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POV: Arthur Stark
[ The Dreadfort, during the first year of his rule ]
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The block of stone hung at chest height when Hullen told the men to stop. The ropes creaked over the pulley, and the haulers set their feet on the wet planks to keep the load from turning. I was coming from the old wing with the plans under my arm and had to go around a cart of sand to reach them. The master mason had crouched at the base of the eastern tower; while Qyburn, who had come to check the lime from the new kiln, asked what was wrong, he pushed the point of a knife into the joint between two blocks and pulled out a portion of mortar that crumbled across his calloused palm.
"Lower the stone into the cradle," Hullen ordered, without rising. He waited until the load settled onto the wooden crossbeams, opened another joint and worked the material apart between thumb and forefinger. Qyburn crouched beside him, asked for the knife and brought the dust on the blade close to his face before handing it back.
I left the plans on a trestle table and came closer. "The men were ready to lay another course. What did they find?"
Hullen stayed crouched, the knife still across his knee. "The mortar has lost its bind, my lord. If the same batch was used along this whole section, we will have to pull the blocks and lay them again."
Qyburn wiped his fingers on his sleeve. "The lime had already begun to set in the trough. Fresh water gives the mix back its look, though not its strength."
Hullen rose with one hand on the wall. "The first trough sat waiting while we waited for the stone. By the time it reached the bench it was hardening. I had them add water to use what we had." He slapped his hand against his thigh to be rid of the last of the dust, which fell onto his boot. "We lost two days to the rain and I thought it would still serve."
"And now we lose those same days pulling down what you put up." My voice came out too loud. The haulers stopped beside the wooden cradle; one of them let go of his rope and waited, unsure whether he should move away. I pressed the tube of plans against the edge of the table. "How many men worked this stretch? How much will we have to redo?" Hullen pointed out the end of the section and explained that thirty-two men had spent three days there. Before promising another date, he needed to know how many joints he would have to open.
He finished speaking and stayed where he was, in front of me. I knew that kind of waiting. Weeks earlier I had called him out over the delay in front of the overseers and told him to make up the lost time the moment the rain let off. I remembered Hullen trying to explain the order of the laying, and remembered cutting him off before he reached the end of it. I let go of the tube, whose edges had begun to mark my palm, and turned my attention back to the workers around the stone.
"Start with the joints Hullen marks. Take the blocks out carefully; we can use the stone again once it is cleaned." I waited for Hullen to call an assistant before going on, this time without raising my voice. "I pressed you to make up the delay. I should have listened to how much work that allowed. You should have thrown the batch away. If it happens again, come and find me before you tell anyone to lay it." He nodded and began marking the joints with red chalk; Qyburn followed him, scraping a sample from each one. Once the haulers had been given a task, the noise of ropes and boots came back around us.
I opened the drawing across the trestles while I waited for the first marks. The base of the tower stood a little above my waist. From there I could follow the foundations all the way to the cutting for the future hall, where two men were measuring the distance between stakes. On the parchment, that area held corridors, chambers and a stair facing the inner yard. Further on lay the private wood, the districts inside the walls and the sheltered harbour on the Weeping Water. I ran my nail along the lines and stopped at the eastern tower. There was room for three floors above the stones we now had to raise a second time.
Rhoslyn arrived with two ledgers protected by a leather cover. Olyvar Poole came behind her, holding a wax tablet and a stylus. The ring of keys at his belt knocked each time he stepped around a basket. Rhoslyn set the ledgers down beside the plans and followed the red marks along the wall. "Are the shifts still being paid? I need to know before I close this week's spending." I confirmed that they were and pointed out the men clearing the first block. She noted the answer without saying anything about the order of works lying open under my elbow.
Olyvar went to Hullen to check which deliveries had supplied the trough. "I will keep the lime going out separate from the mixing," he explained, drawing two columns in the wax. "The kiln it came from tells me where the material started. I need the name of whoever made the batch and the hour he began using it." Qyburn confirmed that the trouble lay in the reused mortar and asked that the joints made with it be checked. Olyvar heard him out before filling in the first line.
The ring of keys still made me look for Razdhan. Two weeks before, he had come into my chambers after supper and set those same keys on the table, along with a tablet so scratched over that part of the columns had disappeared. Olyvar was with him. I recognised one of the three scribes who had come with me from Winterfell, sent by Luwin to help put the Bolton ledgers in order. Until then I had mostly seen him at Eldric's side, comparing inventories against what our men were turning up in the stores.
