A Life in Westeros
Chapter 16 - Part 2
Barbrey pulled the rota back toward her. "I'll have food sent up when you're done walking it again. You will walk it again."
"I will."
He went back out into the damp air. The second landing was a scar of turned earth and raw wood against the water. Men moved in it with the slow care of people who knew the river could take a day's work in one night. Adian watched them set the next pile, then put his shoulder to the line when they needed weight on the post.
The wood shuddered, then bit. Water welled up around it and settled.
"Again," he said.
They drove it down until it stopped.
They got three more piles in before the light went. The bank looked worse for it—mud to the knee, cut reeds in heaps, the river pushing dirty foam around the new wood. Adian sent the crew off with a promise of extra ale and walked the raised path back to the hall with his boots sucking at every step.
Barbrey had food waiting in the solar. Fish, bread, a jug that had not been watered to nothing. She took one look at the mud on him and pointed at the cloth by the door.
"You're not sitting on that chair like that."
He wiped down and sat anyway. She let it go.
"Four piles," he said. "Deeper line. They'll hold if the men don't get lazy tomorrow."
"And the store?"
"Cole's waiting on timber. Same as this morning."
Barbrey tore a piece of bread and did not eat it yet. "Then we decide. I can strip the path work and give him enough to raise walls. That leaves the upper walk half-finished through spring. Or we wait on the Barrowlands and the store sits in stones until the wagons remember how to move."
"Strip the path."
"I thought you'd say that."
"The walk floods anyway. A dry store does not."
She ate, then reached for the rota she had written earlier and drew a line through two names. "I'll pull them at first light. You can tell the path crew yourself. They'll take it better from you than from a slate."
He nodded. That was the argument, and it was already over. Not because she had given in. Because both of them could count.
***
The next two days were mud and noise.
Adian was on the bank at dawn. The crew sank piles until the wood stopped talking. When a young carpenter wanted to call a post good at a depth Adian did not like, Adian made him pull it and sink it again. The man muttered. He did the work.
At midday Adian walked the smithy. Cole had the first wall up on the dry store, pale timber against dark stone. The smell of pitch was already in the air from the old hearth. Adian put a hand on the new frame.
"Roof before the next rain," he said.
"If the rest of the boards come off the path crew today, yes."
"They will."
On the second afternoon he took Harys up the river toward the Fever stretch. Not far. Just far enough to see the bend where boats slowed and the reeds grew thick enough to hide a hull. A weathered post already stood there from some older, half-forgotten watch. The wood was rotten at the waterline.
"This is the second post," Adian said. "Rotating. Four men. Two on, two off. They write what they see. They don't collect extra coin off boats unless I put it in their hands first. You know who runs it?"
Harys did not need to think long. "a Reed cousin from the fens. Pell. Quiet. Doesn't drink on watch. The men listen to him without making a show of it."
"Give him the silver and the rules in writing. If he takes a cut that isn't on the page, he loses both."
"Aye."
They marked the post with a strip of cloth so the river crews would see it and know the stretch was no longer empty. That was all. No garrison. No banner. Just a place that would have eyes in it tomorrow.
When they got back, the boy was on the dock again with the nurse. He pointed at the new piles.
"More?"
"More," Adian said.
The child counted the ones he could see from the old pier, lost track at six, and started over. Adian did not correct him. Six was enough for a boy that size.
***
On the third morning the Barrowlands timber still had not come. What arrived instead was a short wagon of mixed boards, warped on one end, and a steward's man who wanted to be paid as if the load were whole.
Adian met him in the yard, not the hall.
"This is not what was written," Adian said.
The man had the look of someone who delivered excuses more often than wood. "Roads. Rain. Lord Dustin's cousins took a share off the top for their own repairs. I brought what I could."
"You'll be paid for what you brought. Not for what you meant to bring. Next load comes whole or it waits in the yard until I decide I need warped boards."
The man started to talk about custom and Northern weather. Adian let him finish, then had Harys count the good lengths in front of him. They paid that number. The wagon left lighter and quieter.
Barbrey watched from the hall steps, arms folded under her breasts.
"That'll travel," she said when the man was gone.
"Good. Saves me writing it."
She came down into the yard. Mud flicked against the hem of her gown. "Fever house is going to want their courtesy fee before you've even tied a boat to the new posts."
"They can want it. They get an answer when there's a landing to charge for."
"And if they sit a wagon on the bank to make a point?"
"Then we move the wagon and send them the same terms I sent Martyn. Written. Dated. No theater."
Barbrey's mouth tightened, not unfriendly. "You're spending like the quiet is already over."
