by Robin Hobb
His words jolted me back to my own situation, and I immediately replied, “No, sir,” and bent my head over my own paper and my mind back to the task before me. Despite my delay, which had seemed an eternity but had likely been only a minute or two, I finished well within the hour and had time to go back and check my work. I found several errors, probably due to my rattled state. Nonetheless, when Captain Rusk announced, “Time! Pass your papers to the cadet on your right. End cadets, bring the papers forward to me,” I felt as queasy as if I had failed every problem.
I kept my eyes to myself and spoke not a word as we left our classroom and formed up for our march across campus. A few of the others whispered to one another about two of the knottier problems on the test, but both Spink and Gord were as silent as I was. Despite the cold air, I felt sweat trickle down my back.
My test in Varnian is a hazy memory to me. We were given a technical passage from a cavalla strategy text to translate into Gernian, and then had to compose an essay in Varnian about how to care for a horse. I handed in my papers feeling I had done well enough. The trick of the essay was, of course, to keep to vocabulary and verb forms one was certain of.
Our midday meal was next. We went first to Carneston House, to exchange our morning books and notes for our afternoon materials, and then straight to the mess hall. I didn’t speak a word to anyone. No one seemed to notice my silence. They were all preoccupied with the tests we had completed and dreading the ones still to come. If anyone else had marked what had happened between Gord and Spink, they chose to keep as mum about it as I did. The cooks had prepared a hot and hearty bean soup thick with chunks of fat ham and plenty of fresh bread to go with it. It smelled good, much better than their usual concoctions, but I scarcely tasted it. Spink seemed lighter of spirit, as if he had faced his most feared demon and the rest of the day could not daunt him. I avoided meeting his eyes for fear of what I might read there. Would I know if my best friend had forsaken his honor and cheated on a test? And with the next breath, I traitorously wondered if that would be such a bad thing, if he had done it so that his fellows, including me, could continue at the Academy? Did the ends justify the means? Was the culling, as Trist had suggested, a cruel way to test our loyalty to one another as well as our learning? And then my mind came back to Rusk’s comment about Gord needing to borrow a pencil-that one cannot always depend on one’s comrades but should always be in a position to let them depend on oneself-and wondered if there had been some hidden meaning there.
I entered the engineering and drawing classroom with trepidation. I feared a lengthy session with calipers and straightedge and ruler, dissecting and analyzing some ancient construction. Instead, we found Captain Maw triumphant over four disorderly heaps of miscellaneous building materials. He wore a heavy coat and hat. He grinned at us all, clearly pleased with himself. It filled me with dread.
“Quickly organize yourself into your patrols. I’ve decided that we will have a practical test of what you have learned. In a few moments we’ll be carrying our materials outside and across the campus to Tiler’s Creek for a realistic demonstration of what you have learned so far in my class.
“Often a cavalla patrol will find itself faced with an obstacle of some sort that must be crossed: a river, a ravine, a desert, or some other rough piece of terrain. Then all the spit and polish and book learning in the world cannot avail you unless you can put both your minds and your bodies to work. My test is a simple one. Your objective is to transport your patrol across Tiler’s Creek. I’ve furnished you with an ample supply of materials and tools, far more than you would have with you on the average horse patrol. The rules are simple. You must cross Tiler’s Creek. You may use only the items from your own supply dump, but you may barter with other patrols for what you think you may need. Barter carefully, for once you have given something away, you cannot demand it back. You will pass or fail this test on the basis of your patrol crossing the creek. I will now give each patrol five minutes to select a leader for this exercise. Only the leader can barter and his decision is final. Choose now. ”
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I instantly hated it. Not the construction aspect: I appreciated the chance to prove my skills and knowledge in a practical way. No, I dreaded having to choose between Spink and Trist, for I was certain they would be my only choices. And once we had selected one or the other, I feared the divided loyalties within our patrol would hamper our efforts to get anything done. As I dreaded, Trist immediately smiled round at us and announced, “How about it, fellows? You know I can get this done. ”
Oron and Caleb immediately nodded, but Gord held up a warning hand. “Wait. I want to propose a different man for the job. ”
“Not Spink,” Oron said decisively.
