She pulled out her far-seer and studied the far bank of the river, checking out each ruined building in turn. She scanned past one a short ways downriver from them, then turned the far-seer back to take another look. “That’s a hydroelectric generator if I’ve ever seen one. It’s beat to junk and corroded like there’s no tomorrow, but I’m sure of it. The Guild Hall did get blown to blazes if one of the generators is out in the open.” Mari pointed. “That’s the place we want.”
Alain blew out a long breath. “Getting there may be difficult. Especially since I fear our trail can be easily followed by the inhabitants of Marandur. We may not have much time before more of them arrive.”
Mari studied the river. The water flowed clear, impeded only by the broken stubs of bridge supports, marching in ragged columns toward the opposite shore, and the remains of the fallen bridges themselves, which in some places poked above the surface. Aside from that, the only things visible in the water were the decaying stumps of masts from boats and ships sunk long ago. From what she could tell from the wrecks, the river hadn’t silted up in the long time since the Imperials had last dredged it, remaining deep enough that small ships could probably still navigate it. As far as Mari could see, the Ospren River spread widely between its banks, its waters running with a steady current that carried occasional pieces of driftwood past at a decent clip. Swimming obviously wasn’t an option even without taking into account the weight of her pack. “Deep, wide, and fast, and we’re on the wrong side of it. We need a boat.”
“I cannot create one, if that is what you are asking,” Alain advised.
“Maybe I was hoping for that.” Mari stared around at the ruins of the waterfront. “Most of these places seem to have been burnt out as well as blown apart. But if we can find a warehouse door that wasn’t burnt and hasn’t decayed into uselessness, maybe it’ll serve as a raft.” She started walking along the edge of the water, peering at the battered buildings and rubble for large pieces of wood. Fortunately, the very edge of the river wall near the water was almost clear of junk, probably having been swept clean occasionally when the river flooded in the Spring.
Alain followed, his own eyes going back frequently to check on their trail. “They are not in sight yet, but they will see us crossing,” he observed.
“Fine. As long as they don’t have boats to follow us with,” Mari snapped. “Hey.” She darted toward a gaping opening, tugging at some large pieces of wood still fastened together. “It’s part of an old warehouse door.”
Alain lent a hand and they pulled it free. The Mage eyed the cracked wood dubiously. “Will it hold us across the river? Will it even hold us and stay afloat?”
“Do we have a better option?” Mari asked. As she waited for Alain’s answer, they heard rubble falling a short distance upriver in the direction they had come from.
“Not unless we want to fight again soon,” Alain agreed.
It took both of them to shove the old door to the river. Mari climbed on first, balancing with difficulty, then going to her hands and knees. “We’re not standing up on this trip,” she advised.
Alain nodded, began to join her, then paused. “We should get paddles of some kind.” But as he turned back a thrown rock struck less than a lance-length away from him, thudding into a rotten crate. “Then again, perhaps we need to trust to luck.” He sat down on the door and then used his legs to shove off from the shore as hard as he could.
Mari hung on, her arms and legs quickly drenched as chill river water washed over the makeshift raft. But the raft didn’t sink, supporting them as the river’s current carried them out toward the center of the water and down toward the remains of the nearest bridge. “We need to try to catch ourselves on the remains of that bridge and pull ourselves across the river,” she yelled over at Alain. “Otherwise we might get swept completely out of the city.” She didn’t want to think about what would happen to them if the Imperial sentries saw a couple of people on a raft drifting out of Marandur.
“All right,” Alain called in reply.
A moment later, Mari heard the plunk of something small and heavy hitting the water. Looking back, she saw more barbarians on the riverbank, still too close for comfort and all of them hoisting rocks and bricks from the endless supply around them. She could see dark objects arcing toward her, following them with her eyes until they landed around the raft, sending up splashes that soaked any parts of Mari and Alain that had remained dry up until then.
“They have bad aim and little strength,” Alain told her. “That is not surprising. They probably get barely enough to eat to survive, and in the warren of the ruined city, they surely fight normally at close hand by ambush.”
“Does that mean we’re safe?”
“Not yet. I think I remember something about being in water. Swimming, it was called?” Alain put his feet in the water and began kicking, helping shove the raft farther from the river bank.
Mari kept her eyes on the approaching bridge, trying to judge their chances of snagging some part of the wreckage. But a wide stretch of river ran free between two supports, and the raft was heading straight down the center of that. Cursing, she tried using one hand as a paddle to propel the raft toward some of the debris sticking up above the river, but made far too little progress. The current swept them through the gap and downstream. “Okay. Let’s aim for the next bridge. It’s a big one. Probably used to be the main bridge for the city. There should be lots of wreckage sticking up far enough for us to use.”
Their pursuers had been left far behind now, small shapes on the riverbank, as Mari did her best to aim the foundering raft toward a bridge support, cutting across the current with the help of Alain’s kicking in the water. For a long moment she feared they would fall short, but then the raft hit, almost knocking her off as she grabbed for handholds, the worn stone and masonry cold and slick from river water and algae. A hard lump formed in her stomach as she imagined getting thrown from the crude raft into the river, having to abandon her pack with her jacket and her tools, struggling through the cold water but perhaps not making it, sinking slowly into the darkness of the river, her spirit becoming one more restless wraith haunting the ruined city.
