Bridge-Dead

Overview

Where a crossing fails, people die: a span gives way under a cart, a ford shifts in the night, a ravine bridge drops a party into the water. The Bridge-Dead are the remnants of such deaths that stay at the crossing. They are seldom violent. They are a warning, and the families who keep the crossings treat them as part of the crossing's record.

Appearance

They are seen at dusk and in mist, at the place where they fell: a grey figure standing on the broken end of a span, a shape at the water's edge that is gone when the lantern reaches it, a cart and team crossing a bridge that is no longer there. More often they are only felt and heard: a sudden chill at one plank, the sound of timber cracking when nothing cracks, a voice calling a name from below. The air near them smells of river water and wet rope.

Habitat and Range

They linger at failed crossings, old and new: the woundland crossings of the Broken Marches, where repeated bad repair has made passage a matter of permission; the ravine bridges of the Briarreach; and the side fords and the patched span of the Greyford Reach. A crossing that has failed many times has many.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Bridge-Dead remnant clings to the moment of its death and repeats it, or keeps watch over the place it happened. Most do no harm beyond fear. Some cling harder: they draw travellers towards the weak plank or the false ford, as if to make them share the fall, and those are the ones the crossing families watch.

Abilities

Like other remnants, they chill the air, sour the mood, and move small things: a loose plank, a rope, a lantern. A strong one can make a traveller step where the dead man stepped. They grow stronger the longer they are left unnamed.

Uses and Dangers

They mark the dangerous place, and the crossing families read them so. A Troll house of the Crossing-Oath Houses that remembers every collapse remembers every dead with it, and tells a traveller which plank to avoid by the name of the one who fell there. Goblin side-ford families mark a ford with a dead upon it with their own reversible marks. The danger is to strangers who do not ask.

Lore and Belief

Crossing families hold that a Bridge-Dead stays quiet while its name is spoken at the crossing, and that it turns on the living when it is forgotten; that is close to true of remnants generally. Trolls tell the names at each repair, and Human toll-keepers at Greyford sometimes pay a coin into the river for the dead of the last collapse. Some say the dead of a crossing that is finally abandoned walk off with the last traveller.

The crossing songs remember the bridge-collapse that took a whole wedding party, and the night a year later when the wedding was seen crossing again, laughing, over a span that was not there; a carter who followed them is said to have driven his team into the river.

Where It Appears

• Overview: The Risen Dead