Chapter 12: The Wrong Bell

Brant's ram was the Weir's own mill beam, with an iron cap that twelve soldiers had spent the night hammering onto the end.

He had it carried to the foot of the tower at dawn and drawn up in two ranks.

He stood beside it with his chalk in one hand and his sword in the other.

"On my order," he said, and no one could hear him, because they were standing in the open air, so he pointed.

The first swing bounced off the tower door so hard that three soldiers sat down.

The second took a stone out of the lintel, which fell on the beam and cracked it.

The soldiers picked the beam up again anyway.

Naho watched from the doorway of the low room with Gerta and Sella and Alric, with a sleeve over her mouth against the grey.

She had told Brant twice, on the slate, that the book said hands.

He had read the slate, and understood it perfectly well, and crossed it out with his chalk.

The third swing struck dead center, and the whole tower answered.

Naho felt it come up through the stone under her feet, a long shudder from the base to the roof.

Far above, in the dark of the belfry, the cracked tongue of the Bell swung against the bronze.

For the first time in ten days the Wake Bell made a sound.

It was one note, flat and torn, and it went out across the Weir.

The old Bellkeeper, who could not hear it, put both palms against the wall of the low room and held them there.

"That was her," he said, aloud, to nobody. "That's the voice."

His eyes were running, and Naho had no joke for it, so she did not make one.

Then the grey came down the lane.

It did not look like a wave, because it had no color to look like.

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