Mari gripped the shattered bridge support so hard her hands ached, taking deep, shuddering breaths.
“Mari?” Alain’s voice was close by. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “No. I’m scared to death.”
“I am glad I am not the only one.” His voice held no trace of humor.
Mari turned her head enough to stare back at him. “Are you really?”
Alain nodded, his face tight with strain, his clothes drenched. He lay on the other side of the small, improvised raft. “I do not swim all that well, and I am tired, and this raft is…not very good.”
“Alain, I’m too scared to move. There’s just been too much. The storm and the trip south and the Dark Mechanics and Professor S’san and the prophecy and this awful, awful city and—” She tried to still her shaking. “You know.” He nodded again, silently. Mari closed her eyes, trying to block out the world for a moment, but she kept seeing an image of Alain. He trusted me. He got on this raft. He’s counting on me. I have to get him to safety.
Thinking about someone else made her own fear subside a little. Mari forced her eyes open, staring at the ruined bridge support just before her face, then moved her head to look where they needed to go. There were plenty of rough spots ahead. Plenty of places to grab and hold. It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done. Just keep telling yourself that. You can do this. It’s gotten you through life this far and it’s going to get you to the other side of this river.
She focused on her left hand, willing it to release its death grip on a protruding brick. And finally it did, jerking free. She scrabbled the fingers along the surface of the column a short distance, to a place where some bricks had fallen, leaving an opening she could latch onto. Shivering, Mari wrenched her right hand free, bringing it up to grab a hold
near her left hand. The raft swayed and grated sidewise along the bridge support a little. Seeing another handhold a little farther down, Mari lunged for it and grabbed on there. The raft moved a little more.
She found that once she had started moving, keeping going was hard but not nearly as hard as starting had been. The raft swung alarmingly under her knees as she pulled it along, Alain helping where he could from the back and using his legs to push the raft when he could find a spot to rest a foot. They came to places where branches and other debris had piled up against the bridge supports, and yanked the raft around them. In one of those piles, Mari found a stout branch long and light enough to be useful as a pole and passed it back to Alain.
They cleared one column. Mari stared down into the rushing water, seeing the layer of broken bridge remains lying beneath the surface here. If you’re the daughter of Jules, then your ancestor sailed unknown seas. You can get the rest of the way across one lousy river. “Don’t let me fall off,” she said to Alain, then slid down so her upper body was resting face down on the raft and her feet dangled into the water low enough to reach the submerged rubble. Step by step she walked the raft across the gap, the cold water biting into her legs and hips and grabbing at her as it raced past through the opening.
“Let me take the front now,” Alain suggested as they reached the next bridge support.
Mari shook her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the next stretch of wreckage. “We can’t get by each other without losing the raft. It’s barely together as it is. I’m all right.”
After the fight through the gap between supports, pushing along the solid surface of another support seemed easy, even though her shivering was increasing as the cold water stole the heat from her body. She pushed her fears back a little again with thoughts about heat-sinks and fluid dynamics. The next gap between supports wasn’t too hard, with the remnants of the fallen bridge so close to the surface Mari could brace herself against them. Then another column, another gap…
She thought the raft might be sinking lower, the ancient wood soaking up water and losing its ability to float. Pieces broke off occasionally, whirling away in the cold water and quickly lost from sight. Her shivering had grown so violent that Mari wondered if that alone would break the decayed wood. Don’t think about it. Just keep going. You can do this.
Mari bumped up against a flat surface and just stared at it blankly. Alain’s hands were on her shoulders, then his arms were around her waist, helping her up a short, steep slope that abruptly leveled out onto a flat surface littered with the leavings of battles over a century gone. They were on the other side of the river, on the clear area edging the river wall. Mari huddled into a tight ball, her clothing soaked, shaking uncontrollably from the cold.
A warmth grew around her, surrounding her body as if she were encircled by gentle fires. Mari yanked her eyes open, astonished, to see Alain kneeling nearby and staring at her. “W-what are you d-doing?”
He spoke slowly, concentrating on his effort. “I am making the air around you heat up. Not enough to harm, just enough to help.”
“I–I kn-knew that h-having a M-mage for a b-boyfriend would c-come in handy s-someday.”
She just lay there for a while, the heat soaking in, her shivering subsiding and her breathing growing calmer. “Alain, I know this takes a lot of work. Please stop. I’ll be all right now.” Getting her arms under her, Mari pushed herself up to a sitting position.
Alain looked weary but he was smiling at her, the expression clear enough that anyone might have noticed it. “You are a brave and remarkable woman, Mari.”
“I’m not half as brave and remarkable as my Mage is.” Feeling embarrassed by his praise, she forced herself to her feet, then offered Alain a hand. “Come on. We need to keep moving, just in case those sub-humans have another way across the river.”
He took the hand and stood up, almost overbalancing her. But she managed to stay up, too, then laughed. “Hey. We forgot to fill our water bottles.”
“Other issues had our attention. Can it wait?” Alain asked.
