaking his head before Finn finished his statement.
"No, no, you too. Aren, is it?"
"No, I'm Finn."
The guard said sternly, "Well then, Finn, you have to take care of
the little one. I want your word that you will take the girls home."
"You can't tell me what to do. I don't even know you."
The guard gritted his teeth in an expression of frustration.
"Cepero was right; you are a handful. Listen to me, all of you. I'm a
sergeant; my name is Griebel, and I work with Sergeant Cepero. Now you
know me too, and yes, I can tell you what to do. Give me your word,
young Finn, that you will go home with the girls. Now!"
Sergeant Cepero's name seemed to return some sense to Finn, and he
nodded reluctantly.
"Straight home!"
As the sergeant watched them, Finn led the way, still holding
Kerith's hand. He didn't go very fast, and Oriel guessed that he was
fuming about being forced to give his word. He was probably just as
worried about Briam as she was. Her mind was a whirl of thoughts, but
her concern over Finn seemed oddly clear to her now.
"Are you angry about having to go home, Finn?" she asked.
"He made me give my word." Finn was brusque.
"He's right. It's dangerous out on the bridge. Kerith almost fell,
and Briam --" Oriel's voice was stopped by tears that just seemed to
come out of nowhere.
"Oh, stop crying, would you?" he snapped.
Kerith, whose sobbing had abated to quiet hiccups as they started
on their way home, glared at him. "Don't you yell at Oriel. It's all
your fault because you ran off. Sian said you were in charge, and --"
"Hush, Kerith," Oriel recovered her voice at the younger girl's
spirited defense of her. Thinking of Briam had made the tears come back
just for a moment, but she wouldn't weep now when she knew that Kerith
needed her. Even though Sian had put Finn in charge, he and Kerith never
got along, and Oriel knew she needed to make peace between the two of
them.
"No, it's his fault," Kerith insisted. "He should have stayed with
us. I'll tell Sian on him, and --"
"No, you won't." Finn shook his head vehemently. "It's not my
fault. You should have kept up with me. And now I can't go and look for
Briam because I have to take you home."
Kerith stopped dead in the street, and Finn, still holding her
hand, tugged. "Come on. I have to take you home and then go search for
him. Come, you little git!"
Kerith began to wail loudly. "I hate you! Briam fell down because
you weren't there."
"Finn! How could you say such a thing?" Oriel knelt in the street,
putting both arms around Kerith. "Don't cry, Kerry, please. He didn't
mean it."
Two voices said as one: "Did too."
In the midst of her worry and fear and tears, Oriel suddenly felt
very tired. "Look, we have to get home quickly. Finn, you didn't see
what we saw. Kerith's scared and so am I. You have to stop arguing with
her. Kerith, hold my hand, and please, walk as fast as you can."
Oriel rose and this time there was no conversation amongst the
three children. The image of Briam sliding down the causeway into the
river was stuck in her mind. Her stomach clenched. Would Sian make her
feel better? No, Oriel decided; she would only feel better when she saw
Briam.
She remembered her mother leaving her in the warehouse. She had
never seen her mother again. A soft sob escaped her. Briam had helped
her then. He had come to see her at the warehouse every day, and she had
agreed to live with Sian only because Briam lived there too. And now he
had disappeared into the river. Would she ever see him again?
"We're almost home." Finn's voice was flat. Oriel realized he
looked pale. The older boy was transferring his weight back and forth
between his two feet. "Oriel, you go in and tell Sian. I'm going back to
look for Briam."
"No, you're not," Oriel said. She could taste the fear in her
mouth, and knew that it would be very bad if Finn went to the causeway.
"The sergeant told you to go home, and you gave him your word. Sian will
be able to find Briam."
"I gave him my word that I would take you two straight home, which
I have done," Finn pointed out. "I said nothing about going to search
for Briam after taking you home, so there!"
"Sian, Sian!" Kerith let go of Oriel's hand and ran through into
the yard where Sian was hanging sheets on a clothesline. The little girl
hugged Sian's legs and the words spilled from her. "Finn left us all and
Briam fell into the river, and the guard made Finn promise to come home,
and it's all Finn's fault, and now he's yelling at Oriel. Make him stop!
Briam's gone, and I'm so scared! I hate Finn!"
Oriel and Finn stopped arguing in shock as they listened to the
torrent of words.
