Wheelbarrow
“Something went wrong. No. I did something wrong,” the old man confided to his elegiacally squeaking two-wheeled companion, “but I can’t remember what it was.”
Crrrk, crrrk, crrrk was the only reply. The handcart’s bent wheels squeaked out a sad and pathetic cycle of remonstrances, warning with each revolution that it might not be up to carrying any new or substantial burdens. Its halcyon days of silent, uncomplaining labor were behind it, forgotten and discarded like the gray paint that had cracked and fallen off years in the past, left behind like the youth and memories of the creaky old man who pushed it. Discarded, as he had been.
His voice was as deep as the wheelbarrow’s was not, but like the wheelbarrow, he swayed a little from side to side as he pushed the cracked and bent old cart forward through the rubble of his formerly glorious city. “What was it?” he asked more loudly as he lifted the sad-looking handcart over a jumble of rocks. Looking up, he saw that the street ahead was completely choked with rubble from the collapsed walls of the old Hall of Justice that had once commanded the elegant square at the city center. He wrapped his long, wiry, white-haired arms around the handcart and pulled it higher—protectively up to his chest—and stumbled up over the chaotic mess that used to dispense Engevelen’s famously impartial common law in the city of Villiers.
“That feels better,” he observed when he finally reached smoother road. “Now, where is it?” The old man squinted up at the light blue sky, then to his left and to his right. He thought he could hear raised, troubled voices. Up a side street just ahead and to the right. He followed the sounds, forcing his arthritic legs to move faster, rocking back and forth as he pushed his wheelbarrow down the road. Houses crowded the cobble, and twenty-foot-long stone planter boxes separated the narrow walk from the road.
There was comparatively little debris on this street, though it was clear that at least the fringes of the battle had passed through here. A series of pyramidal rock piles dotted the street, and there were lines in the thin dust leading to the mounds, indicating that someone, and recently, had swept up the smaller detritus. On some of the front stoops of the remains of the houses, luggage, crates, artwork, and other possessions had been piled. Sometimes the items were piled on much larger carts than the one the old man pushed. A boy of maybe eight or nine strode purposefully by, carrying a loaf-sized rock and, with some solemnity, in complete silence placed the rock among the rest of the rubble on the street. The old man paused, leaning on his cart to watch the child. The boy marched back to one of the houses. Its front wall had been caved in, but the houses on either side were untouched. The boy rummaged around, pulling at the mess of rock in front of the house, finally finding another chunk of stone that he could carry to the street.
“Don’t know how that happened,” the old man called out in his deep voice, “but they might need that rock when they fix it.” The boy ignored him. Then, as the shouting began again, the old man carried on down the road. He passed other silent men, women, and children, either cleaning the streets or piling things up on their stoops. The rock piles and pyramids of possessions combined in the man’s mind for a moment. His hands, the veins bumping out, making gnarly hands gnarlier, tightened on the handles of the cart. He knew he had set out with the cart for a purpose, but what was the mission? The emotions that rose up within him—anger, frustration, grief—begged for release, but he was stuck. His tottering mind, his failing memory, and the lonely certainty—his only certainty—that he did not know how to help those he passed, locked his feelings in.
The sound of a vicious argument drew him on.
He dodged his wheelbarrow around a cracked planter box, the front wheel running through a narrow line of unswept dark soil that had escaped its confinement, and saw a woman facing off against three soldiers in the livery of the municipal guard. It was clear that this was the source of the noise that had drawn his attention. A pulse of anger pounded through the old man’s blood. He pushed the handcart faster and ran, no longer swaying from side to side.
“Ma’am,” said one of the young men, a corporal in chainmail and a clean uniform tunic, “I’m sorry but we will not be b—”
“This street is a disgrace,” she interrupted in a strident and punishingly enunciated voice. “And it’s been like this for a week. That is not how we do things here. You promised to help clear the refuse and it has not been done. Your performance is unacceptable.”
What? Confusion instantly transformed the old man’s athletic sprint into an oafish muddle and then, almost as quickly, to a sloppy halt. Uncertain of himself, he took up a station a few paces away from the agitated quartet. A neat-looking home stood behind the woman, but her front steps had been crushed by some heavy object. Whatever had done the damage was gone, leaving only wreckage behind.
“Are you the carpenter?” The lady said, sharp eyes suddenly upon him. She had the dark skin and light eyes of an indigenous citizen of Engevelen and seemed neither young nor old, but she was certainly straight-backed and severe of expression. Her hair was neat and shoulder-length, her clothes clean, and she wore a white apron with red carnations embroidered upon it. “You’re late,” she said as if she was a judge pronouncing a sentence. “Very late.”
