LIBERATING THE ARM

Each day Dale checked the tower as she had promised Merdigen she would, despite the tremors that assailed her whenever she passed through the wall. Every heartbeat she believed her last and that she’d be sealed in granite for all time, only to emerge breathless in the tower chamber and find it empty, its silence and stone walls oppressive. She did not linger, and the wall guardians did not hinder her passage, but she felt them observing her.

When she returned through the wall to the encampment, Alton awaited her as always. There he stood, watching her intently, hands clenched at his sides. He was looking better. It wasn’t just the polished boots, but his hair no longer stuck out at angles, and he took pains to neaten his uniform, shining the buttons and cleaning stains, mending tears and frays, and attempting to press out wrinkles.

Dale smiled, pleased by Alton’s overall appearance. It was an improvement, though he still fell into gloomy silences and remained intense about the wall. Some things, she reckoned, she could not influence. The place, with its forbidding wall and nightmarish forest beyond, had the tendency to suck the life out of one. What they needed was a party. A party would lift everyone’s mood, maybe even Alton’s.

“Merdigen?” he asked.

“Not back yet.”

“What was he thinking?” Alton demanded. “He can be of no help to us if he’s haring off to wherever—wherever illusions go!”

“He said he’d return,” Dale reminded him.

“How do we know?”

Dale sighed. “How do we know anything? Sometimes you have to accept a thing on faith.”

Alton opened his mouth as if to retort, but then closed it. “There’s something I’d like you to see,” he said.

He took her into the encampment where a servant stood waiting with a mule hitched up to a wagon.

“I know you can’t ride yet,” Alton began.

“Not allowed to ride,” Dale corrected.

Alton smiled. “Not allowed, so we’re using the wagon.”

He helped her up onto the bench, then climbed up himself and collected the reins. To her surprise, instead of heading toward the makeshift road that led to the main encampment at the breach, he slapped the mule with the reins and whistled it toward the wall, then turned so they headed west, in the direction of the breach. Alton’s uncle, who had been in charge of the encampment before his death, initiated clearing along the wall, the soldiers and laborers under his command chopping down trees and burning brush to a distance of several yards. When Alton came to the encampment, he ensured his uncle’s work continued.

It was in this clearing between wall and forest that Alton guided the wagon. It was bumpy and hard going over stumps, rocks, and uneven ground, and it jostled every single bone in Dale’s body. She would have had an easier time on horseback, but Leese wouldn’t allow her to ride. Alton remained silent throughout, not explaining what this little excursion was about. His hands seemed to shake, though it was hard to tell with the jarring ride. Something was eating at him, that was for sure.

The wagon pitched and swayed as roughly as any boat in an unrelenting sea storm, the wall always oppressive and cold at their left. Dale was never so relieved when, miles later, Alton reined the mule to a halt and set the brake. He came around to her side of the wagon and helped her down. Her old drover friend Clyde would approve.

She followed Alton to the wall. “What do you see?” he asked.

Dale withheld a sarcastic reply and examined the granite expanse before her. She did not know exactly how far they had come in the wagon, but there were cracks feathering the surface. She knew they were spreading all the time, no matter how minutely, evidence of the weakening of the wall.

“I see cracks,” she said.

Alton nodded. “Yes, cracks. Anything…odd about them?”

“No,” Dale replied.

Alton narrowed his brows and stared hard at the wall. “You sure?”

Dale glanced at the cracks again, seeing nothing different about them from others she’d observed closer to the breach. “I am sure. Why?”

“It’s just that—” Alton scratched his head. “It’s just that I think I see some sort of pattern in the cracks. Or at least this morning I thought I did.”

Dale glanced uneasily at him, and back at the wall. Sure, she could see patterns, like watching puffy clouds passing overhead that looked like birds, faces, ships, and any number of things, but she did not say this to him. She wondered just how deeply his obsession was affecting him.

He shrugged. “My imagination.” He helped her up into the wagon for another torturous ride back to their encampment, during which he fell back to brooding.

Dale scarcely touched ground in the encampment when the mender Leese approached with a wave.

“Rider Littlepage,” she said, “just the one I wanted to see.”

“Uh oh,” Dale said under her breath, but she smiled. Leese no doubt wanted to check the progress of her healing wound, which meant painful prodding of still tender flesh and having to demonstrate the flexibility of her arm and shoulder. She’d lost so much strength that her visits with Leese often left her exhausted and in tears. Leese was most sympathetic and patient, but in equal measures thorough.

“Time to check on my wound?” Dale asked, hoping maybe the mender had something else on her mind for once, like an invitation to tea or the recommendation of a book for Dale to read.

“The usual,” Leese replied. “Today, though, I want to take special care and time. If you could join me in my tent in a couple minutes?”

“Of course,” Dale replied, then groaned as Leese walked off.

Alton glanced at her in surprise. “Is Leese not treating you well?”

“Too well. I must be her only patient. Why can’t anyone else around here get sick or break a leg or something?”

