The Burning Bridge Read online

  “So what’s going on? Did you see anything?” Horace said. Will looked up at him, wearily.

  “A bridge,” he told him. “They’re building a huge bridge.”

  Horace frowned, puzzled by it all.

  “A bridge?” he repeated. “Why would Morgarath want a bridge?”

  “It’s a huge bridge, I said. Big enough to bring an army across. Here we’ve been discussing how Morgarath couldn’t move an army and all its equipment down the cliffs and across the Fissure, and all the time, he’s been building a bridge to do just that.”

  Evanlyn picked at a loose thread on her jacket. “That’s why he wanted the Celts,” she said. When both boys looked at her, she elaborated. “They’re expert builders and tunnelers. His Wargals wouldn’t have the skill for an undertaking like this.”

  “They’re tunneling too,” Will said. “There’s a narrow crack—sort of a cave mouth—in the far side that they’re widening.”

  “Where does it lead to?” Horace asked, and Will shrugged.

  “I don’t know. It might be important to find out. After all, the plateau on the other side is still hundreds of feet above this point. But there must be some access between the two because there’s no sign of ropes or ladders.”

  Horace stood and began to pace back and forth as he considered this new information. His face was screwed up in thought.

  “I don’t get it,” he said finally.

  “It’s not that hard to ‘get,’ Horace,” Will told him, with some asperity. “There’s a barking great bridge being built over the Fissure—big enough for Morgarath and all his Wargals and their supply wagons and their blacksmiths and their oxen and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all to come waltzing over.”

  Horace waited until Will had finished his tirade. He was outwardly calm, but Evanlyn could see a slight flush of anger on his face. He let the awkward silence stretch between them for some time, then said, in a deceptively quiet voice:

  “You’re quite finished, are you?”

  Will shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, realizing that he might have gone too far.

  “Well…yes,” he said, making a vaguely apologetic gesture for Horace to continue.

  “What I don’t get…” Horace said, enunciating very carefully and with heavy emphasis, “is why it was never mentioned in those plans you captured.”

  Evanlyn looked up curiously. “Plans?” she said. “What plans?”

  But Will gestured for her to wait for an explanation. He realized that Horace had made a vital point, and the sarcastic response he had been planning was instantly dispelled.

  “You’re right,” he said softly. “The plans never mentioned a bridge across the Fissure.”

  “And it’s not as if it’s a small undertaking. You’d think it would be in there somewhere,” Horace said. Will nodded agreement. Evanlyn, her curiosity thoroughly piqued by now, repeated her question.

  “What are these plans you keep talking about?”

  Horace took pity on her. “Will and Halt—his Craftmaster—captured a copy of Morgarath’s battle plans a couple of weeks ago. There was a lot of detail about how his forces are going to break out of the Mountains via Three Step Pass. There was even the date on which they were going to do it and how Skandian mercenaries were going to help them. Only there was no mention of this bridge.”

  “Why not?” Evanlyn asked. But Will was beginning to see what Morgarath had in mind, and his horror was growing by the second.

  “Unless,” he said, “Morgarath wanted us to capture those plans.”

  “That’s crazy,” Horace said instantly. “After all, one of his men died as a result.”

  Will met his gaze evenly. “Would that stop Morgarath? He doesn’t care about other people’s lives. Let’s think it through. Halt has a saying: When you can’t see the reason for something, look for the possible result—and ask yourself who might benefit from it.”

  “So,” said Evanlyn, “what’s the result of your finding those plans?”

  “King Duncan has moved the army to the Plains of Uthal to block Three Step Pass,” said Horace promptly. Evanlyn nodded and continued with the second part of the equation.

  “And who might benefit from that?”

  Will looked up at her. He could see she’d reached the same conclusion he had, and at the same time. Very slowly, he said:

  “Morgarath. If those plans were false.”

  Evanlyn nodded agreement. Horace was not quite so quick to see the point.

