The lynx entered Tavin’s tollhouse through the window. She landed on his breakfast, folded the map she had been carrying and leveled a crossbow at his chest.
“Close the bridge.”
Tavin looked at the porridge dripping off her left boot.
“Which end?”
“Both.”
Beyond her shoulder, the west road was filling with men. Their officers had wrapped the harness bells, but nothing muffled the wheels of the cannon. Tavin had heard them coming for half an hour. He had hoped they were turning into the quarry.
The lynx was a head shorter than him, with a surveyor’s pouch across her narrow coat. A new lieutenant’s badge had been sewn above it. Wet fur stood out along her jaw. She had a black ear and a torn yellow one.
He recognized the ears before the face.
“Dessa?”
She did not lower the weapon. Last spring he had lent her a measuring chain. She had returned it with a new catch and a note explaining why his old one had been dangerous.
“Your marshal means to cross at first bell,” she said.
“He told me he was escorting grain.”
“Those wheels grind it?”
Tavin pushed back his chair.
“Keep that pointed at the floor. My assistant sleeps upstairs.”
For a moment she kept her aim. Then the bow dipped.
Across the river, on the eastern heights, three red pennants had appeared above the stone battery. Behind that battery lay the orchards, mills and winter stores of the ridge towns. Marshal Oret had accused them of withholding grain. The ridge council accused Oret of seizing their merchants. They had spent six weeks returning each other’s letters unopened.
Darrow was the only crossing that could carry siege guns. The upper pass was already snowbound. If Oret crossed, the ridge batteries would answer; every town along the narrow river would be within reach of one side or the other.
Tavin had taken tolls from their wagons for twenty-eight years. He knew which miller adulterated flour, which fox kept a second family near the quarry, which human carter paid early so nobody would notice his false axle tally. He kept seeing the miller’s three daughters at the battery, carrying flour sacks. They would be close enough to watch the first gun fire.
He took down the bridge keys.
“Your battery holds its fire.”
“I can hold them while the cannon remain west of the river.”
“Even if his soldiers come over?”
“Keep the guns here. I’ll answer for the battery.”
They went out together.
Darrow’s center was a timber-and-iron span between two stone piers. Counterweights let it rise for the spring ice and settle onto its piers afterward. In the old war, an army had seized its western winch and forced a crossing. The rebuilt machinery required a keeper on each side. Tavin held the western key. Dessa showed him the eastern one.
“Our keeper left when the guns arrived,” she said. “He didn’t want to choose.”
At the center, a wool wagon stood with one wheel jammed against the rail. Its driver had been trying to reverse toward the eastern bank. His human husband crouched by the wheel with a pry bar. Two young foxes watched from beneath the wagon cover, their ears pressed flat.
“Leave the wool,” Dessa said.
The driver bared his teeth. “It is everything we have.”
Tavin took the bar from the husband. “Then pull when I tell you.”
The wagon shifted. Its wheel came clear with a shriek that brought the waiting horses upright in their traces. Dessa steadied the nearest horse, speaking too softly for Tavin to hear. They had the family moving east when Oret rode onto the western approach.
He wore a plain rain cloak. Beside him a badger captain carried the furled royal standard.
“Warden.” Oret reined in. “You are delaying a lawful passage.”
“You told me grain.”
“Grain follows the soldiers. Open the road.”
“The east guns are laid on it.”
“I know where they are.”
Oret looked past him at Dessa. He recognized her coat, if not her face.
“You can still deliver my offer, surveyor. Disarm the battery, open the stores. No town need be touched.”
“Your offer includes the towns,” she said.
“As surety. They cannot close the grain road every autumn and call it a price dispute.”
Tavin had once surrendered his winter pay as surety for his assistant’s debt. It had not felt like a promise of kindness.
He walked backward to the western winchhouse. Dessa went east. They turned their keys and worked the wheels. The center span rose level between its towers, taking the road out of reach of the approach ramps.