“No, not Spink,” Gord shocked me by saying. “I propose Nevare. His marks have been excellent and more than once he has shown that his father gave him a practical grounding in this sort of work. Isn’t that true, Nevare?”
Only a week ago, I would have flushed with pleasure at Gord’s praise, and at the newly appraising stares that my fellows gave me. Today, I only felt intensely uncomfortable. Did I want praise from fellows who would cheat or suggest cheating? So I only said, grudgingly, “I’ve built a cattle bridge or two. And helped with the footbridge for my sisters’ garden. ”
There was a very long moment of silence. Trist looked shocked, not just that Gord had proposed someone other than Spink, but also that he had chosen me. But Rory, Nate, and Kort were all nodding vigorously, and after a moment Spink did also. Trist just shrugged. “If that’s what you fellows want,” he said, as if he didn’t care at all. Caleb immediately nodded also. Trist seemed to think it rather generous of himself to concede, and I suppose it was. As it was, we were still standing about uncertainly when Captain Maw announced, “Time is up. Name your commanders. ”
“Cadet Nevare Burvelle,” Trist announced before I could say anything. Then, quietly, to me he added, “You’d best do your job, Burvelle. If we fail this, then we all go down because of you. ”
His words changed my warmth at my comrades’ support to a liquid fear in my belly. Was that why neither Spink nor Trist had given me much challenge for this post? Because a failure now would be such a spectacular defeat? It chilled me, but Rory, grinning like a frog, tilted his head at me and jovially commanded me to “Lead on, Commander Burvelle. ”
I think that, even said in jest, it does something to a man the first time someone actually calls him “Commander. ” I thought about it as Maw ordered all of us to follow him outside into the raw weather. Each of us gathered an armful of supplies from our pile and followed him. In that moment, I decided I would step up to the challenge rather than, as I had first considered, insist that Trist take it on. Maw was whistling as he led us out into the cold and the wind. We tramped through the caked and icy snow on the lawns to the edge of campus. There he motioned us to set down our loads and invited us to survey the creek.
When I stood by the stack of supplies Maw had given our patrol, my heart sank. Tiler’s Creek seeped along, a muddy gash at the edge of our landscaped Academy grounds. The trees that grew along its steep, mud-flanked banks were pole-size saplings, now bare in winter’s grip. The gap we had to cross was not especially challenging. Once, perhaps, Tiler’s Creek had been a real creek. I suspected that nearby households siphoned off most of its water and dumped waste into the small trickle that remained. At the bottom of its muddy ravine, the “creek” was little more than a seep of slime under a coating of ice, and only about eleven mucky feet wide. It was immediately obvious that we had only one wooden plank that was long enough to span the creek. We had a quantity of shorter boards, rope, canvas, stakes, a mallet, several knives, a hammer, a saw, and some nails. My heart sank.
“Let’s sort out our materials and see what we have,” I suggested.
That was a mistake. Trist immediately added, “Let’s see if that one long piece will reach across
the creek. ”
Spink then chimed in, “Looks like we only have one. We may have to trade to get more. ” I suddenly saw how it could go. I would ostensibly be in charge, while the two natural leaders actually made the decisions and set the tasks. I felt the familiar lurch of uncertainty that always plagued me when I wondered if I had the ability to be a good officer. I was too solitary, too independent, too accustomed to doing it all myself, my own way. Perhaps my father had been right about me; I did not have what it took to lead.
