Original Link (now dead) - http://zone.msn.com/asheronscall/ASHEtallwood.asp
The Tallwood Bridge
by Son of Mikodemus (Marcel Richard Gassner)
"Hold them back, or else they'll fall and that will be the end of them!" And so much for our commission, the speaker added to himself. His pale eyes scanned the frothy waters a hundred feet below, half hidden in mist.
His partner, a lithe woman whose eyes never left the opposite bank, held up a thin hand. Behind her, a troupe of city-folk shuffled uncertainly to a halt at the cliff's edge. Their leader, a bulky man whose girth did not appear to be limited by his height, gasped for breath. Fat, fleshy knobs that doubled as hands slapped his enormous belly.
"I am not paying a sack of pyreals to watch a stream flow by. We have to be back by sundown," he panted as forcefully as his puffing lungs allowed.
Lao Shan, who knew their schedule well, didn't even turn to face the speaker. His kind was beneath contempt -- so greedy and foolish as to be dangerous -- but Agrullah had decided that they needed some money. As such, she did not voice these thoughts. Besides, he was a man, and men tended to shout much and say little.
Instead she merely said, "If the albino wishes to rest, we will do so. Until he says otherwise, we will wait silently and thank the Maker that he has not sent a horde of lurkers to investigate the racket you make." Her comment had the desired effect. The tourists crowded in among each other, quietly jostling their leader for his estimate of the situation.
The northern wilds of Osteth were not really the place to bring sightseers; Lao knew that now. On the spur of the moment, Agrullah -- who had taken charge after their money from a campaign at Fort Wiltshire dried up -- could think of nothing better. The result was this trip with a dozen velvet-slippered burghers to see a graveyard. An impossible graveyard that not even seasoned wilderness hunters would willingly seek out. But a hundred thousand pyreals? Who would turn down a commission like that?
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