Beech the Brave (More or Less)
Marked riders bring new hauling gear to Briar Glen, threatening the homes above Vale Mouth. Beech must choose between another reckless intervention and trusting his neighbours.
In which Beech discovers that a proper hero must occasionally do the sensible thing before being allowed to do the stupid one.
Beech had been given half a piece of bread to finish and a place beside the sheepfold wall in which to sleep. Neither had proved particularly satisfactory.
The bread had gone almost immediately. Sleep had been interrupted by a distant horn, the sound of horses on stone, and Tam insisting that everyone should wake up in case the riders were friends.
"Why would friends sound a horn at this hour?" Beech asked from beneath his cloak.
"So we know they're coming."
"Well, we know. Can we go back to bed?"
Tam had no answer to that, chiefly because Nella arrived before he could invent one.
She had a lantern in her hand and Fern at her heel. Neither looked as though they expected much sleep before morning.
"Three lights on the northern track," she said. "More riders behind them. They've stopped above the mill road. Mara's watching from the ash grove."
Beech sat up, pulling the cloak carefully away from the dressing on his upper left arm. His wrist was wrapped too, and the stiffness in his shoulders suggested he had spent the day carrying an entire cottage rather than helping people out of one.
"King's soldiers?" he asked.
"No banners that Tam recognises. And they didn't come from the south."
"Kings can have northern soldiers."
"They can. But until someone sees a king among them, we're treating them as strangers."
Nella passed him the lantern while she tightened the cord holding her hair. Across the sheepfold, Berta was moving between the wounded with a candle, and Harl was taking a fresh pot of water from the hearth. Even half asleep, the villagers continued with the arrangements they had practised over the past two days. The children were together beneath the sound part of the stone store roof. The wounded lay furthest from the east gate. Two runners waited on the upper track. Duchess lay beside Widow Fenner's turnip basket, guarding it with the expression of a creature prepared to charge anyone who mistook her for a common pig.
Beech was rather proud of that. There had been a time when the principal organisation in Briar Glen involved deciding whose turn it was to buy a round.
"Can you walk?" Nella asked.
"I've been doing a great deal of it lately."
"That's not what I asked."
"Yes," he said. "A little unhappily, but yes."
She nodded towards the ridge. "Then come and see what's on our doorstep. And you're not going down to it on your own."
"I wasn't going to."
She raised an eyebrow.
"I am improving," he said.
"You are. That's why I'm asking instead of tying you to the store."
They climbed between the ash trees to where Mara lay beside a low boundary wall. From there the northern road could be seen crossing the slope beyond the village, a pale ribbon under the cloudy moon.
There were seven horses, possibly eight. Three lanterns swung from saddles at the front. The riders had stopped beside the fork leading down towards the square, and a man on foot was holding one of the horses' bridles while its rider examined something spread over the saddle.
When the nearest lantern turned, Beech saw a white circle crossed by a dark line upon the rider's sleeve.
"The broken-ring mark," he whispered.
Mara nodded. "They came along the road. I watched them ride past the north field gate. Whatever's happened at North Scar, they didn't come through the hill underneath us."
The leading rider rolled up his parchment and signalled with two fingers. A horn sounded from the party; somewhere across the lower village another horn answered. A minute later, a smaller group of goblins emerged from the direction of the meeting hall to guide the riders downhill.
"More of the marked ones," Nella said.
"And horses," Beech added. "Horses have never been terribly fond of me."
"Neither have goblins."
"No, but horses are taller."
Below them the riders took the turn towards the meeting hall. The northern track to the sheepfold remained empty.
Nella watched until the last light disappeared behind the rooftops. "They've brought something the men under the hall are waiting for."
"What sort of something?"
"The dangerous sort, I expect. We need to find out before they use it."
Beech looked beyond the roofs, towards the place where the lower street had torn itself apart. Even in darkness he could make out the grey stripe of fallen masonry and the crooked shape of Elna's old flour store.
"And if they open the gate?"
"We don't know that they can."
"I wish," Beech said, "that people would stop finding out by trying."
The message arrived an hour before dawn, tied to the shaft of an arrow.
It struck the post beside the sheepfold entrance and quivered there while Tam ducked behind the watering trough. Whoever had shot it had done so from a position too distant for anyone on the wall to see.
