aFireFist
A Life in Westeros
Chapter 16 - Part 3
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.
They closed the last stretch on foot, water to the calf, and the camp came into view the way cheap things did in the Neck—lean-tos, a low fire hooded by wet wood, sacks stacked on a broken cart. Neck chalk marks still showed on two of the grain bags. Eight shapes around the fire. Two more near the ponies. No knight. No banner. Just men who had decided the new traffic was easier than work.
Adian stopped his line in the last cover and counted again. Ten. Maybe an eleventh in a lean-to.
"On my mark," he said, voice flat. "Alive if they drop steel. Not if they don't."
The fire popped. One of the bandits reached for a jug.
Adian moved.
They hit the camp before the jug made it around the fire.
The first man never got his sword clear. Harys took him at the knees and put him in the mud. The second came up with a hatchet and swung too wide; Adian stepped inside it and drove the pommel into his face. Bone gave. The man dropped.
Shouting started then. Wet, close, ugly. No formation. The ones at the ponies tried to cut the lines and run. One tracker reached them first and hamstrung a horse by accident in the dark—the animal screamed, which was worse than any horn. The second pony bolted into the reeds with a sack still tied to its saddle.
Adian did not chase it.
A thick-shouldered man came out of the lean-to with a rusted short sword and more nerve than sense. He slashed at Adian's ribs. The edge caught leather and then skin, a shallow burn along the side. Adian caught the wrist, turned it, and put his own blade in under the man's arm. The body went heavy. He shoved it off and kept moving.
Two of the thieves threw down steel when they saw the numbers. One tried to talk. Harys hit him in the mouth and told him to kneel. He knelt.
The last three broke for the marsh. One made it. The other two did not get far. The reed ground ate a boot and then a man. Adian's people pulled one back alive. The other went under and stayed there.
It was over in the time it took a fire to slump.
Ten men accounted for. Three dead. Six bound. One gone into the dark with nothing in his hands. Adian stood over the fire and listened for more. There was only the pony crashing somewhere to the west and a man on the ground trying not to choke on his own blood.
"Leave him," Adian said when one of the aides reached to finish it. "If he lives, he walks to the holdfast and tells them what happens on this road. If he doesn't, the marsh can have him."
They searched the camp without talk. Grain sacks—seven still sealed, two split. Wool packs with the Fever mark still on the ties. A broken cart with one wheel gone and the other cracked. Coin in a leather pouch, not much. A knife with a cracked horn handle. Two wineskins. The snapped wheel-iron from the road, dragged in like a prize.
Neck chalk showed on three of the grain bags. Their own code. That settled any question of where the load had been headed.
Adian pressed a cloth to his side. The cut was shallow. It wet the cloth and then slowed. He could breathe without it pulling too hard.
"Load what the cart will take," he said. "The rest goes on the horses we still have and on our backs. We don't leave their work sitting here for the next hungry fool."
Harys spat mud. "Want the lean-tos burned?"
"No. Smoke tells the wrong people we were here. Pull the posts down and leave it ugly. That's enough."
They worked fast. Bound men on their feet. Dead men left where they fell after the pouches were emptied. The repaired idea of the cart was a lie—it would need a yard and a day—but it could roll if two men walked the broken side. They made it roll.
Dawn was a grey smear when they came back onto the raised road. Pell's cloth strip showed farther east on the Fever post. The gap they had just used would not stay a gap.
***
House Wells sat behind a low timber palisade and a ditch that needed digging. The lord was a thin man named Ser Renn Wells who wore a decent cloak and the expression of someone who had hoped the problem would solve itself. He came out into the yard when he saw the sacks.
Adian did not dismount until the count was started in front of him.
"Seven sealed grain, two split, wool intact, one cart that needs a wheel, six men still breathing," Adian said. "Your road's clear. The ones who ran can stay in the reeds."
Ser Renn looked at the bound men, then at the blood on Adian's sleeve. "I am in your debt."
"You're in the book," Adian said. "Greywater View takes a watch-fee on that stretch for the next season. Same terms as the reed ford. Written today. Your men report anything that leaves the road. Mine keep the post. If another train vanishes, you send your own first and then you send for me."
Renn's mouth tightened. "A fee on my own approach."
