Chapter 296: What the Bell was Worth

Corren brought the waybell to breakfast.

He placed it at the center of the table while the household ate around them. Rod wondered whether the display was intended for him or the workers passing through the hall. Several glanced at it. One shook his head and continued toward the gardens.

"Do they agree with keeping it?" Rod asked.

Corren followed the departing worker with his eyes. "Some do."

"What do the others want?"

"Their orders delivered."

Rod broke a piece of bread. They had slept in a room above a workshop. Before sunrise, workers beneath them had begun moving frames and sorting reeds. The household had enough business to remain busy even while its stores filled with goods it could not efficiently ship.

Senn joined them carrying two broken shafts and a strip of thorn-covered hide.

He laid the hide beside the bell.

"We recovered this from the first attempt." he said. "A thorn ridge broke against the cart."

Lana leaned closer. The thorns grew from overlapping plates, each rooted in a dense mat of coarse hair. Dried sap filled the spaces between them.

"Does it keep growing after removal?" she asked.

"This piece has not."

He turned it over. The inner surface had dried hard. Dirk tested one thorn with a knife tip and stopped when it resisted more strongly than he expected.

"Do you mind?" he asked.

Senn gave permission. Dirk scraped a shaving from the side rather than attempting to break the point. Beneath the dark outer layer, the thorn was pale and dense.

"Arrows will need gaps." he said.

Rod looked at the broken shafts. Both had split near their heads.

"Spears?"

"Driving poles." Senn replied. "We thought enough noise and pressure would send it out of the hollow. We had moved younger briarbacks before."

"You expected it to leave."

"Yes."

The admission carried the same unhappy simplicity as Corren’s account of the wager. They had taken a familiar method and applied it to a problem larger than the ones they knew.

Rod asked Senn to begin at the first sighting.

The beast had appeared after several quiet weeks at the closed crossing. Workers checking the old approach found fresh rooting near the upper bank. The soil there stayed cool, and water seeped through the hollow even in dry weather. Within days, briars thickened along the trail.

The first group tried to drive it uphill. The animal struck their cart and injured Ferris. The second group brought longer poles and approached from both sides. Thorns rose across one path while the boar turned on the other. They escaped by abandoning their tools and climbing the stream bank.

"It knew where you were?" Lana asked.

"It found us."

"Could it see both groups?"

Senn considered. "No. The upper group had not entered the hollow."

Rod looked at Dirk. The archer added a mark beside the account.

"Has anyone gone near it since?" Nessa asked.

"We watch from the alder ridge. Hadrin has watched from his side."

"Has it killed anyone?"

"No. That does not make another cart a useful shield."

Rod agreed. He asked permission to retain the thorn shaving and copied the positions of the two failed approaches onto their rough map.

Corren watched without interrupting. When Senn left to finish his morning duties, the household leader moved the bell away from the strip of hide.

"You are considering the crossing."

"We are learning about it." Rod replied. "That is as far as we have gone."

"What would you need to consider it further?"

"Terms worth taking back to Hadrin. Access to the ground. People who know the local growth. Time to decide whether our party can do the work."

Corren rested his scarred hand beside the bell.

"I will return this if the crossing opens and our loaded carts can use it under agreed limits."

"What limits?"

The satyr brought out another sheet. It named the household’s usual freight, the number of carts expected each week, and the loads they had carried before the closure. A builder had marked places where the road needed widening.

Dain studied the figures.

"These were the loads before it failed?"

"Yes."

"Then asking to resume them may not solve anything."

Corren drew breath to answer sharply, then stopped.

"What would you suggest?"

"Start with what a repaired crossing can carry. We need someone who understands the footing to tell us that."

The household’s builder was summoned. His name was Branth, a narrow-shouldered fey with fingers stained by wood preservatives. He took one look at the old figures and set them aside.

"Those were cart weights. They do not say how the wheels carried them."

For the next half hour, he explained what the party needed to know. Narrow rims sank into soft approaches. Loads that moved as a cart tilted drove more force through one side. Even a sound bridge could be damaged when its supporting bank washed away.

Rod followed enough to understand why neither satyr’s account settled the problem.

"Can you inspect it with Hadrin?" he asked.

Branth gave Corren a brief look. "I offered."

"Offer again. We will be there."

Corren agreed to send him if the keeper accepted a meeting. He also offered workers and tools once the party approved an approach. The boar’s carcass and any ordinary salvage would belong to the adventurers, apart from materials needed to repair the crossing.

