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16. First Circle
I recalled what one of our soldiers, a pale man with startlingly dark eyes, had once said, trying to entertain a group of the men and the workers as they sat in the south ward. "We all carry our fears in different places," he told me. "Some men have it here, in the back, and some of us have got it in our head and neck, and then there are those who carry their fear in their bellies. It's heavy, you see." As he explained, he had stooped or bent himself over in a painful-looking way to show the toll of fear in different places, and we had all laughed because it had been horrid and funny at the same time and we knew what it was all about, and then, when I thought of it more, it was not really funny at all. And now I remembered him (he had marched away and was gone), and I thought that I was carrying my own fear everywhere: it had seeped like poison behind my eyes and into my temples, in my back and the bottom of my stomach and the soles of my feet and my smock and shift and my kit bag. And perhaps all of us were like this; there was no room for anything else.
"You," said the young man from Rohan. "Sad little girl. With the knife. Will you help me?"
"What is it?" I drifted reluctantly towards the bedside.
"I want to go out to the window."
"It's too early for you to be up. You need to rest your leg."
"I hate this ward. And I've no leg to rest, have I?"
"It's too early. Give it a few more days."
"I'm tired of it. And you seem like you're better than the rest of them, anyway."
"I'm not better," I said, and then paused; I was beginning to lose track of all the rules, or at least about why I had once held them to such importance. "But I'll help you."
He sat up and circled one arm around my shoulders and I helped him stand. He was heavy against me and he winced.
I said, "You can stop if it's too much." But he shook his head.
"You're stiff as a board," he remarked, shifting his weight. I could feel every shudder that ran through him and every unsteady breath, and I hated it.
At one end of the ward there was a tall window with heavy leaded glass. The ledge below it was wide enough to sit comfortably upon. I left him there and returned with my arms stacked with pillows, one for his back and another for his leg.
I got up on to the other end of the ledge and tucked my skirts beneath me; the ledge was long enough to seat us both with a wide space between us. Through the glass, the rooftops of the Fifth Circle and then the Fourth and the Third tumbled out below us, but the thickness of the pane made it all wet and indistinct. It reminded me of an artist's frieze tucked away in some corner of the Fifth Circle that I had once paused before with my mother when I was little. She was taking me along on some errand, no doubt, but she liked to make out that small trips to buy cloth or milk in the markets were actually grand excursions for the two of us; at least she did in those early days, and I would marvel at how adventurous she was, my mother, and how it seemed she could lead us anywhere on earth.
I had stood with my nose nearly against the frieze, trying to discern what this all might be about. "No, come back here," my mother had smiled, and she took my hand and drew me back so that I gazed up at the entire picture, and figures and faces emerged so suddenly that I nearly gasped. I had walked back and forth like that several times, slowly and quickly, my eyes never leaving the wall as I tried to reason how nearness could not yield a greater understanding of the thing. And now I stared out over the rooftops, blurred by the window and battered by the Siege, and wondered if I ought to edge away and put my heels against the opposite wall as I had so many years ago.
"Thank you," said the young man as he settled in. We were quiet for several minutes, and then he said, "It's so high up. I've never been so high up."
"So what are you looking for?" he asked after I failed to respond. "Staring out there."
"Have you got someone out there? I suppose you're waiting."
I looked at him, but he was staring through the window. There was a hungry kind of expression on his face.
"Everyone always thinks it's a man," I said.
"Do they?"
"Anytime a girl looks sad, it's always, 'Missing your young man?' As if we can't think about anything else."
He shrugged. "Lots of us here, and not many of you, I suppose. You've all got your pick of the lot." He paused. "So is it a man, then?" he persisted.
I shook my head. "It's everything."
"You're not in love."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because when you are, it's all you want to talk about. To anyone who'll listen."
"So what about you? Have you got a girl?" I knew what his answer would probably be, but I asked anyway.
"I had one. In my village. I had a girl."
"Was she pretty?"
He shook his head, still staring out the window.
"No?" I asked.
"She was perfect."
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be. You didn't know her."
"What was her name?"
"Maethwyn," I repeated, though I regretted it, for pressed through my Minas Tirith accent the name lost its music.
We were quiet for a long time. I hadn't seen Fíriel all day. Maybe she was walking down the corridor at this moment, listening, knocking on the door to the Warden's offices even though it already stood ajar. I had worn her out at last. I leaned my head against the window, and even through my cap I could feel the cool glass.
"It is a man," I murmured.
"Is it?"
"It was a man."
"Is he dead?"
I shook my head. "I think about him all the time."
He said nothing.
"But I don't know if he thinks about me, too. But he must have, at some point." I hugged my knees to my chest.
"You must like him."
"Wronged woman, are you?"
"You could say that." The glass was as cool as a sheet of water through my clothes. I was too tired to stop myself crying, and I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand in angry motions.
"What did he do?" His voice was curious, but no more so than it had been before, as if it were all one and the same to him. And maybe it was.
I said, "Tell me about Maethwyn."
"Tell me what he did to you."
"Was she fair, like you, or darker, like me? What did her voice sound like?"
"It's no business of yours, is it?"
"Well, my business is none of yours, either."
"You started to tell me, though." Apparently there were rules for this sort of thing.
I put my forehead against my knees and waited, and then I murmured a word or two; choked on them, really.
"What was that?"
"I said, he forced me."
The man from Rohan said nothing.
"I mean, I didn't want to—" I went on. I was suddenly panicked, as if this had somehow turned into an act of self-preservation. "I didn't even—"
He held up a hand. "I know what it means. I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be. You don't know me."
"I do, a little."
I shook my head. "What happened to you was worse. Very much worse."
"This was one of your own men? From your country?"
"It was worse, what happened to you," I persisted.
"Was it one of your men?"
"Yes." One of Gondor's men, I thought. None of them were mine. "Would it be better if it were one of yours, then?"
He licked his lips and shrugged. "No." He shifted the cushion beneath the remains of his leg. I turned my head away; there was something in his eyes I didn't like. "Where's your father?" he asked.
"One, and he's a child. He went to the coast with my mother."
"Don't you have anyone to protect you?"
"I don't know," I said.
"That's a shame," he murmured. "Pretty girl like you."
"I'm not pretty." I wiped my eyes against my sleeve. "Would it be better if I were ugly?"
"No. I meant…"
We were both quiet for a while. I was afraid for a few moments that someone might pass by and see us like this, him staring away, and me weeping like a fool, neither of us supposed to be perched up here in the first place. I suppose that if you had had a mind to, you might have constructed a fine complicated story about the two of us that was not true at all.
After a while, he said, "I want to go back, now." I slid off the ledge to help him, folding his arm about my shoulders once more.
"She was fair, like me," he said as we made our way back to his section of the wards. "And tall. She had a low voice, but sweet. After—I looked for her, but I couldn't find her."
"I'm sorry."
"Well—it's done, now."
"No, it isn't," I said.
I was setting out the wet linens to dry on the long wooden racks, when Fíriel came and touched my shoulder.
"You're done," she said. "You're off. Go and get some sleep."
I said nothing. The water from the dripping cloths was pooling at my feet, and Fíriel took the damp bedding from my hands.
"Go. I told the Warden you were worn out and you needed a few days for your strength to return. He didn't ask me any questions. He said it was fine."
I wiped my palms on my smock and nodded.
"There's a good girl," she said, and she seemed to relax just a bit in her back and shoulders so that the corner of one of the sheets touched the stones of the floor. She lifted it again and spread it over the racks, being careful not to bunch the fabric anywhere so that it would dry smoothly.
When I passed through South Ward it became clear that something was happening. Murmurs about the First Circle were going around, staff members were massing in small knots between the rows of beds, and it seemed as though everyone were snapping into the same urgency that had been their air during the Siege.
"What's all this?" someone asked.
Nauthir, one of the older surgeons accosted me and a few of the other girls. "Just when we thought it was—" he shook his head. "We've just got word, two of the guardhouses and a great piece of the wall on the First Circle have collapsed; they'd taken too much damage during the Siege, though apparently they'd been thought safe enough until now. There were a great many men on those walls and beneath them and the Warden has orders for everyone. You'll all go to one of the matrons in the atrium and get your instructions."
The other girls exchanged a glance and hurried off, but I hesitated. Fíriel had said that the Warden had removed me from the rotations. He had removed me, and yet it seemed like such a cumbersome thing to try to explain now. I was tired and my head ached, but having to explain always seemed to make things so much more difficult.
I thought of the boy from Rohan, and of Maethwyn, and his niece, and their wrecked pathetic village that was now only a smear of ash on the plains. I thought of my own sleepless nights and my own nightmares. I had nothing better to do.
"Is there a problem, miss?" Nauthir was asking me.
"No—no, sir."
"Then report for your orders with all haste, please."
"Yes, sir," I said, and I rushed away to where the others had gone.
When I had gone down to the Second Circle to help clear away the wounded and the corpses, I had scarcely recognized it because the cobblestones had been strewn with bodies and blood. And now I found that I did not recognize the First Circle at all; houses and buildings were gutted shells of themselves and the old high walls had crumbled and shifted at perilous angles, as if reaching towards one another. Fallen stones formed piles and tunnels; there was no clear place to stand, and my shoes were soon coated in ashes and dust. The most frightening thing about it all was that it looked as though nothing had ever lived there recently, as if it were some ancient desolation that we had only just discovered. Everything smelled of smoke, and then I remembered the tall funeral pyres that they had began to light and feed just after the end of the last battle.
A long section of the high walls and part of the gate was gone; there was only a gash and a pile of cracked stones and splintered wood, rising out of the ground. The guardhouses had been crushed, their walls buckled in like a row of broken backs. If Mordor came to Minas Tirith a second time, then surely there would be no siege at all; even I could see that.
Several workers from the Houses were already there, and the largest group was gathered around where the first guardhouse had once been. One of the other women saw me and motioned me over. She was tending to a man in Guardsman's livery who was sitting on the chalky ground, a thick line of blood running down one side of his head as if it had been painted there.
