The Burning Bridge Read online

  Halt felt a cold hand of premonition clutch his heart. He cast his gaze around, looking back down the path where Gilan had come. Bad news from Celtica. And Gilan apparently alone.

  “Where’s Will?” he asked quickly. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s all right,” Gilan said, and the senior Ranger’s heart lifted just a little. “I came on ahead.”

  As they had been talking, they had begun to move toward the central pavilion. There were more guards on duty here but they moved out of the way at the sight of Halt. He was a familiar figure around the War Council. He put out a hand now to steady his former apprentice and they entered the cool shade of the Council pavilion.

  A group of half a dozen men was clustered around a sand map—a large table with the main features of the Plains and Mountains modeled in sand. They turned now at the sound of the new arrivals and one of them hurried forward, concern written on his face.

  “Gilan!” he cried. He was a tall man, and his graying hair showed him to be in his late fifties. But he still moved with the speed and grace of an athlete, or a warrior. Gilan gave that tired smile again.

  “Morning, Father,” he said, for the tall gray-haired man was none other than Sir David, Battlemaster of Caraway Fief and supreme commander of the King’s army. The Battlemaster looked quickly to Halt and caught the quick nod of reassurance there. Gilan was all right, he realized, just exhausted. Then, his sense of duty caught up with his fatherly reaction.

  “Greet your King properly,” he said softly, and Gilan looked up to the group of men, all their attention now focused on him.

  He recognized Crowley, the Ranger Corps Commandant, and Baron Arald and two other senior Barons of the realm—Tyler of Drayden and Fergus of Caraway. But the figure in the center took his attention. A tall blond man in his late thirties, with a short beard and piercing green eyes. He was broad-shouldered and muscular, because Duncan was not a king who let other men do all his fighting for him. He had trained with sword and lance since he was a boy and he was regarded as one of the most capable knights in his own kingdom.

  Gilan attempted to sink to one knee. His joints screamed in protest and tried to lock up on him. The pressure of Halt’s hand under his arm was all that stopped him from falling once again.

  “My lord…” he began apologetically, but Duncan had already stepped forward, seizing his hand to steady him. Gilan heard Halt’s introduction.

  “Ranger Gilan, my lord, attached to Meric Fief. With messages from Celtica.”

  Suddenly, the King was galvanized with interest. “Celtica?” he repeated, studying Gilan more closely. “What’s happening there?”

  The other Council members had moved from the sand map to group around Gilan. Baron Arald spoke: “Gilan was carrying your messages to King Swyddned, my lord,” he said. “Invoking our mutual defense treaty and requesting that Swyddned send troops to join us—”

  “They won’t be coming,” Gilan interrupted. He realized he had to tell the King his news before he collapsed from exhaustion. “Morgarath has them bottled up on the southwest peninsula.”

  There was a stunned silence in the Council tent. Finally, it was Gilan’s father who broke it. “Morgarath?” he said, incredulously. “How? How could he get any sort of army into Celtica?”

  Gilan shook his head, suppressing a huge need to yawn. “They sent small numbers down the cliffs, until they had enough troops to catch the Celts by surprise. As you know, Swyddned keeps only a small standing army…”

  Baron Arald nodded, anger showing on his face. “I warned Swyddned, my lord,” he put in. “But those damned Celts have always been more interested in digging than protecting their own land.”

  Duncan made a small, pacifying gesture with one hand. “No time now for recriminations, Arald,” he said softly. “What’s done is done, I’m afraid.”

  “I should imagine Morgarath has been watching them for years, waiting for their greed to overcome their good sense,” Baron Tyler said bitterly. The other men nodded quietly. Morgarath’s ability to maintain a network of spies was all too well known to them.

  “So Celtica has been defeated by Morgarath? Is this what you’re telling us?” Duncan asked. This time, as Gilan shook his head, there were relieved glances around the tent.

  “The Celts are holding out in the southwest, my lord. They’re not defeated yet. But the strange business of it all is that Wargal raiding parties have been carrying off the Celt miners.”

  “What?” This time it was Crowley who interrupted. “What earthly use has Morgarath for miners?”

  Gilan shrugged in reply. “I’ve no idea, sir,” he told his chief. “But I thought I’d better get here with the news of it as soon as possible.”

  “You saw this happening, then, Gilan?” Halt asked, frowning darkly as he puzzled over what the young Ranger had just told them.

  “Not exactly,” Gilan admitted. “We saw the empty mining towns and the deserted border posts. We were heading deeper into Celtica when we met a young girl who told us about the raids.”

  “A young girl?” the King said. “A Celt?”

  “No, my lord. She was Araluen. A lady’s maid whose mistress was visiting Swyddned’s court. Unfortunately, they ran into a Wargal war party. Evanlyn was the only one to escape.”