"I'm spending like the quiet is rented." He glanced at the dry store wall, then at the scar of the second landing. "When it ends I want this place able to feed men and fix a boat without waiting on someone else's smith."
She held his eyes a moment, then nodded toward the hall. "Come count with me. Cole's asking for nails we don't have yet. If we're pulling from the path, I want it on the page before he takes them."
They spent an hour on that. Nails, pitch barrels, two spare axles that could be bought off a river trader if Cole could not forge them in time. Barbrey kept the numbers tight. Adian kept the work moving. When they disagreed it was over days, not pride.
***
The rider came on the fourth afternoon.
He was not a lord. A steward's man from a Fever River holdfast so small it barely had a name anyone used twice—House Wells, if the old maps still had it right. Mud to the stirrups. Horse blown. He asked for Adian at the gate.
Harys brought him to the yard. Adian was still in his work tunic, tar on one sleeve from the landing.
"Two grain carts and a wool train bound here," the man said. He kept his voice low. "Never arrived. Tracks leave the raised road west of the old reed ford and go into the reeds. We've lost purses off smaller runs for a month. Eight men, maybe twelve. No banner. Broken men and thieves. My lord wants them gone. He won't send his own."
Adian wiped his hands on a rag. "How long since the carts were due?"
"Three days."
"Any bodies?"
"None we found. Just the tracks and a snapped wheel-iron in the mud."
Barbrey had come as far as the hall door. She did not step into the yard. She heard enough.
Adian looked at Harys. "Pell's post is up?"
"First rotation started this morning."
"Then they didn't use the watched stretch. They used the gap between the ford and the new post." He turned back to the rider. "Your lord can have the road cleared. Greywater View will take a watch-fee on that stretch for the next season. Written. If he wants the goods back, they come here first and get counted."
The man hesitated. "He won't like paying."
"He likes lost grain less. He can come say so himself if he wants."
The rider took that for what it was and went to water his horse.
Adian did not call men in a rush. He walked inside with Barbrey and shut the solar door.
"I'm taking Harys, eight of ours, and two trackers who know that reed line," he said. "Tonight or first light. I don't want them moving the sacks farther in."
Barbrey's eyes went to the cut of his shoulder, then back to his face. "You're not taking a host."
"I'm not. It's a camp, not a keep."
"The landing and the store keep moving," she said. It was not a question.
"They keep moving. Cole has his boards. The crew knows the pile line. You hold both."
She nodded once. "Don't bleed for a cart."
"I don't plan to."
He spent the rest of the light on things that still belonged to the compound. He told Cole the roof went on whether he was standing under it or not. He told the landing crew the next two piles were the deep ones, no guessing. He wrote Pell a short addition to the watch rules: anything that leaves the raised road for the reeds gets reported the same day, not the next.
The boy found him in the yard as the sun dropped. He had a crust in one hand.
"Going on a boat?"
"Not tonight."
"Then where?"
"Work on the road." Adian put a hand on the child's hair, brief. "You stay with your mother. Count the posts in the morning if you want."
That was enough for him. He went back toward the hall with the nurse.
Adian ate standing. He checked a knife, a short sword, and the leather at his side. Nothing ornamental. Harys came with the names. Eight men who had walked the routes long enough not to shout when they should shut their mouths. Two trackers from the Fever side who knew which reeds held ground and which swallowed a boot.
"Dusk to the ford," Adian said. "We go in before they have a fire worth seeing. No horns. We take what they stole and we leave the road usable."
Harys grunted. "And if there's more than twelve?"
"Then we don't be stupid. We back out and we come with more. I'm not buying a story with our blood."
They left the compound while there was still a line of grey on the water. The second landing stood behind them in the half-dark—raw piles, cut bank, a shape that would be a dock if the work held. The dry store had three walls and no roof yet. Greywater View was mid-build. That was why the road mattered.
The raised path west of the reed ford was quieter than it should have been. No carts. No boat-horn from the nearby channel. Just wet wood and the smell of rotting reeds.
The trackers went first. They found the snapped wheel-iron where the rider had said, then the crushed grass where something heavy had been dragged off the road. The trail bent into the marsh, not toward any holdfast.
Adian raised a hand. The men slowed.
No charge. No noise. They stepped off the timber and into the wet, spreading just enough that one man going down would not take the rest with him.
Ahead, through the reeds, a pony stamped. Then another. Canvas moved. Someone laughed once, low, the sound of a man who thought the road was still empty.
Adian looked at Harys. Harys nodded.
For the Full 10906 word Version Please check my p.a.t.r.e.o.n: pat.....reon.c.o.m/cw/aFireFist just remove the multiple periods in this link. Thank you for the Support!