"I spent half a day chasing three sacks of barley," Razdhan said, pushing the papers aside to open the tablet in front of me. "I talked to bakers, haulers and two scribes. I had the storeroom door checked. In the end the barley was where it belonged, and this man needed less time to find it than I needed to gather the haulers." Olyvar stayed by the chair, his hands closed over his own tablet, until Razdhan made room for him.
"The issue was entered in the charcoal column, my lord." The scribe turned the wax towards the hearth light and pointed to a line nearly lost beneath the scratchings. "The baker signed for it. If we compared only the totals, three sacks would be missing from one store and three left over in the other. I asked for the receipt before I had anything counted again." Rhoslyn left off, for a moment, the ledger she was checking by the fire and leaned in to look at the baker's mark.
Razdhan set both palms on the table, leaning over the keys. "When we took the Fort, I needed to know how much food there was, where the weapons were and who held each door. I can still do that. Now shipments of stone, ore, timber and tools pass through my hands, bound for villages whose names do not always come written the same way twice. The yard loses an instructor while I work out which scribe called a saw a blade. I want Olyvar in my place over the civil stores."
The proposal had me open the list of duties we kept alongside the wages. Razdhan's name appeared in three places, and two of them had grown since the first sharing out of tasks. "You keep the inspection of the armoury and the defences with Perseu," I said, striking out his charge over the civil stores. "Deliveries and inventories pass to Olyvar, under Rhoslyn's checking. How long do you need to take them on?" The scribe sorted the keys by their rings before answering, leaving the armoury ones nearest Razdhan.
"The stores already counted can pass tomorrow. I need to go over the two river granaries with the overseer before I sign for the stock." He opened the tablet to a marked page and showed the receipts still missing. "I can attend the next distribution. To promise you a balance, I need to see what is left after it." Rhoslyn drew her chair to the table and asked for the list. Razdhan took back the armoury keys and left the rest beside the scribe; that night he walked out of my chambers carrying only a small tablet with the names of the weapons on it.
Olyvar had been two weeks in the new post when Maester Hollan found us by the tower. The chain showed between his collar and the clasp of his cloak; he held three folded messages, shielding them from the wind with his free hand. "The Hornwoods have confirmed their visit. The Karstarks ask lodging for twenty-six men, servants counted. The Manderlys come by sea and up the Weeping Water; they expect to arrive while you are away. And Lord Umber sent word that he is coming to see the forges with his own eyes. He brings a dozen men and explained nothing further." He handed the letters to Rhoslyn and waited for me to finish gathering the plans.
"We will be back tomorrow, at day's end. Have the chambers made ready and tell Perseu about the escorts," I answered. Hollan followed with his eyes a block the masons had just taken down, and asked whether the bathhouse wall would need the same inspection. Olyvar explained that the mortar there had come from a different batch. The maester kept that on a small sheet of his own and went back to the lodgings. He had come five moons ago; the Citadel had taken nearly three to send him after Kennet died in the attack on the Fort. The old maester had been found under part of the rookery tower, beside the boy he had tried to pull off the stair.
Hollan had taken over the ravens, the correspondence and the daily care of the sick; the infirmary answered to him. Qyburn kept the training of the helpers, the rules of cleanliness we had brought north and the works he had experience in, and could halt any treatment that went against those rules. The evening before, the two of them had argued for nearly an hour over the use of a room for patients with fever. When I went to find them, Hollan was measuring the space between the beds and Qyburn was checking the window. The maester agreed to keep the fevered apart without my having to press him, though he did not raise his eyes from the measuring tape while he said it. "They are the lord's rules. Qyburn only wrote them down." Qyburn went on working at the latch. Both of them used my arrival to ask for more linen.
Rhoslyn tied the ledgers to her saddlebag while I put the map away. "If anyone asks why the lord is out, shall I say he went to check the road, or that he rode off to visit every building between here and the hills?" she asked, pulling the strap tight.
I pointed out, on the folded drawing, the run through the villages and the place where we would take the barge back. "The road, the sawmill and the fields by the river. I want to see them before I hear what our neighbours have to say about the men coming to work them." She went over the travel provisions with the squire and left the rest of the reports for the council.
