Ralan was unsure what to do. If he continued toward the bridge, he would simply be handing himself over to the guards, who were slowly moving through the crowd toward him. Yet if he fled, he'd have nowhere to go. He'd be slowly hunted down in the city. He couldn't even race to his parents' home in the Upper Triangle—they had disowned him years earlier.

Just as he was about to turn his horse away, a hand grabbed his leg and pulled. Ralan slid over and another hand grabbed him. He went to kick at the person who held his leg, but a mass of hands reached out and pushed him to the road.

Ralan was on his back, looking up at the sky, when a face leaned over. It was an extremely dirty man, with matted hair, and a filthy Harvest Guild shirt on. "Don't ya worry, Guildmaster. We'll get ya past." He shoved a folded up piece of clothing at Ralan. "Here, put this on, and stand behind Will'm there." He pointed to a large man, who had a face devoid of any emotion. He just kind of stood there and stared.

Ralan scrambled to his knees and pulled on the green shirt. It was stained and dirty and smelled of rancid fruit. What is it with me and things that stink? Ralan thought as he stood up.

Someone shoved him, and then Ralan was pressed into a mass of dozens of men, women, and children, all wearing the green of the Harvest Guild. He glanced back, and someone was leading his horse away from the bridge and toward the Flats. Closer to the bridge, the Merchant Guards were frantically looking all around, squinting at faces and pointing in random directions. A few Knight Protectors held their positions flanking the bridge.

The crowd of workers returning home to the Old Quarter grew in size, and the people all pressed close and moved toward the bridge. The makeshift barrier that the Merchant Guards had created worked at first. People were stopped, asked a few questions, looked at closely, and then waved through.

But this process started to break down as more and more people were pressing forward to the bridge. Ralan was near the front, so he clearly saw the chaos unfold. A guard held up his sword and threatened violence if everyone didn't back up, which led to the crowd pushing forward even more violently. The guard's eyes went wide, and then he retreated in the face of the sea of humanity.

Ralan was borne forward, like a leaf on a river. There was nothing he could do but ride the wave and hope that he would simply be overlooked amidst all the other people wearing green. He hoped that when the wave finally hit shore that it would be a friendly one.

The guards were in complete chaos, with them all separated and attempting to push their way through the crowd to join forces. Ralan wasn't quite sure what they had in mind, but even if they had joined up and created a human barrier, the mass of people—now numbering in the hundreds—would have been impossible for them to stop.

He had already passed at least five Merchant Guards. Their eyes had scanned the crowd, but they couldn't pick out Ralan from any number of Harvest guild members, and Ralan passed them without effort. He had just stepped on the bridge when he glanced over at a Merchant Guard scanning the crowd. They locked eyes, and the Guard's eyes went wide.

It was Esel, the Merchant Guild gatekeeper.

"He's here!" Esel screamed, pointing at Ralan. A hand shoved Ralan's head down, and bodies squeezed against his while they surged forward. "He's in that crowd. I saw him!"

Ralan lost sight of Esel, as he was bent over and being forcibly pushed onto the bridge along with dozens of other people, but he could hear him. In short order, Esel's voice sounded further away, his desperate plea for someone to hack through the crowds continued, even as it was going unheeded.

They had passed one of the bridge towers and were over the Great River. Ralan stood up straight and looked around. All he could see was a sea of dirty green. The Merchant Guild guards were still wading through the throngs of people that continued to surge toward the bridge, but they didn't attempt to follow anyone toward the Old Quarter. This bridge can't possibly be this busy, even with people heading home after work, Ralan thought.

Halfway across the bridge, Ralan realized that he was safe. The guild guards were nowhere to be found, and the people who had escorted him across made more space for him to breath and for them to chat and ask him questions.