Perplexed, the old man struggled for a moment, at a loss for words. “I—I don’t think I’m a carpenter.” Events and time had a habit of getting away from him, he knew that. The present just slipped away. He sometimes forgot a story mid-tale. And he was aware of this, sometimes. That awareness, the knowledge of an incompetent, unreliable memory, made him hesitate. He thought he was not the carpenter. But am I? Did I forget what I am? He looked down at his rough, gnarled hands. Old scars covered them, dull, creamy white streaks through which no hairs grew. A carpenter might have hands like that. He looked at the corporal, who was eyeing him up and down, frowning, but also trying to smile. Uncomfortable, trying to be polite. He had a short sword on his hip and two men at his shoulders, but he was also hesitant.
The woman was not. “You look like you have been alive forever,” she stated, as if that settled the matter. “You must be the man I asked for.” When the old man did not reply, she added, “You have a wheelbarrow, don’t you?” It was not really a question.
The old man looked down at his rickety cart. “It’s empty.”
She was not a big woman, but she produced an enormous sigh. “That isn’t the only thing that’s empty.” She crossed her arms and slowly shook her head, eyes narrowed, lips pressed thin.
“Is this the best I can expect from the city now? Some confused old tradesman who doesn’t even know to bring tools?”
“No,” said the old man.
“No?” the woman sneered.
“No, I mean, I don’t think I am a carpenter. I—I was on my way to get something,” the old man said in as smooth a voice as he could manage. It made more sense as he said it, helped to put the sequence of events together in his mind. “I heard your voices and thought someone needed help.”
The woman’s eyes were hard and her response quick. “I do need help—with my front step—but apparently you and these soldiers are not interested in helping me.”
The corporal tried to smile at the woman, but his face was too stiff with embarrassment. “There are no city carpenters being sent out to residents, ma’am,” he said in a bureaucratic tone that belied his reddening face. “All non-essential personnel are under an evacuation order. An order, I must respectfully state, that includes you.” He made another attempt at a smile and spared a glance at the old man. “This gentleman’s cart is surely for luggage. He must be taking it to his residence.”
“If you think I am going to leave my home, you are as confused as this . . . carpenter,” she shot back, all her attention on the soldiers. “I am of Engevelen. We. Do. Not. Leave.”
“Please ma’am,” the young soldier said, hands up in a conciliatory gesture, “all of your neighbors have organized their evacuation luggage on the street. You must also do this so that your possessions can be tagged and collected.”
“You will be tagging and collecting nothing of mine,” declared the lady. She turned sharply on her right high heel, marched almost regally to her house, and carefully avoiding the broken steps, ascended and entered.
The corporal stared after the lady for a moment, then pulled off his helmet and wiped his brow. “There’s one on every street,” he muttered.
“Two or three on most,” one of his soldiers said.
As the corporal put his helmet back on, he seemed to remember the old man. “Sir?” he said, “Do you need assistance, sir?”
The weapons that the young men carried reminded the old man of something. Sharp blades and leather. Each had a smell, a feeling, a connection to experience. Their chain mail had a smell, too … the oil … it brought back memories just out of reach, reminded him that he had his own purpose. In a stronger voice than he had used with the woman, he said, “No, I’m good to go, corporal,” and continued down the road, pushing his cart.
I used to have a sword. It had been bigger than the ones the municipal guard carried. Much bigger. A two-hander, heavy, hard to stop in flight. He could not remember his name, but he knew where he was going. And why.
***
“I can’t let you into the armory, sir.” The soldier’s chainmail swished as he crossed his arms below his broad chest. He was shorter than the old man, just shy of six feet and thickly built. Half of his left eyebrow had been replaced by a white scar that blazed on his ebony face.
“I need those swords,” the old man repeated for the eighth time. “We need them.”
“Why might that be?” The soldier was a sergeant, and his gentle, wry expression suggested patronization as much as his question. It was a familiar expression to the old man. Most people smiled like that when they told him no. He knew that. The sergeant was still smiling and still talking to him, explaining his refusal. “Civilians have been ordered to evacuate. The most vulnerable are being escorted out today. You should have been one of them.” He paused and widened his smile. “And who exactly is ‘we’?”
“Me and my friends,” the old man replied, exasperated. The question was irrelevant under the circumstances. This was an emergency. He lifted the arms of his bent old wheelbarrow. “I can carry enough for everyone in this.”
