“The Eagle as well,” the count had said, “so that she may report back to me the success of your efforts.”
They marched hard for three days, seeing nothing except the desolation of farming lands gone wild, then set up camp on the lee of a bluff overlooking the western channel of the Veser River. This was the channel all ship traffic used since the eastern channel—split off from the western by a spur of rocky land, was too shallow, spreading out into marsh before it reached the sea.
Artisans from the city of Autun quickly set to work felling trees and constructing two engines, called ballistae by the ancient Dariyans. They also began work on a small catapult that used a stout young tree, stripped of leaves, branches, and bark, as its arm.
The work proceeded quickly. By the time Liath and the other mounted soldiers had checked out the area, finding nothing but a few burned villages, swathes of heavily grazed fields with no cattle in evidence, and a fallen keep built by some ancient race that had guarded the river in another age, the engines were taking form.
All the next day the engineers worked on their machines. It was so hot that they stripped down to breechclouts as they worked, men and women alike sweating under the sun. Meanwhile Sergeant Fell and a few of his men who had fought the Eika along the north coast of Varre scouted the river as the tide ebbed. Near midday, at low tide, the river ran shallow near the mouth, glistening tidal flats scored by deeper channels coursing seaward.
Late that night, under the light of the gibbous moon, the work parties set out as the tide ebbed again. On the last lip of solid land, they stripped and began the long trudge across exposed sand and rocks, towing logs sharpened at one end. The day’s heat had spilled over into night’s air, making it so heavy and warm that Liath was grateful for the pull of cool water against her skin as they headed into the river’s main bed. Pebbles rolled smooth by their passage downriver slipped under her feet. She smelled the salt of the sea. The waters streamed past, brown with silt, and sang in their murmuring chorus of the long journey from their original home in the mountains far to the south. A branch grazed her thigh and swirled on.
On the flats, where the water flowed no more than knee-deep at low tide, it was an easy matter to drive in beams for piles, though the current was strong enough that a fair bit of wrestling was required to get the angle right. Like the stakes set leaning forward to stop a charge of heavy cavalry, this line of piles was to be angled and fastened so that the bow of a ship might only drive it deeper. With the piles protruding half an arm’s length above the water at the low, so Sergeant Fell said, then an Eika ship could not pass even at high tide.
“Here, comrade!” called a woman to her. As she plunged forward, the water rose along her thighs and she shivered as the cold current dragged at her, coursing around her hips and tugging her seaward as she waded farther out. A man, seeing her struggle against the pull of river, linked arms with her and together they got out to a raft anchored against the current by a section of the heavy chain. She helped five laborers as they wrestled a log as big around as her waist into the deep water and turned it up. Others hauled out rocks from the shore and used these to weight the log on the seaward side while a burly man with a blacksmith’s thick arms hammered the log into place. Still more rocks were brought until Liath, standing on this foundation, could touch the top of the log, the water only up around her waist, submerged rocks slick under her bare feet.
From this vantage, the moon’s light cast a glamour over the scene; its light washed the waters with a silver gleam that winked ceaselessly as the river rushed forward to the sea. Overhead, many of the stars had been bleached to nothing by the moon’s waxing light, but at a glance she could identify the three jewels of the summer sky shining high above her, diamond, sapphire, and citrine. The River of Heaven, unlike the earthly river that coursed round her now, was only a faint mist. On a moonless night it would have stretched like a shimmering beacon right across the zenith, dropping down into the coils of the Serpent in the southern sky. The Penitent and the Eagle, its wings unfolded, rose to the east; in the west, the Dragon set. She shut her eyes. The current dragged against her like the pull of grief.
“That’ll hold,” said Sergeant Fell, startling her back to earth. He had waded out to test their handiwork. “Go on, then. There’s more to set in, all the way across. The tide’s well turned, so we’ve only a few hours before it’ll be too high to do the job Count Lavastine’s set us to do. We can’t sink piles into the deep channels, so these here’ll have to hold strong for the weight they must bear.”