Oron and Caleb immediately nodded, but Gord held up a warning hand. “Wait. I want to propose a different man for the job.”
“Not Spink,” Oron said decisively.
“No, not Spink,” Gord shocked me by saying. “I propose Nevare. His marks have been excellent and more than once he has shown that his father gave him a practical grounding in this sort of work. Isn’t that true, Nevare?”
Only a week ago, I would have flushed with pleasure at Gord’s praise, and at the newly appraising stares that my fellows gave me. Today, I only felt intensely uncomfortable. Did I want praise from fellows who would cheat or suggest cheating? So I only said, grudgingly, “I’ve built a cattle bridge or two. And helped with the footbridge for my sisters’ garden.”
There was a very long moment of silence. Trist looked shocked, not just that Gord had proposed someone other than Spink, but also that he had chosen me. But Rory, Nate, and Kort were all nodding vigorously, and after a moment Spink did also. Trist just shrugged. “If that’s what you fellows want,” he said, as if he didn’t care at all. Caleb immediately nodded also. Trist seemed to think it rather generous of himself to concede, and I suppose it was. As it was, we were still standing about uncertainly when Captain Maw announced, “Time is up. Name your commanders.”
“Cadet Nevare Burvelle,” Trist announced before I could say anything. Then, quietly, to me he added, “You’d best do your job, Burvelle. If we fail this, then we all go down because of you.”
His words changed my warmth at my comrades’ support to a liquid fear in my belly. Was that why neither Spink nor Trist had given me much challenge for this post? Because a failure now would be such a spectacular defeat? It chilled me, but Rory, grinning like a frog, tilted his head at me and jovially commanded me to “Lead on, Commander Burvelle.”
I think that, even said in jest, it does something to a man the first time someone actually calls him “Commander.” I thought about it as Maw ordered all of us to follow him outside into the raw weather. Each of us gathered an armful of supplies from our pile and followed him. In that moment, I decided I would step up to the challenge rather than, as I had first considered, insist that Trist take it on. Maw was whistling as he led us out into the cold and the wind. We tramped through the caked and icy snow on the lawns to the edge of campus. There he motioned us to set down our loads and invited us to survey the creek.
When I stood by the stack of supplies Maw had given our patrol, my heart sank. Tiler’s Creek seeped along, a muddy gash at the edge of our landscaped Academy grounds. The trees that grew along its steep, mud-flanked banks were pole-size saplings, now bare in winter’s grip. The gap we had to cross was not especially challenging. Once, perhaps, Tiler’s Creek had been a real creek. I suspected that nearby households siphoned off most of its water and dumped waste into the small trickle that remained. At the bottom of its muddy ravine, the “creek” was little more than a seep of slime under a coating of ice, and only about eleven mucky feet wide. It was immediately obvious that we had only one wooden plank that was long enough to span the creek. We had a quantity of shorter boards, rope, canvas, stakes, a mallet, several knives, a hammer, a saw, and some nails. My heart sank.
“Let’s sort out our materials and see what we have,” I suggested.
That was a mistake. Trist immediately added, “Let’s see if that one long piece will reach across the creek.”
Spink then chimed in, “Looks like we only have one. We may have to trade to get more.” I suddenly saw how it could go. I would ostensibly be in charge, while the two natural leaders actually made the decisions and set the tasks. I felt the familiar lurch of uncertainty that always plagued me when I wondered if I had the ability to be a good officer. I was too solitary, too independent, too accustomed to doing it all myself, my own way. Perhaps my father had been right about me; I did not have what it took to lead.
The rest of the patrol began to move to obey Spink’s and Trist’s instructions. I realized my error in not being more forceful. I would not err so again. I tried to put my father’s steel into my voice. “No. That’s not how you start a bridge. I’m not worried about spanning it now. The span is no good if we don’t have anything to support it. Foundation first.”
