BETTER TO TRUST YOUR OWN? (1885)BETTER TO TRUST YOUR OWN? (1885)
The cookhouse was poorly lit but noisy. Rowdy diners flung out fingers and chanted numbers in a drink-you-under-the-table match. When flames shot out from the stove, the cook splashed food into a wok and raked it with a metal scoop. At a stump of wood still wrapped in scabby bark, the helper chopped meat cake, a meditating monk drumming with two cleavers.
The place was packed, a sign of decent if not cheap food. Men squatted in the low light of candles and small lamps, their knees up, and backs against the log walls. The cook yelled a dish name, a diner shouted his spot, and the helper rushed by, steamy dish in hand.
Then he jabbed a broom at me. “Get out, you’re dirty and filthy.”
“Screw you, you’re no boss.” He must have seen me wheeling away the corpse.
“All seats are full.”
I retorted with Grandmother’s words: “Sit on the floor, for sure you’re poor.”
Our family always ate at the table, even when the dishes were meagre.
“Mister, such luck to see you again!” someone called.
Soohoo of Clouds Clear Tower pointed to the bench by him and spoke to the helper. “They paid him, didn’t they? He’s all free and clean, no?”
They exchanged glances. Of course everyone in Yale kowtowed to the doorman to paradise, the one holding the key to Goddess’s room. Only a yam brain would refuse. The helper cursed and left.
“Can we do more business?” Soohoo must have heard that I carried my life’s savings on me. Goddess had seen the cash when I was undressing; maybe they wanted to rob me.
“Of course!” I swung the boy into the air and onto the bench. He giggled with delight, but the same brat had fled the store today. “Can you watch him?”
“We have pencil and paper and stones for woy kee. He can watch himself.”
“People play that?” Coolies played chess but never woy kee, which used two bags of pebbles, one for each side. Who needed more deadweight on his back while tramping through snags and swamps?
The cook came by, hands at a grubby apron, cleaver tucked into a leather belt that gleamed like a strop. I named two dishes and then added a third.
“Yes, build your strength for a night of bliss!” Soohoo was peering at the boy. “This one fell into the river?”
I nodded and reached for a candle in my bag but yelped at the touch of cold flesh. A dog with a wet nose sniffed at our legs. I kicked it hard.
A man oozing whisky fumes patted the boy’s head with a grimy hand. “A Yin-chin doi eating rice! Didn’t I say that Chinese food is best of all?”
“He’s no Yin-chin doi.” Soohoo’s voice rose. “He’s jaap jung, Chinese and Native. Call him Best-of-Two!”
“That’s so, that’s so.” The drunk nodded to excess and poked at the boy’s face. “Be good, Best-of-Two, hear? Listen to your father. Always obey him.”
When the drunk lurched away, Soohoo asked if Peter had been given a Chinese name.
Who the hell had time to waste? Choosing a name required thought and study. What did the brat need with another name? Whenever I called him, he ignored me.
Two men in overalls sauntered up. One removed his hat and dipped his head in respect. “Boss, need some wood chopped?”
When Soohoo shook his head, the man planted a foot on my bench and pointed. “Too bad the redbeards saved your son. You’d be laughing if he had gone under.”
“I take him to his mother.”
“Won’t anyone else spread her legs for you?”
“She’s a married woman.” I raised my fist at him. “She has land and a house.”
“Can’t dump the boy now, can you?” The man chortled. “Heaven protects him.”
The cook shoved him aside and slammed my food onto the table. “We chop meat cake here. Want to add something to the stump?”
One hand hung over his cleaver. Firewood in his stove popped and crackled. The diners fell quiet as the pair crept away.
“Those monkeys enjoy yanking their own tails,” said the cook. “Are you really taking the boy to his mother?”
I filled my mouth with rice to avoid talk, wary that this one wanted to impress Soohoo by acting nice to me.
“What if the mother doesn’t want him?” the cook asked. “You’ll have wasted time.”
“Won’t matter.” Soohoo spoke for me and gave the worst of answers. “This one, he’s a superior man.”
“Superior man?” The cook’s bellow of doubt caused his customers to snicker. “Superior men stay in China. They don’t come here!”
“That railway worm heard wrong,” I said to Soohoo.
“It’d be quicker to find a needle in the ocean than to track down someone in that wilderness.” The cook smirked. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”
“No woman turns away from her own son.”