"Talk to this one," she said to me. "Make sure he doesn't move yet."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Are you all right, dear?"
I nodded and she said, "All right," and then she got up and moved on. The air was full of the sounds of orders, moans, coughing, the smell of dust and panic. I took a clean cloth from my pocket and pressed it to the man's face, feeling for the damage with the fingers of my other hand. His hair was sticky and smelled of iron. He looked like all the others; they all looked rather the same, in the end.
"About a dozen," he said. He was blinking slowly as if he had just woken up.
"A dozen what?"
"Men. Right under the guardhouse when it all came down. I saw it, you know. I got the least of it."
"I heard."
"Poor wretches," he said. He blinked again and then shut his eyes and I could feel him grow heavier against me. I made myself close my hand around the point of his shoulder; he was warm, at the very least.
"Wake up," I said. "What's your name?"
He opened his eyes. "Sorry. I thought it would go the other way."
"What do you mean?" I took the cloth away and took out another one, and my hands were not as steady as they might have been.
"I thought…during the Siege, I thought that Mordor would make the City crumble from the top down, somehow. But now it's all going from the ground up, isn't it?"
"What's your name?"
We kept talking and he stayed awake, but he would not tell me his name. I wondered if he remembered it.
There was blood and stone and dust, and there was man after man to tend to; the pain and the tiredness swiftly returned to me after the first shock of seeing the ruined gate, and the noise and the openness of the place made me dizzy and anxious. Fíriel was right, I thought, I should have stayed up in the Houses. I sat down on a large piece of stone and wound the cloth of my smock tightly around both of my hands as if trying to stanch a wound of my own. I shut my eyes and different voices rang in my ears.
"What are you doing here?" I looked up and Valacar was standing over me.
I started. "What about you?" I retorted. It was the only thing I could think to say.
"They've asked for all free hands. I suppose I'm only able to be dismissed when I'm truly not needed."
"I…All free hands," I said, lifting my own from the folds of my smock.
He crouched so that our eyes were on the same level. "Well, you've not been well."
"What doesn't Fíriel tell you?"
"Oh, a great many things, I'm sure. Are you all right?"
"Yes," I said, and I got up from my seat and stepped away from him through the dust. He got up and moved after me; I was vaguely, strangely satisfied to see that there was something startled about his movements, as if he were having trouble keeping me in his sights.
There was a large group of people clustered about a huge section of rubble near what used to be the gatehouse. Many of the men were working to clear away some of the stones, but it looked to be slow going.
"Look there," one of the other women said to me, catching me lightly by the sleeve. "They think there are still some men beneath all of that, two or three, perhaps."
"They must be dead."
"We don't know."
"All of you stand aside if you're not helping here, then," one of the young men said, motioning us back. His face was impassive but he seemed to be taking us in with his eyes, each of us in turn, as if he wanted a moment to be sure that we were actually there.
"I'll be wanted elsewhere, I suppose," murmured the woman; none of us were really accustomed to being ordered about by anyone but the Warden. She walked away, but I found myself rooted to the spot, my kit bag clutched in my fist. The men were hard at work with their sleeves pushed back and their arms coated in dust, shouting cautions to one another, but I couldn't see the use of any of it, and perhaps they couldn't, either. The wreckage seemed as solid and hopeless as something that had been built on purpose.
There seemed to be no real hierarchy of commands. "…never clear it away in time…" I heard a fair-haired Rohirric man say. He was speaking to a Minas Tirith man in captain's dress.
And then Valacar was beside me once more. "You look tired," he said to me. "Why don't you go back up to the Houses?"
"Hush," I said.
"…not all the way over," the captain was replying. His left palm was pressed against his forehead while he described figures in the air with his right hand. "I saw it as it went, the roof isn't all the way in…"
"There's a clearing here," someone called. A section of the rubble shifted and collapsed as though it were a creature settling down for a rest. The sound was like the slow cracking of bones. Pebbles tumbled and rolled to the ground and a few of them touched the toes of my shoes like a threat. "Take care!" someone else shouted. "Don't be foolish."
"Stand further back, at least," said Valacar, taking me by the elbow. He took a step back and his grip tightened and I gasped a protest; then his hand dropped away altogether. He stood with his arms folded across his chest. Opposite from us, conferring with the captain and the Rohirric man, was Lord Aradîr. I glanced over at Valacar, but his face was without expression; if anything, his features were a bit slack, as if had given up on something.
"Come around," someone was calling. "Surgeons, as well, if there are any."
"There's a man under the guardhouse, perhaps two," the captain was saying to me and Valacar and a few of the other healers who had gathered. Aradîr was still standing beside the captain; he did not look at any of us directly. "It's not impossible that they're still alive," the captain continued, and here he looked at Valacar, as if he possessed some extra knowledge by virtue of his grey surgeon's coat. Valacar returned his glance but said nothing. "One of the walls may have gone down intact. We've cleared a space through the stones…"
"Narrow," one of the other men broke in, "but if we can go through without upsetting it…"
Valacar cleared his throat. "Forgive me; but even if they're indeed alive, we've no idea if they can be safely moved out. Might it be better to wait until all of it can be shifted?" The wreckage seemed to settle a few feet under its own weight, and a stone about the size of an infant tumbled from the heap, as if in reply to him.
"Won't happen anytime soon…" someone else put in.
"Half the men in my company were lost to Mordor," said the man who had interrupted the captain, now glaring at Valacar, "I'll not see anyone else lost to anything so needless as this…"
"Calm yourself," said one of the other men. Lord Aradir was saying nothing; his eyes simply moved from one speaker to the next.
"…never seen anything like this…" one of the other girls said, and someone else was saying, "Why have they brought the women down here?"
The voices blended together, and my gaze wandered over to the spaces between the stones, the slender gaps and the shadows between them. I looked back at the tired, ragged company that had assembled itself here, and I saw the first young man looking at me, the one who had first asked me to move away. I stared back at him. Little one, I thought. I was exhausted and bruised, as if the world had done nothing but batter me for the past several days. But for a moment I felt as though the world might be drawing me into its confidences for once, laying a part of itself bare. And here was something I could do.
"I can go in," I said. The arguments went on, but the captain and Aradîr were now glancing at me. "I can go and try to have a look inside," I continued. "I'm small enough so that I won't upset anything."
It was quiet for a moment and then Valacar leaned in towards me. "A word, please," he said, and he took me by the arm and pulled me aside, some distance away from the crowd. I wrenched my arm from his grip with as much force as I could muster.
"You are going back to the Houses, right now," he said to me.
I stared back at him and said nothing.
"You could be very badly hurt, like those men. You could be killed."
"You don't know that."
"Why does it matter to you, anyhow?" He put out an arm, an unusually broad gesture for him, as if to encompass the whole scene before us.
"Why doesn't it matter to you?"
"I don't know what's wrong with these men," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "They're soldiers. They should be able to tell a wise risk from a foolish one. They should be able to leave a lost cause without bringing others into it."
I stared past his shoulder at the mound of broken stones; unlike that picture on the Fifth Circle, it was no clearer at a greater distance. "Isn't it all sort of a lost cause, at this point?"
"Very well, perhaps it is. And we can talk about that later. For now—"
"Stop trying to look after me. You needn't bother yourself."
He took a step closer to me so that he could lower his voice. "Then why did you come to my room the other day, if you didn't want looking after?"
I didn't have an answer to that.
"Why shouldn't I look out for you?" he persisted.
"Because you don't have to. We're not kin. I'm nothing to you." And then I remembered the day when I had come to his surgery room with the clean linens to tell him about my meeting with Aradîr, and I had tossed my basket in the air and Valacar had laughed, and I was pleased that he had. That was more than nothing, though I couldn't be sure of what it amounted to. And now that seemed ages ago. Now we were the keepers of one another's secrets, as if we had been crammed together into a space with very little air. And I wanted to be rid of it all, rid of the way one thing inevitably wound into another as if it were all spun out of a single tangled thread.
"What if I want to look out for you?" he said. "You're owed that much, at least. You're owed something."
I thought of that day in the surgery with the dying man, when Valacar had sent me out to the gardens. I hadn't asked for any of that day, or anything that had come out of it. I thought of what he had told me about what had gone on between him and Aradîr, all these things that made me want to shudder if I dwelled on them for too long.
"Why can't you…" I trailed off, trying to think of just what I wanted to say.
"Why can't I what?" he asked.
"Why can't you do what you're supposed to do? Just like everyone else?"
"What makes you think everyone else does what they're supposed to?"
"That's not the point. It would be so much easier for you, with everything, if you just…kept to yourself."
"I suppose that's what you're doing, now? Keeping to yourself? Staying out of trouble?"
"Don't tell me what to do."
"I can tell you what to do because I am many years older than you are, and I have had much more time to make mistakes than you ever have. And I don't believe you're thinking clearly. So please go back up to the Sixth Circle."
"I'm all right," I murmured.
"You're not." He put his hands on my arms, just below my shoulders. "You don't eat. You don't sleep."
"Stop it."
"Not until you listen to me." His grip tightened a little. "Don't let yourself become a danger to others, as well as to yourself."
"Stop it!"
We both stepped apart from one another. He looked surprised, and he had his hands slightly forwards, palms out, the type of gesture you might make to show that you are at a loss for something: weapons, or coins, or words. My heart was racing painfully beneath my ribs. He had shaken me, once, hard, and I had struck him across the face.
"Are you all right?" asked another voice, and we both turned to look. Although he had been standing in conference with the captain a few moments ago, Lord Aradîr was now a few feet away.
"Well?" he said, glancing at me. I nodded. Valacar said nothing. "Should I remind you that this girl is in no way under your orders?" Aradîr said, turning towards him.
"Nor is she under yours," Valacar replied, his voice lower now. "The Warden's excused her from the rotations."
"He did the same for you, as I recall." He turned to me before Valacar could reply. "And how old are you, good lady?" Though I had the feeling he already knew.
"Nineteen, sir."
He nodded. "More than old enough to choose your own course," he said, though he seemed to be speaking more to Valacar than to me. "The captain would like to know if your offer still stands."
