The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 91 Three Days to Leave

The rider nailed his warning to a post while Keela stood beside it.

She waited until he had finished hammering.

“Are you ordering people to leave, or asking whether anyone lives here?”

The man kept one hand near his sword.

“Clear the crossing shelter before the fifty ninth evening. Stores supporting the fortress are subject to destruction.”

“Children sleep there when the road floods.”

“Then move them.”

He rode away without looking at the roof.

By noon on the fifty sixth day, his warning lay on Daren's table. Keela had brought the entire post, cut short above its buried end, because she would not let anyone later argue about the words or where they had been displayed.

Daren read them while Pella changed the wrapping around his knee.

The proposed list had become an order against one named place. Reedbank's intake and the other sites remained threatened, but no matching notices had yet been seen there.

“What about the cart?” he asked.

Osric had watched it from the eastern ridge. Four barrels under wet hides. Long iron hooks. A narrow chute at the front, with a blackened clay mouth and a spirit contact behind it. Not a wagon carrying torches. A machine built to push burning pitch beneath roofs while its operators stayed under cover.

Daren remembered one at Corren.

The memory arrived with the smell of scorched hair.

“Has it moved?”

“Only across the camp. One wheel wobbled. They're bracing the axle.”

That fault could buy time. It could also be repaired before morning.

He asked Osric whether any civilians had been near the cart when it was tested.

“Two carriers. They were ordered back.”

“Did the operators seem frightened?”

“One did. Kept checking the hide above his head.”

Daren remembered that habit too. A weapon that threw fire made enemies of wind and bad carpentry as readily as it made enemies of people. Its operators would know weaknesses the watchers could only guess at. That did not mean they would abandon their orders when shouted at from a roof.

He marked the uncertain points on the drawing: range, wind, supply plate, stopping method. The list was longer than the list of things they knew.

Pella tightened the last wrap around his knee.

“Don't turn uncertainty into a reason to walk down there yourself.”

“I was thinking about it.”

“I know.”

She gave him the staff and waited until he used it to stand without twisting. Even anger had to pass through the body carrying it.

Daren asked for Brida.

She came with the crossing inspection in her hand. The reset fastening held under a cautious test. Foot traffic could resume with watchers and one person on the narrow span at a time. Cargo would cross only in divided shoulder loads. Soldiers still watched the near approach intermittently.

“Can we bring the shelter down ourselves?” he asked.

Keela's face hardened.

“You want me to finish their work?”

“I want to know whether the roof can be saved before they burn it over your stores.”

Brida looked at the drawing. Pegged rafters, removable thatch panels, a stone back wall. Some could be carried away. The central beam would take too many hands while patrols watched.

Keela sat down slowly.

Her shelter had begun with three posts and a blanket when the crossing was new. She had added the roof after a traveler died in freezing rain. Daren had never asked its history. He heard it now because losing a structure was not the same as losing what people had made there.

“We move the bedding first,” she said. “Then the tools. Nobody sleeps under that roof tonight.”

“Your choice,” Daren said.

“Yes. Remember that when your people arrive to help.”

He did.

They sent warnings to the other marked sites. Ysra arranged watchers at Reedbank's intake without gathering the hidden households into one visible crowd. Cinderbank's charcoal went into smaller caches on dry ground. The ridge fodder owners moved what they could carry and left a watcher for what they could not.

Hearthfast supplied six volunteers for the shelter work. Brida would lead them. Daren stayed behind because his knee could not safely manage another descent.

Being useful from a bench had never felt so much like abandoning someone.

Selka found him watching the workers leave.

“You sent the person who knows roofs.”

“I know.”

“You don't have to enjoy it.”

He rested his hands on the staff and watched until the last shoulder basket disappeared.

That afternoon, Captain Krail's reply came to their request for the registration terms. Households entering the station would receive food pending assignment. The document allowed separation of able workers from dependents during transport.

Daren read that sentence aloud twice.

No one asked whether he still intended to let people choose. He posted the whole reply where they could read it or have it read to them. Then he put a bench beside the notice so nobody had to stand alone while deciding.

At supper, fifty four pounds of grain remained.

Orin brought him a drawing of the shelter. The boy had never slept there, but Ress had described the sloping roof and the bench beneath it.

“Can Brida make it again?”

“If we keep enough wood.”

Orin looked at the monastery beyond the wall.

“Why do they get to choose what stays?”

Daren folded the drawing carefully.

“They don't get the last choice.”

From the west, a yellow warning cloth appeared above the trees. Brida's party had reached the shelter. Another cloth followed, lower and moving fast.

A patrol had reached it too.