Perseu was waiting beside the horses with twenty guards. Kevin was going over the watchtower signals with two scouts, marking the order of the posts on a piece of wood. Qyburn was settling his instruments into the cart that would come with us as far as the river. Olyvar kept the storeroom keys; Razdhan was already in the yard, running the recruits that Morghaz and Belzakar would take on after their first weeks of training.
A lad came forward with a wooden sword and lifted his arm too high. Razdhan turned the blow aside with his staff and touched the inside of his knee, taking his stance from under him. Before the recruit could recover his guard, the end of the staff was against his chest. "You followed my weapon and stopped seeing my foot," Razdhan said, stepping back so the boy could rise. "Again. When my shoulder comes forward, look for where the rest of the body will come from."
Morghaz was drilling another group among ditches and logs, making the men carry their companions on the way back. Belzakar worked with two ranks of shields. He broke off the exercise, slid the shaft of a spear into the gap left between two recruits and waited for them to correct the spacing. Razdhan had been preparing the newest men for those tasks: stance, handling of weapons, and enough wind to reach the end of a session. None of the three ever needed to cross the yard to meddle in another's instruction.
On the far side of the yard, where the straw targets stood against the old wall, Wenda was correcting a lad's elbow without touching him, using the point of her own arrow to show where the line should run. Ulmer and Fletcher took the ranks behind her in turn. The three of them had come up from the south on Davos's ship with the rest of Toyne's men, and the northerners took weeks to notice their shooting before they noticed their accents. The complaints stopped when the first archers handed back to Kevin began hitting moving marks.
Sandor trained alone against a post, well clear of the ranks. He was eleven years old, with the height of a lad of fifteen and a wooden sword heavier than the other recruits', made to measure on Razdhan's orders. He had been striking the post with the same sequence since early morning. The burned side of his face shone with the salve Qyburn applied before training, and the sweat ran down over it to his chin.
I stopped two paces off and waited for him to finish the set. "Your elbow rises before your hip. When the man is bigger than you, that gives you away."
Sandor hit the post once more before lowering the weapon. He kept the burned side turned towards me, the way he had since his first day at Winterfell, when he still expected people to look away. "There is no man here bigger than me, my lord."
"Then hit Ben when he comes back off the road," I answered, walking on towards the horses. "He has half a head on you and the belly to hold the rest."
The boy let out a sound through his nose that nearly became a laugh and went back to the post.
Razdhan saw us and handed his staff to an assistant. "Morghaz keeps the ditch group until midday. Then we trade men," he said, wiping mud from his hand. I asked him to keep the training running during the lords' visit and to settle the rotas with Perseu. He checked my horse's girth out of habit, pulled a strap that was already tight and turned his attention back to the recruit. The lad had repeated the advance, this time keeping his knee covered. Razdhan called him by name and was back at the exercise before we mounted.
The way to the gates passed the service buildings of the inhabited wing. Steam came from the laundry, and two women were carrying a basket of linen to a covered line. Alys counted the pieces in the doorway, with a child asleep in a cradle near her bench. Many of the women brought from Craster's lands worked there, or in the kitchens, the sewing rooms and the lesser stores of the castle. Others helped the midwives and the infirmary. I recognised one of them as she crossed the yard with a bundle of bandages; years before, she had come to Winterfell carrying her son on that same arm.
Qyburn halted the cart to take the bundle. The woman explained that she had left another at the infirmary and asked whether the patients' linen would go on being washed separately. "It will. Show Hollan where you have stored it, so he does not send for it from the common store," he answered, settling the bandages among his instruments. Alys called the two laundresses back when they had finished hanging the wash. Rhoslyn noted a request for cloth below the wages and put the paper away before we rode on.
We left the old wing by a passage that opened onto the outer yard. The Bolton towers still stood above the workshops, some closed off while their roofs came down, others held by the garrison. The torture chambers and part of the lower dungeons had already been pulled apart. The defences still worth anything would stand until new walls took their place. We had set aside eight years for the whole of the building; part of the first had already gone to surveys, demolition and foundations. The masons' work could be followed from the ground, with no need for a ladder.
A pale flame rose above the workshops before we reached the gate. The nearest horses lifted their heads, and the roar of the blast came an instant later. I halted my mount and signalled to Perseu. "I want a word with Tobho before we go. We still have to settle what the visitors may be given." Rhoslyn gathered her reins and asked the squire to warn the guards. We took the side passage, leaving room for a cart loaded with bars fresh from the stores.