"Aradîr—" Valacar began.
"What did you say?"
Valacar took a deep breath, and then said, "Sir," and the corner of his mouth tightened briefly in something that could have been either a smirk or a grimace, the sort of face you might make to yourself when you remember something particularly regrettable that you've done. "Have you heard anything I said? She's tired out. She shouldn't be here at all."
"She looks well enough to me."
"Forgive me, sir, but I don't believe you were appointed to discern who is well and who's not. That would be the Warden's duty. And mine."
"Duties that you've forfeited, Valacar."
"You know very well."
"No. Tell me how."
"I'm sure you know that you're not to speak to your superiors in this—"
"Please tell me. Sir."
"As was made quite clear to you before, for breaches of City law and of the Healer's—"
"On what proof?" Valacar's hands were down at his sides, as if he believed he'd already been defeated, as if he'd taken one step too far and little cared how much farther he went, how much more irretrievable he could make himself. Aradîr looked tired, but his voice was still as calm and cordial as it had been that day when he'd greeted me in his offices and made me recite my old lessons for him.
"The records from the dispensary clearly show that—"
"The records show nothing."
Aradîr turned to me again. "Please run and inform the captain that—"
"And will you please leave her out of this?" Valacar demanded.
I turned and saw that the captain was making his way over to where we were, looking none too patient with us.
"That was my intent," said Aradîr. "You may be excused, Valacar," he added quietly.
Valacar crossed his arms over his chest and said nothing.
"You may go, now," Aradîr said, and his voice was a half-tone lower. "On your own, or if you insist—"
"My lord," said the captain. "What have you decided?"
"First, Captain," began Aradîr, looking at Valacar, "if you might—"
"If you might let me go in." All three men looked at me. It took me a moment to recognize the voice as my own. "Lord Aradîr's agreed to let me go in to the wreckage to see if there's anything that can be done."
Aradîr glanced at me. "Indeed," he said, looking at the captain once more, "and if you could please see to it that this man—"
"He's going to help me," I broke in once more, the words tumbling out one after the other. "He needs to—he's the best at seeing me through these things, if—if there's something I don't understand. He has to."
"Very well, come along, then." The captain had already turned away and was walking back towards the wreckage and the small crowd, the speed at which he moved suggesting that he cared little for the strange, slow ways of these healers.
Aradîr didn't move. "Captain," he began, though he was now looking at me. I stared back at him; there was no expression on his face that I could read.
"Yes?" The captain barely glanced over his shoulder.
"I'll…have a word with you afterwards, please." Aradîr glanced at Valacar, and then back at me, his words winding in upon themselves now that we were all faced again with the massive weight of the wrecked circle. The anger seemed to have gone out of him. Instead he just shook his head, looking vaguely embarrassed.
"Very well," said the captain, whose back was to us again.
"You can thank me," I whispered to Valacar as we followed the captain back towards the guardhouse. "I just helped you."
"I'd rather you'd just helped yourself. You don't have to do it, you know." He looked at me then, and sighed, shaking his head.
And people were watching, now. I glanced up once and then refused to look again as I fastened my kit bag tightly at my waist.
"…and you'll stop straightaway if something doesn't feel right to you," the captain was telling me. "Because we're usually right about these things, aren't we?" He didn't seem to be asking for agreement from anyone in particular. None of it felt right even now, but I nodded.
Someone said my name. Valacar was standing next to me again, and he said, "Tuck up your sleeves. Like this. So they won't catch." The bruises were still on my wrists, but now they looked as though they could have been smears of grime, like everyone now wore. "And thank you, anyhow," he whispered into my ear.
The space they'd cleared was just a narrow shadow between a curved stone fragment and a dark piece of wood whose weathered surface had now gone to splinters. I held my breath and climbed in.
Beneath the stones everything was black, like one dark room beyond another. I didn't move. The dust was thick in the air, on the ground and filtering down from above and I thought I could feel myself choking on it. I was hunched over on hands and knees and I felt tiny sharp fragments sticking in the creases of my palms and beneath my fingernails, and I wondered if more would stick in my throat and my nose.
I waited and the darkness resolved itself into shapes, black against black. Something unbroken slanted above me and ahead of me. The men had been right—one of the walls had gone down intact. There was space inside the wreckage. I went forward, gingerly—one palm, then the other, one knee, then the other. For each movement I had to wait and blink until I had convinced myself that my eyes had grown used to this new pocket of shadow, and I remembered what Ioreth had once told me, what I had then told Beren—that because we had spent our childhoods in Minas Tirith, we had grown more accustomed to the dimness and the clouded horizon, the lack of light.
The passage seemed to narrow to just the width of my shoulders. I felt in front of me with my fingers for traces of blood or anything human. I did not want to be surprised. I shifted around a column of stone that jutted to my left, and then my right arm caught on something sharp before I knew it, and I could feel it all shuddering and shifting around me. A few small rocks struck my shoulder, then something that might have been a metal bolt or a hinge. I tried to coil more tightly into myself, to be smaller inside my own clothes and my skin, but I had already shrunk myself down as much as I could. There was nowhere to retreat to. I could have backed out then, backed out as slowly and gingerly as I had come in, and no one would have thought any worse of me, or at least they would not have said as much, but for some reason I chose not to. There was nothing to do but inch forward.
The wooden wall slanted so low now that it brushed my back. The soft part of my fingers touched stone and I groped my way forward, listening to my own breathing. I thought of my mother exploring the curving alleyways of the Fifth Circle when she was a girl, trailing her hands along the walls; back then, the Siege had only been a distant shadow looming on the horizon. Marriage and a daughter and a son, a dead sister and an inherited nephew and a refugee camp somewhere on the coast had probably never even crossed her mind. I wondered if she had ever been afraid, when she was my age.
My skirts and my sleeves were caked with dust and I could taste the grit and the chalk in my mouth, and I wondered, too, for a moment, if this was what dying was like, crawling into a smaller space and then a smaller, picking up heaviness. I wondered if Valacar's soldier, the one who had lain gutted and bleeding on the table in the surgery that day, had known what was happening. If he would have forgiven Valacar (or forgiven me, for that matter), or even thanked him.
Was it one of your own men? the man from Rohan had asked me as we huddled on the ledge by the window. And now as I tried to see an arm's length ahead of me and as I tried to shake the dust from my eyelashes, I realized that the men who were ours weren't so by the simple facts of flags and colors; that would be too easy. The men who were ours were the ones who we saved or lost, the ones whose bedsides we lingered at, the ones who we cut and stitched and soothed, the ones whose blood stained our clothing and stuck beneath our fingernails. So Tarondor was mine, I thought. And Valacar's man—he was mine, as well, at least in part. And a great many others, whether from Minas Tirith or Ithilien or Edoras or other place. Something else shifted and the stones grated against the wood, and it sounded like a moan in my ears.
The space opened slightly, and I thought I could see a few fingers of light filtering through gaps in the rubble overhead. And then the back of my wrist touched something soft.
I caught my breath. My fingers searched the ground. Stones creaked somewhere above and to my right. I thought I could smell blood, or metal, or both, and something else, as well, something that I could not place. I touched one wrist, and then another, and then a throat and a shoulder seemed to emerge before me, as if the wreckage were growing flesh on its own. I was trying to string the scene together, and my hands were clutching at fragments and endings in the darkness, and then all at once the fear came roaring back to me and I stopped everything. The walls closed in and I couldn't move. I had crawled into a tomb, I thought, and dying amongst death would be far worse than dying here by myself, and the walls seemed to shift in towards me, the dark shapes swirling before my eyes and then behind my eyelids when I shut them. My mouth and throat were dry and my stomach hurt, and I wanted to be far away, the wish that I had first had on that night when I had left the kitchens and walked alone into the rain.
And then I took another breath, and then another. I opened my eyes. In my mind I divided up my choices and parcelled them into corners. I took balances and made calculations; I had been a stretcher-bearer like everyone else and I knew the exact weight of a dying soldier. The man lying nearest me made a noise. I touched his wrist again, touched his arms and his legs. I took another breath. I knew what I had to do.
I backed out of the crawlspace even more slowly than I had gone in. When I ducked out and stood up the light stung my eyes.
"Well?" said Lord Aradîr, at the same time that the captain said, "Did you find anything?" I shook the dust from my hands. The soldiers and healers who had gathered about seemed to ask the same questions with their eyes. Valacar stepped closer to me, not bothering to disguise his relief.
I said, "There are two men inside. One is alive and one isn't. If you widen the entryway I think I can bring him out—the live one."
"Good girl," murmured the captain.
The relief had gone from Valacar's face. Aradîr glanced at the captain but said nothing.
"His right arm is pinned beneath a piece of stone that I can't move," I continued. "It's crushed. I'll need to take it off above the elbow."
"And you think you can do that?" the captain asked. "Do that, and bring him out quickly enough?"
I nodded. "Valacar can help, with—after that."
"No, I won't," said Valacar, drawing me aside. "Because you're not going back in."
"I can do it. I know how."
"It's not just the amputation. You could barely get in, yourself; how are you going to bring a grown man out with you?"
"I can do it."
"How?" He lifted his hands as if he were going to touch me again, and just as quickly he dropped them back at his sides.
"There's enough space."
"Are you very sure?" the captain asked me.
"And the arm?" Valacar persisted. "Are you sure it needs to come off?"
I nodded.
"You're certain of this?" Aradîr said.
I said, "I need to take it off."
Valacar and the captain exchanged glances, and then Valacar nodded and knelt to take his instruments out of their cases.
On the way back inside, something sharp scraped against my ankle where my skirts had bunched up. I touched the skin and held my fingers there for a moment; I was bleeding, but there was nothing to be done for it now. I didn't mind.
For a moment the tunnel seemed wider than it had when I had first gone through, as if objects in the world had shifted ever so slightly to accommodate me. I was almost surprised that the men were still there; I suppose that a part of me had expected them to vanish like visions in a children's story, shades put up to fool the hero. But they were there, and the one was still alive.
