Deus Ex Machinarium

Anh was floating several mers above the ground. Since this activity did not tax his mind too much, he opted to hover in a vantage point right in the middle of a forecourt of an inn called ‘The Black Goose’, which Brandt chose as their last stop before entering the city proper. This inn was an order of magnitude bigger than everything they'd visited on the way from Sheridawn. So far. The entire complex seemed larger than a village, with three sprawling guest houses, four stables, and a few additional buildings of various purposes, which included a blacksmith. All of this straddled the main road which ran through the middle of the forecourt like a demarcation line.

The hour was exceptionally early, even considering Brandt's and Anhs' strict standards, several candles before dawn, however, the skies in the East already had this greyish-purple glow, heralding imminent bivrise. The tanai didn't have the time to marvel at this sight, because there was enough of a commotion happening below to warrant his immediate and undivided attention. Several dozen carts and carriages were readied for departure. Those bound for Sheridawn stood on the northern side of the forecourt. Accordingly, the ones earmarked for Isdelburg stood on the opposite side. The crowds of hoomin, and even tahei, involved in these preparations could be counted in hundreds and incorporated a diverse selection of trades, from laborers loading crates, sacks, and bundles, through stableboys hitching up draft animals, to caravan masters instructing their drivers and drovers. There were even several stalls with food rations for the road and other useful knick-knacks. The galleries surrounding the square housed a large security detail keeping a close eye on thieves and vagabonds. At first, they were glancing suspiciously at the flying enrobed figure, but gradually stopped when they likely concluded that he didn't pose an immediate threat.

The size of the crowd was staggering, even for Anh. His kinfolk made pointed observations about things happening below, while he couldn't stop lamenting the lack of writing utensils.

Now and then he looked straight down at the mules, to check if everything was still in order. He was instructed to do so by Brandt, to the chorus of sarcastic remarks made by his kin. Anh was sure that the word 'slave' was mentioned at least four times. But he did it anyway because Brandt needed to ‘finalize passage agreements’. His absence was prolonged, Thernohh quietly counted out drips and triskols, and had already gotten to a quanter with change when the silhouette of his companion appeared in the passage leading towards King Rasmus Bridge, pushing through the crowd. Just as Anh was seriously considering floating back down and starting to harass random people for some clean writing sheets.

-” We need to move.” - shouted the hoomin once he got close enough.

-” All right. We’re moving.” - shouted back Anh. He lowered his flight until he was almost back on the ground, scaring several workers in the process, and yanked the mules.

-” We should be able to avoid the morning crowds, which might seem counterintuitive to the obvious. I managed to secure priority entry through the bridge and paid the tolls already.” - said Brandt mounting his horse.

-” That’s… fortunate” - said Anh wiggling his eyebrows - “I think.”

-” I said ‘entry’." - replied the man, maneuvering so as not to trample anyone to death - "There is still the other end of the bridge, where Isdelburg collects its share of the toll and where I could not go, for obvious reasons.”

-” I trust you have everything under control.” - remarked Anh dismissively -” Besides, they are incentivized to make us cross and pay, I presume.” - They were already nearing the toll gate of the bridge and his attention had already shifted to marvel at this prime example of engineering.

The toll gate loomed large above them. Anh ignored kin's comments about gloom and menace and with the help of Tow, he started assessing the structure's qualities. The gateway consisted of two stone, rectangular towers, fifteen mers in height. The distance between them measured no more than six mers and instead of a solid door, a two-winged barrier, painted in blue and yellow stripes, prevented entry. Overlooking all this was a narrow wooden bridge, occupied at this moment by a couple of bored, yawning soldiers of the kingdom, armed with longbows. Banners, sporting the Royal Cockerel, hung sadly and loosely from the battlements.

Brandt led the animals with the attached tanai around some carts and several packed mules, waiting patiently to be allowed to pass, effectively skipping the entire queue. There was some displeased muttering, but no one dared to protest loudly. A stocky, fifty-something soldier in a blue-yellow tabard manning the barricade stepped out from behind the obstacle and approached the travellers.

-” Halt! Citizen.” - shouted the man - “The passage openeth’ naught for thee at this hour.”

-” We hath already secured proper measures for passage at priority.” - responded Brandt calmly but in a voice that Greoo described as 'authoritarian'.

-” Ah, yes. Mr Zerster, Please.” - the officer nodded and then proceeded to raise the barrier.

-” Hey!” - shouted one of the merchants whom Brandt and Anh passed over - “how come they get to go, but we don’t!”

-” Citizen! Shuteth up thine! These bes internal kingdom matters, not concerning thee.” - the officer growled back - “Now stay where you are.”

The tiny caravan moved on. When the officer went out of earshot, the tanai asked the hoomin.

-” Are we really on ‘internal affairs of the kingdom’ here?”