Beech recognised the close-bound black and rust-coloured fletching. The archer who had pinned his sleeve to a rain barrel during the flour-lane escape was still out there, shooting with the same deliberate care. That goblin had stayed near the marked workers even as the captain's ordinary raiders grew restless.
Nella waited until Fern stopped growling, then drew the shaft from the post and unwound the strip of parchment fastened beneath its feathers.
The message was short.
Five prisoners. Western pasture at first light. In return, no attack upon the upper track until noon. Your carpenter remains your concern.
There was no signature.
"He might at least write his name," Harl said when Nella brought it into the store. "How are we supposed to address a formal reply?"
"To the unpleasant fellow with the axe," Beech suggested.
"That doesn't narrow it down enough."
The prisoners were still in the reinforced cattle pound. Two men guarded the approach, with strict instructions not to stand close enough for the goblins to grab their clothes. Nella had kept them fed and given them water despite complaints from people who had lost nearly everything to their raiders.
She read the message a second time. "He wants his men. He doesn't promise to take the rest away."
"He promised half a day without attacking us," said Tam.
"And if he breaks it?"
Tam considered the question, looking towards his useless cracked horn. "We could complain."
Darron, sitting by the hearth with his injured arm supported in a sling, made a noise through his nose that was not quite a laugh.
"We need them away from the village," Nella said. "Not simply away from us until noon."
Beech stood beside the little table where Joss had arranged his lists of missing people and stores. The columns were untidy but useful. Some names had been crossed out as families reached the sheepfold. Others remained circled, because no one could confirm where those people had gone. There were fewer names left now than there had been yesterday, and that mattered more than any count of defeated goblins.
"The captain's worried about his men," Beech said. "But the marked ones are still making him work."
"He knows it," Nella replied.
"What if we make him choose?"
Nella looked up.
Beech explained his thought in a few plain sentences. They could offer the captain his prisoners if he withdrew his raiders from Briar Glen and left the upper track alone. That would still leave the marked workers below the hall, but they were fewer and would lose the muscle they needed to move timber and haul whatever machinery their new riders had brought.
"He might take the prisoners and attack anyway," Mara said.
"Yes."
"He might put an axe in you."
"Also yes."
"You're making a poor case for this plan."
Beech pulled at the torn cuff of his cloak. "It's not a particularly good plan. It's simply the best one I can think of that doesn't involve bringing the hall down on everybody."
Nella folded the parchment and stood. "I'll put your offer to him: his five prisoners for a full withdrawal, not a few quiet hours. You're coming because he's more likely to listen when he can see the man he wants to hit. But you speak when I ask you to speak."
"Agreed."
"And if I say we leave—"
"We leave," Beech finished.
She gave him a level look, then placed the goblin's message on the table beside Joss's list.
"Good. Now we need to know what the marked ones have brought. If they're about to pull the ground from under us, a promise until noon won't be worth the parchment it's written on."
The western pasture lay between the cattle pound and the mill road, where the grass was short and neither side could approach without being seen.
Nella went with Beech and Mara, while Harl waited behind a stone wall with two runners. Fern trotted at Nella's heel. From the village came the clink of harness and, faintly, the measured thump of timber being unloaded.
The captain emerged from behind a fence with four ordinary raiders. He wore his red cloak over a breastplate stained with mud, and the old dent in his helmet had been hammered into a slightly different shape. His axe was in his hand, but he kept it low.
He examined Beech with open dislike.
"You're still alive."
"I've been told it's a difficult habit to break."
The captain ignored the remark. "Where are my five?"
"Fed and guarded," Nella said. "We can bring them to the pasture when we have an agreement."
"You'll have an agreement when they're on this side of the fence."
"No. You'll have them when your men have withdrawn from the village. We've already lost enough people to your promises."
The captain glanced towards the village. His ears twitched as a metallic clang sounded from the square.
"There's an order to keep the south road clear," he said. "My employer wants the gate ready."
"Your employer's men have been using yours like firewood," Nella replied. "Have they paid you yet?"
For a moment the captain's face showed almost nothing. Then his lips peeled back from his teeth.
"Mind your own affairs, shepherd."
"I am. Every time that wheel turns, my village moves."
