Chapter 302: Passage Restored

Branth refused to let anyone put a cart on the bridge.

The briarback had been dead for an hour. Workers had opened the approach, recovered the loose tools, and begun cutting the carcass free of the retaining stones. From above, the crossing looked usable again.

Underneath it, two bearings had sunk into mud.

Branth lay on a plank beside the stream with a lamp held low. Hadrin crouched above him, listening while the builder tapped each support with a wooden mallet.

"The upper timber is sound." Branth said. "This end is not sitting where it should."

Hadrin leaned farther down.

"Can you show me?"

Branth moved the lamp. A narrow gap appeared between the shoe and the timber above it. Rod could see it from the bank once someone pointed it out. Weight crossing the bridge would have closed the gap abruptly, striking the weakened footing beneath.

"How long to fix?" Corren asked.

"If you stop asking people to walk over my head, I can measure it."

Corren called the workers back from the bridge.

Rod sat on the upper track while Nessa finished treating his arm. The sap irritation had reddened the skin around the scratch. She cleaned it again, removed a tiny thorn fragment she had missed in the first pass, and covered the wound with fresh cloth.

"That stays dry." she said.

"I can lift with the other arm."

"You can rest with both."

Dain sat beside him, shield across his knees. The upper rim had bent inward. He had removed the straps so the damaged metal would not cut them during transport.

Below, workers rolled the briarback’s body onto a cleared patch of stone. Theren supervised the handling of the thorn ridge. The meat remained usable once separated from the sap-bearing hide, and Corren sent for people accustomed to dressing woodland game.

Rod retained the tusks, several sound armor plates, and a portion of meat for the party. They sold the rest to the two households at an agreed price. Hadrin deducted nothing from the promised commission. Corren paid for the meat as a separate purchase, settling the amount before the cutters began dividing it.

Lana asked Theren for a sealed quantity of sap and a few prepared thorns. He provided them with instructions written on waxed cloth. None would travel loose in a food bag.

Dirk kept a plate to show a fletcher. He had seen how well its thorns resisted his knife. Someone in Lethren might know whether they made useful arrow components or merely expensive ways to ruin a shaft.

By evening, the crossing had become a worksite.

Branth and Hadrin agreed to spread the near footing over a wider base of stone. The keeper’s replacement timber would sit above it, shaped to the bridge’s existing underside. Theren marked roots that must remain undamaged while the bank was opened.

They combined the useful parts of both earlier proposals without announcing a winner.

Rod was glad of that. He had no desire to spend the evening listening to a contest about who had been right before the beast arrived.

The party stayed at the station that night. Corren’s workers slept there too, filling the beds that had stood empty when Rod first entered. Hadrin served the evening meal with more energy than he had shown while discussing the commission.

Ferris had come with a cart carrying supplies. Nessa checked his leg and made him remain seated while others unloaded. He watched the recovered pieces of the crushed cart being stacked for salvage.

"Was it as large as I remembered?" he asked Rod.

"Large enough."

Ferris looked relieved by the answer.

The following morning, Rod’s party helped where their injuries allowed. Dirk carried measurements between the bank and Branth’s workbench. Lana kept a seep away from the open footing by freezing a temporary edge along the water channel, then thawed it when Theren had diverted the flow properly.

Rod used his sound arm to sort the recovered fittings. Dain sat with the tool rolls and repaired loose handles. Nessa moved between the workers, treating ordinary cuts before dirt and sap made them troublesome.

Nobody called those jobs part of a glorious victory. They still needed doing.

At midday, Branth lowered the new timber onto its bedding. Hadrin watched the contact along its full length. They adjusted two wedges, checked the opposite side, and only then secured it.

An empty cart crossed first.

It rolled smoothly over the bridge. Workers below watched the bearings while Corren guided it from the far side. Branth marked the timber’s position after it passed.

The next cart carried several sacks of gravel.

Halfway across, the near wheel dropped with a hard knock.

"Stop." Hadrin called.

The driver halted immediately. Corren moved to the horse’s head while Branth inspected beneath the bridge. The bearing remained in place. The problem lay above it.

One deck plank had a shallow hollow worn beneath its edge. Without weight, it rested level. Under the wheel, it tipped against the neighboring board and opened a gap.

Hadrin closed his eyes briefly.

"I checked those before the road closed."

"The beast and two broken carts have used it since." Branth said.

They unloaded enough gravel to move the cart back. The damaged plank came out, revealing a second split at its fastening. Hadrin fetched spare timber while Branth checked every adjacent board under a measured load.

The delay cost them most of the afternoon.