-” As much as that fellow cares” - said Brandt - “we are.”

The tanai didn’t respond, only nodded, being already busy counting stones.

Even though the Neisse was the smaller of the two rivers merging at the Isdelburg peninsula, its width still measured almost a kimer. The bridge spanning it was built to match that grandeur. Seven mers in width, twice that in height, it stood on stone arches, set about forty mers apart, which in turn rested on stone pillars, reinforced to withstand spring ice floes. Anh counted nineteen spans until the stone bridge ended abruptly with a massive wooden drawbridge, hinged from a threshold of the city gates. These in turn were bookended by twin rectangular stone towers. A series of metal chains served to actuate the bridge. Anh noticed that the banners hanging from these towers were different and depicted a silver fish on a light blue background. High above the fish, a red horizontal bar with some trapezoidal shapes was added, almost like an afterthought.

*is this supposed to represent a bridge* - asked Greoo - *looks silly*

*yes, the fish is the old symbol of Isdelburg* - replied Tow, the resident walking encyclopedia of unconnected facts and trivia - *they added the bridge afterward* the name Isdelburg means literally a place where chub is…*

But Tow wasn't listened to anymore, because Anh directed his attention to the river and views on either side of the bridge.

Neisse was swollen with spring meltwaters and peppered with occasional ice floes. To the left, the river seemed like a grey ribbon slowly flowing towards him in a menacing silence. On his right… well, that's where it merged with Orda, a river even wider and more powerful. The waters there seemed almost like a sea. The riverbank opposite, way past the tip of the Isdelburg peninsula, was barely visible in the morning mist.

Isdelburg in comparison seemed insignificant and tightly squeezed on the peninsula, as if gripped in a vice. Although the towers, the parapets, and the gate seemed like impenetrable fortifications, the city didn't care that much for security, as the defensive walls extended no more than a hundred mers on either side of the gate, seamlessly blending into an extensive - and very much unfortified - system of wharves, landings, cranes, ramps and warehouses.

-” The drawbridge.” - the sharp sound of Brandt’s voice pulled the tanai out of his daydreaming - “It's up. It should not be at this time.”

-” We only just entered the bridge." -replied Anh dismissively - "And we're ahead of time. I’m sure these things are synchronised between both sides.”

-”They should be, but this is a free city, maybe there was some political incident, or…” - the banker paused and scratched his chin - “I would expect everything to be prepared for that torrent of merchants waiting to pass, but maybe you are right. We’ll wait and see what happens.”

When they reached the edge of the stone pier, where the bridge would land, they stopped. Nothing happened. Once or twice a helmeted head appeared above a parapet, muffled shouts and banging came from somewhere inside the tower, but the bridge stayed up.

The toll gate on the Cammotian side must have been opened, because a crowd started to gather behind them, leaving both men in an uncomfortable position, as they had only icy water as an escape route. Anh floated just on the edge of the pier, looking half bored, whilst Brandt shifted his gaze between the gate and all the merchants they bypassed previously, who were now slowly creeping towards them. His demeanor showed a hint of nervousness, the first time since they started their journey.

The wait dragged on. The crowd grew denser and was slowly turning into an unruly mess as the prolonged delay made its constituents very unhappy. There was a lot of angry muttering, shoving, and pushing. A pampered voice of an Imperial noble demanded answers, followed by weak protests and sounds of a rod hitting the flesh.

Brandt finally had enough.

-” HEY! Lower the bridge!” - he shouted - “Before anyone gets hurt!”

- “Yeah!” - came somewhere from the crowd - “Open the fucking gate!”

Nobody seemed to respond for a short while, but then a soldier appeared on the battlements.

-"Shveige! Ve are vorking on it!" - bellowed the man, then he paused and looked around the crowd as if he was searching for someone in particular. - "Vou zere! Ja, vou on ze ferd." - he hollered pointing straight at Brandt - "Kan your fliegling frend komm und help hier?"

- “ I think he means you.” - said the nord among the angry responses coming from the crowd - " Are you willing? I mean, not as if it's of any use, I don't think you can reach the tow…"

Anh shrugged, ignoring the banker. He nonchalantly floated off the pier into the air then hastily headed to the gatehouse of the bridge, his robes flapping around in the wind.

- “ Tanai. They can fly.” - muttered Brandt, then sighed - “Now let’s hope he does not cause some sort of a disaster”.

But Anh wasn't listening anymore. He was already high over the bridge proper, almost as high as the battlements. The soldier waiting for him there had his eyes wide open with awe and wonder mixed with surprise.

-" Yes, what is the problem?" - asked the tanai, after a few drips of his free-floating at the man's eye level didn't respond.

-" Uh, ja Herr hexer. Ze winsch iz stuk." - stuttered the guard, then pointed towards the door leading to the tower - "Zis vey."

