Chapter 8 – The Growth of Trees #3
“First time in a long time,” he said, glancing back at the wagon with appreciation. “Since the first invasion of Valleth, anyway. That’s a milestone, isn’t it? The official opening of Harnost Highway.”
“I thought it was Tounot Turnpike.” She fell into step beside him, petting Master Eugene. The Knights of the Brede squabbled like boys over the naming of things.
He gave her a wounded look.
“Of all people, I never thought you would abandon me.”
“I would never,” she protested. “I think it should be Eugene Street, in memory of the first wagon to touch it.”
“We are not naming the first major road in Tresingale after a donkey, no matter how distinguished.”
Bickering amiably, they stopped for breakfast and carrots and then headed for the wall.
It was a fair distance, two and a half miles along the curve of the road that went south, then east. But it gave them a chance to see the progress of all the new projects along the route, from two buildings at the end of a long lane by the river to the wooden frame of what Sir Miche said would be the town’s first store.
A merchant named Guian was already on his way to the valley.
It promised to be a fine, hot day as the sun rose in a clear sky, and Ophele was already beginning to perspire in her hot woolen dress as they reached the cob barracks, a prominent structure on a hillside overlooking the sheep pens.
“They’re putting in windows?” she asked in surprise. The building was made of white Brede River clay, and the large, regular gaps in deep sills could be nothing else. It seemed foolhardy, with stranglers creeping about every night.
“One in every room,” Sir Miche said, with mingled satisfaction and defiance. “The east wall will be finished before the barracks are. We’ll have all the windows we want, and laugh at the devils.”
“I like the tower.” It wasn’t in her to laugh at the devils. She didn’t even want to think about them. “What’s it for?”
“That’ll be the council room,” he replied, nodding to the large round tower on the east end of the complex. “Have you heard of the Five Courts?”
She nodded. They were the five bodies that supported the Emperor in Segoile: the Courts of Nobles, Merchants, Artisans, Scholars, and the powerful Court of War.
It would have been blasphemous to count the Temple of the Stars as merely a court, though the essential divinity of the Emperor made it very difficult for the Temple to oppose him.
“That will be the Andelin’s Court of War,” Sir Miche was explaining.
“The Emperor considers us a buffer region against Valleth, expendable if necessary. We’re not going to count on the House of Agnephus for support, if it comes to it.
We’ll have our own Court of War, our own standing army, and our own Academy. Just in case.”
Ophele digested this. The ramifications might have escaped most seventeen year-old girls, but she had read a great deal of history.
No one in Segoile could protest if the duke maintained his own army, not with Valleth sitting on his doorstep.
But she couldn’t help wondering if anyone in the Five Courts had considered that Remin Grimjaw, son of an extinct House, might not think that Valleth was his only enemy.
“The Brede belongs to the duke, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Even the docks on the south side of it?”
“Every mile,” Sir Miche agreed, looking at the dark water churning beyond the trees. “Nothing moves on the river without Rem’s permission.”
They were so clever, the Knights of the Brede.
Had anyone thought, when the duke claimed the river as part of the Andelin, that it would mean his duchy was all but impregnable?
Everyone said Remin was a genius, and he must be; the greatest military commanders in Argence had been trying and failing for a hundred years to take back the valley.
And now the genius held it to the south bank of the Brede.
Was that what the duke was planning? Or maybe planning was too strong a word, she thought, frowning. He was maneuvering. He was putting himself in the most advantageous, unassailable position. The House of Andelin would be very difficult to destroy the way his original House had been.
Had Remin really thought of all that when he was only seventeen?
“My lady?” Sir Miche asked, and Ophele looked up, startled to see they were nearly at the foot of the wall.
“I’m sorry, I was thinking of the Court of War,” she said, which was the truth.
“It’ll be some time before it’s ready.” Retrieving his shovel from the wagon, he saluted her with it. “I wish you luck with the windlass. Sit down if you get tired.”
“Be careful,” she replied, as she always did, and turned the wagon south to the well.