The heat grew as I came nearer the line marked on the ground. Tobho held his place between the moulds and the men working the converter; he saw us, pointed with his tongs to where we should wait, and went back to the work. The blast drove through the liquid metal, and the flame changed as the charge was worked. I could still remember the first trials, everyone gathered around a single sample. Now the apprentices carried moulds while another crew made ready the place of the next pour.
The stacks of bars ran along most of the shed. Production had risen with the men's experience, the steadiness of supply and the shortening of the gap between charges. Tobho kept the best material for the chosen blades; much of the rest went to tools, fittings and gear for our own lands. No forge in the realm spent steel on ploughshares and village saws. Soft iron served, bent, was straightened in the village fire and bent again, and so it had been since before the Boltons. Tobho had told me in the first week that I was throwing a master's work into the mud. He went on saying it while he carried out the orders. The second converter stood on a side platform, still waiting on its lining and the last of its fitting. Bringing it into use would take more men when the time came.
In the corner of the shed the old Bolton bloomery still stood, cold. Tobho lit it once a moon and set two apprentices to work it the whole day, with hand bellows, charcoal and patience. By day's end the pair had a bloom of iron the size of a loaf, full of slag, that would still need another day under the hammer before it became usable metal. Neither of them complained about instruction after that.
I asked how much we had drawn since the last moon. Tobho raised three fingers black with soot, then turned the tablet towards me and let me follow the scored columns out to the edge.
"In Qohor I had four men and a furnace like that one at the back. In a good week we drew out of it what fits in that small pile by the door." The smith pointed with his chin at the vessel, where the blast had come through the charge again. "That thing pours more steel in an afternoon than my four men gave me in two moons. I watched the first charge come out and spent the night awake, looking for the mistake."
When the sample was ready for examination, Tobho set it on the bench and showed the fracture to the apprentice. "Mark it for tools. Take the result to the man at the moulds and check that he wrote down the same charge," he ordered. Only then did he pull off his gloves and come over. Soot had gathered in the creases of his neck and his apron. "If you came to ask for more swords for the visit, you needed to come before my shift started. The chests we agreed on are ready."
I passed along the bench without crossing the mark and looked over the bars set aside. "I want to know what we will have once our own deliveries are met. Rhoslyn will be taking orders the moment those chests are opened." Tobho brought the tablet where he noted the trials. He showed three charges bound for tools, one held back for blades and two that had gone back for correction. Below them, the marks of the days before filled columns that ran to the edge.
"One week I deliver twice what I did the week before. The next, half the charges go back to the furnace," he said, dragging his finger down the wax. "I still have to share these bars out among the ploughs, the saws, the props for the mines and the armoury. If you take material out of here to fill an order from outside, someone will have to tell me which of those deliveries is going to wait."
Rhoslyn took the tablet, set it against what she carried and returned them both to the bench. "Then we take samples and the gifts. No promise of supply before we have closed the villages' needs."
Tobho led us to the smaller workshop once another smith had taken over the pour. Three men worked behind the guarded door. One prepared the selected bars, another saw to the joining of the layers, and the third was polishing a blade whose waves were beginning to show in the light from the window. Tobho knew the whole of the method I had taught him. Those men, chosen with my leave, learned different stages under his eye; the complete notes stayed with Eldric, kept apart from the books that passed among the apprentices.
The smith took a sword from the rack and tilted it to look over the finish. The joined layers made lines that ran with the blade to its point. He found a mark above the guard, scraped it with his thumb and called the polisher over to show him where work was still owed. "The waves come up with the working of the surface. Before anything goes out, I check the welds and test the edge," he explained to Rhoslyn, who had brought her face closer. "A pretty pattern does not mend a badly tempered blade." He put the sword back on the rack and covered the chests meant for the lords.
◆ ◆ ◆
We rode out while the men were readying the pour. On the road we met charcoal carts bound for the workshops and workers going back to the villages with new saws lashed under their benches. One of them took his out of its cloth to show the others as the escort passed, holding it by the back of the blade the way a man holds something he is not yet sure is his. The escort split between the front and the rear; Kevin took the lead with the scouts, Perseu stayed near me, and Qyburn's cart rode protected among the mounted men. Olyvar had given Rhoslyn the sheets of the shipments we would check along the way.