"A fee on a road you would not walk last month. You can refuse. Then the next carts can take their chances and I can stop pulling my people out of bed for your losses."
Silence held a few breaths. One of the bound thieves coughed and spat. Renn glanced at him.
"Written," Renn said. "I'll put my mark. I want the grain that was mine returned."
"You'll get what the marks say is yours after we count it at Greywater View. What was bound for us stays with us. I'm not sorting wet sacks in your yard."
That landed. Renn did not like it. He liked empty stores less. He sent for a clerk.
They wrote it at a plank table in the small hall. Watch-fee. Season term. Report the same day, not the next. Adian signed. Renn signed. Harys witnessed. No speeches.
Adian left the six living thieves with Wells. "Yours to hang or send to the Wall. I don't care which. If I see them on that road again, I won't bring them back."
He did not wait for thanks.
***
Greywater View came up out of the morning mist the way it had when he first returned from the sea, except the second landing was no longer only stakes. Two more piles stood in the water. The dry store had its fourth wall. Someone had gotten a partial roof on in the night—Cole, or the men Barbrey had pointed at the work.
Barbrey met him at the inner gate. She saw the cloth at his side and the mud to his thighs and the cart limping behind.
"You're walking. That's the part I asked for."
"Shallow," he said. "Needs washing. Not stitching if the water didn't do anything clever."
She lifted the cloth herself in the side room off the hall, fingers sure, mouth flat. The cut was a line along the ribs, already closed in the middle, ugly at the ends. She cleaned it with boiled wine and bound it tight.
"Any of ours hurt?"
"One bruised knee. One split knuckle. That's the list."
"And them?"
"Three dead. Six to Wells. One in the marsh."
She tied the last knot harder than she needed to. "Goods?"
"Most of them. Chalk marks still on the bags. Cart needs a wheel. I'll have Cole look at it after the store roof."
"Cole's already on the roof. I told him if it rained on the pitch I would take the cost out of his next extra."
Adian almost smiled. It did not quite get there. He was tired in the way a night in the reeds made a man tired—cold in the joints, the smell of wet iron still in his nose.
"Renn paid in writing," he said. "Watch-fee on that stretch. Same shape as Martyn's."
"Good. Then the landing isn't feeding thieves." She stepped back. "Change. Eat. Then you can go stare at piles. The Fever letter is still on the table. They can wait one more day now that you've given their neighbor a reason to be polite."
He changed. The boy appeared in the doorway while Adian was pulling a clean tunic over the bandage. The child looked at the dark stain on the old cloth in the basin, then at Adian's face.
"Work on the road?"
"Done."
"Did you bring the cart?"
"Yes."
That was the piece he could have. Adian took him as far as the yard and showed him the broken wheel and the grain sacks being moved under cover. The boy touched the chalk mark with one finger.
"Ours?"
"Some of it. The rest goes back where it belongs."
"Count?"
They counted the sealed bags together. Seven. The child was pleased with seven. Adian sent him inside before the men started talking about the camp.
***
By midday he was on the landing again.
The cut pulled when he set his weight against a post. He did it anyway, then let the crew take the next one. Harys had already put two extra walkers on the stretch between the reed ford and Pell's post. Not a host. Just no more empty gap.
Cole came down from the dry store with pitch on his hands.
"Roof's on enough to keep a rain off. Nails are still short. I can hang doors or I can finish the inner racks. Not both today."
"Racks," Adian said. "Doors tomorrow. I want barrels in there before I want it pretty."
Barbrey found them an hour later with a slate. She had already entered the watch-fee and the recovered grain.
"You're pushing the landing again," she said.
"The road's clear. No reason to let the bank sit."
"The store still has no doors and the smithy hearth needs a new hood if Cole's going to work through wet weeks. I can give you men for piles or men for the hood. Not a full crew for both."
Adian looked at the water, then at the raw store, then at her. The gown was damp at the hem from the yard. Her braid had come a little loose from the morning's work.
"Hood and doors first," he said. "Two days. Then every spare back on the piles. I'm not leaving the store half-useful after we just filled a cart with grain that almost didn't get here."
Barbrey marked it. "That's the first time today you've chosen the store."
"The road made the point."
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