Rod watched Corren while the workers carried out the repair. The household leader looked toward the wagon waiting with his first delivery, then returned to hold the replacement plank steady. He did not ask to send the freight through while they worked.

Near sunset, they repeated the test.

Empty cart. Partial load. Then the first agreed full load, smaller than the heaviest Reedbank had once used.

Branth remained beneath the crossing with a lamp. Hadrin watched the deck. Theren checked the bank after each passage. No gap opened, and the new footing stayed where it had been set.

The driver halted beyond the last stones rather than continuing to the stores. Branth wanted the same cart to return, giving the footing a load in the opposite direction. They turned it on the clear patch above the far approach, checked the bindings around the gravel sacks, and brought it back at walking pace.

Rod stood clear with the rest of the party. The driver watched Hadrin for the signal to proceed. Beneath the bridge, Branth moved the lamp along the new bearing as the weight crossed overhead.

The cart returned without a knock.

Theren checked the bank again. A shallow trickle had formed near the new bedding, carrying fine soil toward the stream. He pointed it out, and the workers opened a drainage groove before it could wash beneath the footing.

"That would have become another gap after rain." he said.

Hadrin marked the groove on his maintenance sketch. Corren sent a worker for small stones to line it. They waited while the flow cleared and the water ran without carrying mud.

Nessa sat beside Ferris during the delay. He had watched every passage with his injured leg propped on a sack. When she asked whether the first cart had crossed near the place he was hurt, he pointed farther down the approach.

"I will use the bridge again." he said. "I will stand somewhere else when the cart turns."

She checked the position he indicated and asked Senn to keep the waiting area outside that swing. He moved the supply bundles accordingly. The crossing needed room for people waiting as well as wheels moving over it.

They ran one final passage after the drainage work was finished. This time both household leaders walked behind the cart, watching its wheels from the same side of the road.

The loaded cart reached the far road.

For several moments, everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to say it was finished.

Hadrin stepped down from the bridge.

"This load may use the road in dry weather." he said. "We inspect again after the next heavy rain."

Corren nodded. "We send the first maintenance crew before adding more."

Branth wrote the measurements beneath their agreement and gave each satyr a copy.

Only then did Corren fetch the waybell.

He had kept it wrapped in a padded cloth inside the supply cart. He carried it with both hands, stopped before Hadrin, and offered the handle.

"The crossing is open."

Hadrin took it.

His thumb settled into the worn place on the rowan. For a moment he merely held it, looking at the dent above the lower silver band. Then he turned it once, checking the pins as carefully as he had instructed Rod’s party to do.

"It has been kept well." he said.

"It was mine to keep well." Corren replied.

Hadrin nodded. "Until today."

Rod accepted that as close to an apology as the two were likely to offer in front of their workers. The bell passed back without another contest, and the written maintenance terms remained in Branth’s hands.

At the station, Hadrin counted the party’s payment onto the table.

Rod checked it with Dain. Corren added the household’s share and a record of the materials credit they had negotiated. The proceeds from the beast’s meat went into the common purse separately. Once the Five Knots’ fee and damaged equipment were accounted for, they had earned a worthwhile return.

They had also earned their passage.

"We leave after breakfast." Hadrin said. "The road is clearer in the morning, and I have deliveries for Lethren."

Rod glanced at the bell now hanging beneath its old bracket. "Does the whole party need to stay close?"

"Close enough to hear the turns I call. No one follows a sound through the trees without asking me first."

He showed them how he carried it, wrapped until needed so it would not ring with every step. The striker hung separately on a short cord. He sounded one note in the yard.

Rod heard bronze, then something quieter beneath it, like the same note continuing beyond the building.

Hadrin turned toward the southern path.

"There." he said softly.

Lana listened. Midnight lifted his head from the bench.

"You heard the road?" she asked.

"I heard where the sound went."

The keeper wrapped the bell again and took it inside.

That night, Rod packed their reward and checked the supply remaining before the Five Knots’ collection date. They could spend a day in Lethren, return with Hadrin, and reach the terrace in time. If the settlement proved worth a longer stay, they would have to make a new arrangement on another visit.

He preferred having a reason to return.

Outside the window, two loaded carts stood ready for the morning. One belonged to the station. The other carried Reedbank panels bound for the town.

Before bed, Hadrin hung a new notice beside the station door. It named the crossing’s reopening, the trial load limit, and the need to ask before taking an unfamiliar cart through. Corren read it, suggested adding the width between the bridge rails, and held the board while the keeper wrote the measurement.

Rod watched from the common room. The notice would save the next traveler a question and perhaps a damaged wheel. It was a useful thing to leave behind after all the work required to produce it.

They would travel the same road.