At the first crossroads, four riders came out of the side track and waited for the column. Simon Toyne rode forward in the mail the workshops had made for his men, dark and without any sigil. The leather of his belt was still the one from the south, patched and old. Through all the years in the Kingswood, not one of them had worked with his face uncovered. The smallfolk who saw them remembered cloth, hoods and boiled leather masks, and the drawings the Crown had nailed up in the squares showed those masks. That was why Toyne's men could ride my roads with their faces bare.
"The road is clear from here to the sawmill," Toyne said, turning his horse to keep pace with me. "We took two men near the old bridge, knives in their pockets and no story that held together. They are tied up in the boatmen's shed, waiting on your word."
I had Rhoslyn note the names for Olyvar. Big Belly Ben spat nutshell on the ground and moved his horse out of the way of Qyburn's cart, with the delicacy of a man who learned late not to block a lord's path. At the end of their column, kept well away from the villages as I had demanded since the first day, Harwyn sat with his mouth open in what may have been a smile. We passed without a word from him.
A shadow came down over the road before Toyne rode off. Hugin folded his wings and settled on my shoulder, his talons going into the reinforced leather I wore on that account. He turned his head towards the riders, let out a call, and went on watching the same spot long after the men had left the road.
In the fields by the river, the drainage channel kept dry a stretch of ground where water used to stand after every rain. There were fresh furrows on the higher strips and men working at the extension of the ditch. The village lands lay divided into three fields, marked out by shallow ditches. In the first, the rye already covered the ground. In the second, beans and peas came up to the knee. The third had been left unsown, with the sheep of two villages loose on the stubble. The mill in the larger village was already taking sacks from two neighbouring holdings. We stopped to watch the unloading; the wheel turned steadily, and the miller raised his voice to show Qyburn where they kept the water away from the stores.
Rhoslyn asked him how much he had ground since the end of summer. The miller wiped the flour from his hands on his belly before answering and pointed at the sacks stacked to the beam.
"More than last year, my lady, and the ones from the high villages have not come in yet." He slapped his palm against one of the sacks, raising white dust. "My mill is the same as it always was. The difference came from the bean field. The rye that followed it filled the ear in a way I have not seen since I was a boy."
An old man sitting on the threshold followed the talk without getting up. He said that tired ground needs true rest, not weeds planted on top of it, and that at the end of all this the soil would come collecting. Some of the men at the unloading laughed; others did not. I ordered that the two strips be measured separately at the next harvest, the old man's and the one that had followed the new order, and that both numbers be read aloud before the village. The old man spat on the ground and took the wager. Higher up, near the hills, most of the ore was still moved in baskets and small carts. The stretch of rail laid in the main mine would be extended once it had been judged in use.
On the afternoon of the first day, a carter told us that the new cut between two villages was under mud. I had ordered that road straightened to save nearly half a league in hauling stone. Hobb had recommended following the slope, where the ground was firmer. When we discussed the line, I had worried about the distance and the trees that would have to come out. Now a cart stood buried to its axles, and the men were unloading the one behind it to make room for the ropes.
Hobb came over with a spade in his hand. Without my having to ask, he pointed out the bend where the rain had come down off the high ground and spread across the cut. "We can get the load out, my lord. But filling this with stone will mean coming back after every hard rain." He drove the handle of the spade into the ground and rested his weight on the blade. "The slope is still firm. I need to take out the trees we marked and build up the bend. I can move the men there once they have the cart free."
I dismounted to look at the ditch and sank in to the ankle. I pulled my leg out with force, holding on to the saddle. Rhoslyn had just come up with her ledger open; I saw the quill in her hand and spoke before she could start. "Wait until Hobb has shown the rest. We still do not know how much will have to change."
She lowered the quill and pointed at the page. "I am checking how many men have already been paid for this stretch. That is what you asked for before we left."
The rein leather slid through my muddied fingers. I handed the horse to the squire and walked with Hobb to the foot of the rise. The old marks still showed on the trunks. Some of them stood so close to the cut that I could have seen them the first time, had I got down from the saddle to walk the line. I came back to the cart with mud to my shin. "Use the slope. The timber taken out can be used in the works here. Then mark the replanting on the abandoned stretch," I ordered, taking from the overseer the names of the men who would stay on the road.
Rhoslyn waited beside my horse. I handed the paper back and asked her to record the change. "Write that Hobb recommended that line when we discussed the work. It was I who chose to pass below." She checked the overseer's name before writing it down and put the ledger away in the saddlebag. Behind us, Hobb gathered the workers around the cart and shifted the ropes. We waited until the wheels moved before taking the road again.