Chapter 197: The Bottleneck [BONUS]

The Darwen Span came into view at the second hour of the afternoon.

Encrid had seen it when he came to the Wall. He had seen it drawn on the Wall’s maps. He had heard it described by merchants in the Shambles who crossed it twice a year.

But seeing it again after more than a year and a half - he still felt just as amazed as the first time.

The Riven was a gorge half a mile wide. It cut across the land from east to west as far as the eye could see, as though someone had taken an enormous knife and sliced the world in two. Its walls were sheer grey stone. Three hundred feet below, at the very bottom, a river ran white and furious over black rocks.

The roar of it came up out of the gorge like a constant wind.

And across the gorge, from one side to the other, ran the Span.

It was a single arch of dark stone. It was not built of blocks, the way the Wall was built. It looked as though it had been poured, or grown, or pulled up out of the rock by hands much larger than human hands. Its surface was smooth and grey and faintly lined with patterns that no one had ever been able to read.

The deep-folk had raised it before there was an Empire.

It was wide enough for four carts side by side.

And it was the only road south.

? ? ?

The front of the column had reached the Span in the late morning.

By the time Encrid arrived with the rear, the crossing had already stopped.

He saw why before anyone told him.

In the middle of the Span, half a mile out over the gorge, a wagon lay on its side. One of its wheels had come off. Its load of grain sacks had spilled across the stone, and two oxen stood tangled in their harness beside it, bellowing.

Behind it, the column had jammed.

Four lines of wagons, pressed so close together that no one could move. People on foot squeezing between them. Children crying. Soldiers shouting.

And the whole thing had stopped.

Merta was standing at the northern end of the Span with the evacuation order in her hands. She looked as though she had been standing there for hours. When she saw Encrid - she explained without being asked to.

"An hour and a half since it broke," she said. "They’ve been trying to fix the wheel."

"Fix the wheel?"

"The wagon has two hundred of the wounded’s blankets on it," Merta said tiredly. "Nobody wants to lose it."

Encrid looked at the wagon.

He looked at the jammed column behind it.

He looked north, back up the road.

"Harun," he said.

"My lord."

"Take ten knights onto the Span. Cut the oxen loose. Take them across. Then push the wagon over the side."

Harun hesitated.

"And the blankets?"

"Throw the blankets onto the wagons behind it. Whatever doesn’t fit goes over with the wagon."

Harun nodded and went.

Encrid turned back to Merta.

"How many are still on this side?"

She looked down at her papers. She did not need to. She already knew.

"About four thousand," she said. "Most of the soldiers. The Gleaning. The last of the wagons."

"And how long to get them across, if the Span is clear?"

Merta was quiet for a moment.

"Three hours," she said. "If nothing else goes wrong."

Encrid let out a breath.

"The children?"

"Across," Merta said. "All of them. They went first this morning, before the wagon broke. Wren counted them off the southern end herself. Thirty-four, and every other child on the Wall. She made me write it down."

For a moment, Encrid could not say anything.

Then he nodded.

"The wounded next," he said. "Then the Gleaning. Then the soldiers, from the back of the line forward. Anyone who can fight stays on this side until the very end."

"The soldiers won’t like being last again." ℴ

"The soldiers are the only ones who can hold the road if something comes down it."

Merta looked at him. Then she looked north, at the empty road.

She did not ask what he thought might come.

? ? ?

Something else went wrong.

Encrid was standing at the northern end of the Span, watching Harun’s knights shove the broken wagon toward the edge, when Corr’s voice came from behind him.

"My lord."

Corr’s wagon had been stopped at the northern end for the last hour. He was still sitting in it, with his tally board on his knees and the long Far-Watch glass in his hand.

He was looking north.

Encrid turned.

On the northern horizon, where the road came over the last line of hills before the Riven, there was a haze.

It was brown-grey. It hung low over the land, spreading slowly from east to west.

Dust.

The kind of dust that thousands of bodies raised when they moved together.

And rising out of the middle of it, pale against the grey afternoon sky, was a single curved line.

A tusk.

Encrid took the glass from Corr and looked.

It was the Elder. He could not see its body yet, only the tusk, rising and falling above the haze. The same slow, heavy rhythm.

Rise.

Pause.

Fall.

"Six miles," Corr said. "Maybe less. The Roamers are ahead of it. The small ones. They’ll reach us first."

Corr looked up at him.

"In an hour," he said quietly. "Perhaps a little more."

An hour.

Three hours to get everyone across.

Encrid lowered the glass.

Behind him, out on the Span, Harun’s knights gave a last great shove. The broken wagon tipped over the edge. For a moment, it hung there against the sky.

Then it fell.

It fell for a long time. Three hundred feet. Encrid did not hear it hit the river. The roar of the water swallowed the sound.

The column began to move again.

Slowly. Far too slowly.

All around Encrid, at the northern end of the Span, people had turned to look north. They had seen the dust. They had seen the tusk.

He watched their faces change.

He had seen that look before. On the Wall, the day the tusks first appeared above the trees.

It was the look of people who had run as far as they could.

And had just realized that it was not far enough.

? ? ?

Thank you, @Stingdragon for the Magic castle~