Now the soldier chuckled. “I don’t think so, old fellow. You don’t want to be running around town with a cart full of sharp objects.” He shook his head with a rueful half-smile. “Someone might get hurt. I don’t want that on my conscience.”
The old man put down the wheelbarrow, dug in his heels, and straightened his back. The words came to him out of old memories, words engraved indelibly by some long-ago training. “I have a right—as a citizen of Engevelen—to a sword upon request to defend my person, my neighbors, and my country. This law is subject to the Methueyn Treaty to which Engevelen is a signatory.”
The soldier’s head sank back into his neck. “Wow. Really. You can be eloquent when you want to be, sir.”
“First time anyone’s called me that.”
“What, sir?”
“No, eloquent.”
“Well, look,” the soldier said after more chuckling, “you’re right, you can legally make that demand. Not many people know that anymore. Leave the … uh … cart out here and come on inside. I can’t just hand over government property without a form. You’ll have to sign something.”
He led the old man to a desk in the anteroom of the armory, where a lantern cast a dim, wavering light on some papers, a manifest, a bottle of ink, and a quill, but he could not locate the form they needed. It had been a long time since there had been a citizen request for arms, but he drew up a brief letter. “Now, just write your name and sign here,” he said under a horizontal line at the bottom.
“My name?” That was the question that vexed him. “I . . . cannot remember.” I used to hear it all the time. He frowned. “Do you know?”
“Very funny. I just met you.”
The silence that followed lasted long enough for the soldier to realize this was no joke. “Where did you say you came from, old fellow?”
“From the house on the hill.”
The soldier’s eyes widened, “The House of Fools?”
Time slipped. A crashing noise. A color, red. When time returned, the old man found himself pinning the sergeant against the heavy iron door, his white-haired arm hard across the man’s bare throat. The table was on its side against the wall to his left, and the chairs, papers and ink were scattered.
“L—let me go,” the soldier wheezed. He was on his toes, gasping for air.
“I can’t let you call it the House of Fools.” The old man’s deep voice reverberated like a colossal bell off the stone walls of the anteroom.
“It—it’s just a f—figure of speech. A nickname. Do you know w—what that is? A j—joke. I can’t b—breathe.”
“I know what it is,” the old man stated firmly. “And I can’t let you hurt the people there by talking like that.”
The sergeant’s eyes, which had been screwed half shut in pain, opened wider and swung up into the hardened face of the old man, who seemed bigger, taller and straighter, now than before. Almost a different person. “I’m s—sorry. I—I won’t say it a—again.”
The old man eased his grip and took a half step back. The soldier’s face was tearstained from being choked, and once he regained his balance, he bent double, catching his breath. Recovered, back straightened, his eyes went to the hilt of his short sword.
“Don’t draw that.”
“I wouldn’t,” the soldier said, aghast. He breathed, swallowed, and vowed, “Heaven strike me down if I draw on you, old man.” He began to wipe his eyes with his mailed arm, but quickly stopped and squinted. Hard metal rings and tears do not mix. “I’m sorry. Everyone calls the home that name, but it never occurred to me how it might make the folks there feel.”
“I don’t like seeing people hurt,” the old man said.
“Sir, that is why we are evacuating the city, you know,” the soldier replied, eyes searching the old man’s lined face. “To keep them from being hurt. Skoll and Hati might—probably will, according to the commander—come back. It would be better if you helped your friends pack up and escape rather than give them swords that—I don’t mean to be cruel—they probably can’t use.”
“Sometimes it’s better not to be saved,” the old man replied. His voice seemed to harmonize with some natural frequency in the room.
The sergeant blinked and said nothing for a moment. When he did speak, he sounded resigned, but there was also something more in his tone. “My name is Havard. Do you really not know yours?”
“I do.” The old man frowned. “But it isn’t my true name. They call me Mick.”
“Well, listen, Mick,” Havard said, “I’ll sign out the swords in your care—as long as I can find the ink bottle and there’s anything left in it—but I’m worried you don’t understand what we are up against. This isn’t like another probe from Armadale or southward pressure from Ardgour like we had five, no wait, seven years ago. These demons, Skoll and Hati, they are a knights-damned disaster. And we don’t even know what they want, why they come, or why they leave. We sure as hell can’t seem to show them the door. And those skolve things they have with them are an even bigger problem in a lot of ways. They kill more people, that’s for sure. A lot more.”