Sian looked at the two of them, and her face tightened as she
looked at Oriel. "Hush, Kerith. What happened, you two?"
Finn was silent, and Oriel glanced at him before she turned back to
Sian. "A barge hit the causeway and broke it in two."
Sian's eyes widened and her voice was incredulous. "What? That
can't be right."
"She's right. I saw it." Kerith nodded.
Sian didn't answer at once but bent to loosen Kerith's grip on her
knees. "Start from the beginning, please. Where's Briam?"
At her mention of his name, Oriel groaned and began to cry again,
and Sian looked up at once, her eyes crinkled as she frowned. "By
Celine! What happened? Tell me quickly."
Finn remained silent, so it fell to Oriel to explain what had
happened. He didn't speak until she finished.
"Sian, we have to go look for him," he said.
"You are not going anywhere," Sian said sternly. "You have behaved
completely irresponsibly, and I have had quite enough. You're fourteen
years old and should know better -- " She interrupted herself. "Never
mind that. I'll deal with you after we get Briam back. And hear me,
Finn, you are going to be doing chores with no time off for sennights,
months even. This time, I'm putting Oriel in charge, and if I hear that
you didn't do what she asks you, then you will understand what
punishment really means. Am I clear?"
Finn nodded, face glum.
"Oriel, take care of Kerith. Fix leftwiches for lunch. Finn, finish
hanging these sheets, then go inside the house. I expect to find the
whole house swept and mopped when I return with Briam."
Sian decided to go to the guardhouse first. She wanted to see if
Lieutenant Darklen or Sergeant Cepero were there. The children's story
of the causeway falling into the river was unbelievable. Why were the
children even at the causeway? Where was Briam? Oriel was responsible
beyond her years. She was familiar with death and loss, so seeing her so
upset made Sian worry.
By this time Sian had reached the guardhouse, which seemed
deserted. There were two pages sitting in the lobby, but that was it.
"Where are all the guards?" she asked one.
The small boy replied, "Oh, a runner came, missus. Seems the
causeway broke. Hey, Enid, what did you see?" He addressed the other
page, a little girl.
The girl, about eight years old, spoke in a high-pitched voice. "Oh
my, it was terrible. It broke in half, and fell into the river. All the
people fell in the river too. I was there with Sergeant Cepero, and he
sent me over to fetch everyone else. They're saying that lots of people
are dead."
Sian gulped. "Thanks, children." She left, heading toward the
causeway. It sounded incredible, but it was true. Her stomach clenched
at the thought, and her breath stuck in her throat. No, she wouldn't
think the worst based only on the story of a child. Without conscious
thought, she increased her pace.
Within a couple of menes, she had arrived at the causeway. The
sight that met her eyes was as unreal as any dream or nightmare she'd
ever had. The huge stone bridge that had been a part of the cityscape
for all her life was no longer intact. Near the center of the river, a
large bite of stone was missing from the upriver side of the bridge,
leaving only a narrow span connecting the two sides of the city. Even
this slender width appeared fragile and Sian could not see anyone
venturing across it. Below the causeway, she could see rubble sticking
out of the water. Rescuers scurried back and forth between the broken
stonework and a large barge.
The chaos was almost worse than the destruction of the causeway,
some people milling around, gawking and gossiping, others with anxious
expressions on their faces trying to get to the scene of the disaster.
On the keep side, she could make out groups of people on the riverbanks.
On her side, guards were pulling people and things from the river. A few
aid stations had been set up, with the town guard carrying victims from
the banks to the healers.
Someone pushed her aside from behind. "Make way for a healer."
A stout guardswoman held Sian aside as a middle-aged matron hurried
toward the river, a satchel hanging from her arm. She glanced back as
she passed, catching Sian's eye. The healer looked as shocked as the
rest of the crowd. Her unkempt hair and the deep bags below her eyes
seemed to suggest that she'd just woken up and it only helped to further
emphasize the look of fear on her face. Even as the woman hurried on,
Sian wondered if a similar look was etched on her own features. The
healer was soon lost from sight amid the tumult of rescuers closest to
the causeway.
The woman who held her arm spoke gently, but firmly. "Miss, you
need to go home. You can't stay here. All of you in this crowd are
hindering the rescuers." Her tunic showed her to be a member of the town
guard. "We've got enough help; now what we need is space."