  “Evanlyn?” Duncan said, his voice the merest whisper. The others turned to him as he spoke and were startled. The King’s face had turned a chalky white and his eyes were wide with horror.

  “That was her name, my lord,” said Gilan, puzzled by the King’s reaction. But Duncan wasn’t listening. He had turned away and moved blindly to a canvas chair set by his small reading table. He dropped into the chair, his head sunk in his hands. The members of his War Council moved toward him, alarmed at his reaction.

  “My lord,” said Sir David of Caraway. “What is it?”

  Duncan slowly raised his eyes to meet the Battlemaster’s.

  “Evanlyn…” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “Evanlyn was my daughter’s maid.”

  23

  THERE WAS NO TIME TO PUT THE PLAN INTO ACTION THAT night—dawn was less than an hour away. At one stage, Will had suggested that Horace and Evanlyn should leave him behind to burn the bridge, while they rode to take the news to Araluen. But Horace had refused.

  “If we go now, we won’t know if you’ve succeeded or not, so what do we tell the King? There might be a bridge or there might not be?” he said, in another example of the solid common sense that had become part of his thinking. “And besides, destroying a bridge this size might be a little more than you can manage alone—even a famous Ranger like yourself.”

  He smiled as he said the last words, to let Will know he meant no insult. Will conceded the point. Secretly, he was glad they would be with him. He shared Horace’s doubt that he might not be able to handle the task alone.

  They slept fitfully until dawn, finally woken by the sounds of shouting and whips as the Wargals drove the miners back to their task of finishing the bridge. Throughout the day, they watched with alarm as the completed footway crept closer and closer to the side of the ravine where they lay hidden. With a sinking feeling, Will realized that the estimate given them by the dying miner was not to be relied upon. Perhaps the extra numbers of slaves were the reason, but it was obvious that the bridge would be all but completed by the end of the following day.

  “We’ll have to do it tonight.”

  He breathed the words in Evanlyn’s ear. The two of them lay prone on the rocks, overlooking the building site. Horace was a few meters away, dozing quietly in the cold morning sun. The girl shifted her position so that her mouth was closer to his ear and whispered back.

  “I’ve been thinking, how will we get this fire started? There’s barely enough wood around here for a decent campfire.”

  The same question had been taxing Will’s brain throughout the night. Then the answer had come to him. He smiled quietly as he watched a group of Celt miners hammering pine boards onto the bridg
e framework to form the roadway.

  “There’s plenty of good firewood here,” he replied. “If you know where to look for it.”

  Evanlyn glanced at him, puzzled, then followed the line of his gaze. The frown on her forehead disappeared and she smiled slowly.

  As dusk fell, the Wargals herded their weary, starving slaves back from the bridge and into the tunnel. Will noticed that by the end of the afternoon, the work of enlarging the tunnel seemed to have been completed. They waited an hour longer, until full darkness. During that time, there had been no sign of any activity from the tunnel. Now that they knew to look for it, they could see the loom of the firelight from the valley at the other end of the tunnel, reflecting on the low, scudding clouds.

  “I hope it doesn’t rain,” said Horace suddenly. “That’d ruin our idea all right.”

  Will stopped in his tracks and looked up at him quickly. That unpleasant thought hadn’t occurred to him. “It isn’t going to rain,” he said firmly, and hoped he was right. He continued on then, leading Tug gently to the unfinished end of the bridge. The little horse stopped there, ears pricked and nostrils twitching to the scents of the night air.

  “Alert,” said Will softly to the horse, the command word that told him to give warning if he sensed approaching danger. Tug tossed his head once, signifying that he understood. Then Will led the way across the uncompleted section of the bridge, stepping lightly as he crossed the narrow beams above the dizzying drop. Horace and Evanlyn followed, more carefully, with Horace heaving a sigh of relief when they reached the point where the planking began. He noted that compared to the previous night, there was much shorter distance to traverse before reaching the completed section. He realized that Will was right. Another day would see the bridge finished and ready for use.

  Will unslung his bow and quiver and laid them on the planking. Then he drew his saxe knife from its scabbard and, dropping to his knees, began to pry up one of the nearest planks from the bridge walkway. The wood was soft pine, roughly sawn, and perfect firewood. Horace drew his dagger and began prying up the planks in the next row. As they loosened them, Evanlyn moved them to one side, stacking them in a pile. When she had six planks, each over a meter long, she gathered them up and ran lightly to the far side of the bridge, stacking them on the far bank of the Fissure, close to where the massive, tarred cables were fastened to wooden pylons. By the time she returned, Will and Horace were well on the way to removing another six. These she took to the other cable. Will had explained his plan to them earlier in the day. To make sure there was no remaining structure on the far side, they would need to burn through both cables and pylons at that end, letting the bridge fall into the depths of the Fissure. The Wargals might be able to span the Fissure with a small, temporary rope affair, but nothing substantial enough to permit large numbers of troops to cross in a short time.