Anh followed him inside. There, he discovered three more hoomin heaving on a long metal rod, which was firmly wedged inside some mechanism. Seeing the tanai enter, they let go of the lever and moved aside, bowing their heads and muttering something illegibly. One of them, an elderly man with an impressive white mustache, stepped forward, taking off his leather coif.

-" I'm the bridge master m'lord hexer sir." - he said in a clear Cammona, with an accent that Tow recognized as a pure Gisean - "I have no clue what's happened here, I've personally checked all them gears yestereve, and not a problem was found."

Anh felt embarrassment welling up inside. These men treated him like some… summoner of Eldritch Horrors, if such things even existed at all, with respect and fear. He wanted to immediately shrink and lower his head but Thernohh forced him to float that little bit higher so that he would be at least a full head taller than the crowd.

-" Yes, indeed." - he said in the most knowledgeable tone he could muster - " Please allow me to inspect the apparatus. I shall forthwith identify the problem and set about correcting it."

The tanai then proceeded to fly about the mechanism, helping himself with a faint bluish lumehex, which zipped around illuminating those parts he needed to see the most, all to the revered silence of the onlookers, only occasionally interrupted with quiet comments and gasps.

The problem turned out to be indeed trivial. The winch, powered by two men and connected by a wooden axle with a similar setup in the opposite tower, drove a small wooden gear, which turned a massive, four mer in radius, wooden sprocket. This sprocket in turn pulled on weighted chains, which lifted the bridge via a non-differentiated pulley located in the highest part of the tower. Several triskols of poking around revealed that one of the wooden pegs, which were supposed to keep the chains in line with the gears, broke off and jammed it all to inactivity. The location of the fault was such that it would have taken the engineers quite a bit of searching, as it was all but invisible from the platform where the winch was.

A short bout of kinhexergy later, and the tanai emerged from the deepest bowels of the tower, floating with him the offending battered piece of wood, which he then gently landed on the bridge master's extended palm.

The men didn't waste any more time and finally, with a loud creak, the bridge moved away from the wall accompanied by an echoing cacophony of chains rattling over their fittings. For what seemed like six Zoons of torpor, but in reality could not be more than a few triskols, the wooden platform trudged towards the pier, finally resting in its seat, with a loud clunk complemented by relieved shouts coming from the crowd.

The bridge master was unapologetically overjoyed. He grabbed Anhs' hand and shook it, ignoring, or maybe just not realizing, the depths of Herr Hexer's unease. He then escorted his savior to the exit, using a narrow, winding staircase, which the tanai eschewed in favor of flying straight down. The man didn't stop talking, apart from those short moments to take a breath, until they reached the ground floor and exited through a side door. He then turned towards the tanai and handed over a small pouch that emitted a characteristic clinking of coins.

-" I know this isn't much, master m'lord hexer sir…" - he said, stuttering slightly - "...but please take this as our thanks. The Lord Merchants of Isdelburg would punish us for dawdling, with hard coin. That's just a little thank you."

Anh took the pouch in his kinetic grip and nodded in silence, but the man wasn't finished yet, and as he walked towards the barrier he enquired, almost leisurely.

-" You travel alone m'lord hexer sir?"

-" No." - replied the tanai, clearing his throat - "My emp… associate with pack animals are just there at the front of the crowd."

-" Very well, m'lord hexer sir. You'll pass free today. Least we could do." - he said, whilst lifting the railing. Then he gestured at Brandt, who took their pack animals, and went forward. Anh smiled uneasily and floated slowly towards him.

-” Care to enlighten me as to what happened?” - asked the hoomin when he caught up.

-” Sure. Yes.” - replied tanai as he took over his mules - “They had a trivial issue with the lowering mechanism. It jammed and they could not budge it.”

-” But finally they managed?”

-” With a little kinetic help from me. I read a book about these mechanisms some time ago, so this was familiar. We had to set some things up, but it went smoothly.”

-” I guess that we…” - Brandt gestured around at the crowd that was now flowing onto the bridge - “...are in Arneg's mercy today.”

-” Well. We are. We get to omit the gate tolls because of my intervention. The folks behind us will pay as usual."

Brandt nodded with appreciation and smiled, but said nothing. He resumed moving forward, ignoring the guards at the gantry who waved and cheered him as they passed. Anh too tried very hard to ignore all this. His kinfolk were split on the subject, half advocated pride in their achievements, the other half thought this was much ado about nothing and any displays of gratitude and affection were simply unnecessary. He opened the pouch he received from the bridge master and looked inside. Predictably, it was a collection of coins worth, at a glance, at least ten shillings.

In his head, Greoo very seriously started outlining a new business plan of staying in these distant hoomin lands and working as a bridge mechanism rectifier. Anh smiled to himself. First, they needed to get on that divinuled boat.