Maril and Bert sat in her carriage while Owen drove them though the people meandering in the shopping district. Maril felt a little claustrophobic sitting in the stuffy dark carriage after the thrilling ride on the open seat of the Hinkleton’s wagon.
After a while, the carriage stopped and Owen began talking with the guards at a city gate.
“How do you know which gate to go to?” Bert asked as the carriage bobbed when Owen stepped off. The gnome was squished against the wall of the carriage to try to look at the gate through the poorly angled carriage window.
“It’s recorded on the assignment paper,” Maril said while she pulled the paper from her bag. She handed it out the door to Owen when he opened it.
“The city wall assignments give you the rune assembly numbers just like the aqueduct assignments. But they also tell you which gate to go to to get permission to climb up onto the wall. Most of the stair accesses are at gates. This is the North Road Gate. The assignment paper says that after climbing to the top of the wall at this gate we should turn west and walk until we get to rune assembly 2,617.”
Owen handed the page back through the door before closing it. Bert, who had stood up preparing to get out of the carriage, sat back down, confused.
Maril gestured vaguely, “We will have to move over to the side, out of the way of the traffic going through the gate. There will be a place to leave the horse while we are on the wall.”
The carriage began moving slowly as Owen led the horse off the road. When it stopped Maril opened the door and cautiously peeked out. After verifying that Owen was tying the horse she opened the door the rest of the way and climbed down from the carriage holding her backpack.
The carriage sat near the city wall with just enough space between the wall and the carriage for the door to open and for Owen to walk through. Plenty of space for Maril and Bert.
Maril led the way with her bag hanging from one hand and the assignment paper held carefully but securely in the other. She smirked noticing Bert trying to follow her with his head craned back to look straight up the tall dusty gray New Rimston city wall. The carriage was parked right at its base and from this angle the wall blocked out half the clear blue sky.
Every assignment Maril got on the wall reminded her that she wanted to look up how it had been made. With her mage sight she could see delicate strands of magic though every seam of mortar between the huge irregularly sized, but uniformly rectangular, cut stones. She couldn’t see any runes here at the bottom of the wall and wasn’t sure if someone had carved runes in every section of mortar or if they had bound the magic to the mortar some other way. Maybe she would actually get around to looking it up after today.
She handed the assignment paper up to the guard standing near a gate at the bottom of the stairs. He held the paper at an angle and ran his gloved thumb over the embossment stamp at the bottom of the page before handing it back to her. She dropped it in her bag, closed it, and swung the bag to settle on her back. When it didn’t hit her back she looked up and sighed, relinquishing the small pack to Owen.
“Ready?” she asked Bert. He nodded, still inspecting the wall and the long line of steps going up its side with excited eyes.
She shook her head and walked through the gate the guard was holding open and started climbing the tall, human sized stairs.
The stairs were brutal. Each one came up to her knees and she and Bert were out of breath before they were halfway up. They stopped at the halfway landing and looked out over the city.
“This is a little late, but I hope you aren’t afraid of heights,” Maril gasped between breaths.
Bert was leaning against the stone rampart looking at the roofs of the north side of New Rimston. He cocked his head looking up the rest of the stairs, “I guess I don’t know, I’ve never been up this high.”
Maril considered sitting on a stair for a while but decided against it. But she did concede to the steps slightly and began using one knee and her hands to climb instead of stepping up each stair. “I wish they could have put the rune assemblies at ground level. That would make these assignments so much easier.”
After a brief pause, Bert countered, “They are probably safer at the top of the wall, no one can get to them without going past the guards.”
Maril groaned, knowing that of course that was why the runes were on top of the wall, but still being annoyed.
When they finally made it to the top she and Bert collapsed onto a bench near the top of the stairs on the city side of the walkway on the wall. Every wall access she had climbed had a bench like this at the top. The bench wasn’t quite small enough to be comfortable. But it was definitely smaller than a normal human bench.
It only took a few seconds for Bert to perk up enough to leave the bench and walk over to the outer parapet. Stretching up he could barely peer over the wall in one of the crenels. Owen picked up a wooden box that was at the neighboring crenel and placed it at Bert’s feet.
Bert thanked him and stepped on it to get a better view over the parapet. Maril couldn’t understand him but could hear excited prattling as he got a good look out the wall.
Maril gave in to his excitement and went to join him on the wooden step. She had looked over the wall in a few places but realized that she had never looked at the North Road before.
The North Road was probably the largest road out of New Rimston. Here, close to the city, it was paved with gray stones that matched the wall and was wide enough for three wagons. She stretched out over the stone so she could look down at the road closer to the wall. The left side of the road had a line of wagons and carriages waiting for permission from the guards to enter the gate. She couldn’t tell how many there were since she couldn’t get far enough out to look straight down. From past experience she knew Owen would not allow her to climb onto the crenel, no matter how careful she was.
The right side of the road had a few wagons leaving the city, trailing out the ribbon of gray road swaying between fields and stands of trees. The North Aqueduct stretched a tight straight line parallel to the swaying highway. From her geography lessons she knew the North Road went to Inerith, New Rimston’s largest trade partner. It also passes a few farming villages, but not nearly as many as were in the East Farming District.
After stepping back down to the stone of the wall she took her bag back from Owen and pulled her assignment page out. After carefully ensuring she knew which way west was, she headed off down the wall. “Come on, Bert. There will be many more places to look over the wall.”
She watched along the parapet with her mage sight while she walked until she saw an assembly number, 2,612. She smiled, thrilled that she would not have to walk far to get to her first assembly, number 2,617.