Beech watched one of the raiders behind the captain shift his weight. The creature had a bandaged leg and a familiar loose shoulder strap. Beech recognised the young goblin he had helped free from a timber beneath the meeting hall. He was leaning on a short spear and looking at the ground.
The captain saw Beech notice him and stepped between them.
"You've made enough trouble," he said. "I should have killed you at the first door."
"You tried," Beech reminded him. "It was a very good door."
The captain's axe rose an inch.
Nella did not flinch. "You'll get your prisoners alive. You'll take your wounded and your raiders out by the northern surface road. No one from Briar Glen follows you. No one fires on you. And you don't bring another torch into our homes."
"And the marked workers?"
"They're not my men," Nella said.
The captain spat into the grass. "Nor mine, apparently."
A horn sounded below. The captain turned towards it, and Beech caught the anger in his face before it hardened into calculation.
"The master sent more riders," Beech said. "They came by road last night. He hasn't opened his northern gate, then?"
The captain's eyes snapped back to him. "You've seen nothing."
"I've seen enough to know they brought horses over the hill instead of under it."
The captain seemed to weigh whether killing Beech would make the observation disappear.
"The marked ones promised silver," he said at last. "When the chest went north. Then when the southern mouth was ready. Now their courier says the road must be forced before payment can be released. They've always got a new reason."
"And the people in the hall?" Nella asked.
"They can work on their precious road without my lads holding their roof up. I've told them that."
"Tell them again," she said. "Then bring your men to this pasture by midday. We'll exchange your five where both sides can count them."
He looked at her for a long time, then at Beech.
"If you interfere with my retreat, carpenter, there won't be a third front door to hide behind."
"I haven't even got a first one at the moment," Beech said.
The captain turned away without smiling.
As his raiders withdrew, the goblin with the injured leg glanced back once. He did not wave or speak. His captain saw the movement and barked for him to keep walking.
"Was that an agreement?" Mara asked.
"Not yet," Nella said. She glanced at Beech. "He heard your offer, though. Now we'll see whether he'd rather save his men than obey his employer."
The northern riders had not brought a key, at least not one that anyone watching could recognise.
They had brought an iron winding bar longer than a man, two heavy coils of chain, and a narrow wooden case carried between saddles. Beech saw the unloading from the damaged upper floor of Mara's brother's cooperage, where a gap in the slate roof overlooked Brant's rear yard.
He was there with Nella and Mara, not alone, and had reached the lookout by the back stairs while Fern kept watch at the bottom. The yard below lay between the meeting hall's rear wall and the broken line of houses leading towards the square. Brant's paving hatch stood open near the wall; from it a stone stair descended to the service chamber, and farther beyond that chamber the inspection gallery led down towards the actual southern gate of Vale Mouth.
No one on the roof could see the ancient gate. What they could see was quite sufficient.
The marked workers had constructed a new hauling frame in the yard. Two long beams stood on wooden trestles, with a wheel and winding drum between them. A chain passed down through the open hatch. At the drum, a removable bar gave men enough leverage to pull against the weight below.
Beech knew the sort of frame. He had helped build smaller versions to lift millstones and wagon beds. This one was clumsier, but its purpose was plain.
The trouble was where they had anchored it.
One of the trestles rested on cracked paving. The other was lashed to an oak upright supporting the meeting hall's rear wall—the very sort of support that Beech had watched sink and twist the previous afternoon.
A marked foreman struck the upright with a hammer. Something shifted in the mortar high above him.
"They're using the wall to pull against the gate," Beech said.
Nella followed his finger. "And the wall's already moving."
"Exactly. If the drum pulls hard enough, it won't have to open the old door. It can take the meeting hall down instead."
Mara looked at the roof beneath their boots. "Could they do it today?"
A man in a long dark riding coat stepped into the yard. He had his hood up despite the daylight, and the broken-ring badge was stitched in white at his shoulder. Unlike the goblins, he wore clean gloves. The marked surveyor approached him with the rolled parchment of Beech's old repair drawing.
Beech could hear only fragments of their discussion.
"...south lock..."
"...one full haul..."
Then, clearly, the rider said, "The instruction is to proceed. The houses are already empty."
"They aren't all empty," Mara whispered, though the man below could not hear her.
"He doesn't care," Nella said.
