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Post by (~Silentstar~) on May 27, 2008 4:27:04 GMT -5
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Post by Bear on Aug 31, 2013 12:34:42 GMT -5
They were a few days from Rend when Gerran stopped the group. The old woman who rode in the coach had been screaming all night and all morning. Emen and the rest of the group knew that she was dying. Gerran and some of the other Renders took the coach further up the road, too far to see, and returned a few hours later with the coach but without the old woman. They began to travel again and a few miles up the road Emen saw a freshly dug grave. She didn't even learn the old woman's name and only saw her twice, once when she'd scratched her and when one of the Renders had left the door to the coach open. She had been a frail thing tucked between mounds of pillows and blankets. Her hair was completely white and falling out in places and she had been so thin her bones poked through her skin. Since she was so old the woman must have had an Ender but Emen never saw it. She wondered what happened to them when their human died.
The Renders moved Baard and Merri into the coach for the rest of the trip, and they travelled faster. It wasn't too long before Emen caught her first glimpse of Rend. It wasn't as she'd imagined, and looked like a very normal city. It took them a day to reach the city proper, and Emen was able to appreciate the scale of the place.
A massive, fast-flowing and very wide river ran between them and the city, and as they get closer Emen saw that they had to travel across a massive bridge with walls more than twice as tall as her and several miles long to reach the city proper. The bridge was very wide, easily capable of holding the Renders, the carriage and the coach side by side. The drop was a long one, and Emen could see plenty of rocks peeking above the surface of the water through the wooden floor planks. A large gate blocked their path, protected by two guards and two of the fiercest, snarling wolf Enders Emen had ever seen. Both were black but seemed to be painted in bright colours with markings across their face and symbols painted onto their flanks. One of the guards, a burly man built like the very bridge they were crossing, tall and wide, spotted Gerran and broke into a smile.
"Found some more unwanted have you?" he asked and with the help of the other guard they raised the gate and let the group pass. They passed under half a dozen other gates, some manned, some unmanned as they travelled the bridge. Although the base of the bridge was solidly built of thick stone, the floor they walked upon was freshly chopped planks of wood. Parts of the stone walls and supports were singed and blackened.
"Why is the floor made of wood when the walls are stone?" Emen asked the man from Everything - she still hadn't learned his name and at that point was far too embarrassed to ask anyone.
"We burn the floor if under attack to make it harder for anyone to cross this way. Without the floor the only way is to climb along the walls and it's easy for archers to pick them off that way," he explained.
"Is Rend attacked often?" Emen questioned, glancing down at the fresh wood.
"No, Rend hasn't been attacked by humans in over a hundred years, but we're made to practice every few months just in case," he laughed. "It's not the humans you need to worry about."
They reached a final gate guarded this time by four people and their Enders. They stood on a platform a distance from the group with a drop between them. While they watched, the guards lowered a drawbridge and raised a gate, allowing them to finally enter Rend.
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