Mick was fairly sure he had not seen any of the skolves everyone was talking about, and he was certain that he had not seen Skoll or Hati, whoever they were. And what this soldier was saying was not exactly what he remembered hearing back in the house on the hill. The word there was “temporary evacuation,” as if some more palatable solution would later be forthcoming. “Why are you telling me this, Sergeant?” he asked after some thought.
“I don’t want you and your friends back at the home thinking that staying is anything except suicide. This is bad, Mick. You and your friends really need to evacuate while you still can.”
“Can’t do that, Havard.”
The soldier’s patient expression collapsed. His face turned red, but Mick did not think it was in anger. “Why not?” Havard pleaded.
Mick thought about his days in the house on the hill. He could not remember many of them, or when he had first been brought there. It had been after he lost his name, though. Even if too many of the days in the house were a gray pastel smudge in his mind, he knew that a lot more folks had arrived over the years. They had come in all shapes and sizes. In variations that strained description, that were beyond the expectation of anyone not of the house. They were all so surprisingly unique, except that all were old. And only left the house one way. But how they were removed, how they disappeared between one meal and the next, was not spoken of by anyone. It was studiously avoided, ignored, disbelieved. A wound not picked at except silently. Alone.
“Because some of my friends already left,” he said at last, treading close to the ineffable line.
“Already evacuated? Well, that’s goo—”
Mick interrupted, saying “No one has ever left the home by evacuation.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Havard said, eyes red, “or what this has to do with swords.”
“No one should go quietly.” Unremembered and unmourned. No matter what we have done wrong.
***
The wheelbarrow squeaked louder under its new load, but Mick seemed to push it along more easily. It had been piled high with weapons. The load could have been tidy and symmetrical, but Mick had requested that the sizes be mixed. It was mostly short swords. Havard had been right; most of the folks at the house on the hill would have trouble wielding a heavy weapon. But for himself, Mick had chosen a mighty, two-handed claymore. The load, though mixed, had seemed to fit together well enough when Mick started toward home, but every bump from the rubble made the heavily laden wheelbarrow less manageable. The farther he pushed, the worse the load became as the metal shifted around, tossing sharp edges everywhere, threatening to pitch some off onto the road. The worst moments came when the whole wheelbarrow seemed to turn suicidal and rotate out of balance, a movement that started gently enough but quickly approached a tipping point beyond which the whole load would have violently rolled over, with potentially deadly consequences for the old man pushing it.
In between battling to keep the wheelbarrow of death on the straight and narrow, a song went through Mick’s head. It was often there, it seemed. He hummed and muttered it, though he could only recall some of the words.
Raise up my shield, sun's light will warm!
Raise up my maul, my scroll and pen!
Raise up my horn, to heavens warn!
Blah, blah blah-blah, blah-blah blah, blen.
“What’s that?” Mick said aloud, interrupting his own singing. Dusk was coming on, and the street he was pushing his noisy, insecure burden through was desolate and ruined. There were no piles of luggage here, no citizens cleaning the street or tidying up the damage, only abandoned ruins. He heard it again, a whining sound coming from up ahead somewhere. He pushed harder, almost jogging, then hit a rock that bent his trajectory sharply left and pitched the whole cart sideways onto the cobbles. Assorted swords and other weapons went flying, landing on the street with a discordant clatter.
“Knights damn it.” Mick scrambled, trying to gather up the sharp metal quickly, listening for the whimpering sound at the same time as he juggled swords, bungling the job when one short sword slid across the jumble of blades and fell off the other side. The wheelbarrow and its chaotic, pointy contents now looked like some deadly, gargantuan version of that pick-up-sticks game that some of the folks back at the house played.
The whine cut across his hearing once more. He whirled, but there were piles of debris everywhere and collapsed houses up and down the street. It was an orgy of destruction far out of proportion to the reported body count. Whoever had come through the town—Skoll, Hati or whatever they called them—had apparently enjoyed knocking the old stone buildings down.
“Do you need help?” he called out desperately. “Where are you?” Nothing. “My ears aren’t what they were.”
He heard the cry again, faint but just ahead. There! At a half-collapsed house that was little more than a pile of odd, angled stones under a broken roof.
“I’m coming!” he called out to whoever was inside, then circled the ruin, still pushing his wheelbarrow of weaponry. On the far side he found an opening, a sort of a cave, with a precarious-looking roof barely higher than his hip. He dropped his squeaking cart and crawled in, meeting pitch darkness almost at once. “Ow!” He banged his head on a jutting piece of stone. The space became more confined as it went on, and he had to flatten out on his hairy belly. Dirt and little rocks got under his shirt, rolling around as he pushed forward.