“Yeah.” Mari pointed. “The current carried us downstream. The old Mechanics Guild Hall should be right over that way.” Walking along the edge of the river at the best pace they could sustain, they saw the building they sought once they had climbed up and over a pile of rubble where a waterfront building had collapsed outward.
Mari led the way, her eyes searching the remains of the old Guild Hall. “Yes. That’s definitely it. What happened to it?” She paused to rest, breathing heavily under the weight of her pack, hands resting on her legs. “It looks like… I bet they did.”
“Did what?” Alain asked. He was standing beside her but once again looking back the way they had come. “I do not recommend spending a lot of time unmoving like this, Mari.”
“I know.” Mari straightened. “I think my Guild blew up the place. Maybe after the rebels captured it. The way the walls have fallen outward in several places make it look like internal explosions did the job.” She started walking. “There should be a couple of ways down to the basement vaults. If we’re lucky one of those will still be usable.”
As they got closer, Mari pointed off to one side, where once-impressive buildings had collapsed in on themselves long ago. “That must have been the old Mechanics Guild academy. It looks like it was once identical to the one I attended.” Mari shook her head, overwhelmed by a strange feeling, as if she were a ghost haunting the ruins of a place where she had lived long ago. “It’s so bizarre, seeing that. Less than a year ago I left the living, breathing buildings of the new Guild academy, and now here are identical buildings wrecked over a century in the past. It looks like they were gutted by fire.” She swallowed, imagining the chaos, the destruction, places she would have recognized, hallways which would have seemed familiar, all sharing in the death throes of Marandur.
“It happened many years ago,” Alain said, his calm voice a comfort. “Your imagination gives new life to what has long been dead.”
“So I need to stop thinking about it.” Mari turned her face grimly from the brooding ruins of the old academy, concentrating on picking out a path to the tumbled remains of the old Guild headquarters next door.
When they reached the front of the building after crossing the rubble-littered courtyard, Mari found a solid wall of debris where the main entrance had stood. Working their way around to the side entrance, they discovered it too was completely blocked where part of the upper stories had simply slid down on top of it. Crossing her fingers, Mari led the way to the back entryway.
There she stopped for a moment, unable to believe their luck. Then she took another look. “Somebody cleared this.”
Alain studied the ruins before them. “You are certain?”
“I think so. It must’ve been quite a while ago, but look at the way some of the wreckage has been shifted to clear the entry.” Mari knelt to examine the dusty surface. “I don’t see any sign that anybody has used it in a long, long time, though.” Moving carefully, she started forward, crouching to get past low areas in the cleared passage. The light dimmed as they went inside and down, so she paused long enough to open her pack and extract the hand light. Her pack was as watertight as Mechanic art could make it, but a little moisture had made its way inside during the river crossing. Fortunately, the hand light was dry. Mari clicked it on, then started walking again. Alain followed close behind. Mari could see he was still devoting most of his efforts to watching their trail for signs of pursuit.
She paused to study the ruins, running her light across their surroundings. “I could be wrong, but it looks like there were two stages of destruction. Part of this looks like it collapsed, then the rest came down on top of it later.” Mari frowned as she turned sideways to slip through an area where the path was barely still open. “The second collapse came after this path was cleared, though. I’m sure of it.”
The first door they came to had long ago fallen off its hinges. The second had been shoved asid
e, its splintered remnants heavily coated with dust. Mari froze as something creaked alarmingly somewhere overhead in the wreck of the building and a fine haze of more dust trickled down from the bent ceiling above them. An occasional scuttling noise marked small creatures fleeing from Mari and Alain’s approach, but nothing large seemed to have laired here. Mari sniffed, catching the faded scent of industrial chemicals, wondering if the poisons liberated by the destruction of the building had kept it free of invading plant and animal life. “Don’t touch anything unless you have to,” she cautioned Alain.
Moving ahead again with great care, they reached the steel door leading to the basement area. It, too, lay askew, but had been wedged to one side to help support the cracked door frame. Mari pointed to old, dark smudges on the ceiling. “Soot. Somebody was down here using torches.” Or somebody had been down here burning something else. How much soot would have been created by priceless technical texts turning into ash? She tried not to think about that possibility, feeling sickened by the idea of so much knowledge being destroyed.
The stairs leading downward were slick with dust but otherwise sturdy enough. Mari took a moment to bless her Guild’s obsession with excavating foundations, basements and subsurface stairs from solid stone whenever possible. Reaching the bottom, she gave Alain an anxious look. “The vaults should be right up this way.” She wondered why she whispered, then realized she felt worried about noise somehow causing further collapse of the ancient ruin. Then, too, there was a sensation of disturbing a place where living humans were no longer welcome.
She picked her way across the floor, increasingly concerned at the signs that there had been a lot of foot traffic here, even so long ago. At one point she paused, seeing something sticking out from under a fallen mass of material. Mari knelt, touching a rifle barrel so badly rusted that a portion of it disintegrated under her finger. “Standard- model repeating rifle. It looks like it was identical to the ones today. The same weapons used in this siege over a century and half ago were employed by the bandits who attacked us in the desert waste. It’s like we’re part of the same story.”