The Burning Bridge

24

G ILAN DROPPED HIS EYES FROM THE TORTURED GAZE OF HIS King. Everyone in the tent could see the pain there as Duncan realized that his daughter had been killed by Morgarath's Wargals. Gilan looked around at the other men, seeking some form of support from them. None of them, he saw, could bring themselves to meet their monarch's eyes.

Duncan rose from the chair and walked to the doorway of the tent, looking to the southwest as if he could somehow see his daughter across the distance.

"Cassandra left to visit Celtica eight weeks ago," he said. "She's a good friend of Princess Madelydd. When all this business with Morgarath started, I thought she'd be safe there. I saw no reason to bring her back." He turned away from the door and his gaze held Gilan's. "Tell me. Tell me everything you know:"

"My lord:" Gilan stopped, gathering his thoughts. He knew he had to tell the King as much as possible. But he also wanted to avoid causing him unnecessary pain. "The girl saw us and came to us. She recognized Will and myself as Rangers. Apparently, she had managed to escape when the Wargals attacked their party. She said the others were:"

He hesitated. He couldn't go on.

"Continue," Duncan said. His voice was firm. He was in control once more.

"She said the Wargals had killed them, my lord. All of them," Gilan finished in a rush. Somehow, he felt it might be easier if he said it quickly. "She didn't tell us details. She wasn't up to it. She was exhausted-mentally and physically."

Duncan nodded. "Poor girl. It must have been a terrible thing to witness. She's a good servant-more of a friend to Cassandra, in fact," he added softly.

Gilan felt the need to keep talking to the King, to give the King whatever detail he could about the loss of his daughter. "At first, we almost mistook her for a boy," he said, remembering the moment when Evanlyn had walked into their camp. Duncan looked up, confusion on his face.

"A boy?" he said. "With that mass of red hair?"

Gilan shrugged. "She'd cut it short. Probably to conceal her appearance. The Celtic foothills are full of bandits and robbers at the moment, as well as Wargals."

Something was wrong, he sensed. He was bone-weary, aching for sleep, and his brain wasn't functioning as it should. But the King had said something that wasn't right. Something that:

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and swayed on his feet, glad of Halt's ready arm to steady him. Seeing the movement, Duncan was instantly apologetic.

"Ranger Gilan," he said, stepping forward and seizing his hand. "Forgive me. You're exhausted and I've kept you here because of my own personal sorrow. Please, Halt, see that Gilan has food and rest."

"Blaze:" Gilan started to say, remembering his dust-covered, weary horse outside the tent. Halt replied gently.

"It's all right. I'll look after Blaze." He glanced at the King once more, nodding his head toward Gilan. "With Your Majesty's permission?"

Duncan waved the two of them out. "Yes, please, Halt. Look after your comrade. He's served us well."

As the two Rangers left the tent, Duncan turned to his remaining advisers. "Now, gentlemen, let's see if we can put some reason to this latest move by Morgarath."

Baron Thorn cast a quick glance at the others, seeking and gaining their assent to act as spokesman. "My lord," he said awkwardly, "perhaps we should give you some time to come to terms with this news:" The other councillors all mumbled their agreement with the idea, but Duncan shook his head firmly.

"I'm the King," he said simply. "And for the King, private matters come last. Matters of the kingdom come first."

"It's gone out!" said Horace, in an agony of disappointment.

The three of them looked, desperately hoping that he was wrong, that their eyes were somehow deceiving them. But he was right. The fire under the left-hand pylon had died away to a small, glowing heap of embers.

By contrast, the other side was well and truly alight, with the fire running fiercely up the tarred rope side rails to the massive cable supporting the right side of the bridge. Indeed, as they watched, one of the three ropes forming the cable burned through and the right-hand side of the bridge creaked alarmingly.

"Maybe one side will be enough?" Evanlyn suggested hopefully, but Will shook his head in frustration, willing the second fire to flare up again.

"The right-hand pylon is damaged, but it's still usable," he pointed out. "If the left-hand side survives, they can still get across to this side. And if they can do that, they might be able to repair the whole thing before we can get warning to King Duncan."

Resolutely, he hitched his bow over his shoulder and started across the bridge once more.

"Where are you going?" Horace asked him, eyeing the structure with distrust. The bridge had taken a definite lean to one side now that part of the right-hand cable had burned through. As he put the question, the structure trembled again, settling a little farther toward the bottom of the abyss.

Will paused, balanced on the bare beam that stretched across the gap.

"I'll have to relight it," he said. He turned back and ran to the far side again. Horace felt queasy watching him move so quickly across that massive drop, with nothing but a narrow beam beneath him. Then he and Evanlyn watched in a fever of impatience as Will crouched by the embers. He began fanning them, then leaned down and blew on them until a small tongue of flame flickered inside the pile of unburned kindling.

"He's done it!" Evanlyn cried, then the triumph in her voice died as the flicker faded. Once again, Will leaned down and began to blow gently on the embers. Something else gave on the right-hand side cable and the bridge lurched, sinking farther to that side. For a moment, Will stopped to look up at the right-hand pylon and cable, still burning fiercely. Then he went back to the embers, fanning them with a new sense of urgency.

"Come on! Come on!" Horace said over and over to himself, his hands clenching and unclenching as he watched his friend.

Then Tug gave a quiet whinny.

Both Horace and Evanlyn turned to look at the small horse. If it had been either of their own mounts, they wouldn't have reacted. But they knew Tug was trained to remain silent, unless:

Unless! Horace looked to where Will was crouched over the remains of the fire. Obviously, he hadn't heard Tug's warning. Evanlyn seized Horace's arm and pointed.

