章 15: She Jumps to the Rescue
"It's not your fault." Christian said, noticing Robin's internal struggle.
Robin glanced over. "I never said it was."
"No, but you were thinking it." Christian guessed. "If you hadn't responded when you did, the village could have been completely wiped out. The fact that you managed to save most of them is already a blessing."
"Well..." Robin sighed. "Never mind. I was just remembering when something similar happened to me. Perhaps that is why I can empathize more with these people. When I look at then, I can see myself from back then."
"You lost members of your family?" He asked, surprised. Although he knew that the Hero would come from a different world, he had never thought about what kind of past a Hero would carry along inside of him when crossing between worlds.
Robin looked down. "My parents. Six years ago, although -right now- it still feels more like yesterday." She smiled painfully. "I can somehow talk about it now, but I couldn't even say a word back then. I couldn't even cry. I was just drowning in a nightmare of emptiness, fear, and despair. I spent an entire week hoping against hope that it was all some sort of bad dream."
"And then?" Christian asked.
"Then, my older brother happened, that's what." Robin shook her head. "He chopped open the lock on my door with an ax, burst into my room, and dragged me outside to go to a festival with him."
"Did it help?" Christian asked.
Robin snickered. "I hated every moment of it. When I finally decided to tell him to stop, he just turned and said to me 'So you DO still know how to talk, huh?'
Then he dragged me to a nearby training ground, put a sword in my hand and told me
'Whatever you have left to say to Mom and Dad, you can say it right here.'
Then he pointed to himself and said.
'It's clear that I'm not good enough for you, so you just speak your mind and then run me through. I'll be listening carefully so that I can be sure to tell them when I catch up to them.'"
Christian jerked his head in surprise. "What? What did you do?"
"What do you think I would do? Kill him?" Robin snorted.
"I dropped that sword quicker than a burning hot potato and sat down on the dirt, bawling my eyes out. The thought of him leaving too was too much for the ten year old me. After that, I decided I had to keep myself together, if only to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't kill himself."
She rolled her eyes. "It was only after a long time that I realized that the sword he gave me hadn't even been sharpened." Then she sighed, a half smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. "Although I near half-killed him when I realized that fact...still, I am thankful that I had an older brother like him at that time."
Christian was quiet. He had never had a brother. And so, he could only enviously listen to Robin's tale. Then he shook his head.
'What am I being envious for? If I did have a brother, then he'd probably be endlessly competing with me for the throne... In my case, I could only hope to have as good a brother as his.'
"That sounds an awful lot like bragging, to me." Christian finally sniffed, having found something to say.
Robin raised both eyebrows and grinned mischievously. "That's right. I'm bragging. What are you gonna do about it?"
At this, Christian could barely hold back the laugh that almost exploded out of him. Now, was neither the time nor the place for merry things, in front of the bodies of the dead. But at least, Robin's spirit was raised a bit.
At that moment, Keith waved from a nearby collapsed house. "Oy! I found some survivors! Over here, they're in the basement!"
A piece of the cellar's ceiling had fallen, revealing a young maiden, curled around a small toddler child, both of them unconscious. The young maiden also had blood streaming down her face. She had hugged the child tightly to keep it from being injured when the cellar ceiling started to fall.
The townspeople gathered, trying their best to unbury the basement. The village chief had hurried over to help, managing to carry out twice as many broken materials as the regular men. Robin quickly ran over.
"Quickly, remove that wooden beam!"
They finally managed to clear away the beam, but then A carpenter stopped them from going any farther. "There aren't any weight-bearing pillars down below. If you take any more from around the hole, the entire cellar could easily collapse!"
"Well, what do you expect me to do, man! Do you want me to wait until it's too late!?" Keith exclaimed. "Or is the sight of blood not enough for ye?" He was so agitated that his northern accent slipped back into his speech.
"No, but someone will have to be lowered down the hole to tie a rope around the woman and the child so we can lift them to safety." The carpenter asserted stubbornly.
"Are you kidding me!? That hole is too small for a normal man, and ye can hardly expect a child's knots to be tied tight enough-"
"I can do it!" Robin interrupted. "If the hole is no wider than a ten-gallon keg, I can do it! It should be easy enough to measure the hole's width like that, right?"
"Right you are!" A man said. "I've got an empty one over here."
They lowered the barrel through the hole in a net, the barrel positioned vertically. The opening was about an inch wider than the 10 gallon keg. But it was still wider. Everyone let out a sigh of relief.
Then Robin instructed the carpenter to set up a simple pulley system by stacking up an extremely sturdy pile of wood on both sides of the hole, this helped to give them a place to stack the reusable lumber as well. Then, they set up a long wooden beam across the two wooden piles. to this beam was firmly attached two metal links for the rope to go through.
On one of the metal links, the rope was firmly attached, and then fed loosely through the other metal link, to the workers, who would be pulling from an area of sound ground next to the wreckage of the house. Thankfully, after showing then what she wanted, the men followed her request without questioning it. Being the Hero sure did have its perks.
While they were still setting up, Robin went off to the side with two lengths of rope, and started tying them into loops. She attached the ends of the looped, criss-crossed rope to a metal ring. Originally, she would have had a problem attaching the metal ring to the rope, but thankfully, she also had a solution for that.
"What are you doing there?" Christian asked.
Robin didn't look up. "Making a simple rope harness to keep them stable and upright while they are being lifted."
"What?" He asked, not understanding.
Robin glanced at him, then rolled her eyes. "I'm helping." She said simply. Christian sighed and stepped to the side. He could only wait and see what the rope would be used for.
Everything was finished and ready within five minutes. And Robin stepped in the center of the rope, waiting patiently for the men to slowly lower her down.
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