Some time later, when we took a short break, I asked him about the argument.
“It’s the Traction men,” he said. “They want to start winching now, before the track’s finished.”
“Can they do that?”
“Yes… they say that it’ll take some time to get the city up to the ridge, and we could finish off here while that’s going on. We won’t allow it.”
“Why not? It sounds reasonable.”
“Because it’d mean working under the cables. There’s a lot of strain on the cables, particularly when the city’s being winched up a slope, like the one before the ridge. You’ve never seen a cable break, have you?” It was a rhetorical question; I didn’t know before this that cables were even used. “You’d be cut in half before you heard the bang,” Malchuskin finished sourly.
“So what was agreed?”
“We’ve got an hour to finish, then they start winching anyway.”
There were still three sections of rail to lay. We gave the men a few more minutes’ rest and then the work started again. As there were now four guildsmen and their teams concentrated in one area, we moved quickly, but even so it took most of the hour to complete the track.
With some satisfaction, Malchuskin signalled to the Traction men that we were ready. We collected our tools, and carried them to one side.
“What now?” I said to Malchuskin.
“We wait. I’m going back to the city for a rest. Tomorrow we start again.”
“What shall I do?”
“I’d watch if I were you. You’ll find it interesting. Anyway, we ought to pay off these men. I’ll send a Barter guildsman out to you later today. Keep them here until he arrives. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“O.K.,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Not really. While the winching is taking place the Traction men are in charge out here, so if they tell you to jump, jump. They might need something done to the tracks, so you’d better be alert. But I think the tracks are O.K. They’ve been checked already.”
He walked away from me towards his hut. He looked very tired. The hired men went back to their own huts, and soon I was left to my own devices. Malchuskin’s remark about the danger of a breaking cable had alarmed me, so I sat down on the ground at what I considered was a safe distance from the site.
There was not much activity in the region of the stayemplacements. All five of the cables had been connected up, and now ran slackly from the stays across the ground parallel to the tracks. Two Traction guildsmen were by the emplacements, carrying out what I presumed was a final check on the connections.
From the region of the ridge a group of men appeared, and walked in two orderly files towards us. From this distance it was not possible to see who they were, but I noticed that one of their number left the file at approximately one hundred yard intervals, and took up a position at the side of the track. As the men approached I saw that they were militiamen, each equipped with a crossbow. By the time the group reached the stayemplacements only eight of them were left, and these took up a defensive formation around them. After a few minutes one of the militiamen walked over to me.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Apprentice Helward Mann.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve been told to watch the winching.”
“All right. Keep your distance. How many tooks are there here?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “About sixty, I think.”
“They been working on the track?”
“Yes.”
He grinned. “Too bloody tired to do any harm. That’s O.K. Let me know if they cause any trouble.”
He wandered away and joined the other militiamen. What kind of trouble the labourers would cause wasn’t clear to me, but the attitude of the Militia towards them seemed to be curious. I could only presume that at some time in the past the tooks had caused some kind of damage to the tracks or the cables, but I couldn’t see any of the men with whom we’d been working presenting a threat to us.
The militiamen on guard beside the tracks seemed to me to be dangerously near the cables, but they showed no sign of any awareness of this. Patiently, they marched to and fro, pacing their allotted sections of the track.
I noticed that the two Traction men at the emplacements had taken up a position behind metal shields, just beyond the stays. One of them had a large red flag, and was looking through binoculars towards the ridge. There, beside the five wheelpulleys, I could just make out another man. As all attention seemed to be on this man I watched him curiously. He had his back towards us as far as I could make out at this distance.
Suddenly, he turned and swung his flag to attract the attention of the two men at the stays. He waved it in a wide semicircle below his waist, to and fro. Immediately, the man at the stays with the flag came out from behind his shield and confirmed the signal by repeating the movement with his own flag.
A few moments later I noticed that the cables were sliding slowly across the ground towards the city. On the ridge I could see the wheel-pulleys turning as the slack was taken up. One by one, the cables stopped moving although the major part of their length still ran across the ground. I presumed this was the weight of the cables themselves, for in the region of the stays and the pulleys. the cables were well clear of the ground.
“Give them the clear!” shouted one of the men at the stays, and at once his colleague waved his flag over his head. The man on the ridge repeated the signal, then moved quickly to one side and was lost to view.
I waited, curious to see what was next… although from all I could see nothing was happening. The militiamen paced to and fro, the cables stayed taut. I decided to walk over to the Traction men to find out what was going on.
No sooner was I on my feet and walking in their direction than the man who had been signalling waved his arms at me frantically.
“Keep clear!” he shouted.
“What’s wrong?”
“The cables are under maximum strain!”
I moved back.
The minutes passed, and there was no evident progress. Then I realized that the cables had been slowly tightening, until they were clear of the ground for most of their length.
I stared southwards at the dip in the ridge: the city had come into sight. From where I was sitting, I could just see the top corner of one of the forward towers, bulking up over the soil and rocks of the ridge. Even as I watched, more of the city came into view.
I moved in a broad arc, still maintaining a healthy distance from the cables, and stood behind the stays looking along the tracks towards the city. With painful slowness it winched itself up the further slope until it was only a few feet away from the five wheel-pulleys which carried the cables over the crest of the ridge. Here it stopped and the Traction men began their signalling once more.
There followed a long and complicated operation in which each of the cables was slackened off in turn while the wheelpulley was dismantled. I watched the first pulley removed in this way, then grew bored. I realized I was hungry, and suspecting that I was unlikely to miss anything of interest I went back to the hut and heated up a meal for myself.
There was no sign of Malchuskin, although nearly all his possessions were still in the hut.
I took my time over the meal, knowing that there were at least another two hours before the winching could be resumed. I enjoyed the solitude and the change from the strenuous work of the past day.