I touched him and he stirred slowly; it was like watching a thing underwater or perhaps through a pane of heavy glass. I had no pain-draughts with me; I thought I wouldn't need them, and anyway there were probably no more to be had.
I shifted the thin cloth bundle over to my side, which was difficult because it was stiff, without any give. The fabric on his sleeve tore easily enough. He stirred again when I knotted a strip of cloth on his arm beneath his shoulder, tightly, like my mother had taught me.
"Hush," I said, and I went to work.
At the first cut he jerked and made a noise in the back of his throat. I was stronger, now, stronger than I had been before, and I could keep him still. I couldn't hesitate, I knew; after the first cut there can be no room left for doubts, but only speed and work. The smell of blood filled my nose and my mouth. Valacar had always kept his saws the sharpest of any surgeon, or at least I thought so; I thought of him in his little rooms among his knives and his towels and his tables, and suddenly I was overtaken by gratefulness, for him and for everyone. It seemed like only a few strokes before I had sunk down to the bone. It was like a destination, like coming halfway home.
I stanched the blood, held the cloth tight as I switched saws. There was more noise, now. His eyes may have been open; I couldn't tell and I didn't dare let my gaze travel from my work. But I talked to him. I made my voice low and soft, as soft as you could want a mother's or a sweetheart's voice to be, and I talked to him.
I told him that in time the end of the bone would scar itself over, that the flesh would knit itself back together. I told him that there was nothing to fear because the sun would rise again and again, keep dragging itself over the horizon regardless of our own wishes, until it came time for us to die, that this was a thing that could be counted on. And that certain things would never stop happening until Mordor tore through the skeleton of our gates, that things had always happened. That we could make them happen, like Beren had said to me, or least we might make ourselves believe that we could. Children would be born, and tiny dots of villages would be burnt to bone and ash. And people would get married, and they would nurture secrets and keep them, and people would betray one another. And that we would all make lives for ourselves out of the tiny spaces that were given to us.
By the time I had gone all the way through the bone, he was quiet beneath my hands. There, I said. That's all right. That's done, then.
And once that was over, it was easier, like walking downhill. I felt my way through the blood and the skin as if this was the one thing I had been meant to do all of my life. The last thing that was keeping him pinned on the spot was a fragment of his sleeve. I had already wrapped up Valacar's saws. But I had one more knife, tucked away in my own kit bag; the knife that the grey-haired captain had pressed on me, the knife that the young villageless man from Rohan had said was for no one but me. As if he was showing me some sort of unexpected gift; and perhaps he had, in the end. I drew it out and carefully cut away at the very last of the trapped man, and then we were both free to go.
I turned him around inch by inch in the narrow space and brought him out into the daylight; what remained of his arm was wrapped up tightly, and I remember that I held him mostly by his shoulders, that I pulled him mostly by the fabric around his collar and the edges of his shirt, and that pieces of stone leaned in and collapsed behind us, as if confirming the finality of it all. I remember thinking what a lucky thing it was that only one of the men in the wreckage had been alive, and not both of them; for what could I possibly have done with two to worry about?
I brought him out and he lay on his back on the cobblestones of the First Circle, and then I could finally stand apart from him and look into his eyes. They were pale and still like the surface of a reflecting pool. He stared back at me.
Valacar was beside him right away as he said he would be, needle and thread in hand. I sat down. A few of the men came and smiled at me and patted my shoulders, saying, Well done and good work.
"That was very good," Lord Aradîr said quietly. We both watched Valacar work; he was almost finished. "You're a brave girl."
"Thank you, sir." I paused. "I hope you don't mind it."
"What would I mind?"
"It was against the Healer's Canon. For me to use the knives. Sir."
He glanced at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. I was covered in blood and dust. "Of course," he said, "we can make short-term allowances under certain circumstances, can we not?" He glanced over at Valacar; did not seem to be waiting for a reply from me. "Be well," he said. "Take care that you have some rest." He got up and walked away as Valacar was tying off his last stitch.
They took the man up to the Houses along with the others from the First Circle who could now be moved. As far as we could tell, the collapse had claimed seven men, six from Gondor and the last from Rohan.
When Valacar found me I was back up on the Sixth Circle, sitting in the corner of one of the garden balconies.
"Valar," he said when he saw me, "come and wash up." I was still wearing my smock from earlier in the day.
"I'm sorry I hit you."
He smiled faintly. "It's all right. I deserved it; I shouldn't have shaken you like that."
"What's going to happen to you?" I asked.
"I don't know." He didn't speak for a long time. "Come inside" he said.
I nodded but I felt too heavy to move for the moment. It didn't seem so very urgent.
"What's wrong?" he asked me.
He got up and walked away and returned a few minutes later with a basin of water. He sat on the bench beside me and put the basin between us.
"Here," he said. "Wash your hands."
The water was cool. I stared at my fingers, but didn't move. They looked like things that had nothing to do with me.
In the Houses, washing our hands is the very first thing we are taught to do. As little girls and boys, before we ever make a single cut or place a stitch, before we fold a single towel or tear a bandage or watch someone die in front of us, we wash our hands.
"Please," said Valacar. I still did nothing, and so he reached across the basin and pushed my sleeves up from my wrists. He turned my hands palms-up, where the blood was caked thick in the creases in my skin. The water clouded pink.
"I was impressed with the amputation," he said, looking down. "It was very clean."
"It was hard," I said, "in the dark."
"I can't imagine," he said. He had a small flat stone in one hand and he pushed it gently between my fingers, the way my mother had taught me. He was quiet while he worked on my left hand, but he spoke again, very quietly, as he started on my right, still without looking me in the eye.
"I've seen crush wounds before. That didn't look like the end of one to me."
I said nothing. He was going underneath my fingernails with the narrow end of the stone, one at a time, the way all the surgeons learn to do. They were getting too long and I needed to trim them. The water swirled pink and red.
"It was dark, as you said," he continued. "Not enough space or light. Anyone could have made a mistake. You brought him out alive, and that's what matters."
"No," I said. "It wasn't a mistake. I needed to take the arm off." I stared at him, bent over the basin as if he were at work on something important, until he looked up at again.
"All right," he said.
"It wasn't a mistake," I repeated. I lifted my hands from the water. They felt as soft as a child's, as if they were new again.
Valacar nodded. He stood up from the bench and took the basin with him.
"You did well. And thank you, again."
"You're welcome," I said, watching him walk away. My legs felt unsteady as I stood up, and I wondered if I should trust them right now. I leaned over the railings and stared out at the lower circles.
Later the rest of the wreckage would come down, unable to keep itself at such heights; only then could the rebuilding begin in earnest. It would take years until it was all as it was before, and even then it there would be something different about it, something that you couldn't quite put into words.
And just a few days later the man that I had pulled from the wreckage, the man whose blood was still on my smock and my dress, would die. From the shock of it all, most likely, Ioreth would explain to me when she gave me the news. The weight and the falling and the shock of it all—there are some things that a body can't manage on it's own, not so unusual in the end. But you did well, my dear—you did your best by him, though I'm sorry it came to this.
But standing there on the balcony, I didn't know any of this. The gardens were quiet and there was a hint of warmth on the breeze, and I closed my eyes for a long time. My shoulders went slack, as if something had gone out of me, something that had kept me coiled together. Then I opened my eyes and remembered the little carved figure in my kit bag. I had found it, felt the edge of it over the top of his shirt pocket along with the same carving knife that he had held against my neck in the alley in the rain. I took it out now, let it lay on my open palm. Like everything else it was smeared with blood. I stared at the wooden man for a few moments. It looked like a dead thing in my hand, and then I closed my fingers around it and tossed it over the edge.
This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author.


text:
The morning show for people who wake up at noon.
Shit gets real weird on this week's episode of the Super Late Morning Show with the Lucas Bros. Check it out.
Finding guests for the Ja Rule Release Party might be a little harder than the Lucas Brothers thought.
Stop by the party, and come back next Monday for a fresh new episode of The Super Late Morning Show.
Brody Stevens lives and breathes positive energy.
Monkey around with professional goofballs David & Chris Walsh.
Trevor Moore, a founding member of The Whitest Kids U' Know, didn't just release a comedy album called Drunk Texts to Myself -- he created and starred in music videos to go with it. From a legal loophole involving mouthwash to a rap about the pope, Trevor's songs come to life like never before.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Health Care-Medical Interpreting (CLIMB CEU)
PCC's Health Care Interpreter Training Program is completed in one term and offers 120 hours of the general principles of interpreting, ethics, telephonic and video interpreting, linguistics, medical/dental terminology, anatomy and physiology, cultural awareness and competency, mental health and business practices. Students who successfully complete the course are then prepared to take the National Certification/Qualification Exam allowing them to work in health care settings requiring certified or qualified interpreters. Course is designed for individuals who are already bilingual or multilingual. A background in health care is not required, but fluency in both languages is required. The program is offered in a live, virtual classroom which means that you can speak with fellow students, talk with your instructor and see the presentation materials. Students must have the minimum system requirements: 20 MB free disk space; soundcard with speakers and microphone or headset 28.8 Kbps AND Internet connection (not dial up). Prerequisite: successfully pass language test at local language company, cost $90. Classes meet at specific times and dates.
The class list for this term is not yet available.


text:
Mitch Boston
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DIY Ultimate Guide
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It's time!


text:
Michelin Pro4 Service Course Tire - Clincher $69.99
As the first to develop easily removable bicycle tires (what we know as clinchers), Michelin stamped their authority on bike racing in 1891 at the Paris-Brest-Paris road race. Their win in Paris began a long string of victories that nearly spans the history of the bicycle. The PRO4 Service Course Tire is the 4th generation of the only clincher tire to ever win on the cobbles at Roubaix, and it's one of four tires in the PRO4 lineup. The PRO4 Service Course is an overall better tire than its predecessor, the PRO3 Race. This comes by way of a few significant changes, but the important result is that this tire is slightly more durable and, at the same time, faster.
