The Severed Verge

The sun tasted of dry copper and scorched bark, bleeding down between two massive ironwood buttresses that anchored the verge. Kayadu knelt on the rim shelf, pressing his chest against the wood while checking the rawhide lanyard on his throwing slate. Three hundred paces of suspended timber hung across the gulf, creaking under crosswinds that tore along the boundary between cold fog and golden light. On the far side, resting upon a transverse loading trestle, sat the ironwood transport crate, its slatted lid leaking the warm amber glow of living ember-moss.

Around him, the frost-scarred climbers held their breath. Boma-adu squatted on his haunches, his thick arms cradling the fifty-pound river-slate ballast. The stone’s face bore the matching ground disc Kayadu had scored that morning with his scraper.

"The wind is rising from the south flue," Boma-adu murmured over the rush of the abyss. "The spans are already shimmying."

"They won't drop it until we take our weight past the third arch," Kayadu said. He pulled the last unbaked clay vial from the oilskin pouch at his ribs. His right palm throbbed beneath its grease-wrap, blistered by the acid burn from the chimney climb, but his fingers remained steady. He uncorked the stopper with his teeth. The sour reek of living tree-wasp venom met the faint cinnabar dust on the throwing stone. "When I spring the line, run for the winch post. Do not look down."

Across the chasm, the canopy scout stood on the abutment. Kayadu recognized the woman from the lower spans: tall, broad-shouldered in shingled armor, her curved flint-saw across her back. Beside her stood a slender recruit whose breastplate hung crooked, gripping an ashwood sling with white knuckles. Behind them, eighty yards higher on the roost spar, the winch team sat near the deadfall counter-weights. Kayadu saw the glint of a bronze trigger wedge.

He did not wait for horns. He spat the cork, dipped his forefinger into the viscous venom, and smeared it across the face of a thumb-sized river pebble. Leaning down, he pressed a second slick film of venom directly onto the scored contact disc of Boma-adu’s fifty-pound ballast stone, matching the surface area to the pebble's ground face until the dark paste bit into the slate.

"Now," Kayadu said.

He shoved off the bark shelf and hit the timber deck.

The Verge Bridge jumped beneath his hide boots. Rawhide suspension cords groaned under the impact, shedding dry moss into the clouds ten thousand miles below. Boma-adu lunged behind him, the heavy ballast slung in a shoulder basket, his boots pounding cedar planks with rhythmic thunder.

From the far roost, a whistle split the air. Sling-stones whistled through the draft, cracking into the handrails and throwing chips of ironwood across the walkway. A round stone glanced off Boma-adu's raised slate cudgel with a sharp crack, deflecting into the void.

Kayadu sprinted low, his gaze locked on the winch housing above the far abutment. If the trip-winch turned, the notched cedar pins beneath the third arch would shear under their stride, dropping the bridge into the clouds.

Fifty paces out, the recruit on the far shelf panicked. The boy fumbled a stone into his sling pouch, stepped forward, and whipped the cord before his balance settled. The missile skittered uselessly over the decking.

"Hold the stay!" the woman shouted. Her voice cut clear across the creaking wood, hard as green timber. She caught the recruit by his harness, wrenching him back from the edge as she unslung her hunting sling. "Do not shoot the runners, fool. Shoot the cords!"

Kayadu reached into his chest sling, pulling the treated pebble into his scarred palm. He matched its crimson face against the contact circle of the throwing slate, letting the venom bite into the pores of both stones. The tether grabbed. In his hand, the small pebble took on the phantom drag of the fifty-pound ballast stone Boma-adu carried ten paces behind him. Every muscle in Kayadu's strained right shoulder burned against the kinetic weight.

He whipped his arm forward, releasing the pebble toward the high roost spar.

The pebble streaked into the sky. Ten yards behind him, the fifty-pound river stone leaped from Boma-adu’s basket, drawn by the invisible link of momentum. The heavy slab smashed through the bracing struts of the high roost with a deafening crack. Wood sheared like brittle bone. The bronze trigger-winch tore from its mountings, tumbling into the chasm along with its shredded trip-lines before the operators could drive the drop-pins home.

"Clear!" Boma-adu roared, stumbling as the basket emptied.

