17. N
Triana had settled into the daily routine, not that there was much to vary.
Shovel, scrape, sleep, eat (never enough).
Repeat. The stables stayed at a constant temperature, comfortable when she worked, a bit cool otherwise.
Small as that blanket was, it was welcome.
She even tried wetting it down to stretch it, but that wasn’t successful.
The mage-lights remained on all the time, neither dimming for night nor brightening for day.
She had long since lost track of the days.
She had made a half-hearted effort to keep track of time using her rest periods. She had no firm clock so marked off a “day” after every other rest period. She knew that to be arbitrary, and it didn’t seem to matter much, but at least it gave some structure to her life.
Otherwise, she settled into a rhythm. She recalled her father’s admonition.
“They have to be right every time, you only have to be right once.”
She made it a point to be compliant, to try and draw the guards into a sense of complacency.
They remained vigilant and careful. She counted the steps from her cot to the step, from the door to the step, from the dung-bin to the step.
All were too far out of her reach. She considered using the bronze rod that she had removed from Rock’s back as a spear …
but it was heavy and poorly balanced, and fighting was something her slaves did. Not her.
She wasn’t going to win the game using their rules, so she needed to change the rules.
She had finished her work, eaten, washed, and gotten into clean clothes, when she sat down on the step with the bronze rod.
She lifted it, felt its weight, studied the end they had struck with the sledge to crack Rock’s back and drive it in.
“So, Rock, they use these rods to control you, the same way the collar controls me. Push the button until you do as you are bid. Same as me.”
She rolled the bar between her hands, feeling its weight and hearing the soft grinding sound of metal against stone.
“If we can get the other rods out, then they won’t be able to control you. One comes into the cage, while the other protects him. But, if that control rod or box doesn’t work, then there is nothing to stop you from squashing him. A little chaos at the door,
and I might be able to get to him before he clamps the collar down on me.”
She rolled the bronze rod back and forth, working out the details.
“I take out the one with the control rod. I run towards him and give him one good spear shot. He goes down, and then there’s no one to put me on the floor.”
The memory of Haldeen choking her with the control rod rose up, and with it the remembered terror.
“Once I’m free, we figure out how to get the cage open. The stable has a big door that will lead to a big hall. Somewhere, there will be a big door outside. Stables are for animals, and they need a way to get animals in and out. We get out that way. After that … shit, I don’t know. We figure it out.
Improvise.”
She held up the bronze rod, hefting it over her shoulder like a javelin. “Oof. Going to need to work on that. Got to get stronger. I’ll have one throw.”
“Thoughts?” she asked Rock. Silence.
“Yes? No? Indifferent?”
More silence from Rock.
“You know, my good, sir,” she said. “There was a time when I liked my males on the taciturn side. Kept them from filling up my air with their prating and posturing and other male foolishness. Perhaps the next one I get might be a bit less stoic … perhaps merely laconic.
Carrying the whole conversation gets old.”
She lowered the bronze rod from her shoulder and sighted along it. “This one came out on account of some kind of infection. I suspect the others will be set more firmly. Let’s see what we have, shall we?”
She tried the trick with climbing the cot again, but Rock would not cooperate. She would get it set, and start up, and he would shift away, leaving the cot to slide down his side and clatter to the floor. She had learned to jump free after one nasty spill where she wrenched her ankle.
She made several attempts, her frustration venting in sulfurous profanity.
Then, inspiration struck. She got her shovel and laid out a line of Rock food, starting where he “sat” and extending across the cell.
Rock’s mouthparts clattered as he worked his way along the straw and dung.
The food kept him on a straight path, with no sidling away as she placed the cot along his side, climbed it, and scrambled up to where she could swing herself up.
The cot clattered away, as Rock chewed through the remaining dung.
“You are definitely male,” she said triumphantly.
“Put a little food down, and everything else just gets forgotten.”
She walked along his back, getting the feel of the rhythms of how Rock moved.
A pace or so forward, eat, another pace or so.
She got to the first of the rods and gave it a tentative push.
Quite solid, and with no play whatsoever.
