I started down the steep bank, and despite my attempts to pick good footing, I slid most of the way. I had tried to pick a spot on the bank that was well coated with snow. Even so, there was mud up the back of my trousers before I reached the bottom, where my boots sank into the ooze, but only a few inches. “Spink, Caleb. Come on,” I told them, and then turned my back, refusing to watch them hesitate. I crossed the mucky creek, breaking through the shallow ice at every step. I scrambled up the opposite bank, using exposed roots and tufts of grass as handholds. By the time I stood on the other side, I was filthy. Spink, to my surprise, was right behind me. Caleb watched us for a moment, then, as we ignored him, he crossed. He had to use the rope to pull himself up; he had height but no real muscle on his frame. We reached down, hauled him to his feet, and then stood up, brushing off our hands. I realized that Captain Maw was watching us, a peculiar smile on his face. I wondered if this was his idea of a practical joke on all of us. I grinned back at him and gave a wave to show I could take it. Then I turned back to our task.
I had never built a rope bridge, but I’d seen pictures of them. I called out that we were going to go for the simplest form: a single rope strung across to walk on and another line above it to hang on to as we crossed. I saw the other three patrols immediately halt in their efforts and look at one another as if trying to decide if that was the plan they should have pursued.
Half an hour later I had proved to myself that we did not have enough rope to make a bridge. The saplings that grew close to the edge would not take our weight; we had torn three of them up by the roots. The ones that were further back were too far away; we didn’t have enough rope. I had made at least four trips back and forth across the mucky creek, trying to find a way to anchor the rope to the bank itself. Trist, to my surprise, had turned to it with a will. He had not ventured into the muddy creek, but he was almost as dirty as I was from anchoring the rope to various shrubs that we then uprooted. Gord had served mostly as an anchorman, trying to hold the rope bridge by his own weight; it hadn’t worked. Oron had fallen in the creek once and Rory twice. Our time was running out. The only consolation we had was that the other patrols were faring just as badly as we were. If I had not spoken my rope bridge plan aloud, I might have been able to trade our long board for another patrol’s coil of line, but it was too late to do so now.
I sat down for a moment to catch my breath. Even putting four men on each end of the line to anchor it and using the long board as a balancing pole, we hadn’t been able to get Spink across. That was ignoring the problem of Gord’s massive weight, and the larger problem that as soon as a man had crossed, he could no longer act as an anchorman on the home bank.
I glanced at Maw. He was bundled on his bench, reading his book and smoking. He had given up even watching us. I was tired, cold, and muddy, but the frustration was the worst. I did not think Maw would give us a task with no solution. I tried to think back over all our constructions in his class, trying to come up with something that would be a clue to the solution.
“We’re running out of time!” Trist announced.
“Does anyone have any ideas?” Spink begged. I heard him throwing it open to anyone to take the command from me and save our patrol. That felt like a knife in my back. I lifted my eyes to stare at him. And there, twirling down from the sky above, shed from some unseen bird that had flown overhead, was a perfect black wing plume. It spun as it came down, shaft first, and neatly twisted itself into some soft snow to stand upright. It stirred slightly in the chill wind.
The memory crashed back into me. I stood with Dewara at the edge of the abyss. What had anchored those flimsy magical bridges? Only feathers driven into the sand, and twists of spiderweb. I had wood for stakes, a mallet for pounding them in, and stout rope. I could anchor my bridge to the earth itself. There might be just enough rope to do that. I slogged across the creek one more time to whisper my plan to my fellows. If it succeeded, I wanted the success to be ours.
We worked feverishly, cutting our stakes and sharpening them, pounding them into the earth and securing our lines. Our limited supply of tools meant that I had to wade across several more times, ferrying tools back and forth. We ended up with two parallel lines that barely spanned the divide. We had untwisted our short piece of remaining rope into the twine and used it to fasten the crosspieces we had cut from our remaining lumber. We kept one fairly long piece as a balancing pole. I stood back and looked at our “bridge” and wondered if even a rabbit could cross it safely. We had barely finished it when Captain Maw stood, took out his pocket watch, looked at it, and shook his head. “Five minutes, gentlemen!” he announced to us. There were shouts of dismay and frustration from the other patrols.
