8. Many Hands
Many Hands
The rest of that day went to gathering supplies. He brought the cart up early the next morning and pulled it to a stop in front of the Kettle, where Sasha already stood waiting, her breath puffing white in the frost.
It would burn off within the hour, but for now the cold still lay across the ground.
"Morning." Kain climbed down and unhitched Roan from the cart, which was loaded with the gravel he'd shoveled out of the river through the night, then took the cart by the rails and worked it around the side of the tavern. "How're you keeping?"
"Better than you. You look exhausted."
"Busy night." Kain set the cart by the wall where the ditch would run. "Clay's coming up shortly, and Jeremiah's bringing tools."
He took up the shovel he'd brought from home and started in on the ditch. He'd gotten better at digging over the year, but the ground next to the building was hard and half-frozen still, and it gave nothing easily.
There was a low ridge the trench would have to cross, and he sized it with his eye and settled on a ditch about eighteen inches wide and six deep, running the length of that side of the building, set a little lower at one end than the other so the water would have somewhere to go.
It took the better part of an hour to run the trench along the side of the Kettle. He looked at the ridge he still had to cut through.
It stood about a foot higher than the ground around the tavern and sat ten feet or so off from it, no great distance but enough work to feel. Boots thunked on the ground behind him.
"How can I help?"
Kain turned. It was the man who'd helped him with the fence posts, whose name still hadn't come his way, leaning on a shovel and looking down into the trench.
"Two jobs going. I need this run the rest of the way through that ridge, and the bottom of it packed with gravel before we seal it. Which do you want?"
"Gravel, I think."
"Plenty of it in the cart there." Kain pointed.
He didn't make anything of the help. It was no more than he'd have done at another man's place, and around here that seemed to be the size of it. The man took up a shovelful of gravel, dropped it into the bottom of the trench, and spread it out to about an inch.
Kain set in on the ridge, driving the shovel down into it. The ground was rockier here and frozen harder, and he leaned his weight into the work and kept on and made his progress slow and steady.
He was about halfway through the ridge when another wagon came up the road, Jeremiah at the reins. He hopped down.
"Got the clay off the McGrath farm. McGrath himself wasn't feeling up to coming over."
"Can't blame him." Kain shook his head. The McGraths were getting on in years and didn't get out much. "Appreciate it."
"Brought you this, too." Jeremiah reached into the wagon and came up with a pickaxe, then tossed it over. Kain caught it. "Have a look. Beauty, isn't she?"
Kain turned it over. It was old, plainly, but it had been kept up well, and the head was sound. "Where'd this come from?"
"Back in my younger days. I took the wild notion I'd go be a gold miner up in the hills.
" Jeremiah grinned. "Pert near froze to death, dug a good fifty-foot shaft, found nothing, and then a bear tore my camp to pieces.
Came home and gave it up. Most expensive tool I ever bought, and it still earns its keep around the farm.
Won't need it back before summer, like as not. "
"Thanks." Kain set the shovel aside and took up the pickaxe, and the work went faster from there, the point biting where the shovel had only scraped. He had the rest of the ditch through the ridge before long.
By then others had started turning up. The rest of the trench filled with gravel quick, one man digging it out of the cart, another tipping it into the trench, a third raking it smooth.
When the gravel was down, Kain went to Jeremiah's wagon for the clay, and they set to packing it over the gravel and working it flat.
Someone put a mortar tool into the mix, and it smoothed the clay down clean.
There was always more clay laid out in front of him to work, and he never once saw who set it there.
When the whole length of it was laid, he stepped back and looked it over.
"I had this down for two days at least." Kain wiped his hands. "Long as it holds off raining a day or two, that'll set up hard."
A few people laughed and went back to it, and a few others looked his way.
"All right, what's next?"
"The cellar. We tear out what's left of that wall and get the quickite in."
A handful of them were down the cellar stairs before Kain had finished saying it. He took up Jeremiah's pickaxe, a lantern went up on its hook, and they set to.
The wall came out easy. It was old stone set in old mortar, and the mortar had gone brittle and was carrying more load than it should, so a few blows broke it loose and the stones came away almost on their own.
They tore out a long stretch of it, from a few inches off the floor up to near the ceiling.
Behind the wall the ground was a mess, the way Kain had figured. Hollows had opened in the soil, and a few stones had been shoving up against the back of the wall. They packed dirt into the hollows and pried the stones out, and that part went quick enough.
Sam came down with a stack of broad wooden boards before Kain had thought to ask for them. They stood the boards up against the open wall and propped them, then cut a few holes along the top and fit funnels into them.
"Where's that quickite?" Sam asked.
The bags came forward. Sam tipped the first into a barrel, sloshed in buckets of water, and stirred it into a grey-white slurry. Kain looked down into it.
He'd never seen the like, but it looked like it would do the job, and Sam tested it by standing a stick up in the middle until it held on its own.
Then they poured it through the funnels, and it filled the gap where the wall had been.
Two and a half bags went in before it was full, and Sam dusted off his hands.
"There we are." Sam clapped the dust off them. "Wash your hands well once you're up top. Quickite'll make you good and sick if you let it sit on your skin. The boards come down in a day, but go easy on that wall a while yet. Give it a week before you drill it or hang any weight."
"I'll keep that in mind." Ten days he'd set aside for all of this, and the better part of it was done before noon. "Thanks."
A bell rang from the top of the stairs, and Sasha's voice carried down over the noise.
"Dinner. On the house."
Boots crowded toward the stairs, and Sam caught Kain across the shoulder on his way up. Kain started after them, then stopped.
He rinsed his hands in a bucket and ran his eye over the shelves along the other walls of the cellar. Most held fine, but a few had started to rot through at the brackets. He went over and began taking down what sat on the rotted ones.
He'd need to go home for the wood.
"Hey." Sasha had come back to the doorway. "What are you doing down here?"
"Getting it done." Kain lifted a shelf free and looked at it. "I'll have a new one for this tomorrow. Just need the size. Figured I'd see to that door in Room Five too, the one that sticks when it swings too wide. Don't put anyone in it the next couple of days."
"There's a merchant in it tonight, but he's gone at first light." Sasha stopped herself. "Why are you doing all this? You've already done more than anybody had a right to ask."
"I didn't do much. Showed up, same as the rest of Tillamore." Kain set the shelf down. "Had ten days set aside for this and won't need them now. Might as well spend some of it putting your place right."
"And while you're making your grand plans, you could come up and eat like a regular person."
"I'll eat when the shelves are straight." Kain tilted one. "You know this one's crooked?"
"I know. That's the jar shelf. Put onions or potatoes on it and they roll straight off."
"Let's see about that."
"Come and eat, Kain." Sasha turned and went back up the stairs.
Kain looked at the crooked shelf a while. He'd eat when the shelves were straight.