“There’s trouble up north. Redbeards are angry, looking for work.”
Soohoo raised his bowl. “Better to have a beggar mother than a magistrate father, isn’t that what they say?”
The proverb silenced the cook and sent him scurrying. No doubt he had crossed the ocean in a tight little group, a pot of mice and ants. If one of those men made a move of his own, his friends were sure to scoff. Back home, a fellow in a nearby village decided to take candles and sell them where prices were higher, across mountains and bandit territory. Everyone, even his wife and brothers, called him a fool, pointing to his arthritis and reminding him that no profit was guaranteed. And, the rains were coming. On the day he set out, he gruffly reminded his critics that this was a very taxing trip. They had laughed in his face. “If it was easy, why, then everyone would do it!”
I asked Soohoo who might help me.
“Lew Bing Sam, the mix-blood, he tracks down lost kin for people. He speaks all dialects, knows how to lead the way. People from China come to us first. But when a man truly goes missing, he’s a runaway monkey that can’t be found.”
“People trust Sam?”
“He drinks a bit, but what can you do?”
The brat was feeding the dog. I rapped his skull. “I’m still eating!”
Soohoo later insisted on carrying my bag to Clouds Clear Tower.
“No need,” I said. “Your place is thriving.”
“People are leaving Gold Mountain.”
“You’ll go home a rich man. No dogs will bully you.”
“I sweep floors and empty shit buckets, same as my workers.”
The door of his shop swung open and out stepped the mix-blood.
“Sam!” cried the boy.
I jerked him back. A father spawned him but no mother taught him.
“Sam, your name just arose,” said Soohoo.
“I told Goddess to keep quiet!” He grinned. “That woman, she pants and scratches like an animal. She says there’s no other man as straight and strong as me.”
“This man needs a guide.” The brothel keeper pushed me forward.
Sam frowned, as if recalling our scuffle on the beach and my insult.
“I look for this boy’s mother,” I said. “She lives near Lytton.”
“Why not take him to China?”
“He belongs with his mother.”
“Who’s that?”
“Mary.”
“Mary who?”
“Don’t know.”
“That’s how you treat the mother?”
Soohoo steered us inside, away from another fight. “Sam, your woman is about to give birth. Save some money here; use this one to porter.”
“What? Did I ask you for advice?” he demanded.
Meanwhile, the door guard led a dazed, dreamy-eyed client to the exit and greeted his boss. The lamps threw round shadows and yellow light onto wall scrolls containing single words, seven-term quatrains, and long couplets. I hadn’t noticed them the first time I was here.
“Pretty, eh?” Soohoo strutted before them. “My handwork! I’m a read-books man!”
“I sell goods along the railway,” Sam said to me. “You carry my goods; I’ll find your woman. We don’t pay each other.”
“Go hire a hungry China man,” I replied.
“China men don’t want the job,” said Soohoo. “They fear graveyards.”
“Me too.”
“Not so!” exclaimed Soohoo. “We saw you bury that thing. Our Council pays Sam to stop at those places and pay respect.”
“He shouldn’t take the job if he’s scared.”
“He needs a helper.”
“Let him hire one of his own.”
“They’re busy fishing. He needs a man to talk pretty with customers. Isn’t that so, Sam?”
“All China men call us stupid pigs,” he said. “You say we mix-bloods have no brains. The railway snot worms are beggars yet they look down on me. ‘Those aren’t clear beans,’ they say, ‘those are green beans. That’s not pickled turnip, that’s cabbage.’ They sneer and call me a dirty mongrel, half a loaf of bread. But if a China man brings them supplies, they smile and buy large amounts.”
“A man with self-respect doesn’t porter for a mix-blood,” I told Soohoo.
“You want to find the mother? Then you need Sam.”
“I have money; I know how to do things.”
“I’m a superior man too,” Soohoo said. “So I help you.”
The guard opened the door too quickly, trying to get rid of Sam. He noticed and stopped to look back at Soohoo and me. A rush of cool air caused the oil lamps to flicker, caused the shadows on the walls to jerk back and forth.
“You two fools go the same way,” Soohoo said. “Why not travel together?”
“That one prefers his own kind,” Sam said. “Even when they don’t know east from west. He doesn’t know how much horse shit covers the road.”