Ophele knew her routine now. She knew where water would be needed and had found the patterns in the men’s work, slow and uneven in the morning, accelerating into a perfect, humming machine as everyone woke up.
“Wayyyy I wake up, up high on the hill,” called one of the foremen from the top of the wall, raising his voice over the clatter and clang of all the tools, and all the men on the wall sang the answer.
Wayyyyy I wake up, before the sun
Got a cup and a bite against the chill
Got a mountain to climb before day is done.
“Wayyyyy I wake up, down in the valley,” came Sir Miche’s voice from the trench, and there was a ripple of appreciative laughter from his fellow ditch diggers before they called back.
Wayyyy I wake up, under the stars
Got to grab my shovel, no time to dally
Got a mountain to shift, so far…
“So far!” called Sir Miche in answer, as all the shovels bit into the wet earth at once, dirt flying up in a wave from the trench. Stone thwacked into place on the wall, and there was the scrape of mortar, trowels flicking, a rhythmic accompaniment to the music.
After a few days, Ophele had learned these songs well enough to sing along, softly because she had no more notion of music than a sheep.
But that was the time she liked best, when they all sang together so that the wall almost seemed to assemble itself.
She nodded and smiled and waved as the men went by, fetched their tools when they dropped them, and before noon, she topped off everyone’s water and then turned back to town, where Wen and his kitchen boys were waiting to load the noon meal onto the wagon.
“No, they’ll load it, you’re a bleeding duchess,” Master Wen barked when she tried to help.
The irascible cook stood in the door of the kitchen with his hands on his hips as he watched the proceedings, red-faced in the afternoon heat.
“Do ye think they need consultation on stacking their baskets? Go. Sit. Eat!”
The abrupt bellow made her jump, and Ophele scuttled over to a pair of tree stumps set in the shade of a nearby tree.
There was a trencher of bread, cheese, and a sliced apple waiting for her there, covered with a cloth.
Wen glowered at her until she was done, and when she rose to return the plate and cloth, he looked pointedly at the remaining bit of bread and cheese.
“Does it not suit your palate, Your Grace?” he asked, soft and dangerous, like the warning gust of a tempest. Ophele stuffed the remainder into her mouth and escaped.
It was hard to eat when she was so hot, and so very tired.
Sir Miche had said that eventually her body would adjust to the work, like he had gotten used to his ditch digging, but it had been weeks and still she was just barely keeping up.
Her hands were blistered, blisters on top of blisters, and she washed and bandaged and padded them under her gloves, wincing as she dragged the buckets out of the well.
The burn of her aching muscles blended with the heat of the day until it was as if she moved through a waking dream, where everything hurt and nothing was real and it was impossible to tell one day from the next.
Unfortunately, the nights were all too vivid.
“I’ll be back late,” said the duke after her supper, just as he did every night, clanking and jingling in his armor.
He kept it on a stand in the cottage, battered steel that was disappointingly utilitarian, though he carefully cleaned and inspected it every day.
His sword was an object of fascination to Ophele, who had been nourished on fantastical tales of legendary weapons forged in magical fires and engraved with sorcerous writing.
His Grace’s two-handed broadsword was nearly as tall as she was, but it didn’t look the least bit magical.
“Be careful,” she said from the furthest corner of the bed, where she was already trying to hide behind her book. She couldn’t let him go face the devils without saying something, even though she knew he would have preferred that she didn’t exist.
“Go to sleep,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’re safe. Nothing will harm you.”
And he was gone, slinging his sword into its place on his back. Outside, the light was fading.
For the first week after he returned from Ferrede, it hadn’t been bad.
There had only been the occasional noises of devils, faint and faraway, quickly dispatched before they could approach the town.
But their numbers had grown with the heat of the days, and Ophele knew about every one of the gaps in the town’s outer perimeter because she heard the duke and his knights discussing them over supper.
The palisade wasn’t completed on either the western or eastern ends.
There was a gap of nearly two miles in the middle of the stone wall.
Stranglers climbed over the palisade, exploiting the least shadows to slink into town.
Every night, there were more of them. Every night, they came closer. Louder.