Everyone turned to look at me. The other patrols were talking and moving pieces of wood and shaking out lengths of rope. In the circle around me, a small silence reigned. I felt the cold of the day and the chill of my small command’s doubt. I suddenly knew they wouldn’t follow me, and worse, that neither Spink nor Trist had the real knowledge of how to build a bridge. We were all going to fail because I had failed my one chance to lead. Then, “Let’s get sorting,” Spink said to Kort. As they moved to obey my command, Spink gave me a wink. It both reassured and annoyed me. It seemed to say that he was with me, and that with his backing, I could command. I was grateful for his support, but I wanted to be able to lead regardless of whether I had it or not. I longed to know how he and Trist made others want to follow them. What did I lack?
There was no time to ponder it. Captain Maw had given us a motley pile of resources. As Trist had noted, there was only one piece of lumber long enough to span the creek. One patrol was already taking the easiest and most obvious solution. They set the single board on the ground so it reached from bank to uneven bank. But the board bowed under the weight of the first cadet who tried to cross it and spilled him into the half-frozen muck. The cadet who had fallen into Tiler’s Creek clambered back out, coated in filth, wet, even colder now than he had been, and dispirited. His fellows hooted at him as he rejoined them. Maw, who was sitting silently on a nearby bench reading a book, lifted his eyes, pursed his lips, and shook his head at them. I thought he fought back a smile. Without a word, he took a pipe from his coat pocket and began to fill it with tobacco.
I, too, shook my head. Maw, I suspected, had a different solution in mind. What had seemed so easy when we were building models now seemed almost insurmountable. How easy it was to reach down from above a model and carefully fix a tiny plank into place. I suddenly saw the real first step in solving the problem. “We need at least two men to cross to the other side,” I announced. “We can’t build a bridge working just from this end.”
No one wanted to go. It was a steep climb down, a mucky slog across, and then a tough scrabble up the other side. Whoever went was going to get his uniform and boots filthy. I glanced up and down the creek. There were no bridges in sight. Through the muck was the only option. “Two of us, at least, have to wade across.”
“Not me!” Trist announced with a grin. “Not right before Dark Evening. I have plans for the days off and they don’t include fussing about with my laundry. Make Rory go.”
I’d already forgotten the lesson I’d just learned. I should have issued orders to two of the cadets, not opened it up for discussion. I didn’t want to set a good example by wading across myself. For one thing, I had the very same reasons for wishing to stay clean that Trist had. But just as important to me was that I wanted to stay where the materials were so that I could come up with a credible building plan. I took a breath and tempered my remark. “No one has to go just yet, Trist. We have to determine what materials need to cross with that part of the team. Sending two men across empty-handed won’t do us much good.”
“The others have already started, and we’re just standing here talking,” Oron complained.
He was right. I saw that one patrol was busily nailing crosspieces to their long plank. Did they think that would make it stronger? Another group had succeeded in trading so that they had two long planks. I looked at ours again, stood it up, and shook it. It wavered. Even two of them would not have the load-bearing capacity to be the foundation for a successful bridge. “There’s no sense in doing anything until we have a definite plan,” I told the others. “And somehow I don’t think that this one long plank is at the heart of it. I think it’s a distraction. What if we didn’t have this piece of wood? What would we be doing?”
We all looked at our pile of supplies with new eyes. “Rope bridge,” Rory announced.
I nodded. “We’ll anchor it to those saplings. But we still need a team working at the other end.”
Rory knelt down and began to unfasten the rope from its coil. The others made similar “busy” motions. I took a breath. It was time to command, and I had no faith that anyone would follow my orders. Not unless I physically led the way. “Spink and Caleb. You’re wading across with me. Rory, give me one end of that line.”
“What do you need us for?” Caleb demanded piteously.
I refused to answer. He shouldn’t have been questioning orders and I wasn’t going to indulge him. Rory shook out the line and gave me an end. “Let’s go,” I told them.
I started down the steep bank, and despite my attempts to pick good footing, I slid most of the way. I had tried to pick a spot on the bank that was well coated with snow. Even so, there was mud up the back of my trousers before I reached the bottom, where my boots sank into the ooze, but only a few inches. “Spink, Caleb. Come on,” I told them, and then turned my back, refusing to watch them hesitate. I crossed the mucky creek, breaking through the shallow ice at every step. I scrambled up the opposite bank, using exposed roots and tufts of