A morning later, Sam tied a brick onto this mouse’s back. Lurching drunkenly, I acted as if the weight of the pack was nothing and tried to walk alongside Sam, even march ahead. Anything was better than being seen trudging behind him. The Native people by the river would see me as the beast of burden, the plodding ass being led, or the master’s loyal dog even though our packs were alike in size and weight. We were both long-legged, but my clothes were better made and cleaner so I looked like a boss. My hat was newer too. But Sam had the surer foot and pulled ahead without effort.
At first I hung back to let the distance declare that we were strangers. Then I wanted safety, wanted Sam within shouting range. I thought of returning to Yale, but its China men would cackle like grannies. “We warned him not to go! City men totter on bound feet.”
This morning I hadn’t touched my breakfast. Sam asked, grinning, if I was sick or having second thoughts. I rushed off and squatted in the latrine to clear my head. To go with the mix-blood would be like dragging a cow up a tree.
Late last evening, the boy and I had followed him to a house, far from the raucous noise and flickering lights of the saloons, to save a night’s rent. Sam didn’t live in Yale. And on his visits here, he stayed away from Chinatown and the Native village.
“Summers, I go to mountain caves,” he told me. “Cover myself with tree branches and sleep on rock.”
“Wild animals don’t eat you?”
“They’re smart and stay away.” Whenever Sam spoke to the boy, it took longer than when he spoke Chinese with me. Of course he was giving him more details. I heard the boy laugh, but nothing that Sam said to me ever made me smile.
Then, when three redbeards came toward us, I hushed the boy, who was dancing and singing by my side, testing his new shoes on the sidewalk. Sam ignored my call for quiet and for lowering the lantern. I held the brat as he squirmed. Luckily, our two parties passed each other with no trouble.
“What, you wanted to fight them?” I asked Sam. Not much was needed to provoke a redbeard to violence, especially when China men were far from Chinatown.
“Fight who?”
After this, my son clung to Sam the brave warrior, not his nervous father.
In the empty house, Sam lit candles and lay blankets on the floor. The doors had no locks. “What if someone comes to slit our throats?” I asked.
“Then we make sure to slit theirs first.”
He and the boy laughed and went hand-in-hand to tour the house.
“The boy asked how I came to own this house,” Sam said, “without the fuss and noise of a big family. He wants a home just like this!”
The blankets were thin against the chill so I drew the boy close. He turned this way and that. I wanted to slap him to settle down. I slept poorly and awoke when it was still dark. The boy was gone. I sprang to my feet. The worm had crawled to Sam and slipped under his blanket. Those two shared a similar stink, I told myself.
“Come!” I forced the boy to trot along. He kept squatting and pressing his hands to the steel rail, his gaze fixed on its mirror-like finish.
Big and small bridges carried the railway across the creeks that fed into the Fraser. Clear water streamed glistening down the mountains but turned muddy in the swift wide river. On the iron road side of the waterway, only the upper reaches of hills held green trees, ones that had escaped woodsmen and forest fires. Below the tree line, broken earth and charred stumps drained into long dry gullies. The mountain slopes were steep; workers had let logs roll from high up down to the water, crushing and ripping at everything in their way like maddened bulls. During the Guest Wars, the wild lands and bamboo groves had burned along with human bodies. Our fields lay trampled as blowing dust and ashes blinded us. Those lands, too, had not been restored.
The river narrowed as the two shores reached for each other. In the middle sat a rocky island, a small mountain of trees braced against the water. Sam spoke to the boy before turning to ask me, “Know what that is?”
No.
“It’s the home of the bear that swims under the water.”
“Bears can swim?”
“It planted this great rock to stop war canoes from going upriver. But nothing stops the fish!”
The grey plank buildings of one village perched on the hillside. Below, its people leapt like mountain goats over the rocky bank of the river and crouched with long-handled nets on platforms above the swollen current. They watched the water closely with spears at the ready. On snatching a fish from the water, they heaved it into a stone pit where it was clubbed to death and then butchered. The Native tools were hand-made and bound by rough twine. I pushed the brat forward to see; he would need that gear in his future.
Sam backed his pack onto a boulder to relieve the weight and hailed a woman hanging strips of orange flesh onto a rack. Her white teeth gleamed when she turned around. The boy ran to join them, and she patted his back and ruffled his hair. But when I approached, she resumed her work and Sam walked away.