  “False? What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” said Will, “Morgarath wanted us to find those plans. He wanted the Araluen army assembled at the Plains of Uthal—the whole army. Because Three Step Pass isn’t where the real attack will come from. The real attack will come from here—a surprise attack from behind. And our army will be trapped. And then destroyed.”

  Horace’s eyes widened in horror. He could envisage the result of a massive attack from the rear. The Araluens would be caught between the Skandians and Wargals in front of them and another army of Wargals in their rear. It was a recipe for disaster—the kind of disaster every general feared.

  “Then we’ve got to tell them,” he said. “Right away.”

  Will nodded. “We’ve got to tell them. But there’s one more thing I want to see. That tunnel they’re digging. We don’t know if it’s finished, or half finished, or where it goes. I want to take a look at it tonight.”

  But Horace was shaking his head before he even finished. “Will, we’ve got to go now,” he said. “We can’t hang around here just to satisfy your curiosity.”

  It was Evanlyn who solved the argument. “You’re right, Horace,” she said. “The King must know about this as soon as possible. But we have to be sure that we’re not taking him another red herring. The tunnel Will’s talking about could be weeks away from completion. Or it could lead to a dead end. This whole thing could be yet another ruse to convince the army to divert forces to protect their rear. We have to find out as much as possible. If that means waiting a few more hours, then I say we wait.”

  Will glanced at the girl curiously. She certainly seemed to have a better grasp of strategy than one would expect from a lady’s maid. And there was an unmistakable air of authority about her as well. He decided that Gilan’s theory was correct.

  “It’ll be dark in an hour, Horace. We’ll go across tonight and take a closer look.”

  Horace looked from one of his companions to the other. He wasn’t happy. His instinct was to ride now, as fast as he could, and spread the word of this bridge. But he was outvoted. And he still believed Will’s powers of deduction were better than his own. He was trained for action, not this sort of tortuous thinking. Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be convinced.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll look tonight. But tomorrow, we leave.”

  Wrapped in his cloak and moving carefully, Will returned to his former vantage point. He studied the bridge carefully, thinking that Halt would expect him to be able to draw an accurate plan of the structure.

  He hadn’t been in position for more than ten minutes when a horn blast rang out.

  He froze, terrified. For a moment, he thought it was an alarm and that an alert sentry had spotted him moving among the rocks. Then he heard more cracking of whips and the grunting cries of the Wargals and, as he raised his head, he saw that they were driving the Celts off the bridge and back toward the half-finished tunnel. The prisoners, as they went, downed their tools in stacks. Wargals began reshackling them to a central leash.

  Glancing up to the west, Will saw the last curve of the sun dropping behind the hills and he realized that the horn had simply been sounding the end of the working day. Now the prisoners were being returned to wherever it was that they were kept.

  There was one brief altercation, a few meters from the tunnel mouth, as two of the Celt prisoners stopped to try to lift a prone figure that lay there. Angrily, the Wargal guards surged forward, beating the miners away with their whips and fo
rcing them to leave the still figure where it lay.

  Then, one after the other, they filed through the narrow entrance of the tunnel and disappeared.

  The shadows of the huge bridge lengthened across the hillside. Will remained unmoving for another ten minutes, waiting to see if any Wargals reemerged from the tunnel.

  But there was no sound, no sign of anyone returning. Only the still form lying by the tunnel mouth remained. In the rapidly worsening light, Will couldn’t make it out clearly. It looked like the body of a miner. But he couldn’t be sure.

  Then the figure moved and he realized that, whoever it was, he was still alive.

  19

  TREADING CAREFULLY, WILL AND HORACE MADE THEIR WAY across the narrow plank path that bridged the last fifteen meters of the Fissure. Will, with his excellent head for heights, could have run lightly across it without a problem. But he went slowly out of regard for his bigger, less nimble friend.