The deadfall did not drop, but the impact sent a violent tremor down the main cables. The bridge bucked sideways, rolling forty degrees over the yawning cloud floor. Planks popped from their rawhide lashings, fluttering down into the white expanse.

Kayadu sprinted through the swaying timber, covering the hundred paces past the middle span while the rawhide stays whipped like startled snakes. He vaulted a gap where buckled cedar had twisted loose, driving his boots into the final stretch until he hit the far loading trestle. Ten paces ahead, right before the canopy abutment, sat the transport crate. Through slatted sides, the orange brilliance of living ember-moss bathed his face in fragrant warmth. For men who had spent their lives shivering in lightless trenches, the heat felt like a blow to the chest.

He lunged for the hemp carrying strap.

A shadow crossed the sun. The woman was already there.

Her curved flint-saw descended in a wicked diagonal cut, aiming for his collarbone. Kayadu threw his left forearm up, letting mammoth hide absorb the scraping bite of the teeth. He drew his flint scraper with his blistered right hand, driving the blunt edge against her breastplate.

She did not yield ground. Her gray eyes locked onto his, flat and calculating. She drove her boot into his wounded shoulder, tearing a ragged breath from his throat.

"You crawl out of the frost like worms," she grated through her teeth, her blade pressing hard against his forearm guard.

"We die down there," Kayadu rasped. He twisted his wrist, hooking his scraper into the hilt-cord of her saw, wrenching sideways to break her balance.

Behind them, a sharp, singing crack split the air.

It did not come from bridge timbers. It resonated deep within the ironwood root-tower itself, a hollow harmonic groan that shook the sky. The celestial spheres were pulling. The Great Severing was working its lever upon the spires, stretching petrified fibers past endurance.

Above them, the upper canopy watchtower shuddered. A pre-rigged boulder trap, mounted directly to the Chieftain’s private observation deck, gave way without a signal from the defenders below. Four counter-weighted granite blocks tore loose from the high boughs, plunging like falling cliffs through the thin air.

"Look up!" Kayadu yelled.

The woman glanced toward the sky. Her eyes widened with bitter recognition.

The first boulder smashed through the eastern suspension tower fifty yards above them. The impact obliterated main anchors. Rawhide cables thick as a man's thigh snapped, whipping through the air and sweeping two canopy defenders off the ledge.

The second block struck the center span. The deck collapsed in the middle, folding downward into a massive V. Planks, ironwood pegs, and frayed cords dropped away into the abyss.

"Chukwu!" the woman screamed.

The recruit had slipped on bucking timber, his leg caught between sheared beams. He hung over the gulf by a single twist of bark fiber, hands clawing at empty sky.

The woman kicked Kayadu back, turned from the crate, and threw herself toward the boy. She caught Chukwuma-eke’s harness with one hand, bracing boots against the shattered abutment. With her other hand, she brought her flint-saw down upon the straining bridge stays that were dragging the terrace shelf toward the chasm.

Kayadu lunged for the transport crate. His fingers locked around the hemp handle just as the deck beneath his boots sheared away.

The timber dropped out from under the world.

A deafening roar filled his ears as hundreds of yards of shattered wood plunged into stratospheric fog, disappearing into white silence.

Kayadu did not fall. His secondary rawhide shoulder harness, spliced with fresh sinew in the chimney, snagged upon a single ironwood peg projecting from the sheared abutment edge. The jolt drove air from his lungs, wrenching his torn collarbone so hard stars flared behind his eyes.

He dangled fifty paces below the terrace rim, spinning slowly in stratospheric wind.

Beneath his boots lay ten thousand miles of unbroken white clouds, stretching out to the rim of the universe. In his left hand, clamped with desperate strength, he held the ironwood crate. Slatted sides pressed against his ribs, pouring sweet heat into his frozen skin, its golden glow lighting swirling vapors around him.

Above him on the broken precipice, the canopy scout hauled the weeping recruit onto the solid bark shelf. She rose to her feet, hands smeared with pitch and blood, and stepped to the edge of the ruin. She looked straight down through sheared air, curved flint-saw hanging loose by her thigh. In her left hand, clutched against her shingled armor where she had drawn it from her breast, she held a pale splinter of carved cedar, gripping the wooden pin tight against the glare.

Kayadu hung by a single three-ply cord, watching her through the mist, waiting for the strand to snap.