The surveyor hesitated. Beech saw him glance at the hall's rear wall, then at the iron bar being fitted through the drum.
Beech swallowed. "He's not certain it'll hold."
"Are you?"
"No. That's why I'm frightened."
From beneath the hall came a muffled knock as someone drew the chain taut. The upright gave a small sideways jerk. Beech felt it through the cooperage wall opposite, transmitted across the old masonry beneath the yards.
For the first time, Nella looked at the wooden hauling frame rather than the unknown machinery beyond it.
"If we stop them pulling, we stop this test," she said.
"Yes. But I don't want to knock a loaded frame apart. If it lets go under strain, it'll throw that iron bar across the yard and perhaps drop whatever they're holding below."
"So they have to release it first."
"And let the brake take the weight. I saw a locking tooth on the drum from here. I know what it does on a mill hoist. I don't know what their old gate will do afterwards."
Nella counted the people in the yard. Nearly a dozen marked workers and guards remained, along with the mounted courier and the bowman by the shattered store roof. Beech caught sight of a narrow strip of white cloth at the bowman's wrist, the broken ring dark against it. The courier raised a hand; the bowman adjusted his position at once. Whatever company he had kept during the first attack, it was the marked faction whose orders he followed now.
They could not simply stroll in and ask to dismantle the frame.
A shout came from the mill road. One of the captain's raiders was refusing to carry another beam downhill. A marked inspector seized his arm, and two others moved to join him. The argument grew loud enough to reach the roof.
Nella watched it for a moment. "Then perhaps," she said, "we should let them finish their argument first."
Nella sent Mara down the cooperage stairs with a runner's cord and instructions for Harl. When she returned with word that Harl and Tam were coming to secure the side gate, Nella took them both aside, out of sight of the yard.
"The hauling chain runs through the hatch," she said to Beech. "Can you see how it's fastened from the landing?"
"Not from the landing. The new guide's in the storage chamber, just beyond the foot of the steps." He hesitated. "You asked me to stay at the landing. Do you want us to go that far?"
Nella looked through the gap in the timber stack, where the chain drew tight against the unstable wall. "As far as the storage chamber. Mara goes with you. Look at the fastening, then come back and tell me what you see. You do not pass the inspection panel to the lower gallery, and you don't touch the chain or the ancient mechanism. If I call, you come out."
"Agreed," Beech said. This time he understood exactly what he had agreed to.
Nella went towards the yard gate to confront the marked foreman while Beech and Mara took the cooperage's rear passage. Beech knew the small gate into Brant's yard: he had fitted it years before, and it still opened silently if one lifted its lower corner. Beyond it lay the southern stack of timber, only a few paces from the open paving hatch.
The argument on the road had moved closer. Through a gap between the planks they could see the captain of the ordinary raiders, his cloak flaring as he faced the mounted courier.
"Those are my men," the captain was saying. "You don't march them into a hole when I tell you they're leaving."
The courier sat on his horse, gloved hands resting upon the saddle. His voice was calm. "They were hired to secure the southern works. That work is unfinished."
"They were hired to take a village. We took it. Where's the silver?"
The courier held out a folded paper. "An account has been recorded. The master will settle it when the gates can be operated."
The captain made no attempt to take the paper.
"An account," he repeated. "I've buried three men and carried another out with his leg crushed, and you've recorded an account."
Mara glanced at Beech. Neither needed to say anything.
The courier gave a short signal. Two marked guards stepped towards the captain. Behind them the patient bowman lifted his bow, though he did not yet draw it.
Nella emerged at the yard gate with Fern, carrying no weapon except a sturdy ash pole she had borrowed from Tam.
"If you're going to have an argument," she called, "have it away from the wall you're pulling down."
The marked foreman wheeled towards her. "You have no business here."
"My village is above your machinery. That makes it my business. Release the hauling chain and stop work."
"The master has ordered a full turn."
"Then the master can come and hold up the roof himself."
A goblin laughed somewhere among the ordinary raiders, quickly and nervously. The courier turned his horse towards Nella. For an instant everyone looked at her, which was long enough for Beech and Mara to reach the open hatch and descend to the storage chamber, exactly as Nella had authorised.
The stone stair was wet. Water ran along one side in a muddy thread, carrying grains of mortar down into darkness. The air smelled of old metal and fresh-sawn wood.