Alton sat before his tent doodling in his journal. He mulled over what he’d seen in the cracks in the wall, the patterns. Eyes. And faces. Some of these he drew with their tormented expressions, but he was no artist and he scribbled them out. When he’d taken Dale to see the cracks and she saw nothing unusual, he became unsure of his perceptions. He couldn’t make out the faces either. Maybe he hadn’t been looking at them at the right angle, or the sunlight was different, or…He just didn’t know anymore. Perhaps he obsessed over the wall so much it was influencing him in odd ways. Maybe he really was cracking like his cousin Pendric. Those rumors were still being whispered around camp.

A commotion distracted him from his scribbles and thoughts of patterns and cracks. Dale emerged from Leese’s tent and declared she was free, followed out by the grinning mender. It took several moments for Alton to realize the sling and bindings had been removed from Dale’s arm.

“Look,” she said, flexing her arm for him and others who gathered around her.

“She’s not to overuse it,” Leese cautioned, “and she’s still to wear the sling for a portion of the day.”

Dale rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I’m going to start flinging a sword around or hauling granite.”

Leese looked mortified by the mere suggestion. “I should hope not! It would undo all the good work.”

The next thing Alton knew, Dale was announcing it was time they had a little party to celebrate. An “arm liberation party,” she called it. The cooks of both encampments began pooling supplies, and some off-duty soldiers went hunting and actually returned with a stag, several hares, and some grouse. Alton donated his aunt’s gift of whiskey and his own supply of wine, but it did not take long before Dale had him peeling potatoes. The cooks who had taken a shine to him after all his wood chopping joked with him, teaching him a bawdy song, and teasing him when he blushed.

Both encampments perked up as anticipation of the event spread. Life at the wall was a serious affair, with danger never far and the fear of the wall’s demise hanging over everyone, but this respite was welcomed by all.

Dale was here and there, supervising the fire pit over which the stag would be roasted, directing the collection of wood for a bonfire, and the making of benches to sit on around it. She rounded up various personnel with musical ability and instruments and got them practicing, which picked up the spirits of all who heard them even more. She dashed by Alton’s work station and grabbed a potato.

“Look!” she cried, and she threw it into the air and deftly caught it. “I can do this now!” Then she tossed the potato to him and sprinted off to the next thing.

She was a dervish if Alton had ever seen one.

It was dark by the time preparations were ready. Wonderful aromas wafted through the encampment, making mouths water, and torches and lamps encircled the party area giving off festive light. Dale even coaxed some idle soldiers into cleaning out pumpkins and gourds and carving faces into them. Everyone donated candles and soon faces both humorous and grotesque glowed at them from the shadows. The faces reminded Alton of the cracks in the wall and he shuddered.

The soldiers on guard duty worked out their shifts so all could have a turn enjoying the festivities, and Alton was astonished but pleased by the high spirits exhibited by all as they feasted, sang, and danced, all in celebration of the liberation of Dale’s arm. He knew it was just an excuse she made to raise morale. She was always up to such things at Rider barracks, keeping everyone laughing and coming closer together as family. The seriousness of this place, and her own frightening experience of being trapped in the wall, must have been too much and she deemed the time ripe to break the spell.

Even as Alton was gladdened by the sight of such frivolity, he found himself edging away from the light and gazing toward the heavens. One half of the sky was cut off from view by the looming silhouette of the wall, but the other half was filled with stars. The music and laughter of the party faded away as he became lost in thoughts of his purpose in life and how he seemed to be failing at it. He couldn’t fix the wall. The cracks kept spreading. And was he mad because he thought he saw eyes in the wall?

He was even a failure as a friend. In an inner pocket, he kept Karigan’s letter, still sealed and unread. He feared what he might find in it: words of anger, words of spite. He’d treated her terribly when they last parted; at the time he remained under the trickery of Blackveil. Those dreams still plagued him, still painted her as the traitor who almost made him destroy the wall, but as time passed, he knew those dreams to be lies, poison, and slowly the dreams held less and less power over him. He feared, however, what he had done to his friendship with Karigan—maybe because he wanted it to be more than friendship.

That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? This trying to defend the lands from Blackveil. It was about preserving friends and family, all those things he valued and loved, and he’d practically thrown it all away.

“Here you are.”

Alton started. He hadn’t heard Dale’s approach.

“The party’s back there,” she said. “We’ve lit the bonfire.”

“Just needed some quiet,” he said.

“I think you’ve had a little more than enough quiet if I do say so myself. It’s fine and good to brood about the future and what’s on the other side of the wall, but sometimes you have to let it go for a little while to remember why it’s so important to worry in the first place.”

Alton glanced at her in surprise, though all he could see of her was her outline sketched by the light of the bonfire. Hadn’t she said aloud what he had just been thinking?

“How about it?” she said. “There’s still some apple pie left.”

And she grabbed his arm and led him back into the light.