I hurried after him, annoyed to be shunned. “That woman, does she recognize the boy? Does she know his mother?”
He shook his head.
“Did you ask her?”
“There are four days to talk!”
He spoke with people fishing, children picking berries, porters old and young bent under laden packs. When I asked if these were friends or strangers, he claimed they were both. I expected him to be asking after Mary, but he never had news for me. I stopped listening to his conversations and trying to catch familiar phrases. There was no need to learn new words now unless they were fresh ways to say farewell and good riddance to this joyless place.
The brat begged Sam for stories and games but ran to me when he needed to shit. The mix-blood was the boy’s friend, but I was the servant who fetched water and took him into the bushes. The little master needed a slave to light his incense, sweep his floor, fatten his dog, and make sure the tea was hot. I tried once to walk away, but the boy screamed for me to stay. That pleased me, to be joined by someone who also feared the forest.
“Mary could be hiding from us,” I grumbled to Sam. “What if she isn’t in Lytton? What if she lied to me?”
“People will know where she is.”
“My ship ticket got extended by ten days. If I’m not in Victoria by then, I lose it.”
At mid-morning, I reached a site before Sam and the brat. Boarding halls that had housed a hundred redbeards yawned with missing doors and shattered windows. Chirping birds flitted in and out. They must have built nests in the rafters. Under its own little roof was a large outdoor oven, domed like an egg but cracked. The rubbish heaps held rusty tins, chipped crockery, broken chairs, and livestock bones, dried and white as paper. I thought of China men with their sweaty faces and white-dusted clothes, but all that remained of their camps were tent pegs poking like snouts from the ground and trenches of wildflowers and tall grasses that marked the latrines. They had been set far from the boarding halls due to redbeard complaints.
I quickened my pace. I hadn’t thought of the iron road when I was deciding to take the boy to Mary. Who would have guessed that that cursed path would help me reach an important destination? Those wretched days were best forgotten.
The smell of a wood fire led to a cabin, its doors and windows intact, capped by a mishmash of shingles. Cockeyed timber enclosed a garden, beside which sat a man, chanting at the sing-song pace of bored schoolboys.
The garden was a cemetery, with rocks, fence pickets, and rough-hewn wood as markers.
“Good morning.” I made myself sound cheerful.
The man staggered over with a body-twisting limp, introduced himself as Moy, and pointed to my pack. “You walk with the mix-blood?”
The fur collar of his greatcoat glistened in the sun. Much too big for him, the garment was cinched at the waist and stuck out like boards. His forehead wasn’t shaved, and the unkempt growth was swept behind his ears toward the pigtail. He looked me up and down with his small eyes and said, “That cockhead Sam hires his own kind, often just a boy. Why do you work for him?”
“He pays.” It was easier to lie than to explain things.
“A China man can do better.”
I looked around, acting curious.
“I told him to limp off with his rotted corpse, never to come back,” he said. “He wants you to sell goods to me, no? You know what that shit-hole fiend told people? He said I should go home, said I had no right to stay here.”
His tangled hair suggested someone crazy-crazy. No normal person lived so close to graves, especially those of fellow workers who hadn’t been ready to die.
“You the caretaker?” I asked.
“Where are the visitors? Everyone rushes south, as if boiling water scalds their feet. No one stops, no one asks who is lying here.”
“What’s your book?” I dodged railway talk.
“Three Word Classic. I read to my old bean.”
I tilted my head. “In the house?”
He pointed to the graves. “In three years, I’ll dig up his bones and take them home.”
His look was so smug that I had to snub the boast.
“Don’t you fear the redbeards?” I asked. “If there’s trouble, you’re here alone.”
“To follow you stinking bastards across the ocean now means I will never come back for the old bean. What cockhead visits hell twice? Better to wait and make one trip.”
“You’ll pass up prospects in China.”
“Huh! The latrine is full when everyone shits at once.”
I reminded myself that he was a customer. “You must have been close to your old bean.”
“That stupid thing? He gambled away the land, the house, even the shit bucket. Our kinsmen refused to help unless he came here to work.”
“You were a steadfast son.”
“He wouldn’t come alone.”
When Sam arrived, Moy barked, “Jaap-jung doi, I told you to stay away.”
“Just showing my helper the route.”