Beech remembered being marched down these steps with his wrists tied. He remembered the empty chest cradle, and the indignity of watching a goblin set his mother's frying pan upon it as if it were evidence in a trial.
The pan was still there. He lifted it by the worn handle and felt the familiar dent beneath his thumb. His kitchen knife was not beside it; the guard who had taken that was long gone.
"Are you quite finished being reunited with your cookware?" Mara whispered.
"Not remotely. But I can continue later."
"Good. Listen."
From beyond the concealed inspection panel came the scrape of iron. A wheel creaked, stopped, and creaked again. There were voices in the gallery leading down to Vale Mouth, the southern gate far beneath the hall, and someone was shouting up towards the service chamber for more men.
The new hauling chain passed through an iron guide set temporarily in the chamber floor. It did not form part of the ancient masonry. Fresh chisel marks surrounded its bolts, and a line of wet earth showed where the workers had dragged it towards the inspection panel. In the gallery beyond, the chain disappeared around a corner towards the machinery below.
Beech put the pan beside the lantern and knelt to examine the bolts. A crack in the floor ran beneath one of them. Each time the chain tightened, the crack opened a little wider.
"It's pulling at the stone up here as well," he said.
Mara crouched beside him. "Can you stop it?"
"Not from this end. Not safely. There's still weight on it. We need them to let the brake down on the hauling drum outside and take the pull off."
Another creak travelled along the chain. A little dust sifted from the ceiling.
Beech stood. "We should go."
That was when the marked clerk appeared in the open inspection panel, carrying his rolls of parchment beneath one arm. He stopped when he saw them.
For a second all three remained motionless.
Then the clerk looked at the pan.
"You," he said.
"Yes," Beech replied. "I understand there's a vacancy for a carpenter who knows when to stop."
The clerk reached towards his belt. Mara raised the lantern sharply, throwing its light full into his eyes. He recoiled, and Beech moved between him and the stair.
"Don't come any closer," Beech said, lifting the pan.
"That's a cooking pot," the clerk said.
"I've had it for years. I'm familiar with its limitations."
The clerk hesitated. His eyes passed from the pan to the widening crack beneath the hauling guide. Another jolt shook the chamber, and the iron fitting pulled a finger's width out of line. A chip of stone struck the floor between them.
The clerk's expression changed.
"The foreman must release the pull," he said.
"That's what we've been saying," Mara replied.
"He won't. The courier has the order."
"Then come up and tell him the chamber floor's coming away," Beech said. "He might listen to one of his own."
The clerk looked down the gallery, where a goblin was calling for the next turn. Beech felt the old impulse to go after the shouting, to see for himself what else might be failing. He stayed where Nella had told him to stay.
Another chip of stone fell. The clerk turned and hurried up the stair ahead of them.
Beech took the lantern. Mara followed, and the three climbed out into the noise of an argument that had become a battle.
The captain's ordinary raiders were withdrawing towards the western road, but two of them had been stopped by marked guards at the yard entrance. One was the injured goblin with the loose strap. The other had drawn a knife. Neither appeared eager to use it, though both had the look of creatures who might do so if pushed much further.
Nella stood between the hauling frame and the courier's horse. Fern was beside her, teeth showing whenever one of the marked guards came too close. Harl had arrived with Tam and three villagers; they held the cooperage side gate but had not entered the yard. It was plain, even to Beech, that they could not hold it for long against all the marked workers.
The courier pointed to the hauling drum. "One turn. We have come too far to stop now."
The foreman placed the new iron bar into its socket. Two workers gripped the ends, while a third stood ready at the brake lever.
The clerk stumbled out of the hatch, panting. "The guide is tearing free in the chamber. The floor's split."
The foreman's hand froze on the bar.
"One turn," the courier repeated.
"If the guide breaks," the clerk said, "the chain may whip across the gallery. We don't know what the weight below will do."
The courier slipped from his saddle. For the first time Beech could see his face beneath the hood: a man of perhaps forty, with a neatly trimmed beard and the ordinary, unremarkable expression of someone who had never been refused service in an inn.
"The lower settlement is abandoned," he said. "The route is worth more than those houses."
Beech thought of the names still circled on Joss's list.
"There may be people in those houses," he said. "And some of us would quite like to have houses again."