Of the four models in the PRO4 series, the Service Course offers the best balance of longevity and performance. It's different than the PRO3 in nearly all regards. Michelin's new dual compound rubber is a bit harder in the center. This allows the PRO4 to uses 7% less energy when riding in a straight line than the PRO3. It also uses new elastomers and silica for extra grip on the shoulder portions. And while the casing uses the same 110 tpi fabric, the shape differs on the new tire. It sports a sharper profile that offers quicker transitions to steep lean angles and increases the surface area of the contact patch once leaned into turns. Both the new compound and larger contact patch increase the turning traction potential of the PRO4 Service Course by a good margin over the PRO3 Race – an astounding 16% better on wet roads. Expect similar improvement on dry roads as well.
One standout quality of the PRO4 is its flat resistance -- again, think about Paris-Roubaix. On the one hand you get their full-tread, nylon high-density breaker to resist insults from typical road garbage. But you also get sidewalls that -- at least to us -- have a long track record of blowout-resistance for gravel-happy rides. Both the AG2R La Mondiale and Project 1t4i teams will rely on their durability on the roads of Europe this season.
The Michelin PRO4 Service Course Tire is available in Black, Blue/black, Digital Blue/black, Red/black, and White/black in the 700x23c size. It's also available in Black in a 700x25c size.
Tech Specs
Reviews & Community
What do you think of the
Michelin Pro4 Service Course Tire - Clincher
? Share a...
Small cracks in the tires...
- Familiarity: I've used it several times
These tires were inexpensive, gripped great, handled great, rolling resistance was great but... after only a few months of use I have small "cracks" on the edges of the tread. And I only had about 300-400 miles on them. It's a little disconcerting but it didn't seem to effect the grip and handling of the tire. But as I used it more, more cracks appeared. I even searched the net and found it seems to be a common problem but it seems Michelin isn't concerned. I'd love to get another set but I worry about the many "cracks" on these relatively new tires. So buyer beware.
Trevor J
One of the Best
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
Pro 4 tyres are some of the best gripping rubber you can buy. I'll never forget ripping down a mountain descent in a rainstorm, completely confident that my Pro 4's would hold true through the tight switchbacks. One of my favorite tyres for wet weather riding and all around tackiness deep into a corner. Durability is on par with the likes of Continental, and I rarely get flats when I'm rocking them.
Chad Cordell
Great Tire
- Familiarity: I've used it several times
Great grip and long lasting at a reasonable price.
Best tire I've ever used
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
I've tried many road tired in the last 20+ years, but the Michelin Pro4's are by far the best. They are on my two bikes. I'm on my 4th pair and no complaints, only 1 flat, from a huge goat head.
Are they selling one tire or a pair of tires?
Spencer Oliphant
Price is per tire. Select Qty 2 for a set.
Michelin Pro 4's
- Familiarity: I've used it several times
I'll never switch to another tire as long as these are available !
For my weight (157 lbs.) these tires give the best stick and increase my confidence to take those corners!
Grip for days
- Familiarity: I've used it several times
Mad sticky rubber and a reasonable weight makes these awesome tires for ripping long mountain descents or for fast crit races. Ride quality I felt is on par with other higher-quality clinchers like Conti GP 4000's. Tire wear expectedly suffers when you have a tire with this much grip. I usually get between 500 and 600 miles and about 50,000ft of climbing before the rear tire is toast. Good price and if you're aware that these will wear quickly they are a good tire for their purpose.
The 700 x 25 is true to size.
- Familiarity: I've used it once or twice and have initial impressions
Although I've had very good experience with the 23s, I put off buying the 25s for months because of a well-circulated article that claimed they were closer to 28s. The tire I got, inflated to 90 lbs., measures 25.2. Nice tire.
Jeff Sabatka
Fat bike for Roadies?
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
This is the second time I bought these pairs of tires and they really last a good amount of time. I ride a bit more dirt roads than the normal roadie, and these tires can stand up against the beating. The second pair I got were 25mm, and the only bad thing about these is that with them fully inflated, you cannot get them through the brake to take off the wheel for transport.
Mike Mortenson
Excellent Tire!
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
700x25 was on my Ridley build. These are fantastic tires, very good grip, an apparent low rolling resistance, and a smooth ride. They played an integral part on a fantastic ascent on Spirit Lake Highway and were even more important coming down!
A wonderful combination of everything you look for in a tire, sticky, supple, smooth, good wear resistance.
Good tire
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
I like the Michelin Pros a lot. They are soft enough to handle well.. sticky around turns while more durable than I was expecting. I weigh 160 and they have been lasting at least 1000-1500 miles.
solid tire, great value on sale
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
I just passed 1K miles on these tires and they are great. absolutely no issues with quality (not showing any signs of wear), they corner great, they roll great, and sometimes you can find them for as much as 50% off the list price which makes them a real bargain.
Solid Tire
- Familiarity: I've used it several times
I've used this tire as an upgrade from Schwalbe Luganos, and these provide much better feel and grip, and are lighter to boot. After 100+ miles on these tires in wet weather, I'd definitely recommend as a good off-season tire, and probably a pretty good summer tire too. Solid wet grip and rolling resistance seems good as well.
A lot of folks compare these to the Continental GP 4000S tires. I have a pair of those on another bike, and honestly can't say that I see a huge difference in performance thus far. I haven't ridden either enough to see a difference in wear longevity, though some folks think the Michelins wear faster. Objectively, there are a few differences, at least comparing the 25mm versions of both - the Contis are definitely wider than the Pro4 tires, and also a little heavier. The Contis also seem to attract more grit, maybe due to stickier compound.
Bottom line - you can't go wrong with either. If you find either for under $50, I'd grab a set and enjoy.
A good Upgrade
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
I've spent lots of miles on several pairs of Pro 3's & these are pretty much an upgrade in every way. Ride Quality is great, rolls well, seems a bit more impervious to flatting & improved wet riding. Love putting miles on these bad boys.
Rick A
Great riding, great wearing
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
This will be my second set of the 700x25. I installed the first set in early summer and have ~3,500 miles on them riding nearly every day of the week with Saturday and Sunday each being at least 50-mile days. A few small cuts (the roads are pretty good here in Chicago 'burbs) and no flats. Definitely better wet weather traction than the Conti's. Have tried both 23 and 25-mm and will stick with the 25's. The lower pressure helps absorb some of the rough pavement and when paired with the winter alloy wheels with higher spoke count definitely more comfortable. Ride equally well with carbon clinchers in summer. Current set not fully worn out but could not pass up this sale.
Best rolling tire on the market
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
I've been riding Michelin Pro tires for several years and the Pro 4 is a great evolution of the pro line.
This tire has an incredible fast and yet grips well on cornering. I also get a lot of miles our of these tires and find them a real good value... especially at half off right here on cc
Duncan Poling
The PRO4 is a great tire, without a doubt. However, for the same $ you could get the robust Conti 4000S. If you want a fast tire, you have found it. If you want your fast tire to last, get the Conti's.
Granted, the colors are pretty cool... and a lot of Pros ride the 4... and the mascot is adorable with his puffy tire body. But the Conti's last so much longer. I am not going to claim that I can tell the difference in performance between the two, lab tech's can barely tell the difference. What I can tell you is the Conti's gave me fewer flats over a longer lifespan.
Overall, I give these 4 stars... If the 4000S didn't exist, they would get 5.
Ben Kuhns
Great Tires
When a post ride tire inspection revealed that my ancient rides were beginning to disintegrate, it was time for an upgrade.
This year's revision of the PRO3 is not a disappointment. The tire feels extremely durable and has a great "road feel." I opted for the larger size, 700x25 since I tend to ride for enjoyment and like the additional comfort of the larger tire.
I haven't had them long enough to speak to their long-term durability, but I have no reason to doubt it at this point. I will report back if that changes.


text:
A former Brigham Young University student is suing a university-contracted apartment complex that he says evicted him after he told his roommates he was attracted to the same sex.
3rd annual Love UT Give UT campaign aims to raise $2M in 24 hours
Marjorie Cortez | posted 22 minutes ago
The third-annual Love UT Give UT online giving campaign starts at midnight. The 24-hour initiative seeks to raise $2 million for some 500 Utah nonprofit organizations and schools.
BYU Pro Day prospects hope to boost draft stock while seniors eye own futures
Sean Walker | posted Mar 26th - 3:32pm
BYU will hold its annual Pro Day on Friday morning at 9 a.m., giving the seniors one more shot at competing — for a potential spot on an NFL roster ahead of April's draft.
Top 5 other playgrounds you haven't yet explored in Utah
by Utah.com | BrandView
Zion, Arches, Bryce… move over. You liked the national parks before they were cool. You don't want a guided tour. It's time to experience other things in Utah now.
Herbert signs bills banning phony caller IDs, drive-thru cyclists
The Associated Press | posted Mar 26th - 1:43pm
Gov. Gary Herbert has signed a bill that makes it illegal to deceive someone by displaying phony caller ID information and approved a bill that would overrule Salt Lake City's mandate that restaurants allow cyclists in drive-thru lanes.
Midvale woman dies in wrong-way crash on freeway
Pat Reavy | posted Mar 26th - 1:40pm
A 22-year-old Midvale woman who troopers say was driving the wrong way on the freeway for several miles was killed in a head-on collision late Wednesday.
Gov. Herbert approves bill setting deadline for prison pick
The Associated Press | posted Mar 26th - 12:46pm
Gov. Gary Herbert has signed a bill that gives a state commission until late summer to suggest where a state prison may be rebuilt.
2 buck deer illegally killed in Emery County
Faith Heaton Jolley | posted Mar 26th - 12:14pm
Two young male deer were illegally shot and killed and Division of Wildlife Resources are seeking the public's help locating the poachers.
Tips for boating safety, surviving cold water
Faith Heaton Jolley | posted Mar 26th - 11:25am
With the warm spring weather, many Utahns are heading out early onto the state's lakes and reservoirs for boating and Utah State Parks officials gave some tips for safe boating in colder temperatures.
Judge says Utah trucker's arrest was legal in sex slave case
The Associated Press | posted Mar 26th - 10:30am
A federal judge has dismissed a challenge to the arrest of a Utah truck driver accused of keeping women as sex slaves in his semi-trailer as he drove across the country.
