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Thornden came to the scene of the burning stables abruptly, running around a corner and suddenly being engulfed by the noise of the many men and boys already at work attempting to douse the flames. The men here were not just those who lived at the Mead Hall – they were men from the city, stopping on the street at the sight and sound of fire to help, Thornden realized.
But all their help was going to little or no good use at all. The place was in an uproar of confusion. Men ran to and fro, some with buckets, some without, taking water from the trough and casting it into the stables. But that water would soon run out, if nothing was done to refill the troughs, and even though the stables were on fire, was the water reaching the actual fire?
Thornden plunged forward into the thick of the hustle. “Form a line to the well!” he shouted, trying to make himself heard. “Form a chain! Take the buckets and form a chain!”
But there were too many other men shouting their ideas of orders for him to be heard. The tumult remained the same and no one listened. But if men will not listen like men, they must be driven like cattle or sheep. Thornden’s hand reached out and he grasped a stranger by the shoulder, spinning him forcefully about to face him. He shoved one of the buckets in his hands and pushed him in the direction of the well. “Go to the well! Fill this with water and hand it to the next person I send!”
With the same rough handling of anyone Thornden thought he could do it with, he began to make the chain, and those that Thornden did not think he could manhandle, soon caught on themselves and followed suit.
Within minutes, two chains from the well to the stables had been formed. The ten or twelve buckets that they had plied to and fro as quickly as human hands could possibly carry them and each bucket of water was used as best it could, for the line of men went into the very structure of the stables and as near to the actual fire as the mortal body could handle.
But would it be enough to save the stables? Thornden stood at the head of one line, pitching water onto the flames as his eyes watered and teared in the smoke, sweat poured down his body, and his lungs struggled to collect air through the fabric of his shirt, and even with all the work and turmoil that every one of them put into it, would they be able to stop the fire before the entire stable went down?
He grasped another bucket full of water as he passed the empty one back down the line and used its contents. They must. They had to put it out. And perhaps…perhaps it was slackening some…perhaps just. . .
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