The courier looked at him as though noticing a stain on his sleeve. "The carpenter. The one who put wood into the guide."
"Among other things."
"You're standing in the way of an undertaking you cannot understand."
Beech tightened his hand upon the pan's handle. "That's true. I don't understand your road. But I know a post that won't hold, and I know what happens when you pull on it anyway."
The courier turned to the foreman. "Begin."
The workers hesitated. One loosened his grip. Another glanced towards the crack spreading under the hauling frame's nearest foot.
The courier drew a narrow sword.
"I said begin."
He stepped towards the worker who had let go, and the captain moved at last. Not to protect Beech or Nella, but to seize the courier's sword arm before it could strike an ordinary raider standing beside the frame.
"No more of mine," the captain growled.
The courier twisted free and slashed. The blade cut through the edge of the captain's red cloak. The captain answered with the haft of his axe, driving the man backwards against the timber trestle. The horse reared, scattering two marked guards. On the roof the bowstring snapped taut.
An arrow struck the frame beside Nella's shoulder.
"Down!" Mara shouted.
Beech hauled Nella behind the upright. A second arrow buried itself in the timber, inches above his head. The bowman had found his angle across the yard. He was not shooting wildly; he was trying to pin the villagers where the guards could reach them.
The foreman had stopped his workers, but nobody had engaged the brake. The great drum was creeping under its load. Each slow movement made the chain drag against the guide below, and every drag sent a shiver through the paving.
"The brake!" Beech shouted. "Put the tooth into the drum!"
"We can't force it while the chain's pulling," the foreman called back. "It'll shear!"
"Then ease the load before you seat it!"
The foreman looked at the wheel, then at the floor. He ordered one worker to call down the hatch and make certain the older catch in the gallery was seated. An answering shout came back. Only then did he tell two others to hold the bar while a third eased the new drum back a fraction, relieving its locking tooth. They worked in tiny movements, much as men at the mill eased a hoist before setting its catch.
Another shaft struck the stone near Mara's foot. Nella looked towards the roof and called, "Fern!"
The dog bounded along the wall, not towards the bowman but towards the sheltered passage leading to the cooperage. Her barking drew Tam's attention to the gap beneath the roofline. He understood the opening Mara had used in the earlier rescue and thrust his long ash pole up through it. The bowman pulled back to avoid the point. He was not hurt, but his next arrow went nowhere useful.
It gave the villagers a few seconds.
Beech stepped forward to help the foreman brace the hauling bar. His injured left wrist could do little, so he set the frying pan on the ground, put his right shoulder against the timber and took the weight with his legs. The men beside him were goblins; one had a broken-ring mark on his sleeve. None of them had time to object to the arrangement.
"Slowly," the foreman said.
The drum shifted back a fraction. Its iron tooth slipped towards the notch. With a final heavy clunk, the brake seated.
The hauling chain sagged. The foreman watched it carefully for several breaths, then called below. Someone in the gallery confirmed that the older catch was holding the gate's weight again. Nobody claimed to know how long the damaged masonry around it could be trusted.
For a moment there was no new movement in the yard. Then the bent upright creaked, relaxed, and settled against its brace. A loose stone fell from the meeting hall wall, but the larger structure held.
Beech stepped back and snatched up his pan.
"Now take out the hauling bar," he told the foreman. "Before someone decides to have another go."
The foreman looked towards the courier, who was struggling to rise beside his horse. Then he drew the iron bar from the drum and carried it away from the frame.
"No more turns," he said.
The courier staggered towards him, one hand pressed against his ribs. "You have no authority to stop."
"The floor is failing. We need new footings, a new guide, and a survey of the south chamber before we put another load on it."
"You will be paid to finish."
"I would like to be alive to collect it."
The courier's face hardened. He turned to the two remaining mounted guards and ordered them to secure the drawings. The clerk gathered the rolls from the fallen trestle. Behind them, the captain was already pulling his raiders away towards the western pasture.
Nella crossed to the hauling frame and looked at the brake seated firmly in its notch. "Can you remove the new hauling gear?"
"With the load held, yes," the foreman said. "Not the old machinery below. We don't know what would happen if we touched that."
"Then remove what you brought into my village. All of it."
The foreman looked ready to argue. A new crack spread across the pavement beside the trestle, and he changed his mind.