Rod asked that the household’s contribution be added to the proposal. He would not take a promise of workers back to Hadrin only to discover that every useful person remained busy in the gardens.

They settled on Senn, Branth, and four workers able to clear paths and handle ropes. More could come for the repairs after the animal was dealt with.

Lana brought out the bark offcut Hadrin had given them.

"Your workshop made this?"

Branth examined it. "One of our earlier batches."

She showed him Orin’s measurements. The builder read them twice, asked what changed the load aboard an airship, and called for a length of prepared fiber from a nearby bench.

The sample was light and faintly springy. Dain held one end while Rod pulled the other. It tightened without the abrupt stiffness of ordinary cord.

"That will not suit a mooring line." Branth said. "Too much movement. It might suit an internal restraint if you account for the stretch."

Lana asked what a test length would cost.

Corren named a price, then reduced it when Branth explained that the proper sample should include failed lengths for comparison. The Five Knots would need to understand how the material wore before buying enough to use aboard their vessel.

Rod paid for the set from the party purse. It was a small purchase compared with the commission, but it meant they would return with something useful even if the larger negotiation failed.

Before they departed, Corren showed Rod the household’s oldest storehouse. Bundles of roof panels filled its upper racks. Lower shelves held jars of prepared clay and coils of finished binding. Several bundles carried marks indicating that payment had already been received.

"Those buyers can wait a little longer." Corren said. "They cannot wait forever."

Rod examined the narrow handcarts standing near the door. Their wheels were broad, wrapped with the same treated bark Dain had admired at the station. Each carried less than a normal freight wagon. Moving a large order along the ridge would require repeated journeys and more workers than the household could spare.

"Why not hire an airship?" he asked.

"Where would you land it?"

Corren led him outside and pointed upward. Branches crossed over every open yard. The nearest broad clearing lay beyond two wet gullies, farther from the stores than the crossing itself. Cutting an airship approach would remove trees that sheltered the reed beds.

"Small expensive goods might justify it." the satyr said. "Roof panels do not."

Rod thought of The Sixth Knot and its empty harness frames. The crew might find work here, but flight would not make every road unnecessary. Someone would still have to bring the goods to a landing, load them, and receive them at the other end.

He copied the sizes of two sample bundles for Tessa. Corren allowed it, adding that any freight offer would need to account for the ground journey as well. The discussion gave Rod a clearer measure of what the closed crossing cost. It reached into every order waiting beneath that roof.

They left after the meal with Corren’s written proposal and a route guide to take them as far as the ridge.

Senn accompanied them himself.

Beyond the last reed bed, he stopped beside a shallow channel where water passed beneath woven boards. One support had been replaced with pale wood.

"Hadrin taught me to set those." he said.

Rod waited.

"Before I worked for Corren, I spent two seasons carrying travelers’ packs from the station. The old keeper knows the woods. When he says a road is dangerous, I listen."

"But you disagree about the crossing."

"I disagree about how long a closed road should remain a punishment."

He adjusted the spear on his shoulder.

"Tell him Ferris can stand now. He sent ointment after the first attempt. Ferris was asleep when the messenger came, and I do not think anyone answered."

Rod added the message to the papers. Whatever the keeper had omitted, the relationship between the two sides had not been reduced to a single quarrel.

The return journey felt shorter until rain began.

It came through the leaves in large, cold drops. Dirk found the rock shelter before the path became slick, and they waited there while the first heavy shower passed. Lana wrapped the fiber samples in dry cloth. Nessa checked the packets of thorn shavings and moved them away from their food.

Dain looked at the map spread across Rod’s knees.

"We could ask Corren to guide us to the town and leave them to it."

"We could."

"Would you?"

Rod listened to the rain running down the rock.

They had bought the lead because they wanted a discovery of their own. The settlement still offered that. Clearing the crossing would cost time, effort, and perhaps more than their original reward justified. Yet both households had things the party wanted, and neither could make good use of them while the route remained blocked.

"I want to see the beast first." he said. "If we can handle it, opening this road is worth doing. We negotiate the price for the work we actually take."

Nessa nodded. "And the workers stay out of the charge."

"We plan for that."

The rain eased enough for them to move. They reached White Stone late in the afternoon, wet from the knees down and hungry despite their stop.

Hadrin opened the door before Rod knocked. His eyes went directly to the case beneath Rod’s arm.

"You saw it?"

"Yes."

"And?"

Rod stepped inside and placed Corren’s proposal on the table.

"He will return it. First, we need to discuss the crossing."