Barbecued spareribs – the perfect March Madness meal
by Harmons | BrandView
All the excitement of March Madness will seem like it barely started once you cook this ribs recipe.
Photos: Local detailers help restore historic 'Freedom One' airplane
Natalie Crofts | posted Mar 26th - 9:32am
Decades after bringing American hostages home from Iran, the plane known as "Freedom One" was returned to its former glory with the help of detailers from Utah.
UTA board OKs changes for executive pay structure
Jasen Lee | posted Mar 26th - 8:38am
In an effort to rebuild trust that has been lost in recent years due in part to criticism surrounding executive pay, the Utah Transit Authority board of trustees Wednesday approved a plan to restructure how administrators are paid.
Medicaid expansion meetings will be closed, governor's office says
Lisa Riley Roche | posted Mar 26th - 8:28am
Gov. Gary Herbert is expected to start meeting in early April with legislative leaders to hammer out an agreement on his Healthy Utah alternative to Medicaid expansion, but their discussions will stay behind closed doors.
Driver crashes into neighbor's house
Kaitlin Loukides | posted Mar 26th - 7:39am
A West Valley City family is out of their home after police say a drunk driver crashed into the house early Thursday morning.
GOP-controlled House OKs balanced budget plan
The Associated Press | posted Mar 25th - 11:30pm
The Republican-controlled House has approved a budget blueprint that projects balance by the end of the decade and includes trillions of dollars in savings from benefit programs.
Police warn residents against door-to-door scammer
Megan Marsden Christensen and Andrew Adams | posted Mar 25th - 11:28pm
Police are warning residents about a scammer who is going door to door, soliciting money for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Salt Lake. They stopped the man briefly Wednesday night, but he is still on the streets.
Ex-USU fraternity president arrested in sex abuse case
Ben Lockhart | posted Mar 25th - 11:26pm
A former fraternity president at Utah State University was arrested Tuesday for investigation of forcible sex abuse.
Fisherman's body found in Willard Bay
Mike Anderson | posted Mar 25th - 11:15pm
The body of missing fisherman Matthew Rasmussen was found Wednesday evening after a three-day search.
Gas station clerk, drivers aid police in catching suspected car thief
Nicole Vowell | posted Mar 25th - 11:10pm
A suspected car thief was arrested Wednesday thanks to an alert station clerk and his fellow citizens who sprang into action and tracked the man down.
Syracuse man develops router with timed filters, on/off Internet control
Ashley Kewish | posted Mar 25th - 10:52pm
A Utah man has created a new device that gives parents on/off Internet control on their children's devices.
Child with special needs shares powerful message
High bacteria counts on cellphone doesn't determine rate of infection
KSL Investigates: SLC out millions of dollars in unpaid parking tickets
Social media kicks up sales of bronzed baby shoes
Ring sale on KSL Classifieds uncovers international cyber crime ring
Don't give children disabled cell phones, dispatchers plead
Thousands attend annual Safe Kids Fair in Sandy
8-year-old stuck by hypodermic needle found on school playground in Roosevelt
Facebook launches Amber Alerts to help find missing children
Health officials link Calif. apple packer to listeria deaths
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Death, Taxes, and Body Shape
Just as death and taxes are inevitable, some aspects of your body condition are inevitable, too. You cannot change them, but you can make the best of them. They seem like barriers to achieving your ideal size, but they don't have to be. They are as follows: aging, genetics, hormones, menopause (for women), middle-age spread (for both men and women), and childbirth (for women).
The Aging Weight Myth
There is a popular myth about aging and weight that goes like this: as you get older, you get bigger. It's only a myth. You don't need to get bigger as you age. Plenty of older people have great bodies and enjoy eating and stay at their ideal size. Remember, all you need is one example of a myth not being true to know that it doesn't need to be true for you.
Does age affect body size and shape at all? Of course. In general, as we age, our metabolism naturally slows down. A slower metabolism means we burn calories more slowly. So, eating less food helps to avoid weight gain. But you can also keep your metabolism high through strength training and eating well nutritionally. We'll cover this in much greater detail later in the book.
Your Genes Don't Come from a Designer
You'll have to be content without designer "genes." The genes passed down from your ancestors through your biological parents are yours forever, good and bad. You cannot change your genetics. But you can learn to make the most of what you've been given. (Yes, researchers are seeking the "fat" gene, but they still haven't found one that absolutely predicts obesity.)
Some aspects of heredity affect your body shape, but your genes alone can't make you fat. They determine your basic shape and height as well as your musculature. But heredity is only one of many factors that affect your shape and size.
An old adage tells us: if your parents and relatives are overweight, you will also be overweight. If you come from a "large" family, this can seem to be true. However, think back for a moment to how your family ate. What size portions did they expect you to eat? Were you required to clean your plate before you ate a treat, meaning dessert? Did the family center all celebrations around food and lots of it? Were you taught at an early age to seek out food for solace, celebration, and reward? Maybe it's not your genetics dictating your size but your family's attitude toward food and eating.
Behaviors in "fat" families are more likely to predict overweight offspring than genetics. You can, however, learn new eating habits. You can leave food on your plate; you can become a picky eater; and you can send your leftover food right down the garbage disposal. Isn't that what a garbage disposal is for?
In How to Avoid Holiday Overeating, you'll learn how to eat at family gatherings and have fun without overindulging … all while staying at your ideal size.
Aagh! Those Raging Hormones!
Hormones often get the blame for everything from obesity to thick thighs. Have you ever said to yourself, "If it weren't for my hormones, I would be able to lose this weight?" You're right in part, but only in part. Hormonal systems that are out of balance can wreak havoc on your weight-loss dreams. You could experience a slower metabolism, weight gain around your midsection, insulin resistance, and water retention, to name a few.
Lean Lingo
Hormones are made within the body to stimulate and regulate cellular and glandular functions. Perimenopause is the 10-12 year transition leading up to menopause. During this time the body's hormone production and metabolic rate slow down.
You have, however, considerable power to change your hormonal balance. A combination of proper and delicious nutrition, specific exercises, and plenty of sunshine on a regular basis can help keep your hormones in balance while freeing up excess stored fat.
You may have hormonal imbalances due to the surgical removal of glands such as the thyroid or ovaries. Replacement medications help. Work with your doctor to adjust your dosage so that you feel your best and have the most energy possible. Hormones definitely affect your weight, but you are not stuck with "bad" hormones. Your lifestyle makes a big difference.
More on: Mom's Health and Fitness
Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Healthy Weight Loss © 2005 by Lucy Beale and Sandy G. Couvillon. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
To order this book visit the Idiot's Guide web site or call 1-800-253-6476.


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Show her how much she means to you with this band, featuring six round bezel-set diamonds at approximately .12 carat total weight. Set in 14 karat yellow gold, each stone has been hand-selected and hand-matched to make this the perfect way to tell her you love her.
Order now for delivery on or before
Thursday, April 09, 2015
using FedEx 2nd Day.


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About the Long Island Chapter
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Long Island Chapter serves residents who have been touched by one of the blood cancers: leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. The chapter serves the Nassau and Suffolk counties.
About The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), based in White Plains, NY, is the world's largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer research, education and patient services. LLS's mission is to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. Since it was founded in 1949, LLS has invested more than $1 billion in research specifically targeting blood cancers.


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Raw posts and updates from our writers with info too timely or uncategorizable for print. What, we said something stupid? Chime in, buddy.
Flower Power: Our weekly Instagram photo contest winner
By Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Sat Mar 21 2015 11:09 AM ]
Yesterday, spring sprang. Here in Fringecrest, nature is waking—unfurling leaves, buds and blooms along Ridgecrest Boulevard and throughout labyrinthine tributary neighborhoods. Dreaming of springtime last weekend, I selected Flower Power as the Alibi's weekly photo contest theme.
Nature proffers sensory gifts aplenty on this second day of spring. And kindred Alibi readers offered up some gorgeous photos of Albuquerque flora on Instagram (@weeklyalibi / #alibiflower). The spectrum of color on display in Burque is proving well worth the wait. Here at the Carrillo casa, winter jasmine and climbing roses exist in various stages of bloom—erupting cadmium yellow and carmine.
Scroll on and smell the metaphorical roses by scoping some of our favorite entries and this week's photo contest victor.
Our favorites:
The winner:
Alibi Picks
Max Out on Corners
By Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Fri Mar 20 2015 12:00 PM ]
Corners brings their brand of post-punk to Launchpad on Monday.
The Daily Word in urban sprawl, bait dogs and Choctaw kindness
By Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Thu Mar 19 2015 11:55 AM ]
In a victory for urban sprawl, developer Jim Strozier announced plans for a new "city" west of Albuquerque.
It's taking longer than expected to find a suitable replacement for former APS superintendent Winston Brooks.
Bernalillo County officials say fears about having your dogs stolen—for use as "bait dogs"—have been blown out of proportion.
Attorneys for two boys charged with beating two homeless Native American men to death are asking for "amenability."
A sculpture is being installed in Ireland to honor the kindness and generosity of the Choctaw during the Great Famine.
Keep your head up, Liza. You are loved.
Have you heard of "disaster tourism"? This is the art world equivalent.
Quintessential Albuquerque: Our weekly Instagram photo contest winner
By Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Sat Mar 14 2015 3:18 PM ]
Instagram is no longer the sovereign province of "the hipster." Your mom and grandma are probably there too, posting Rise-filtered snaps of their latest programming manual or regional cookbook. We dig Instagram because an inclusive ethos motivates our social media efforts. Put simply, we love seeing the world through your eyes.
So every week we reward one passionate Alibi reader-
Last week's theme was Quintessential Albuquerque (#alibiburque / @weeklalibi), and the winner is Instagram user @andreamichellelove29. Her ristra photo captures the earthy effulgence of two of New Mexico's core elements, red chile and sunshine. Please email email@example.com for deets on retrieving your prize package of $10 Alibi Bucks and an extra something or two (CDs, books and/or promotional schwag).
