"Only twenty feet to go," the foreman said.
After a short rest where Pet shared a drink from a bucket of soot-flecked water, the men once more put their shoulders to the gate.
"Push!" the foreman shouted.
Pet strained with all his might, feeling as if the bones in his legs might snap. The gate groaned as the hinges loosened further. The wall of wood crept another inch, then gained speed for nearly a foot before grinding to a halt once more, cutting into the hard-packed earth. The door was sagging as it swung. There was more digging to do.
Pet passed beyond all exhaustion as a long day gave way to a long night. He'd hoped that when darkness came they would be allowed to sleep, but word was that Burke had given the decree that the gates must be closed before dawn. The men chattered among themselves. Was an attack immanent? How many more hours would they have before the dragons tried to retake the forge?
The night sky was black as tar. The foundry smoke and the thick clouds blotted out all traces of the moon. A chill drizzle began to fall over Dragon Forge, turning the ground to mud. Pet's teeth chattered even as his body sweated. At some point he was given a wheelbarrow. He couldn't even recall who'd charged him with the duty. He mindlessly set to work carting away the mounds of earth that others broke free with picks and shovels. Pet dumped the heavy, damp dirt at the base of one of the rust mounds. He coughed from the effort. His head felt full of rust and dust and burnt bone ash. The mucus he wiped from his lips onto his once fine shirt was pink, not from blood, but from the red clay grime that clung to him.
In the moonless, starless night, he lost all track of time. He felt as if he were only dreaming; trapped in a nightmare where he struggled through the darkness, soaked by rain and sweat, pushing heavy heaps to and fro for reasons he could no longer remember.
"Okay men," the foreman shouted at last. "Dawn is only an hour away. Get your shoulders into the gate. Move it. Now!"
Pet dropped his wheelbarrow where he stood. He slogged through the now ankle-deep mud to take his position.
"Push!"
Pet fell instantly. The mud gave no traction. He clawed his way upright again, digging his broken nails into the grain of the ancient, weathered wood. The gate was built of logs thicker than his torso, bound by iron bands with rivets as big as his fist. He pressed both hands against one of these rivets and burrowed down into the mud with his feet, seeking purchase.
"Push!"
Everyone was groaning now. The mud slurped and sucked as men dug their feet into it, churning it into an ever-worsening muck.
And yet, the very mud that made their movements so frustrating was proving to be an aid. The gate slowly began to swing, no longer obstructed by every little rock or bulge in the packed earth that had halted it earlier. The damp ground gave way to the mass of the gate, and the more the gate moved, the easier it was to push.
Then, the gate ground to a halt once more. Tears welled in Pet's eyes.
"Move!" he shouted, straining with every last ounce of will within him. "Damn you, move!"
The gate didn't budge.
Slowly he realized that the men around him were standing back from the gate, looking up in amazement. Pet staggered away from the logs, his legs trembling.
The gate was closed.
The gate had stopped moving because it had met its matching neighbor for the first time in centuries, the two pieces fitting together as neatly and nicely as a man could want.
Pet dropped to his knees in the mud.
He wiped a tear from his cheek as the men around him began to cheer.
He'd heard men cheer like this before. They'd cheered him like this in the shadow of Albekizan's castle, when he claimed to be Bitterwood, claimed that he would lead humanity to a new era.
Those unearned cheers had tortured his sleep ever since.
In this cold and damp predawn hour, the cheers weren't directed at him. He'd not led a single man on this project. He hadn't given them a vision to rally around, or even said an encouraging word to his fellow laborers.
No one would sing a song about his labors today. No one would ever weave it into a tapestry, or write it in a book. Yet he felt as if this were the first truly worthwhile thing he'd ever done in his life.
Pet coughed himself awake. He sat up, feeling as if his lungs were being scoured by the cold air and ever-present smoke. He was in a large room that had been converted into a makeshift barracks and slept on the floor with scores of fellow soldiers, all curled beneath tattered blankets. The far end of the room possessed a roaring fireplace, but any heat the fire put out was sliced apart by icy drafts that cut through the room from innumerable gaps in the walls.
Pet rose on stiff legs and carefully stepped across his sleeping brethren to reach the main door. He wondered what this room had once been that it was so shabbily constructed. He opened the door and found a familiar figure in the street beyond. It was Burke, carrying a large wooden box slung over his back. His daughter followed close behind, a large bundle wrapped in burlap held in both arms.
"Ah," said Burke, his head turning toward the sound of the opening door. "If it isn't Bitterwood himself."
"I told you it isn't," Pet said.
"You look like hell, Pet," Burke said over the rims of his spectacles. "I could still tell that was a silk shirt when I met you. Now it looks like something I wouldn't let my dog sleep on."
Pet looked down at his torn and mud-caked clothing. Burke and his daughter gleamed in comparison. Anza looked especially immaculate, dressed in soft buckskin, her jet-black braid showing not a single stray hair. If there was a bathtub somewhere in this hellish city, she must have taken possession of it.
"I've been working," said Pet. "Helped close the eastern gate."
"Good," said Burke. "That will slow the earth-dragons."
"I know," said Pet. "But, I have to admit, I'm worried. What good is having a gate when the sun-dragons can attack from above?"
"Follow me. I'll show you what's going to be our wall in the sky." Burke pulled the heavy case off his shoulder and handed it to Pet. "Carry this," he said, then walked off briskly, with a confident stride.
Pet hurried to draw beside Burke once more.
"A wall in the sky?" he asked.
"Patience," said Burke. "You're going to be the first to see it. Cold tonight, isn't it? I think we may see snow. Maybe not today, but tomorrow. I feel it in my knees."
"It feels warmer out here than it did in the barracks," said Pet.
"Ah, yes. The wench house. Not exactly a palace, is it?"
"Wench house?"
"It actually has a more derogatory name that I choose not to use in front of my daughter. Tell me, Pet, can you spot the difference between male and female earth-dragons?"
"Not really."
"Neither can they, most of the time. Their sex organs are hidden away in a cloaca. Until they're about ten, all earth-dragons are raised on the assumption that they're male, because the species has a gender imbalance of almost ten to one. The vast majority are male, and it's not until the females go into their first heat that their true sex is discovered. Despite their rarity, the earth-dragons don't exactly treat their females like royalty. They're locked away in the wench house during their fertile period where they're brutally used by the males until they produce a clutch of eggs. Each female lays over a thousand eggs, then is essentially done. She won't be fertile again for another seven years. She goes back to the normal duties and lifestyle of a male, even taking part in the brutalization of those poor souls in the wench house, though, of course, they aren't capable of fertilizing anything."
"That's horrible," Pet said.
"Is it? It's easy to judge earth-dragons," said Burke, leading Pet up a steep staircase to the top of the wall that surrounded the city. "They reproduce through violence. They eat their own babies. Most of them are dumb as dirt. It makes killing them feel less like murder, doesn't it?"