As far as Wistala could tell, Rainfall had all the duties of keeping a road open and drew none of the benefits. She explored just outside his lands along the road in the morning light and near dark and saw marketplaces and inns to either end of his lands, but thanks to the troll, no one dared set up so much as an applecart near the bridge.
Of course, need or ignorance or foolishness sometimes had messengers riding across the bridge at night. Rainfall showed her the effects of some combination of the three one morning—a pair of neatly bitten-off horse hooves and a dropped hat lying on the road with the stain and smell of blood on the gravel.
“Probably some young buck from Newcrossing trying to see his girl in Glenn Eoiye,” Rainfall said, picking up the hat. “That’s a new red feather in his hat, quill cut to write her love notes or a Letter of Intent. In a year, it’ll be a sad song, and in ten, they’ll have new names in the old tune.”
His Elvish fell effortlessly onto her ear with six months of practice. She responded easily: “I don’t suppose a company will be formed to kill the troll and avenge him.”
“Thane Hammar isn’t that energetic. Let’s see if we can learn more of the sad tale.”
They followed the tracks back to the bridge, and Rainfall gaped at what he saw. One whole side of the bridge’s superstructure had been torn away from the wooden repair in the center.
“Oh! I’d have an earthquake come if it would just seal that wretched troll in his cave. This is a month’s labor. I’ll have to hire timberers and see about chain and staples.”
Wistala checked the road for traffic before she ventured out onto the bridge. She crossed the arches, the high-running river filling both banks below, to closer inspect the damage.
“A rider comes,” Rainfall said, but Wistala already heard the hoofbeats and scuttled over the edge of the bridge on the downwind side. There was the briefest of ledges there so men might anchor themselves and inspect the stones at the bottom, and she could easily grip it with sii and saa.
She heard Rainfall call a greeting and recognized the Hypatian tongue used by men in these parts. The rider trotted on without reply. Wistala waited some moments as the elves reckoned time before climbing back up and employing her nostrils.
“Not so much as a wave of his hand,” Rainfall said. “And he wore the garb of a high tradesman. A man with an eye toward commerce is usually better mannered.”
“I found something under the bridge,” Wistala said. “I think it tells the tale of the young man with the red feather. The troll lurked under the bridge for some time, and had been there much before. Smears of droppings are all along the pilings.”
“It’s been a hard winter. Maybe it had trouble finding enough pigs and goats for its appetite. Ah well, the waterfowl return, and it’ll get its fill of them. I must get the bridge repaired. A bad storm now could blow the wooden span to bits.”
Birds and words! Wistala thought, with her tail as stiff as an icicle. He’s got the advantage of the troll, and he doesn’t even consider how to use it.
Wistala watched the labor for the next few days, from the felling of two great trees for lumber to the sawing, the ironmongery both in the barn and at the bridge, and then placing the new beams with the crane. The last fascinated her, and Rainfall attempted to explain it over dinner with a great deal of talk about fulcrum points and levers and counterweights and blocks, but as soon as she learned one working of the crane, it seemed to force the previous one out of her head.
It wasn’t until she watched it at work the next day that some of his discourse made sense. After the workmen had gone—few dared labor long past noon, as they had to travel home on foot, save for a blacksmith or two who lodged with Rainfall at Mossbell—she stayed up and asked a few more questions about the crane.
“Ah, you’re getting it. You’ve no mind for theory, but when you see it in practice, you learn like lightning. I’ve noticed that with your Elvish, as well. Just when I thought you’d never get the hang of the extrafamilial oratory, you—”
“Bother oratory forms for now,” Wistala said. “The crane looks like it can go to a great height, above most treetops. Could it lift a tree upright?”
“Easily. Vertical, horizontal. Vertical is actually easier to maneuver; you don’t have to have stabilizing cables, as the shape of the tree works for you.”
“I’ve got an idea for your crane. But it would have to happen soon. And I expect you’d have to get a group of men willing to brave a shot at the troll.”
“Whatever can you mean, Wistala?”
“Get a piece of paper. You shall draw as I speak.”
Four nights later, with the bridge still unfinished in its repairs, so excited was Rainfall by her idea, Wistala walked Avalanche back and forth across the bridge.
Nerve, Wistala, where is your dragon courage? A drakka should be firebellied on the night of such a hunt, such a challenge.
The crane stood at the north end, hidden in the trees by the hard climb of stairs leading up the side of the cliff. It held a long, thin, straight pine, shorn of many but not all of its limbs. The wider bottom end had been sharpened, and ax-heads, saw edges, spear-points, and knife-blades stuck out from the bottom in a ring, like porcupine quills, though all had been blackened by soot so as not to catch the light. If it weren’t for the intermittent drizzle, she’d be able to see Rainfall atop the crane. But she wanted bad weather for this job to help mask sounds and smells.
Avalanche wore a thick blanket of quilted leather folded and tied across his back and neck, and grumbled a good deal about being out in the wet and not being near the mares of some of the men—only a handful had been willing to take up with Rainfall, mostly friends and relatives of the snatched young man. Not that Wistala had met any of them; her role in all this would hopefully remain secret.
Wistala walked again to the south side of the river, and thought she saw a bulge in the river, but it was hard to tell. She pulled on Avalanche’s reins—
“Careful!” Avalanche objected.
—and walked him to the side.
Yes. A dripping arm clung to the side of one of the stone arches. It moved, pulling up a sodden shape.