“Whewmm,” came the sound from just ahead.
“Hello?” Mick said, skootching forward a little farther, reaching with his hands. His right hand felt rough stone, but his left found something wet. He squinted and could just make out two eyes reflecting the tiny amount of light that made it past him. It was a dog. “Who left you here?” Mick asked, but some undulled part of him remembered that disasters always left someone, or something, behind. That knowledge checked the anger that had suddenly arisen in him. He did not know what had happened, who had been home, or how they had left their dog behind. Or if they had been alive to wonder and worry.
Please, Elysium, may there be no people under there.
“Is it just you? Just you, puppy?” he whispered to himself. Sliding forward a little farther by rocking his whole body from side to side, Mick got both hands around the neck of the animal. “I’m just going to pull you out, puppy. Okay?” He pulled.
The dog screamed and bit his left wrist. “Stuck.” He relaxed the pressure he had applied, and the dog stopped biting, but kept a gentle pressure on his wrist. There was very little wetness from the bite. “Ok, let go now.” He got his wrist back. The dog whimpered once more. It was a sound all mammals made when desperate enough, when their need for help exceeded the risk of vulnerability that told them not to advertise their plight. It was a plea for safety that transcended species, went straight to the soul. Mick could not ignore it, did not want to.
“I-I’ll just have to lift this up for you, puppy.” Mick didn’t know what he was lifting. Was it one rock or the whole house? He could not find leverage all stretched out as he was. “Damn,” he muttered. How long has this poor thing been here? He guessed it must have been days. The dog had almost no saliva in its mouth. Filled with angst, Mick tried once more to life the rock off the dog. He pushed, then pushed again, and moved nothing.
“I-I don’t know if I’m strong enough, puppy,” Mick whispered. The dog whimpered back, but softly. “Time is running out for us both, isn’t it? I can’t remember my own knights-damned name, and you’re stuck under your own house.” Mick’s face was wet. “We’re both in the dark, with the end creeping up on us.” He reached back again for the furry neck and stroked the dog gently with his fingers. “I’m sorry. Time seems to have too much leverage on us.” Oh. Leverage. I really am slow.
“Hold on, puppy, I have an idea.” he said and scootched backward until he could turn around and crawl out to his wheelbarrow. He tipped it over—which seemed to be its new favorite position anyway—sending the pointy ball of swords clanging into the cobblestones again. He grabbed the big two-hander and crawled back into the ruin.
Jamming the sword into the stone without impaling the dog was nervous work. Figuring out how to use the great two-handed blade as a lever was counterintuitive. Mick ended up on his back in the confined space, pushing up on the long handle. Nothing. It might be the whole house. The dog whimpered again, sounding still weaker than before. Mick slid on his back until his head was almost touching the dog’s nose and pushed on the sword handle as if it was all there was in the world. All that mattered. One thought, one hope, one reason for being. He felt complete in that moment, for nothing could be forgotten when there was only one thing to live for. With a grinding noise, the rock moved, though only a few inches. “Come on out now, puppy, come on,” he instructed. The dog did not move. Mick left one hand on the sword, pushing twice as hard and violently shaking, and reached back with the other for the dog. When he felt furry neck, he pulled. The dog came free with a yelp, its head resting on top of Mick’s chest.
It tried to lick him with a sandpaper tongue.
The dog was a half-grown shepherd, weighing maybe thirty pounds. Its fur was matted and crusted with old blood and dirt. Mick could not tell if the dog could walk. There was no room to put it on its feet. It had stopped whining, but its eyes labored to follow the old man’s movements. “You’re kind of done for, aren’t you?” Mick said gently. He knew what those eyes meant. People always said, never base your understanding of animals on your understanding of men, but that was horse crap. What he saw in the dog’s eyes, he had seen before in people. Often. He saw that resigned look virtually every day in the house on the hill, though it was not spoken of aloud. Never discussed, dignified with speech, or admitted to.
“I’ll call you Fenris,” he told the dog. “Fenris,” he repeated to it. You’ll like that name.
The sun was disappearing, and his options were disappearing just as quickly. He realized he would not be able to carry both Fenris and the wheelbarrow. He had no jacket to try to stuff a too big dog into. There was no chance of doing it with a shirt. A pile of swords did not mix with a dog in the cart.
“What are we going to do, Fenris?”