"I can't leave!" Sian almost wailed, her voice breaking as she
struggled to speak calmly. "One of my children is here somewhere. A
young boy."
"We'll look for him," the woman said. "But you have to go home."
Sian swallowed her fear and tried to speak with a level voice.
"Fine, I will." She made as if to leave, projecting calm acceptance,
while inside, her gut clenched. As soon as the guard turned away to
break up another group of gawkers, Sian ducked around the corner of a
small building and made her way back towards the first aid station
upriver of the causeway. She paused just outside the grassy strip and
surveyed the scene.
There were two healers here: a young man and an older, graying one.
Both were working on the same man, the younger one splinting the
patient's leg, and the other occupied with a badly wounded arm. Two
guards carried a woman into the area. She was unconscious, and her face
was covered with blood. The younger healer finished tying the splint in
place and left the patient to the older one's ministrations. He went to
the woman and began to clean her face. A guard came in carrying a bucket
of water. Three patients who had already been tended to sat, blank-eyed,
on the other side of the two healers, and Sian's quick glance confirmed
that Briam was not among them: they were all adults.
She clenched her jaw, trying to remain calm. She had to keep
looking. She moved to the next aid station that was set on the
riverbanks on the downriver side of the causeway. The same picture
repeated itself, except there were half a dozen healers and physicians
here, and more patients, a few children among them. Sian hurried to a
few boys sitting together. As she focused her gaze on one face after
another, her heartbeat faded and relief filled her. She didn't recognize
any of them.
"Get me a stick to splint this," a healer snapped at Sian. She
didn't hesitate, and hurried to do as she was bid. When she returned
with a stick, she was instructed to hold it.
The healer began to splint the arm of a young man, saying, "Hold it
just so. Yes, thank you."
Sian saw the healer glance at her before continuing, "Are you a
guard?"
"No. I'm here looking for my boy. My girls say that he fell from
the causeway into the river. I've searched in the other aid station and
I can't find him."
"Hmm. He could have been rescued on the keep side of the river, you
know." The healer stopped talking, focusing on the last step of the
splint. As Sian watched, the healer tied the last knot and then asked
softly, "Have you checked the bodies?"
"Bodies?" Sian whispered.
"Yes. See there," she nodded further south a few paces away where a
few guards were placing bodies pulled from the river. "Go check before
you continue searching. Be brave, mistress, and may Saren spare you his
blessings!"
The healer turned away to attend to her next patient, and Sian
walked away, hearing the tolling that marked the seventh bell of day.
She could not help but think of the healer's words. Saren was the god of
suffering, and his blessings were considered to be unlucky.
She moved to the next section on the riverbank, an area that was a
makeshift morgue. A pair of guards dumped a body of a young woman, her
limbs flopping loosely as she struck the ground. The weary pair went
back into the river, where one of their compatriots was wading along the
bank. Sian stepped up to the latest corpse in the row, and quickly
adjusted her limbs, trying not to look at the young woman's features.
She began to step around the bodies in her search, the thundering of her
heart threatening to overpower her. Occasionally, she would stop to roll
over a body or adjust the limbs on another. Her tears would not stop,
and she constantly had to wipe her eyes as she looked.
She estimated there were nearly two dozen bodies in the row. The
smell of the river, always a slightly acrid odor of water and fish and
feces, was mixed with the scent of blood here. The horrific injuries to
some of the dead made her want to gag, but the dread of finding Briam in
that press of corpses was enough to make her ignore everything and
continue her search. The wounds had rendered some of the bodies
grotesque, and the next three, a man whose skull had been cleft open,
another man whose legs were crushed, and a woman whose corpse was
twisted half-way around at the waist, were enough to overpower Sian's
resolution; she had to turn away to throw up.
Wiping her mouth, she returned to the line of bodies and she saw a
small boy's corpse, nearly hidden under a large man. Her heartbeat was
loud enough to overpower the pounding in her head. Tears filled her eyes
too fast for her to wipe off, and a giant sob seemed stuck in her
throat, neither disappearing nor coming out. She reached out a hand that
trembled violently.
"Hey, what are you doing?" One of the guards had come back, this
time with no bodies.
She swallowed, trying to push back the moment when she would know
for sure whether or not she would find Briam's body here. "Looking for
my boy," she said.
The guard's face softened. "Is he here?"