Peter darted into the cabin and I gave chase. Mother and Grandmother always warned us children never to enter people’s homes. If we got invited, then we must stay in the courtyard and not visit any rooms. That way, no charge of theft could stick to us. Clearly, the brat had not heard this lesson. I pulled him out quickly but not before noticing a line of shoes and boots lined against one wall. They were black and brown, left and right, high-sided and low, with laces and without. Only one shoe from each pair remained, so no doubt the other had been lost or damaged beyond repair. With his limp, Moy could likely wear mismatched shoes without drawing further bad luck to himself.
We followed Moy as he hobbled to the graveyard clutching a metal bucket, scorched black from flames. Sam told me to light the incense. To him, corpses must have been all the same, no matter if the person had just died or had lain buried for a while. At home, the bones of the ancestors were revered while they watched over us like a woodblock print of the gods. The recently dead, on the other hand, were much feared because they raged with anger at being cut off from earthly pleasures. Someone who been near a fresh corpse would never be allowed near the ancestral tablets. Here, I raised the burning sticks and candles, bowed three times, and planted them in soil. Sam handed me the whisky, and I poured three shots onto the ground.
“Elder Uncles, Younger Uncles, kinsmen, and friends,” Sam called out, “all of you who sleep here in this earth, under this green grass. On behalf of the firms and people of Yale, on behalf of your co-workers, we come to pay respects. We lit fragrant incense; it is the smell of home. We poured whisky; it will warm you. We send money to ease your travels, no matter which way you go.”
I was impressed. China men in Yale must have taught him the words. I fanned the sheets of spirit money, dipped them to the flame and slid them into the bucket. Grey smoke swirled with moths of black ash and rose into the air. When Sam went to unpack the goods, I looked for my clan name among the graves.
A red and black bird hopped from marker to marker. I didn’t chase it away; guardian spirits came in many forms.
In Victoria, every surname group bragged about having the greatest number of deaths, as if mass anguish was boast-worthy, as if buckets of human blood made a weighty claim against the iron road. Even when dead, railway workers were summoned into duty for clan honour.
“That mix-blood shouldn’t be the one doing this,” said Moy. “China men must protect our own rituals.”
I nodded. “Redbeard men and boys hurl rocks and blow brass horns to disrupt our parades. They toss our ritual food to their dogs and laugh when we warn them of bad luck.”
“When outsiders do the rituals, the power of the rites is lost,” said Moy. “When a man passes on, his honour should pass onto kin, not strangers.”
He pointed to his father’s grave. “We were drilling a tunnel. One day we went outside when the explosives were lit. They went ba-lum, ba-lum, ba-lum. We heard the all-clear whistle, wee, wee, wee! My father was first to go in. But then came one last ba-lum! Rocks shot out like cannonballs. One slab spun like a flying plate and cut off his head.”
He took my frown for pity. “When I tell this, people don’t believe me.”
“Maybe they heard it before.”
“Screw you.”
“Me, I heard the man was surnamed Chan, then Lee, and then Mah. Some say he was a bookman; others say he was a coolie. Some say the head rolled down the mountain into the river. Others say wild animals ran off with the head, leaving a trail of blood.”
“Screw you!” Moy limped off, his body jerking from side to side.
Sam had put rice, dark sausages, and stiff slabs of salt fish on a cloth over the ground. The brat squatted there, fingering this and that.
Moy stomped by. “Wet shit and stinking piss. Who wants your garbage?”
He slammed the cabin door. I pulled Peter away before he was accused of soiling the food.
Sam ran up and banged on the wood, offering discounts. When no reply came, he gave me a vicious shove.
“Stupid pig, can’t you talk to people?”
“He spoke rubbish.”
The cabin door creaked but nobody came out. Moy was watching.
“Who doesn’t tell lies?” asked Sam. “You want to carry a full load all the way to Lytton?” He pushed me again.
I shoved back. No mix-blood should bully me. No father should look weak in front of his son.
The boy’s gaze darted from me to Sam, his arms suddenly still. He should see that there was no fear in me. One day he too would need to fight for his honour.
Sam saw the door. “Many customers ahead!” he called. “Nothing will be left on my return trip. You’ll have to walk to town yourself.”
Moy didn’t come forth.
We resumed walking. Sam was angry, but that was his nature. Moy was my countryman, my workmate. If he told a lie, then I had a duty to call him out. I had worked on the railway; I knew its stories. I wasn’t like Sam, who only wanted to sell goods to Moy.