  Once they had burned the bridge, they would ride full speed to alert the King’s army to the threat in the south. Any small numbers of Wargals who might cross the Fissure could then be easily dealt with by the kingdom’s troops.

  The two boys continued levering the planks free and setting them to one side for Evanlyn. In her turn, she maintained her constant ferrying back and forth across the bridge, until the stacks by each pylon were piled high. In spite of the cold night, both boys were sweating freely with the effort. Finally, Evanlyn laid a hand on Will’s shoulder as he pried up one board and began immediately on another.

  “I think it’s enough,” she said simply and he stopped, rocking back on his heels and wiping his forehead with the back of his left hand. She gestured toward the other end of the bridge, where there were at least twenty planks piled up on either side of the road. He eased the cramps out of his neck, rolling his head from side to side, then stood up.

  “You’re right,” he told her. “That should be enough to get the rest of it burning.”

  Gesturing for the others to follow, he picked up his bow and quiver and led the way to the far side of the bridge. He looked critically at the two piles of wood for a moment or two.

  “We’ll need kindling,” he said, glancing around to see if there were any small trees or bushes in the vicinity where they might find light wood to help them start their fire. Of course, there were none. Horace held out his hand for Will’s saxe knife.

  “Lend me that for a moment,” he asked, and Will handed it to him. Horace tested the balance of the heavy knife for a moment. Then, taking one of the long planks, Horace stood it on end and, in a bewilderingly fast series of flashing strokes, sliced it into a dozen thin lengths.

  “It’s not quite sword practice.” He grinned at them. “But it’s close enough.”

  As Will and Evanlyn began forming the thin pine strips into two small pyres, Horace took another plank and whittled more carefully, carving off thin curls from the pine to catch the first sparks from the flint and steel they would use to light the fire. Will glanced once to see what Evanlyn was doing. Satisfied that she knew what she was about, he turned back to his own task, accepting the shaved pine from Horace as the other boy passed it to him in handfuls and stacking it around the base of the kindling.

  As Will moved across to Evanlyn’s side to do the same with her pyre, Horace split a few more planks in halves, then snapped the thinner lengths in two. Will looked up nervously at the noise.

  “Keep it down,” he warned the apprentice warrior. “Those Wargals aren’t exactly deaf, you know, and the sound might carry through the tunnel.”

  Horace shrugged. “I’m finished now anyway,” he said.

  Will paused and studied both pyres. Satisfied that they had the right combination of kindling and light wood to get them going, he motioned the others to cross back to the other side.

  “You two get going,” he told them. “I’ll start the fires and follow you.”

  Horace needed no second invitation. He didn’t want to have to run across the bare beams of the bridge with the fire licking around the cables behind him. He wanted plenty of time to negotiate the gap. Evanlyn hesitated for a moment, then saw the sense in what Will had said.

  They crossed carefully, trying not to look down into the agonizing depths below the bridge as they negotiated the last ten meters. There was a wider gap now, of course, as they’d removed some of the boards that formed the road surface. Safe on the other side, they turned and waved to Will. They saw him, a crouched, indistinct figure in the shadows beside the right-hand bridge support. There was a bright flash as he struck his flint and steel together. Then another. And this time, a small yellow glow of light formed at the base of the piled wood as the pine shavings caught fire and the flame grew.

  Will blew on it gently and watched the eager little yellow tongues spread out, licking at the rough pine, feeding on the flammable resin that filled the grain of the wood and growing larger and more voracious by the second. He saw the first of the thin stakes take fire, then the flames shot up, licking greedily around the rope balustrade of the bridge and beginning to reach for the heavy cable. The tar began sizzling. Drops melted and fell into the flames, flaring up with a bright blue flash each time.

  Satisfied that the first fire was well under way, Will ran to the opposite side and went to work with his flint and steel once more. Again, the watchers saw the bright flashes, then the small, rapidly growing pool of yellow.

  Will, now silhouetted clearly by the light of the two fires, stood erect and stepped back, watching to make sure that they were both properly alight. Already, the right-hand pylon and cable were beginning to smoke in the heat of the fire. Satisfied at last, Will gathered his bow and quiver and ran back across the bridge, barely slowing when he reached the narrow beams.

  Reaching their side, he turned to look back at his handiwork. The right-hand cable was now blazing fiercely. A sudden gust of wind sent a shower of sparks high into the air above it. The left-hand fire didn’t seem to be burning nearly as well. Perhaps it was a trick or an eddy of the wind that stopped the flames from rea
ching the tarsoaked rope on that side. Perhaps the wood they had used was damp. But as they watched, the fire beneath the left-hand cable slowly died away to a red glow of embers.

  24

  GILAN 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.