The rest of the patrol began to move to obey Spink’s and Trist’s instructions. I realized my error in not being more forceful. I would not err so again. I tried to put my father’s steel into my voice. “No. That’s not how you start a bridge. I’m not worried about spanning it now. The span is no good if we don’t have anything to support it. Foundation first. ”
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Everyone turned to look at me. The other patrols were talking and moving pieces of wood and shaking out lengths of rope. In the circle around me, a small silence reigned. I felt the cold of the day and the chill of my small command’s doubt. I suddenly knew they wouldn’t follow me, and worse, that neither Spink nor Trist had the real knowledge of how to build a bridge. We were all going to fail because I had failed my one chance to lead. Then, “Let’s get sorting,” Spink said to Kort. As they moved to obey my command, Spink gave me a wink. It both reassured and annoyed me. It seemed to say that he was with me, and that with his backing, I could command. I was grateful for his support, but I wanted to be able to lead regardless of whether I had it or not. I longed to know how he and Trist made others want to follow them. What did I lack?
There was no time to ponder it. Captain Maw had given us a motley pile of resources. As Trist had noted, there was only one piece of lumber long enough to span the creek. One patrol was already taking the easiest and most obvious solution. They set the single board on the ground so it reached from bank to uneven bank. But the board bowed under the weight of the first cadet who tried to cross it and spilled him into the half-frozen muck. The cadet who had fallen into Tiler’s Creek clambered back out, coated in filth, wet, even colder now than he had been, and dispirited. His fellows hooted at him as he rejoined them. Maw, who was sitting silently on a nearby bench reading a book, lifted his eyes, pursed his lips, and shook his head at them. I thought he fought back a smile. Without a word, he took a pipe from his coat pocket and began to fill it with tobacco.
I, too, shook my head. Maw, I suspected, had a different solution in mind. What had seemed so easy when we were building models now seemed almost insurmountable. How easy it was to reach down from above a model and carefully fix a tiny plank into place. I suddenly saw the real first step in solving the problem. “We need at least two men to cross to the other side,” I announced. “We can’t build a bridge working just from this end. ”
No one wanted to go. It was a steep climb down, a mucky slog across, and then a tough scrabble up the other side. Whoever went was going to get his uniform and boots filthy. I glanced up and down the creek. There were no bridges in sight. Through the muck was the only option. “Two of us, at least, have to wade across. ”
“Not me!” Trist announced with a grin. “Not right before Dark Evening. I have plans for the days off and they don’t include fussing about with my laundry. Make Rory go. ”
I’d already forgotten the lesson I’d just learned. I should have issued orders to two of the cadets, not opened it up for discussion. I didn’t want to set a good example by wading across myself. For one thing, I had the very same reasons for wishing to stay clean that Trist had. But just as important to me was that I wanted to stay where the materials were so that I could come up with a credible building plan. I took a breath and tempered my remark. “No one has to go just yet, Trist. We have to determine what materials need to cross with that part of the team. Sending two men across empty-handed won’t do us much good. ”
“The others have already started, and we’re just standing here talking,” Oron complained.
He was right. I saw that one patrol was busily nailing crosspieces to their long plank. Did they think that would make it stronger? Another group had succeeded in trading so that they had two long planks. I looked at ours again, stood it up, and shook it. It wavered. Even two of them would not have the load-bearing capacity to be the foundation for a successful bridge. “There’s no sense in doing anything until we have a definite plan,” I told the others. “And somehow I don’t think that this one long plank is at the heart of it. I think it’s a distraction. What if we didn’t have this piece of wood? What would we be doing?”
We all looked at our pile of supplies with new eyes. “Rope bridge,” Rory announced.
I nodded. “We’ll anchor it to those saplings. But we still need a team working at the other end. ”
Rory knelt down and began to unfasten the rope from its coil. The others made similar “busy” motions. I took a breath. It was time to command, and I had no faith that anyone would follow my orders. Not unless I physically led the way. “Spink and Caleb. You’re wading across with me. Rory, give me one end of that line. ”
“What do you need us for?” Caleb demanded piteously.
I refused to answer. He shouldn’t have been questioning orders and I wasn’t going to indulge him. Rory shook out the line and gave me an end. “Let’s go,” I told them.
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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 acros
s. 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.