Distant clouds dropped a grey curtain to the horizon. The green and brown patches of mountain and forest curled into shapes of giant thrones, humans, and animals. I was a fool to have accepted Sam’s offer, mortgaging my body without stating for how long. My legs trembled and my back ached, making it a strain to look up from the canyon floor to the sky. The walls were steep, bristling with sharp edges. These mountains had killed my compatriots, so many of us that we were like children who scampered into danger while daydreaming. In China, forested mountains housed hermits who spouted reams of wisdom:
Get a mosquito to carry a mountain.
One mountain is high; another is higher.
One mountain can’t house two tigers.
Those proverbs failed in Canada like water slipping through cupped hands. The sages didn’t know how to use black explosives; they didn’t know that Fire could be alloyed with Metal to rip apart the mountain’s core; they hadn’t seen the horizon rearranged in a single day’s work.
The iron road had been laid atop the old wagon road built for the gold rush twenty years ago. That trail had teetered on skimpy ledges above the surging river until the coolies had widened them.
Then the railway broke from the wagon road to cross a high trestle over a dried-out waterfall. The legs of the crossing were a sturdy cage of logs, splayed at its feet, braced by tiers of cross-tied beams. The ground far below was rubble, cast-off lumber, and white rocks the size and shape of human skulls.
As Sam and the boy ambled across, I paused in front of the old stream. Tree roots poked from soil and the moss-covered bones of the serpent. Further up the cliff hung twisted vines, remnants of an early Native route. I looked at it from all angles. It must have taken long planning and great daring to sling that trail over the high rocks. For a moment, the land didn’t seem so new and untouched.
The two rails of the iron road merged at a single point at the bridge’s end. I was halfway across.
Already?
My knees buckled. Out floated my hands. My legs folded, crouched. I reached for the rail but stopped, half kneeling. My load shifted, about to drop, like a ship’s anchor. I was a statue in a crumbling temple.
“Squatting to shit?” Sam called. “Hurry!”
I clamped my lips. My mouth was dry as paper. My lungs heaved. I gripped my armpits.
Sam’s arms were triangles at his waist. Wind gusted past my ears.
“Watch my goods,” he yelled.
I tugged at the knots of my pack without looking down.
Sam ran at me, his steps rumbling through the wood and up my backbone.
I almost tipped over. “Don’t come near…”
He grabbed my hand. I pulled it back.
He glared at me. “Turn your body. Walk sideways.”
I didn’t move. This coward couldn’t be me. This was someone else.
“Look this way,” he said. “Raise your head.”
I whimpered.
“See the river?” His voice was a granny coaxing a reluctant child. “It’s pretty, very pretty. Look far away.”
His hand drifted in front of me.
I grabbed it.
His other hand shot out for balance.
“I take a step,” he said, “and then you take a step.”
We went sideways, tiny paces, one foot at a time. I was a toddler learning to walk.
Once off the trestle, I squatted. My hands clawed at the ground. Hard, sharp gravel never felt so comforting.
“Good thing you stood still,” said Sam. “Other people, stronger than you, fell.”
I looked away.
“That load on your back,” he said, “it threw you off, didn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Leave the load and take the boy back.”
I burst out, “All I need do is look ahead … as you said.”
“I need my goods,” Sam declared, “not you.”
“You can’t move two loads.”
“Someone will come. I’ll hire him.”
“No one passed us.”
I marched on.
“Come back,” he yelled. “Thief!”
That stinking bastard Sam was no bigwig merchant with money and men at his beck and call. I walked fast, head down, eyes on the steady thrust of my boots. He was a mix-blood; did he ever glance at a mirror? No doubt his father had run off long ago, not wanting this son, not leaving him with family or means.
My family had farmed in our village for three hundred years. All China knew my renowned ancestor, Yang Jun, the Upright. Two thousand years ago, he refused a bribe of gold. The briber pressed him to accept, claiming the secret between them was safe. Yang Jun replied, “Heaven knows, Earth knows, you know, and I know. How can you say that no one knows?” Temples and grand halls throughout China were named after his “Four Wisdoms.”
Yes, that bridge spooked me. The iron road was death: the passing of compatriots, the loss of friends, the mourning of men not ready to die. My own death had been close.
I should never have come back here. The iron road had defeated me before. And here I was, fighting a mix-blood who was superior to me.