  When they finally made it to the finished roadway, Horace heaved a sigh of relief. Now they took a moment to examine the structure. It was built with all the thoroughness that Celts were famous for. As a nation, they’d developed the art of tunneling and bridging over the centuries and this was a typical sturdy structure.

  The smell of fresh-sawn pine planking filled the cold night air, and overlaid on that, there was another sweetish, aromatic smell. They looked at each other, puzzled, for a moment. Then Horace recognized it.

  “Tar,” he said, and they looked around to see that the massive rope cables and support ropes were thick with the stuff. Will touched a hand on one and it came away sticky.

  “I guess it prevents the ropes from fraying and rotting,” he said carefully, noticing that the main cables were constructed of three heavy ropes twisted and plaited together, then thickly coated with the tar to protect them. Also, as the tar hardened, it would bind the three together more permanently.

  Horace glanced around. “No guards?” he commented. There was a disapproving note in his voice.

  “They’re either very confident or very careless,” Will agreed.

  It was full night now and the moon was yet to rise. Will moved toward the eastern bank of the Fissure. Loosening his sword in its scabbard, Horace followed him.

  The figure by the tunnel mouth lay as Will had last seen it. There had been no further sign of movement. The two boys approached him carefully now and knelt beside him—for now they could see that it was a Celt miner. His chest rose and fell—barely moving.

  “He’s still alive,” Will whispered.

  “Only just,” Horace replied. He placed his forefinger to the Celt’s neck to gauge the pulse there. At the touch, the man’s eyes slowly opened and he gazed up at the two of them, uncomprehending.

  “Who…you?” he managed to croak. Will unslung the water bottle from his shoulder and moistened the man’s lips with a little of the liquid. The tongue moved greedily across the wetness and the man croaked again, trying to rise on one elbow.

  “More.”

  Gently, Will stopped him from moving, and gave him a little more water.

  “Rest easy, friend,” he said softly. “We’re not going to harm you.”

  It was obvious that somebody had done him harm—and plenty of it. His face was matted with the dried blood that had welled from a dozen whip cuts. His leather jerkin was shredded and torn, and his bare torso underneath showed signs of more whipping—recent and from long ago.

  “Who are you?” Will asked softly.

  “Glendyss,” the man sighed, seeming to wonder at the sound of his own name. Then he coughed, a racking, rattling cough that shook his chest. Will and Horace exchanged sad glances. Glendyss didn’t have long, they both realized.

  “When did you come here?” Will asked the man, gently allowing more water to trickle through the dried, cracked lips.

  “Months…” Glendyss replied in a voice they could barely hear. “Months and months I’ve been here…working on the tunnel.”

  Again, the two boys looked at one another. Maybe the man’s mind was wandering.

  “Months?” Will pressed him. “But the Wargal attacks only started a month ago, surely?”

  But Glendyss was shaking his head. He tried to speak, coughed and subsided, gathering his fading strength. Then he spoke, so softly that Will and Horace had to lean close to hear him.

  “They took us almost a year ago…from all over. Secretly…a man here, two men there…fifty of us in all. Most of the others…dead…by now. Me soon.” He stopped, gasping for breath again. The effort of speaking was almost too much for him. Will and Horace looked at each other, puzzling over this new information.

  “How was it that nobody knew this was happening?” Horace asked his friend. “I mean, fifty people go missing and nobody says anything?”

  But Will shook his head. “He said they took them from villages all over Celtica. So one or two men go missing—people might talk about it locally, but nobody could see the entire picture.”

  “Still,” said Horace, “why do it? And why are they so open about it now?”

  Will shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get an idea on that if we take a look around,” he said.

  They hesitated uncertainly, not sure what they could do for the crumpled, battered form beside them. As they waited, the moon rose, soaring over the hills and flooding the bridge and the bank with soft, pale light. It touched on Glendyss’s face and his eyes opened. Then he tried weakly to raise an arm to ward off the light. Gently, Will leaned forward to shield him.