The Daily Word in prom-munism, hobbits and Mars
By Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Fri Mar 6 2015 4:14 PM ]
Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School embraces "prom-munism."
If you plan to watch the "Dig" premiere tonight on USA, spotting ABQ locations might make a fun drinking game.
George R.R. Martin donates a first edition of The Hobbit to Texas A&M's Cushing Memorial Library.
Mars ... needs ... women—I mean, may have once had an ocean.
The Daily Word in selfies, Gwar and Netanyahu
By Samantha Anne Carrillo and Lisa Barrow [ Tue Mar 3 2015 2:20 PM ]
What the hell is a "selfie stick" and why is the Albuquerque Museum forbidding their use?
Where does the proverb "In like a lion, out like a lamb" come from?
Milanese artist El Gato Chimney conjures up "symbolic visions of fantasy worlds infused with alchemy, occultism and folklore."
GWAR covers Kansas for the A.V. Club, and the result is rad.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns Congress that Obama's deal with Iran will result in the rise of a new nuclear power.
The United States Department of Justice finds a pattern of racial bias in policing in Ferguson.
The National Academy of Sciences will bestow their most prestigious award, the Public Welfare Medal, on Neil deGrasse Tyson in April.
The Daily Word in disappearing writers, road rage and superbugs
By Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Thu Feb 19 2015 2:04 PM ]
Barbara Follett began writing novels when she was 8 years old. Alfred A. Knopf published The House Without Windows when she was still in puberty, and she disappeared forever at 25. Aren't you glad you're not that successful? Who knows what might happen?
The suspect in last week's Las Vegas road rage killing is in a standoff with police.
A Los Angeles hospital may have exposed 179 patients to a drug-resistant bacterial "superbug."
The Albuquerque City Council orders a halt in Bosque construction.
The New Mexico Senate passed a bill that will put the futuristic Spaceport hangar up for sale.
Happy birthday, Michael Gira, Justine Bateman, Benicio del Toro and Burton C. Bell of Fear Factory and his twin brother (and my friend) Ben Bell.
The Daily Word in bulldozing the Bosque, movie moms and R. Crumb
By Lisa Barrow and Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Tue Feb 17 2015 4:37 PM ]
Want to rally Wednesday afternoon to halt construction in the Bosque?
Balance out those avocados with some spicy chile. Capsaicin "appears to prevent weight gain in mice that are fed a high-fat diet."
Why do prosecutors always get their way?
Alibi writer Genevieve Mueller noticed something strange about movie moms.
The younger Bush can't escape the legacy of his older, poodle-painting brother.
Are insurance companies rewriting Hurricane Sandy damage reports to save money?
Avail yourself of R. Crumb's regimen for staying sane.
The Daily Word in crazies, punk rock and bone broth
By Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Thu Feb 12 2015 2:19 PM ]
Metals executive posits that one-quarter of physical gold market is populated by "crazies."
The Albuquerque Environmental Health Department issued a statement in response to an online rumor about cat meat at a local McDonald's restaurant. (And I weep for the future.)
The New Mexico House of Representatives passed a bill to hold back third-graders with reading deficiencies.
Weekly Alibi's Crib Notes and Cribtoons: Your interactive weekly pop quiz and animated recap with built-in cartoon-based reward system since 1992.
August March interviewed OG punk rocker Gordy Andersen (Black Maria, Jerry's Kidz) about his formative ABQ experiences and influences.
Devin D. O'Leary gave a favorable review to Alzheimer's-centric drama Still Alice. And apparently Julianne Moore's hair color is referred to as "ronze."
Is bone broth as cool as it sounds? Ari Levaux reports.
The Daily Word in cannabis, sex and Allen Ginsberg on psychedelic drugs
By Samantha Anne Carrillo [ Thu Jan 22 2015 12:16 PM ]
Scope our Cannabis Issue to spark up knowledge on New Mexico's medical marijuana policy landscape, an unlikely New Mexican MMJ patient and a recreational marijuana vacation in Pagosa Springs.
Our fourth issue of 2015 also proffers:
• The Weekly Alibi pop quiz, Crib Notes
• A review of Michael Mann's high-tech cyber-thriller Blackhat
• Show Up! On Beholding and Belonging: Five gigs prove there's no place like home
• An arts feature examining Amazon's battle for publishing dominance, Storytime is Over: How Amazon is out-Goliathing the publishing industry
• A review of Kokoro Japanese Restaurant, Back from the Heart of Japan
• And much, much more! Including micro reviews of new releases by California X, Marilyn Manson and The Decemberists; Odds & Ends; venues that offer drinks while making art in Sip, Paint, Repeat; A Drinkable Feast honoring J.D. Salinger; and so on.
And don't forget to fill out our fast, easy and 100 percent anonymous Third Annual Sex Survey to inform our coverage of Albuquerque's circa 2015 lovescape.
The mutilated corpses of four dogs were discovered at the Conejo Waste Transfer Station. Animal Protection of New Mexico is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer(s).
Will you be at the 15th annual world's largest matanza this weekend?
The president of Yemen and his cabinet have resigned amid chaos.
Does the U.S. military keep body counts?
Read a lost letter about psychedelic drugs from Allen Ginsberg to the readers of the Paris Review.
Today's Events
Andy Milne & Dapp Theory • jazz at Outpost Performance Space
Spring Break Adventure Camp at Vista Grande Community Center
An Evening with Martin and Gandhi at La Tienda Exhibit SpaceMore Recommented Events ››
BeLowLife Vids'n'Vinyl • 4.30.2015
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- There is a fixed interest rate of 7.9%
- The loan origination fee is 4.204% (any loans originated after December 1, 2013, will have a loan origination fee of 4.288%)
- The borrower has the option of deferring the loan repayment until 6 months after the student graduates, withdraws from school, or enrolls for less than 6 credit hours in a semester.
Frequently asked questions:
When do I begin the PLUS loan process?
Borrowers may begin applying for the PLUS loan on November 18, 2013 for spring 2014 semester. The deadline for completed PLUS loan applications to be submitted to the Office of Financial Aid is December 2, 2013 for the spring 2014 semester. We strongly recommend that borrowers adhere to this deadline date in order to assure that funds will be secured by the July payment deadline.
How do I apply for the PLUS loan?
In order to initiate the PLUS loan process, students must file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or renewal FAFSA for the 2013-2014 academic school year.
The borrower can log into the US Department of Education's studentloans.gov website [2] to Complete PLUS request process. Applicants must have a FAFSA PIN to log-on to the site. (Applicants can apply for a PIN or have a forgotten PIN re-established at www.pin.ed.gov [3].) Information on approved loans will be automatically forwarded to the Office of Financial Aid for processing. (Please note: if the Parent Plus Loan is approved, the borrower must complete a Plus Loan Master Promissory Note MPN). The MPN can be completed via the studentloans.gov website.
To apply for a PLUS loan, you must be the biological (including non-custodial), adoptive or step-parent of the student. Also you must be a U.S. Citizen or Eligible Non-Citizen (e.g. Permanent Resident) to be eligible for this loan.
All approved PLUS loans for the spring 2014 semester have 5 business days to be processed from the time that a completed application is received by the Delaware State University Office of Financial Aid. DSU will have the ability to view an application within 24 hours from the time that it is completed. However, during our peak processing season, loans may take up to 20 days to be processed.
How much can I borrow?
The maximum amount you may borrow for the academic year is the difference between the cost of attendance (tuition, fees, room and board, books, etc.) and the financial aid that the student is already receiving for that year. When applying for the loan before the aid package has been determined, we recommend that you request the maximum amount on the application. If the student receives additional financial assistance after the PLUS loan is certified, one or both disbursements may be reduced or cancelled to prevent over-awards.
If you decide that you do not wish to apply for the maximum amount, please indicate a specified amount on the application. The amount indicated will be processed for the entire academic year and a 4.204% processing fee will be deducted each semester.
How do I request an increase in the PLUS loan?
To request an increase in the PLUS loan, please click on the link below and fill in the necessary information to complete the PLUS increase request form. An increase cannot be processed if:
- The student has already received a financial aid package up to the maximum cost of attendance allowed
- The Plus loan has been approved with a co-endorser (in such cases the borrower must reapply for a new loan and have the co-endorser re-sign for the loan)
- The first disbursement of the PLUS has already been paid to the student's account
What are my options if I am denied for a PLUS loan?
If the loan is denied due to adverse credit, you have several options:
- Reapply utilizing an endorser
- The other parent can apply utilizing their information to possibly obtain an approved response
- You may allow your student to be awarded the additional Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford Loan
Once DSU receives a denied PLUS loan response from the Department of Education, the additional unsubsidized loan will be applied to the student's financial aid award within our current loan processing timeframe. If the student does not wish to receive the unsubsidized loan, a request must be submitted in writing to the DSU Office of Financial Aid.
If both parents are denied for the PLUS loan, only one unsubsidized loan will be awarded per academic year.
What happens if the PLUS loan was initially denied and it has now been approved?
Once notification has been received that the PLUS loan is approved, the additional unsubsidized loan amount will be removed and the PLUS loan will be applied for the amount indicated on the application.
For any questions and/or concerns regarding PLUS loans, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com [5].
For questions regarding the completion of the PLUS loan application or Master Promissory Note, contact the Department of Education at 1-800-557-7394.


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SymbiarticKalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at
Is Homosexuality Natural? Yes. So is male lactation.
May 17th, 2013 | 19
As Gwenn Seemel points out in her richly illustrated book, Crime Against Nature, the non-human animal kingdom is chock-full of examples that challenge many of our deeply held beliefs about what is "natural" behavior in everything from sexual preference to lifestyle choices to gender roles and even gender identity. A third gender, male pregnancy and [...]Keep reading »


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Performance golf ball fitting focuses on finding the best ball for your game and lowering your score.
Be the first to hear about product introductions, surveys, promotions, and sweepstakes. Through Team Titleist News we will provide exclusive communication not available in any other forum.
Titleist offers the most precise club fitting experience in the game.