"Look!" she said, and he followed her pointing finger to the mouth of the tunnel, where a glimmer of light was showing. Someone was coming! Tug pawed the ground and whinnied again, a little louder this time, but Will, close to the noise of the burning right-hand cable, didn't hear. Evanlyn came to a decision.

"Stay here!" she told Horace, and started out across the wooden beam framework. She inched her way carefully, her heart in her mouth as the weakened bridge structure lurched and swayed. Below her was blackness, and, at the very bottom, the silver glimmer of the river that ran wildly through the base of the Fissure. She swayed, recovered, then went on. The planked section was only eight meters away now. Now five. Now three.

The bridge swayed again and she hung there for an awful moment, arms spread to hold her balance, teetering over that horrific drop. Behind her, she heard Horace's warning cry. Taking a deep breath, she lunged for the safety of the boardwalk, falling full length on the rough pine planks.

Heart pounding with the reaction of her near miss, she came to her feet and raced across the rest of the bridge. As she drew closer, Will sensed her movement and looked up. Breathlessly, she pointed to the mouth of the tunnel.

"They're coming!" she cried. And now, the reflected glow of light from within the tunnel was revealed to be the flare of several burning torches as a small group of figures emerged. They paused at the tunnel mouth, pointing and shouting as they saw the flames reaching high above the bridge. She counted six of them, and from their shambling, clumsy gait, she recognized them as Wargals.

The Wargals began to run toward the bridge. They were just over fifty meters away, but covering the ground quickly. And she knew there must be more behind them.

"Let's get out of here!" she said, grabbing at Will's sleeve. But he shook her hand off, grim-faced. He was already scooping up his bow and quiver, slinging the quiver over his shoulder and checking that the bowstring was firmly anchored.

"You get back!" he told her. "I'll stay and hold them off."

Almost as he spoke, he nocked an arrow to the string and, barely seeming to aim, sent it hissing toward the lead Wargal. The arrow buried itself in the Wargal's chest and it fell, crying out once, then lay silent.

His companions halted in their tracks, seeing the arrow. They looked warily around them, trying to see where it had come from. Perhaps this was a trap, their primitive, single-track minds told them. As yet, they couldn't see the small figure at the end of the bridge. And even as they looked, another three arrows came hissing out of the darkness. The steel heads of two of the arrows struck sparks as they smashed into the rocks. The third took one of the Wargals at the rear of the party in the lower arm. He cried out in pain and fell to his knees.

The Wargals hesitated uncertainly. Seeing the light and smoke of the fire above the hill that separated their camp area from the bridge, they had come to investigate. Now unseen archers were firing at them. Coming to a decision, and with no one to order them forward, they retreated quickly to the shelter of the tunnel mouth.

"They're going back!" Evanlyn told Will. But he'd already seen the movement and he was on his knees again, trying to frantically rebuild the fire.

"We'll have to reset the whole thing!" he muttered. Evanlyn dropped to her knees beside him and began shaping the half-burned strips and heavier pieces into a conical pyre.

"You watch the Wargals!" she said. "I'll look after this."

Will hesitated. After all, this was the fire she had set in the first place. He had a moment of doubt as he wondered if she'd done the job correctly. Then he looked up to the tunnel mouth, saw movement there once again and realized she was right. Grabbing his bow, he started to move toward the cover of some rocks nearby, but she stopped him.

"Your knife!" she said. "Leave it with me."

He didn't ask why. He slid the saxe from its scabbard and dropped it beside her. Then he moved to the rocks. The bridge groaned and trembled as the right-hand cable gave a little more. Silently, he cursed the caprice of wind that had fanned one fire and extinguished the other.

Encouraged by the lack of arrows whistling around their ears in the past few minutes, the four remaining Wargals had emerged from the tunnel again and were moving cautiously forward. Without any real intelligent leadership, and with a false sense of their own superiority, they stayed grouped together, an easy target. Will fired three times, carefully aimed shots.

Each one found its mark. The surviving Wargal looked at his fallen comrades, then lumbered into the cover of the rocks. Will sent another arrow skating off the granite directly above his head, to encourage him to stay where he was.

He checked his quiver. There were sixteen arrows left. Not a lot if the Wargals had sent for reinforcements. He glanced at Evanlyn. She seemed to be maddeningly slow with her efforts to rebuild the fire. He wanted to yell at her to hurry, but realized he would only distract her and slow her down if he did. He looked back to the tunnel, his fingers clenching and unclenching on the bow.

Four more figures emerged, running fast and fanning out so that they weren't grouped together. Will brought the bow up, sighted quickly and released at the one farthest to the right. He let go a little cry of exasperation as the arrow flew behind the running figure. Then he was obscured by the rocks.

Blessing the weeks and months of practice that Halt had insisted on, Will had another arrow out of the quiver and already nocked, without even looking at it. But the other three runners had gone to ground as well.

Now one of them rose in the middle of the line and darted forward. Will's snap shot cleaved the air above his head as he dived for cover. Then another was moving on the left, dropping into cover before Will could fire. His heart was beating rapidly as they made their quick rushes and he forced himself to breathe deeply and think calmly. The time to shoot would be in the last thirty meters, where there was less cover and where the arrows, with a shorter distance to cover, would be traveling faster and so be harder to dodge. Will's heart hammered inside his ribs. He was remembering the last time-only a few weeks ago-when fear had made his shots go wide. His face hardened as he determined that it would not happen again.

"Stay calm," he told himself, trying to hear Halt's voice saying the words. Another of the figures made a short rush and this time, as the firelight illuminated him more clearly, Will held his fire as his eyes confirmed what he had begun to suspect.

The newcomers weren't Wargals. They were Skandians.