  “I’m dying,” said the miner, with a sudden clarity and a sense of peace. Will hesitated, then answered simply.

  “Yes.” It would have been no kindness to lie to him, to try to cheer him along and protest that he would be all right. He was dying and they all knew it. Better to let him prepare, to let him face death with dignity and calm. The hand clutched feebly at Will’s sleeve and he took it in his own, pressing it gently, letting the Celt feel the contact with another person.

  “Don’t let me die out here in the light.”

  Again, Horace and Will exchanged glances.

  “I want the peace of the Out of Light,” he continued softly, and Will suddenly understood.

  “I guess Celts like the darkness. They spend most of their lives in tunnels and mines, after all. Maybe that’s what he wants.”

  Horace leaned forward. “Glendyss?” he said. “Do you want us to carry you into the tunnel?”

  The miner’s head had swiveled to Horace as the boy spoke. Now he nodded, faintly. Just enough for them to make out the action.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Take me to the Out of Light.”

  Horace nodded to him, then slipped his arms under the Celt’s shoulders and knees to lift him. Glendyss was small-boned and the weeks he had spent in captivity had obviously been a time of starvation for him. He was an easy burden for Horace to lift.

  As the warrior apprentice stood straight with Glendyss cradled in his arms, Will motioned for him to wait. He sensed that once Glendyss was in the peace of the dark tunnel, he would let go of the faint thread that held him to life. And there was still one more question Will needed answered.

  “Glendyss,” he said softly. “How long do we have?”

  The miner looked at him wearily, uncomprehending. Will tried again.

  “How long before they finish the bridge?” he asked. This time, he could see a light of understanding in the Celt’s eyes. Glendyss thought for a second or two.

  “Five days,” he replied. “Maybe four. More workers came today…so maybe four.”

  Then his eyes closed, as if the effort had been too much. For a second, they thought he had died. But then his chest heaved with a massive shudder and he continued to breathe.

  “Let’s get him into the tunnel,” Will said.

  They squeezed through the narrow opening. For the first ten meters, the walls of the tunnel were close enough to touch. Then they began to widen, as the results of the Celts’ labor became evident.
It was a dark, confined place, lit only by the dim flames of torches set in brackets every ten to twelve meters. Some of these were guttering now, and provided only a fitful, uncertain light. Horace looked around uneasily. He didn’t like heights and he definitely didn’t like confined spaces.

  “Here’s the answer,” Will said. “Morgarath needed those first fifty miners to do this work. Now that the tunnel is nearly finished, he needs more men to get the bridge built as quickly as possible.”

  Horace nodded. “You’re right,” he agreed. “The tunneling would take months, but nobody would see it was going on. Once they started building the bridge, the risk of discovery would be much higher.”

  In the wider reaches of the tunnel, they found a small sandy patch, almost a grotto, off to one side. They laid Glendyss in it. Will realized that this must have been what the two Celts had been trying to do for their countryman when the stop-work horn had sounded.

  He hesitated. “I wonder what the Wargals will think when they find him here tomorrow?”

  Horace merely shrugged. “Maybe they’ll think he crawled in here by himself,” he suggested. Will thought about it doubtfully. But then he looked at the peaceful expression on the dying miner’s face in the gloomy light and he couldn’t bring himself to take the man back outside once more.

  “Just put him a little farther in, as far out of sight as you can,” he said.

  There was a small elbow of rock and Horace gently placed the miner behind it. He was now visible only if you looked carefully and Will decided that was good enough. Horace stepped back into the main tunnel. Will noticed that he was still glancing uneasily around.

  “What do we do now?” Horace asked. Will came to a decision.

  “You can wait here for me,” he said. “I’m going to see where this leads.”

  Horace didn’t argue. The thought of going farther into that dark, winding tunnel didn’t appeal to him at all. He found a place to sit, close to one of the brighter torches.