"I don't know." She looked back at the pile, and the guard moved to
it. Sian watched as he gently moved aside the adult corpse. She
recognized the body of the boy underneath! But it was not Briam. It was
Nolan, a young boy who lived down the street from her house. She sobbed
aloud.
"I'm sorry, mistress." The guard paused for a moment. "I'm sorry
for your loss."
Sian shook her head, trying to form the words. "No, this isn't my
boy, but I do recognize him. He lives on Murson Street. His mother is in
the guard. Her name is Treya Ludon."
The guard frowned. "Treya Ludon?"
Sian glanced at him and realized that he wore the uniform of the
Dargon town guard. "She's in the ducal guard, not the town guard."
"Oh." There was a long pause and the guard finally broke the
silence between the two of them. "About your son -- he may be on the
other side of the river." He pointed across to where the keep seemed to
squat on the hill over where the guards and healers were working.
When she looked, he put a hand on her shoulder and lowered his
voice, "I heard that many of those alive had been pulled to this side.
There's a lot more dead on the keep side. And we're not sure if we
managed to get everyone out of the water."
Sian drew in a deep breath. She couldn't believe Briam was dead.
"I'm sorry, mistress."
She nodded. "Do you know where Lieutenant Darklen or Sergeant
Cepero are?"
The guard looked back at her, surprise in his eyes. "Yes, mistress.
They're both on the keep side. We have Sergeant Caisy on this side and
Sergeant Cepero just went over, not five menes past, to direct rescue
operations over there. The lieutenant is with him, I think."
"Can you send a runner and tell them that Sian said Briam is
missing?" Sian barely waited for an acknowledgement before she moved
away. She didn't know whether to go over to the other side or not. How
would that help? She didn't think she could bear to see Briam's body.
The images of the broken corpses she had seen earlier ghosted past her
mind's eye and she shuddered. Glancing at the causeway, she realized
that even if she wanted to cross, she couldn't because the guards had
blocked the way across. Her mind in a strange fog, she turned her feet
and let them take her home.
As she plodded along, tried to face the possibility that Briam was
dead. The thought reverberated in her head, growing louder and louder
until she thought she could not bear it. The town bell tolled. It was
the ninth day bell, and the sun was dipping towards the horizon,
although the long summer evening had enough light left that it would be
a while before it was dark.
She thought of Briam, the boy with the quick temper and broad smile
that she had taken into her home and her heart. She couldn't find him,
but she refused to believe he was dead until she saw his body.
Soon she would be home where the other children awaited her. How
would she tell them? What would she tell them? That morning they had
been playing together; now their lives had been changed forever.
Couldn't they stay innocent a little longer? They'd already been
orphaned. Why did they have to continue to suffer?
"Sian, are you all right?" She realized that Tom Madden was
speaking to her and he held her by her upper arms.
Sian blinked. She was on Murson Street already and she hadn't even
noticed it. "What?"
"You said something. What is it? You look terrible. What's wrong,
Sian?" Tom's voice was full of concern.
Sian began to weep. She told him everything the children had told
her. She ended with, "Tom, Briam is missing. I think he may be dead."
"What? Are you sure they're not just playing a game?" Tom slid his
arms around her, and Sian leaned into his embrace, letting her tears
soak his tunic. He continued, "I don't believe it. We need to search.
Have you --?"
"Where do you think I've been?" Sian wailed, lifting her head to
look at him.
"Sian, where's his body?" Tom asked, staring into her eyes.
"I don't know. I couldn't find it."
"Well then, he may still be alive. Tell me where you've searched."
"Everywhere."
"Both sides of the river?"
"No. They wouldn't let me cross to the keep side."
Tom said, "Straight, then I'll go. You need to go and get some
rest. The children are by themselves, Sian, and it's getting late. They
need you right now. I'll find a way across the river."
Sian grabbed his sleeve to stop him, and said, "I asked one of the
guards to send a runner over to the other side. He told me Roman is over
there."
"Roman?"
"Sergeant Cepero. He's on the keep side. Check with him if he's
seen Briam, and don't forget to --" Sian gulped. "To check the dead."
"Don't think that way," Tom said. "I will find Briam. If I know
anything of him, he'll be helping the good sergeant. Go inside, and be
with the children, Sian."
He gave her a push toward her cottage, and Sian trudged inside,
hoping that Briam was alive, but beginning to doubt.
========================================================================