Oret watched it lift. He did not shout. He spoke to the badger captain, who dismounted and took six soldiers down the stone steps beside the pier.
The maintenance walk.
Tavin had closed its gate. Oret had brought a smith.
Across the gap, Dessa crouched in her winchhouse doorway. Tavin raised an open hand: wait.
Then he ran upstairs to wake his assistant.
Benn was sixteen, all wrists and bad temper. He took one look out of the window and began pulling on both boots at once.
“Take the account box to the east,” Tavin said. “Use the high inspection cable. Dessa will get you off it. Go now, before we do anything else.”
“I can’t carry the box on that.”
“Then leave the box.”
Benn’s eyes moved from Tavin to the line over the raised span.
“What are you going to do?”
“Something you aren’t to help with.”
Benn took the ferry horn from its peg instead. He knew where Tavin’s sister kept her skiff, below the western steps. He put the horn through his belt and climbed out toward the inspection cradle.
Below, the smith’s hammer struck the maintenance gate.
Tavin opened the little cupboard beneath the western controls. Inside lay the emergency release handle, sealed with red thread. He broke the seal.
Each winch could release its end of the central span. One end let go, and the road would hang from the other, recoverable by a crew with ropes. Both let go, and the river would carry it down the gorge. The mechanism had been built for a span wrecked by ice, to keep its weight from tearing out the piers.
He had signed every annual inspection. Until today the seal on that handle had always made him proud.
Through the far doorway, he saw Dessa watching his hands. He lifted the handle where she could see it.
She stood up.
She stayed in the doorway. Then she shook her head.
She pointed upstream, toward her towns. Downstream, toward the road by his house. They bought one another’s flour, salt, lamp oil. Half her survey work lay on his bank.
He pointed at Oret’s cannon.
Dessa put both paws flat on the stone sill. She looked toward the orchard road, then down at the deep water. Her claws scraped against the sill.
She went inside her winchhouse and came back with her own release handle. She held it up to him.
A shot struck the western door frame. Tavin dropped. A splinter cut his scalp. He crawled behind the iron wheel as the badger captain climbed onto the platform outside.
“Leave the release,” the captain said.
Tavin could see a strip of white throat above the man’s breastplate. He had taken tolls from this one too: summer leave, a mule loaded with presents, an argument about whether a toy drum counted as merchandise.
“Do you know what’s beyond those guns?” Tavin asked.
“Yes.”
The captain advanced, sword held low enough to clear the wheel.
Tavin heaved the account box at his knees. The captain stumbled, caught the wheel and kept his feet. Silver spilled across the boards. He kicked the empty box aside and reached for Tavin.
Tavin ducked beneath the wheel and pulled the release.
The western end of the span dropped.
Its eastern cradle held. Timber struck the pier below them with a noise Tavin felt in his jaw. The winch jerked backward, throwing the captain against the railing. His sword vanished into the river.
Tavin scrambled onto the maintenance walk.
Across the water Dessa stood beside her own release, one paw raised. She had seen him. She was waiting for him to clear the falling structure.
Then he heard Benn.
The inspection cradle had stopped above the center. One of its small wheels had jammed. The cable’s western support rose from the movable span. When that end fell, it dragged the cable down with it. Benn clung to the little seat, far below the line he should have traveled, directly over the hanging road.
Tavin grabbed the cradle’s hauling rope. It ran loose through his hands. The far pulley had torn out.
Dessa set down her crossbow, stripped off her coat and started down the outside of the hanging span from the eastern platform.
“Wait!” Tavin shouted.
She did not.
The lynx moved with her body close to the iron, finding narrow ledges with the sides of her boots. Benn leaned toward her. The cradle swung.
A soldier stepped onto the western maintenance walk with a loaded crossbow.
Tavin seized its stock. The bow fired into the planking. The soldier drove him backward. His heel met empty air; he caught the rail with both hands and lost the man’s coat.
The badger captain came through the winchhouse door behind them.
“Hold,” he said.
The soldier kept his grip on Tavin’s collar.