Once the foreman had checked that the new chain was fully slack, the workers unlashed it and dismantled the temporary hauling frame while Nella and Mara watched from the gate. Beech stayed close enough to warn them when a beam needed supporting, but he did not touch the ancient mechanism or offer a theory about how to seal it. The gate below was still hidden. Its true condition could not be seen from here.
As the last chain was lifted clear of the hatch, the meeting hall gave a low, weary groan. Its rear parapet broke away, dropping a heap of stone into the yard where the hauling frame had stood only minutes earlier.
Everyone fell back.
Dust rolled through the lane and across the roofs. Beech caught Nella's arm as she stumbled, and Mara dragged Fern clear of the falling grit. For a terrible instant Beech expected the whole building to follow.
It did not.
The hall stood crooked and wounded, its rear wall fractured and part of its roof gone, but the pounding beneath it had stopped. The marked workers scattered into the open lane, coughing. The courier climbed onto his horse with the clerk's drawings tucked beneath his cloak.
Beech saw the bowman moving along the roof ridge beyond the yard. The creature lowered its weapon, measured the distance to Nella, and seemed to consider one last shot. Then its eyes moved to the damaged hall and to the retreating marked riders. It followed them instead.
The captain, already half a street away, looked back once. His gaze found Beech and the dented frying pan in his hand.
"You really are the most aggravating man I've ever met," he called.
Beech, who was covered in dust and beginning to shake from exhaustion, managed to answer, "It's been a difficult week for everybody."
By midday, the hauling frame lay dismantled and the village was quiet enough for the promised exchange. Both sides met in the western pasture with their weapons in view.
The captain arrived with the ordinary raiders he could still count. Several were wounded. The goblin with the split ear and loose shoulder strap limped among them, supported by a companion. Beech could not tell whether the captain had recovered all the others from the lower streets, and did not ask.
Nella brought the five prisoners from the cattle pound under guard. They walked without irons, carrying the little bundles of food they had saved. The oldest of them gave a wary look at the captain, as though expecting to be blamed for having surrendered.
The captain counted them carefully.
"All five," he said.
"All alive," Nella answered. "As agreed."
The captain nodded towards the damaged village. "My raiders are leaving by the northern surface road. We won't fire on your people while we go. You won't follow."
"We won't," Nella said. "But if you return with torches, we'll defend ourselves again."
"I would expect you to."
His gaze moved to Beech. He did not offer an apology or thanks, and Beech would not have trusted either if he had.
"I still owe you for that bridge," the captain said.
"And the door," Beech replied.
"The door was your fault for shutting it."
Beech almost argued. The captain seemed to be waiting for it, which made him think better of the idea.
The goblins gathered their prisoners and withdrew along the northern road. The captain rode neither a horse nor a triumph. He walked with his men, his axe at his side and his red cloak dragging through the mud.
Farther north the courier and the remaining marked contingent had already vanished beyond the bend, taking the iron winding bar and their drawings. The dismantled frame lay in the damaged yard. Whatever orders they carried and whatever waited at North Scar remained unknown.
Nella waited until the last red-cloaked figure had passed beyond the northern hedge before lowering her guard.
"Is it over?" Harl asked.
Nobody answered at once.
The western pasture was quiet. There were no horns from the valley, no goblins hammering beneath the hall, and no arrows coming from the cooperage roof. Only the wind moved through the grass.
"The raid is," Nella said at last. "The rest will take longer."
Beech could see the village beyond the mill, its roofs broken and its walls dark with smoke. Some names remained circled on Joss's list. There was still no word from Pellin's uncle, whom Nella had sent south on a pony to summon help from the king's garrison. And nobody yet knew whether the ancient gate had stopped moving for good.
He turned his recovered frying pan over in his hands. "I should wash this."
"Berta will want to see your wrist first," Nella said.
"Can I ask her to look at the pan as well? It took quite a knock."
"I expect she'll tell you which of you needs more mending."
They started towards the eastern path. Below the orchard, Beech's father's oak door still lay across the narrow drainage channel, supported by stones and old fence timber. A little girl was crossing it with her mother, one careful step after another, their hands clasped tightly. Beech stopped beside Nella and watched until they reached the other bank.
End of Chapter Eleven
The story continues.
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