The full-set Titleist Golf Club Trial program provides golfers with an easy way to experience Titleist products on either the course or practice tee to help determine the right equipment for their game.
Need to customize headwear, gloves, bags, or golf balls?
Track your stats. Get video tips. Set goals for your golf game.
Started by :
Olivia S
2 years ago
2 years ago
Such a range of wants from so many folks. What is Titleist to make of this, I wonder?
Such a range of wants from so many folks. What is Titleist to make of this, I wonder?
How about simply offering the forged AP1's you sell in Korea as a custom option for US players
Not to be greedy but I would love a 913f 15 degree 3 wood and a 913h 19 degree hybrid to complete my fully titleist bag
I would really enjoy a nice lightweight cart bag and a set of 913 driver, fairway metal and hybrid.
Great way to kickoff the season.
More Birdies from the new personalized Pro V1's I just ordered.
Well if I had to ask for something as of right now, I'd probably ask for one of those Team Titleist bag tags or a box of ProV1x golf balls. That would make my day.
300 yard drives, right down the middle.
A round of golf with "The King" himself,Arnold Palmer
Last year
How about we keep it simple...
Beautiful weather and great friends for more rounds of golf. What could be better?
a titleist lanyard and maybe a scotty cameron...
Can I have a 56* wedge?
That'd be awesome if I could get a fitting from Scotty Cameron himself, a couple boxes of ProV1's, and one if those sweet greenT-shirts you posted on your Instagram page.
hahaha Olivia you really started a post that caught alot of reply's. funny how one typo to really start something
cheers greens and fairways
I agree. This thread is interesting. Could go on 'n' on...


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Cross Fire
Cross Fire is a 3D first person shooter that looks and plays a lot like the original Counter Strike. Cross Fire has 4 game modes, including a unique 'Ghost Mode' where one team is nearly invisible but armed only with knives. Gain ranks, earn GP, buy new guns and keep track of your kill/death and win/loss ratios in this fast paced tactical shooter.
Publisher: Z8Games (NA/UK) / GameRage (EU)
Playerbase: High
Graphics: Low
Type: MMO
EXP Rate: Medium
PvP: Yes
Filesize: 1.2 GB
Pros: +Varied game modes. +Players start with a lot of GP. +Short optional tutorial.
Cons: -Dated graphics. -Few original or unique features. -Repetitive gameplay.
Cross Fire Overview
Cross Fire is team oriented first person shooter set in the modern age. Anyone familiar with Counter Strike will notice the similarities between the two games. Many of the guns and stages looked familiar as do the some of the game modes. Compared to many other free to play FPS games, Cross Fire does have poor graphics but the small file size and low system requirements mean a much broader audience can enjoy this simple MMO shooter. Currently there are 2-5 maps per game mode, 16 main weapons, 3 types of pistols, and 3 kinds of grenades. Additionally, there are 2 starting characters to chose from and 3 others available through the shop. All four of Cross Fire's game modes can be played with 2-16 players. The game modes are:
Team Death Match - Two teams race to get either the most kills in a certain amount of time or a pre-set amount of kills before the opposing team. Players respawn soon after they die.
Search and Destroy - One team must plant C4 at specific spots while the other must prevent them or defuse the bomb. Killing all members of the opposing team also wins the round. Players don't respawn until the round is over.
Elimination - Each team must kill all members of the opposing team to win the round. Which ever side reaches the pre-set amount of round wins is considered the victor.
Ghost Mode - One team plays as the ghosts who are invisible when standing still and translucent while moving. Ghosts may only use knives but kill in one hit. This mode is also round based, players do not respawn until the round is over.
Cross Fire Screenshots
Cross Fire Feature Video
Cross Fire Review
By Erhan Altay
Cross Fire went into open beta at the end of January, making it the first free FPS release of 2009. At first glance Cross Fire looks more like a game from the past decade than a new release. The game's graphics are similar to the popular Half Life mod, Counter-Strike which was released back in 1999. While some of the game modes do resemble those found in the classic CS, Cross Fire manages to bring some of its own unique features and adds to the formula. I won't claim Cross Fire is the best free shooter available but it's a solid game with a small 268 mb download that runs on a large range of computer specs.
Global Risk or Black List?
Downloading and installing Cross Fire is quick and painless. Even character creation is steam lined, there is no appearance customization. Instead, players chose from two nearly identical factions; the GR (Global Risk) or BL (Black List) and are taken right to the game lobby. Currently there are 4 servers but only the first seems to have anyone playing on it. I'm not sure how many people are online at any given time but it's never difficult to find a game to join so no worries there. The lobby is well organized, with a large button on top for the item shop and your storage area. On the left players can track their kill/death and win/loss ratios. Towards the bottom, you'll see a box that tracks your buddies and clan members who are online. Cross Fire has a short tutorial available for those who are not familiar with first person shooters. There is no reward to completing it but it only takes a few minutes. The tutorial covers the game's basics; movement, aiming, crouching (ctrl), jumping (space bar), walking (shift), shooting, and finally throwing grenades.
Enemy Spotted!
By far the most common game mode in Cross Fire is Team Death Match. Respawn times are low so even if you die, you can get right back into the action within a few seconds. The gameplay in this mode is similar to those of other modern tactical shooters like Combat Arms and Operation 7. Most public games lack any resemblance of team work and cooperation but this doesn't take anything away from the game's enjoyment. There are three other games modes and you can check the overview for a full description of each but the only other one worth going into detail about is Ghost Mode. Here, one team can only use knives but are nearly invisible. The ghosts must stalk down the team of regular players without getting noticed and gunned down. The regular players must rely more on their team mates to cover their backs and move with caution, keeping an ear open for footsteps as they advance. As of this writing, there are only 2 maps available for Ghost Mode which is a shame. Even Team Death Math has a paltry 5 map selection. If Cross Fire wants to compete with its graphically advanced rivals in the free to play shooter market, it had better add more maps soon.
Shop and Maintenance
The game currency in Cross Fire is 'GP' and new players start with 50,000 of these GPs. Selecting a faction (either GR or BL) costs 4,000 which leaves players with 46,000 to spend or save. The item shop has a total of 16 primary guns for sale though most have rank requirements. There are four available with no rank requirements for players to chose from. The starting gun itself is quite powerful and I had no problem handling it so feel free to save up your GP for a higher ranked gun. Weapons have a heavy cost, usually 40,000+ and it takes a great many rounds to accumulate that much GP so think twice before splurging. Besides guns, the item shop also has spray paints and other accessories for sale. A third bag can be purchased which allows players to carry additional guns with them. There are also three additional character types for sale; SAS, SWAT, and OMOH (Russian special ops.) Each of these has its own type of helmet, backpack, and ammo pouch for sale. Guns and equipment require constant maintenance in the form of repair costs which further chip away at your ability to earn GP.
Feature List
Like many other online shooters, players gain higher ranks as they play. The experience rate is pretty fast, my first rank up occurred after playing two games. Certain guns do have rank requirements but its mostly a status symbol more than anything else. Players can add others to their friend list and see when they're online along with what game room they are currently in. A quick join feature automatically places you in an available room but I rarely use it, it only takes glance to find a room hosting the map you're interested in playing. Clans allow players to form groups and battle as more organized teams. Currently, Cross Fire doesn't have anything like the clan feature in War Rock but perhaps it will come in time, the game is still in beta after all. I did experience one bug that will hopefully be cleared up soon, my music and sound didn't work properly. I run windows vista 64 bit so I'm used to the occasional glitch of this nature. As usual nProtect, the anti cheat problem employed by Cross Fire, conflicted with my antivirus (AVG Free) and had to be added to my exception list. Other than that, the game ran smoothly. Cross Fire's main strength is the ease with which a new player can start playing. A short download, quick install, no character creation or tutorial — just jump right in and start shooting.
Final Verdict: Good
Cross Fire is a new game that feels old. The graphics won't impress anyone and the gameplay is something you've seen dozens of times before. But the game is fast paced, small, and doesn't require a hefty graphics card to operate. If you're a fan of old team based shooters, Cross Fire is worth a try.
Cross Fire Videos
Cross Fire Official Trailer
Cross Fire Interface Video
Cross Fire Gameplay Footage
Cross Fire Cinematic Trailer
Cross Fire Links
Cross Fire System Requirements
Minimum Requirements:
OS: Windows XP / Vista
CPU: Pentium 4 – 1.5GHz
Graphics Card: GeForce 5600
DirectX: 9.0c
Recommended Specification:
OS: Windows XP / Vista
CPU: Pentium 4 – 2G.0GHz or better
RAM: 1 GB or more
HDD: 1.2 GB or more
Graphics Card: GeForce 6600 or better
DirectX: 9.0c or better
Cross Fire Articles
- CrossFire NA Celebrates 6th Anniversary with New Update - Posted on March 11, 2015
Smilegate West is proud to announce the six year anniversary of the North American launch of CrossFire. Since 2009, the popular free-to-play first person shooter has entertained hundreds of millions of players worldwide while consistently delivering monthly updates. To celebrate this momentous occasion, Smilegate West has announced their largest 2015 CrossFire update, the Anniversary Update. Players can expect new items, a new mode and new events throughout the month when the patch goes live on March 11th.
- CrossFire Launches National ESL Series - Posted on April 8, 2014
SG North (formerly G4Box), a leading international publisher of online games, today announced Go4CrossFire, a weekly tournament featuring cash prizes, and the opportunity to represent their country at the Global CrossFire Stars event in China. The tournament will commence on Sunday, April 13, and will feature a 5v5 team format.
- CrossFire FPS gains new Expansive Wave mode - Posted on March 7, 2014
SG North has recently announced the brand new Wave Mode for the popular online first-person shooter CrossFire.
- CrossFire Announces E-Sports Initiative - Posted on January 17, 2014
SG North announces Cross Fire's first eSports tournament of 2014.
- CrossFire Introduces New Battlegrounds For Hero Mode X - Posted on January 17, 2013
Two new vacation-themed battlegrounds and new unique player skins arrive for Hero Mode X fans in Cross Fire.