“The boy,” the captain said. “Look where you’re shooting.”
Below them Dessa had reached the cradle. She took Benn’s wrist. The sagging cable twitched. Tavin saw the little seat tilt and the boy begin to slide.
He thrust the loose hauling rope toward the captain.
“Get this to her.”
The captain looked at the rope.
“Keep hold of the warden,” he told the soldier. Then he took the other end.
Between them they swung a loop toward the cradle. On the second swing Dessa caught it. She passed it around Benn. He had lost one boot. His bare foot pawed uselessly at the air.
They hauled him toward the western maintenance walk. Dessa held his belt until the cradle was empty, then started climbing back toward the east.
Benn struck the rail chest-first. The soldier caught him under the arms. Tavin pulled him through.
The captain closed his hand on Tavin’s shoulder.
“That’s enough.”
Tavin looked across the water. Dessa had reached her platform. She stood in her shirtsleeves, head lowered, sides moving with each breath.
The marshal’s men were coming through the opened maintenance gate with ropes. If they secured the hanging span to the pier, Dessa’s release would no longer send it downriver. They could recover it. Unless she acted now, destroying the crossing would soon be beyond either keeper.
The captain had saved Benn. He would still take the bridge.
Tavin pulled the ferry horn from the boy’s belt and blew one long note: the old call for his sister’s boat.
Benn stared at him, then tore free of the soldier and ran down the steps to the water.
Tavin twisted under the captain’s arm. The grip caught his coat. He left the coat behind, scrambled down the pier steps and jumped from the lowest landing.
The river closed over him. The cold took his breath before he could hold it. He surfaced against the wall of the pier. A stone edge struck his knee. He pushed away with his good leg.
Above him, Dessa’s release sounded.
The span struck the river behind him. A wave rolled him under. For a moment he could not find the sky. Then light opened beyond his hand and he kicked toward it.
The skiff’s bow hit his shoulder. Benn leaned out, teeth bared with effort, and seized his shirt.
Tavin caught the gunwale. With Benn pulling, he dragged himself across it. His injured knee struck the bench. He lay in the bilge until he could draw breath.
“East steps,” he said.
Behind them the central span turned in the current, its far end dragging a white ridge of water. It struck the bend, broke across the rocks and passed out of sight.
On the western pier Oret stood beside his captain. On the eastern height the red pennants were coming down.
Benn took the skiff across to the eastern steps. Dessa waited on the bottom landing with her coat and crossbow. She threw them into the boat, climbed in and took the oars from the boy. Only then did Tavin let his head rest against the side.
No one spoke until they reached the gravel below the mill.
Tavin could not stand. Benn put the warden’s arm over his shoulders. Across the river, the first cannon team was turning back toward the quarry road. Without a crossing, Oret could not reach the stores before winter closed his supply road. He knew it as well as Tavin did.
Dessa watched until the second team turned.
“My council will want me arrested,” she said.
“Mine too.”
“They’ll need a boat.”
She did not smile. Her paws shook on the oars.
By dusk, Oret’s last wagon had passed out of sight. Across the river the ridge crews were covering their guns. The marshal left a notice stripping Tavin of his office; the ridge council sent a runner demanding Dessa present herself for questioning. The guns had not fired. The winter campaign was over before its first crossing.
The wool merchant came down to the skiff carrying a sack of bread. His husband had brought two blankets. They wanted to know whether Tavin’s sister would take passengers in the morning.
Tavin looked at Dessa. She was wrapping cloth around a torn pad on her paw.
“How many?” she asked.
“Us four. And two sacks of flour for the west mill.”
“Two journeys,” Dessa said. “At least.”
The merchant nodded. He had seen the size of the boat.
Benn fetched the old toll slate. Under Wagons, he drew a line. Beneath it he wrote People.
Dessa took the chalk and added, No weapons.
Tavin’s sister arrived, read the slate and took the chalk from both of them.
“My boat,” she said. “I set the fare.”
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