The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 28 The People Below the Gate

The relief cart hung sideways above the western sluice, its rear wheel wedged between broken rails.

Two children crouched beneath its canvas. An old man clung to the sideboard. Below them, black water struck the open gate hard enough to shake the crossing.

The steward stood on the far bank with the cart’s two mules.

“Weight limit,” he shouted. “We told them to unload.”

Asha reached the bank first, moving fast on her crutch. She looked from the animals to the damaged rail and swore.

“You took their team off the slope?”

“They refused inspection.”

Daren heard the lie in its shape, not through any gift. An inspection did not require leaving a loaded cart without a brake on a wet incline. Whether cruelty or stupidity had started this, water would finish it soon.

Jun was already uncoiling Halvek’s rope.

“I can reach the front.”

“Wait,” Daren said.

She rounded on him. “For what?”

He pointed at the crossing. One support had lifted from its socket. Her weight on the wrong plank could turn the whole span.

“For a line from here. Then go.”

She looked, understood, and thrust the rope end into his hand.

They tied her waist while Selka tested the nearest boards with her staff. Asha shouted for villagers to close the upstream gate. Someone answered that the lifting screw had jammed.

Daren felt time narrow around them.

A farmer offered to swim to the far bank and release the jammed screw. Asha caught his sleeve before he entered the water. The current folded around a submerged brace; even a strong swimmer would be driven beneath it.

“Fetch the long hook,” she said. “Work from above.”

He ran. Daren marked the place in his mind, another danger that courage alone could not solve. The villagers were trying to save their own neighbors, and each new attempt could become another person needing a rope. He told the men beside him to keep the bank clear, then asked one to repeat the instruction downstream.

The cart shifted. The old man cried out.

Jun crawled onto the crossing, keeping low over the sound support. Selka followed only far enough to brace the rope against a post. Daren and two farmers held the main line from the bank.

The first child came out backward, guided by Jun’s voice. She was old enough to understand falling and too frightened to obey quickly. Jun did not shout. She described each handhold until the girl reached Selka.

Then the boy followed, sobbing with his face pressed against the planks.

The old man could not move his leg.

“Pinned,” Jun called.

Daren studied the cart bed. A chest had slid across the man’s ankle. Shifting it would change the balance.

“Can you throw anything off?”

“Seed sacks.”

Asha’s face tightened.

“Throw them,” she said.

Jun cut the lashings. Two sacks fell into the sluice and broke open. Pale grains scattered across the water before vanishing beneath the gate.

The cart rose slightly at the rear. Jun dragged the chest just far enough for the old man to pull free.

Then the wheel dropped.

Daren took the shock through his hips. Pain flashed up his damaged knee. The farmers seized the line beside him, but Jun had vanished behind the falling canvas.

“Jun!”

The rope jerked once, alive in his hands.

Selka stepped onto the failing board and reached down. Daren saw light gather beneath the skin of her forearm. Ironhide held her grip as Jun struck the edge of the crossing.

It could not hold the bridge.

“Back!” Daren shouted.

Selka threw herself toward the bank with Jun’s sleeve in her fist. The support rolled out of its socket. Wood and canvas crashed into the sluice, dragging the rope through Daren’s bleeding palm.

One farmer cut the line before it took them all.

For a moment Daren could see only spray.

Then Jun coughed beside Selka, who lay with one arm twisted under her. The old man was on the bank beyond them. He had crawled the last distance alone.

Jun tried to stand, failed, and let the nearest farmer help her. She kept looking toward the broken crossing as though part of her remained there.

Asha counted the children aloud. Two. Then the four adults who had come with the cart. All breathing.

The steward was retreating with his men.

Daren wanted to cross the water after him. He wanted the clean, immediate answer of putting a cruel man on the ground.

There was no crossing left.

Hessa reached him with a blanket. “Help me with her.”

Selka’s arm was not broken, but her shoulder had been wrenched hard. Daren supported it while Asha bound it against her chest. Her face had gone gray.

Jun knelt nearby, shaking water from her hair.

“You kept the line,” she said to him.

“Others helped.”

“You kept it.”

He let the words stand.

The old man watched the current carry his seed away. His name was Oren, and he had spent thirty years improving that barley.

Asha sat beside him without offering consolation she could not make useful. After a while, she opened her own seed pouch and poured a small measure into his palm.

“Not enough,” he whispered.

“No,” she said. “But some.”

Daren looked upstream. The ruined crossing had carried the high road. Vann’s loaded cart could not return by it now.

Beyond the valley, the monastery gleamed against gathering cloud.

They had saved six people and lost the shortest road home.