Paladin Name Generator

The story

I had a loom before Auren Fenhold burned the bridge. Afterward I had its key. People leave the loom out when they tell me how she kept the town through that night. I put it back. It was not a beautiful old thing handed down by somebody whose name made everyone lower their voices. I had bought the frame, altered the treadle for my own foot and strung a winter’s order through it. There was blue warp on it that afternoon, fine enough to catch against the crack in my thumbnail. My son Pell had helped wind it. He could recognize our work across a room.

The shed stood on the far bank because the damp there suited the thread and the rent suited me. At morning we had brought small things over: the spool box, the good scissors, the little packet of needles I did not trust to a cart. The bridge was still crowded with people carrying hens, blankets, rolled bedding and the objects they thought they could not live without. By afternoon the cart meant for my loom had not returned. Bora, who kept the bridge, said another household had taken it for a bed. I could see my shed’s square roof between two trees. It looked close enough to resent.

Auren came down from the town gate with her helmet under her arm. She had the broad, worn face of someone who would remember an ordinary conversation afterward. I disliked that about her even before I had a reason. A little bridge was stitched on her shoulder beside the name Fenhold. She asked what remained across. I told her about the loom. Bora explained that he had asked her to break the crossing before the approaching armed company could use it. The first report had put them hours away. She had agreed to that defense and to keeping the span open while our working tools came back. For a little while both things had fitted inside the same afternoon.

Kell arrived before the loom cart. He had come from the orchard rise, where he had actually seen the company crossing the last field. He described the torn white mark on their lead rider’s sleeve. Smoke was already rising from a stack beyond them. Auren asked him where he had stood, then turned to Bora and asked where the cart was now. It was still at the farther row of sheds, being unloaded for the return. A heavy frame would have to be freed, brought to the cart and hauled back through the people on the span. The men Kell had seen would reach the bank before that journey finished. She listened to both of them. Then she looked toward my roof.

I said the loom could not cross by itself. I said it was what would feed Pell when the flour in our room was gone. I remember saying both things because people later told me I had cared about wood more than lives. I cared about the life that came after this one afternoon. Auren said she understood the request. She did not call it foolish or offer me the consolation of a smaller loom that would somehow grow from the needles in my pocket. She said she could not keep the crossing open for the loaded return and break it before the armed men reached it. The same span lay between those two sentences.

“Then wait,” I said. There must be a great many decisions in the world which sound possible when said that way. She looked at Bora, at the people still coming over, and finally at me. “I am going to close this way to them.” I asked what that meant for the promise she had made me. She answered, “I will not get your loom back.” I wished she had said something proud. I would have known what to do with it. She was making me stand beside the actual thing she meant to leave undone.

There was still time for me to go across on foot. She said so plainly. I could fetch what I could carry and remain on that bank when the span closed. She did not pretend that the choice would bring the frame back or that I could take Pell safely into the company Kell had seen. My son was waiting by the town-side trough, watching the last hens being persuaded out of a basket. I called him to me. He came with one length of blue warp round his forearm, which he had refused to put in the spool box. I took the other end and stayed where I was.

The last family crossed. What Bora had prepared for was done; I will not tell you the work of it. Fire showed along the old timber span. Auren stood on our bank until the remaining people were clear. The smoke changed direction and covered the little stitched bridge on her shoulder. Across the water I could hear men calling to one another, but I could no longer make out my shed’s door. I held the key so tightly that its plain edge marked my palm. Pell asked whether I had locked the loom in. I said yes. It was the smallest true thing I could answer.

Somebody cheered when the first section gave way. Then others joined. The approach the armed men had meant to use was gone. I pulled the little cloth emblem from the catch on Auren’s shoulder and threw it against her breastplate. It fell at her feet. I called her a liar. Pell began crying at the suddenness of my voice. She did not seize my wrist or ask whether I remembered whom she had saved. She picked up the cloth and put it inside her belt. Behind her, Bora was telling the watchers where to stand for the night. She turned toward him without asking me to take back the word.

At the storehouse they gave us bread from the remaining common bake. The man at the door hesitated when he heard my name. Auren was passing with two watchers and told him that Pell and I were on his list. He said he knew what I had shouted. She said, “They are on the list.” That was all. I took the bread. I did not thank her, though Pell whispered something into his piece. She went back toward the gap. I ate with my son against the storehouse wall while the key lay between us. Beyond the river, a wider orange light began where the sheds stood.

By dawn there were black pieces of timber moving in the current. No riders had reached our town by that crossing during the night. Other roads still led out of the town, and our watchers went to them. Auren had not ended the war. From the high bank I saw the part of my shed’s roof settle into the light below it. The blue warp round Pell’s arm had become tangled in his sleeve while he slept. When he woke, he asked whether we could make another loom. I looked at his sleeve before answering. We would need wood first. We would need a place. I knew enough of the work to dislike the word another.

I have heard that Auren’s name means holding a wet boundary. That is the sense people here give Fenhold; I know nothing about grander languages. A person can hold one side while something on the other side goes. When she passed the storehouse that morning, I did not spit or wave. She was still carrying the marked cloth in her belt. Pell and I began unwinding our saved length of thread. He asked how much of it a new frame would take. “Wood first,” I told him again. Across the broken approach, smoke went on rising after the cheering had stopped.