Roots - Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen: Falling Timber

“It’s coming down, get outta’ the way!” The newly constructed wall began to sway ominously forward, uprooting the dozens of stakes and snapping the support beams with a spray of splinters. Shudders racked through the wall as it slanted forward at an odd angle and creaked loudly as nails shot out at alarming speeds, whizzing past the villagers and wounding several as they imbedded themselves inches deep.
“Longhorn, get back; Stratton, head back and tell Muren what’s happening quick! Mason, Jared and Crayg, you’re with me!” Mr. Jeffers ordered and beckoned to the failing wall’s main support beam. “Throw a noose around it ‘round back then attach it to the oxen!”
The men scattered to the warehouse and brought the oxen from their shelter, straining to pull them on foot, and retrieved their thickest sets of rope. One by one, they lassoed the post and tied it in several knots to the reins of their beasts of burden. With a hearty smack on the rump, the oxen took off away from the slumping wall and pulled.
Slowly the post began to rise inch by inch out of the sloppy mud. The men scrambled about slipping in the mud and soaked from head to toe as they tried to keep the oxen moving. The wind tore at their raw faces and bit at them with its chill. Shivering and shaken, the men continued to toil in the grime and muck for the good of the town.
A bolt of lightning struck the ground not a league away and scorched a patch of field the size of a man. Instantly the flash was followed by a boom as the air compacted after splitting. The oxen neighed and kicked, goring a man in the gut and kicking another straight into his face and off his feet. They began to frenzy and charge in all directions until the flooded soil beneath the wall once again consumed the post’s base.
“Round them up before it--!”
Every rope that had held until that moment snapped and whistled through the air, slashing the man’s throat and colliding into the back of the wall. He dropped to his knees and clamped his hands over his neck as blood gurgled from his mouth and between his numb fingers. The men left him fumbling in the dirt as they struggled to pull the wall back.
“Somebody grab him a doctor! Go fetch Muriel!” Jeffers commanded in a deep boom of his throaty voice. He grabbed a rope in his blacksmith’s grip and heaved himself back, step after step in the frictionless mud. The men followed suit, slipping occasionally, but the wall showed no improvement. The men who were wounded lay sprawled in the saturated earth, still and waiting, as the men focused on their task.
Several long minutes passed like the waxing of the moon. The men’s arms burned and swelled from prolonged effort, their faces were cherry red and their eyes bulged as they gave it their all. A few more minutes drifted by slowly until the men began to drop, each too slow to relinquish their grip on the rope and were pulled off their feet.
Jeffers released his last and dropped to his knees, clutching his chest.
“It’s useless men, it’s gone. All our time and work, they’re..we..” He slumped face forward into the mud and died as the men fumbled to pull him up and resuscitate him. His face was still in a scowl and his neck was bunched up with the veins bulging.
“What’s going on! What’s happened?” Muren roared as he sprinted across the waterlogged field. Fear clawed at his insides like a ravenous wolf and consumed his every thought.
“The ground’s too wet. It wouldn’t hold the weight anymore. It’s going down.”
Muren’s heart dropped into his stomach and his last hope with it.
“All of our time and effort, chores and work put off for this, so much money and resources squandered. We have failed, my friends. We have failed our families and our town. I can assure you this: the bandits will come. And they will come soon.”
Muren turned his head and saw the still figures upon the ground.
“What happened to them? Are they dead?”
The others retrieved them and laid them out on their backs to inspect them.
“Lawson, gored in the stomach, dead.”
Muren’s throat constricted.
“Haverts, throat slit, bled to death.”
Muren waned and couldn’t breathe anymore. His lungs seemed to frozen and weighed in his abdomen.
“Lungden seems like he’ll make it. Got a broken jaw and nose though, and he needs stitches.”
A slight pressure seemed to lessen on Muren’s chest.
“Take him to my house, he will be taken care of there.”Muren sucked in a lungful of air and hoped no one would hear his voice shake. “Forget the wall. It’s hopeless now, this ground will not dry for weeks. Instead, prepare to leave and escape our poor town’s fate with your lives and family; or prepare to defend them with weapon and fire. I know not when of how many will come, but I know it will be the Open Fist who will come here, as soon as they need. Therefore, flee or fight, the choice is yours.”
Muren’s face hardened as he looked down at the dead men in the mud.
“And put them in a proper place lest you join them.”
He turned away and strode back across the field, leaving them to their tasks, and delved deep into his mind. All his worries and fears were now present and manifesting themselves in his life. Every nightmare he had had the last month was no longer a dream and rang like a hammer on hot metal.
“If none will stand, we will all fall.”
In the distance behind him, the wall gave a last shudder and fell forward with a tremendous blast of air and splash; leaving itself half buried on either side, like a tombstone large enough for all of Town.