No luck here with an easy extraction. She made a couple of tentative tests of the other rods, and they remained as firmly set as this one.
She wasn’t really surprised, but each rod’s firmness needed to be checked.
All right, time to get down. She had an idea to slide down as she had started to before, but this time keeping her feet under her.
She stepped towards one side, where she could grab one of the four remaining rods and steady herself for a bit.
She looked down, now painfully aware that she stood as high as the roof of a one story building. Still, she could not remain up here.
She made the leap before she could stop and really think about what she did.
She slid down Rock’s side, grabbing the nearest rod to stop her dangling over his side, then let go.
The angle took some of the speed off, but the slope soon turned into a drop and she fell feet first for what she thought was her own body-length.
She tried to catch her fall, using her legs and back to absorb the impact.
That mostly worked, and she landed without injury, except to turn the ankle she had already twisted once.
She knew she looked ungainly, but doubted Rock to be much of a connoisseur of pratfalls.
This would be so much easier if I had my magic. She stood, limped. Rock didn’t seem to be in any hurry to step in with his healing.
The survey of the bronze rods in Rocks back had taken too much time. She would have to hurry if she wanted to eat. She got her shovel, scraped the ash that Rock had left behind while she baited him with food, then started the eat … ash cycle. Even with a sore ankle, she had to work.
It took her five sets of sleep cycles to work out a way that might … just might … remove the rods.
She had just topped off the bucket when she recalled her daft cousin, Kyrtian, showing her a model he’d built from one of his dusty old books.
A shebushet, or trebuchet, or something like that he had called it, or some such thing.
The interesting bit that she remembered was that it had a short arm, and a long one, and that force applied to one side got magnified by the other.
The long arm slung a small bag, and magnified the force, enough that a squad of soldiers could all haul on ropes at the same time and hurl a good sized stone ball a considerable distance.
She didn’t understand the language he used …
blather about “mechanical force” and “golden ratios” and typical Kyrtian word-noise, but he’d been quite clear on how simple the basic principle remained.
A level. No … a lever. If she could figure out how to make a lever that she could attach to one of the rods, she might be able to draw the rods out Rock’s back as simply as removing splinters.
Plus, pushing down was a lot easier than pulling up.
She quickly realized that while the idea might be simple, the execution would be anything but.
She had neither paper nor pencil, so spent a good deal of time working out portions of her scheme in her head while feeding Rock.
The first bit she sorted out was that this would have to work the opposite as Kyrtian’s trebuchet.
She would need to put the weight on the long end, and transfer it to the short end, and she would need something that would be strong enough to handle the force, without bending or breaking.
The bronze rod she had already extracted fit that bill, but she wondered if it was long enough.
Kyrtian’s trebuchet had a very long arm.
Had it been built to scale the long arm would have been five or six times the length of a horse … with the short arm being barely one.
Still, the bronze rod was what she had, and the only thing she could see that would be strong enough to bear her weight.
So, she would use what she had. She had the shovel for the pivot …
the fulcrum Kyrtian had called it. Metal, and with enough of a rise in the middle to set down on Rock’s back and then put the lever on top of that.
She found a way to test elements, setting the shovel down and placing the short end under the edge of the hopper that held Rock’s food.
She stood on the long end, and nearly split her skull again as the rig came apart.
She escaped that teachable moment with a swollen lip and a ringing headache.
Another piece of blanket to tie the lever to the shovel, and it held together.
She was able to stand on the long end, use the shovel for the pivot, and with some bouncing up and down, get the hopper to rise up a bit.
She stood back, pressing the back of her hand to the lip, still bleeding and already puffy. One step forward. Now, how to tie this all in place so I can do this from the height of a roof that’s also smooth as an egg.
It took her another couple of days to come up with an altogether unsatisfactory solution, but it was the best she had.
Another strip of her diminishing blanket to tie the flattened end of the lever to the rod she wished to extract.
It took her a while to sort out how to soak the blanket material, then twist it around the lever, and the rod she wanted to extract.
Rock had stopped reacting when she held the leveh, even when she pointed it at him.
Water to soak the material and enough twists, and it held fast to the bar, even when she jumped on it.