A Severed Line

Two lead wedges remained in Ebele-oma’s work-apron, and the seam in the seventh rib was widening by the width of a fingernail with every turn of the cartwheels overhead. She had bolted to the gatehouse tool locker the moment the carts lurched forward, snatching a mallet, shims, and spare tackle before outrunning the slow oxen along the parapet. Her tapping-iron dangled from its leather wrist thong as she swung forty feet below the carriageway in a hasty hemp cradle, her boots braced against the curving belly of petrified calcium, smelling the vinegar stench of cold marrow. Above the timber decking, thirty southern spearmen marched behind three supply carts, their measured tread sending dull, rhythmic thuds down through the beast's skeletal frame. She needed to set both wedges and pack the joint before the resonant shudder turned the hairline crack into a clean fracture.

If the rib sheared at the spinal collar, the southern arch would drop six inches, taking the timber roadbed with it.

The cart overhead rumbled across an uneven spinal ridge. The white bone under Ebele-oma’s leather soles flexed half an inch, exhaling a puff of chalky powder into the canyon breeze. She did not reach for her harness lines. Instead, she leaned out over the drop, gripped her heavy square-faced mallet, and set the first lead shim against the lip of the split.

The southern infantry had crossed the toll-arch in full battle kit, their greaves polished until they caught the morning glare. Ebele-oma had watched them step onto the span from the parapet platform, helmets laced tight and iron shields strapped across their shoulders, as though forty pounds of southern plate could overawe an eight-hundred-foot fall. Down here, suspended between the blinding white mist of the abyss and the dark underbelly of the sky-beast, iron was nothing more than an anchor waiting for an excuse.

A second jolt shuddered through the arch. The fissure parted a fraction of an inch under the wheel load, weeping an oily drop of yellow marrow that sizzled against the cold lead.

Ebele-oma struck.

The mallet rang once, sharp and flat. The soft lead gave under the iron face, deforming into the mouth of the fissure and biting against the calcified walls. She struck again on the downbeat of the cart’s iron-shod wheels, using the weight of Duke Obidike-adu's provisions to drive the wedge deep into the throat of the seam. The metal jammed hard into the petrified grain. A third blow seated it flush. Instantly, the harsh, metallic ringing of the rib altered, its vibration dropping to a muffled hum as the lead absorbed the shear.

She wiped chalk dust from her lip with the back of her wrist, her breathing shallow and steady. The seam held. The bone had ceased its frantic shivering, anchored against the carriage deck by five pounds of hammered lead.

Then the shouts broke out above.

The noise began not as an alarm, but as the harsh, panicked scraping of iron against slick bone. A draught ox bellowed, its hooves scrabbling against the petrified ridges of the roadbed. Metal clattered—a dropped pike or an overturned barrel—followed by the sharp snap of timber railing giving way.

Ebele-oma looked up through the lattice of suspension cables.

A figure was falling past the edge of the carriageway.

The southern soldier plunged sideways, arms flailing against the wind, his crimson cloak whipping into a tight cone. He was weighted down by an iron-studded jack and heavy leather gear. He struck the secondary tackle line thirty feet above Ebele-oma's head with a sound like a wet hide sack hitting stone.

The hemp line snapped taut with a violent twang that resonated through the entire undercarriage rig.

The shock wave traveled down the rope into Ebele-oma’s timber work-cradle. The cradle lurched violently to the left, throwing her against the bone flank with enough force to knock the air from her throat. Her square-faced mallet slipped from her numbed fingers, tumbling into the white cloud below without a sound.

Thirty feet above, the soldier was screaming. He had caught the tackle line in the crook of his elbow, his fingers tangled in the spare hoist-rings. His weight dragged the outrigger spar downward at a savage angle. The spruce timber groaned, its iron mounting pin grinding against the socket in the beast's flank.

White dust rained down on Ebele-oma’s face. The socket was failing.

"Hold the line!" the man screamed, his southern accent thick and mangled by terror. His greaves kicked against the empty air, searching for purchase on sheer calcium. "Pull! In the Duke's name, pull the tackle!"

"Kick off the harness!" Ebele-oma shouted up at him, her voice cracking against the wind. "The timber pin is tearing out!"

He did not kick. He lunged upward instead, trying to seize the frayed hemp with his armored gauntlets, and his sudden jerk drove the mounting pin another two inches out of the rotted bone.

A shower of calcified flakes sprayed across Ebele-oma’s shoulders. The primary eyebolt that anchored her own work-cradle shared the same structural root. If the outrigger tore loose, the entire suspension cluster would strip from the flank, pitching her cradle into the canyon.

She drew her rigging knife from her belt. The curved horn-handled blade was honed until it shaved dry hair.

The soldier looked down, his eyes wide and bloodshot behind the cheek-guards of his helmet. He saw the steel in her hand. "No—by the gods, woman, hold the line!"

The iron pin shrieked as it canted ten degrees downward. A crack shot through the calcium around the bolt hole, yellow marrow weeping through the freshly opened fault.

There was no debate in her hands. If the spar gave way, the bone would lose its anchor and two lives would vanish into the fog instead of one.

Ebele-oma reached out with her left hand, hauled the secondary rope taut against the edge of the cradle, and brought the knife across the braid.

The hemp parted with a dry pop.

The soldier dropped. The curse in his throat tore into a high, ragged shriek as the wind caught his cloak and turned him belly-up over the chasm. He spun twice through the empty space between the seventh and eighth ribs, shrinking toward the vast carpet of white vapor that blanketed the floor of the gorge.

Ebele-oma braced herself against the cradle frame, waiting for the far-off, hollow snap of steel and flesh breaking against the river mud eight hundred feet below.

The sound never came.

Fifty yards beneath her swinging stirrups, just above the ceiling of the fog, the air grew dark.

It did not darken with rain or smoke. Pale, segmented shapes burst from the crevices in the beast's lower vertebrae—creatures the width of a man's thigh and the length of a spear, their translucent white hides glistening with foul fluid. Dozens of them erupted from the petrified fissures in a writhing, coordinated mass.

They did not wait for the soldier to hit the stones.

Three of the largest leeches converged on the falling man in mid-air, their lamprey-like mouths latching onto his studded jack and greaves with sickening wet thuds. The impact checked his fall for a fraction of a second, suspending him over the white gulf in a tangle of thrashing, pale muscle.

Then came the hiss.

Caustic marrow erupted from the pores of the parasites' segmented skin. A cloud of acrid, sulfurous vapor rose instantly around the thrashing mass. Ebele-oma watched in paralyzed silence as the soldier's iron-studded coat bubbled, charred, and melted like tallow over an iron stove. The metal rivets ran in smoking droplets. The scream died in the man's throat before the iron studs had even finished dissolving, his flesh and gear disintegrating together into a steaming broth that vanished into the gaping maws of the swarm.

Within five seconds, nothing remained of the southern spearman.

The leeches did not drop into the abyss. Sated and swollen with boiling sludge, they curled their long, segmented bodies back toward the underbelly of the Great Span. They did not retreat into the dark crevices from which they had emerged. Instead, they anchored themselves mouth to tail across the underside of the seventh rib, forming a thick, glistening lattice of pale flesh directly beneath Ebele-oma's cradle.

The wind whistled through the gap, carrying the reek of dissolved iron and hot grease.

Beneath her boots, the lead wedge she had hammered into the fissure remained firm. But down below, across the weeping underbelly of the spine, the pale lattice of parasites began to pulse. They contracted and relaxed in slow, measured rhythm—beating not to the terror of the falling dead, but to the steady rumble of the supply wagons still rolling across the bridge above.

They were not nesting. They were waiting for more weight.