[Bronze Woods] If you go down to the woods today

by **Dove Brown** on November 17th, 2015, 9:44 pm

30 Fall 515

Dove swung herself up onto the seat of the front wagon, beside the driver. He nodded to her. "You've been to this site before, they tell me," he said, jerking his thumb at the handful of knights roaming up and down the line of wagons. "I'll look to you for directions."

Dove nodded back and stretched her neck to get a good view past the horse's head. "It isn't that far. Quicker in wagons than on foot though." She avoided looking at the knights and pointed off down the road instead. "It's that way a bit, until it veers off into the trees. Might not get the wagon through."

"Well, we have spare horses, we can log the path and drag them in."

"Fair enough." Dove lapsed into silence, trying not to pick at the healing cut on her cheek, and waited for the knights to give permission to head out. Now that the fields were all harvested, some of the field labourers were being diverted to the new site, along with food and tools.

The order came finally, and the wagon driver picked up the reins and clucked his tongue at the horse. It plodded forward, and Dove braced herself against the seat as she felt the jolts from the rutted road hammering her backside. She pointed out the turn away from Syliras when they came to it and listened to the clucks and rumbles trail away behind her as the other wagon drivers steered their horses around the turn.

Now she was watching for the trail. She almost missed it, then gasped and pointed. "There. Careful, it's rough going." It looked different from last time. Wider, and there were gaps and stumps where trees had already been felled.

The wagon driver swore under his breath and steered the horse off the road onto the track. The jolting got worse.

by **Dove Brown** on November 20th, 2015, 2:11 am

The wagons stopped in a manmade clearing a short distance inside the woods, and pulled into a circle beside a row of treetrunks. Dove jumped down from the wagon seat to join the other farm labourers as they headed for the trunks. One of the escorting knights divided them into three task groups, one to carry the supplies up the hill, one to trim branches off tree trunks, and one to split trimmed trunks into rough planks.

Dove found herself assigned to make planks, which was better than tackling the slope repeatedly with heavy loads at least. She'd have prefered to be trimming, but she wasn't going to argue. She took a mallet, ready to hammer wedges into place.

One of the older, more experienced, labourers started a split by driving a small axe into the end of the first log. A wedge went into the narrow end of the split, which Dove applied the mallet to, and the split grew longer. Another wedge went in further along, and then another, each hammered to the sound of tearing wood as the log split apart. Finally it fell into two halves. The old labourer grinned, examined them, then turned one over and started another split to create quarters. Dove missed one blow. It hit the trunk and jarred her hands badly enough that she made sure not to do it a second time. The quarters went down into eighths - thin wedges suitable for fencing, plank walls, and roofs.

Dove put down her mallet and helped to carry and stack the new planks against the wagons ready for the supply haulers to carry up the hill. One of the planks stuck a splinter into her finger, and she winced. Examining the finger, she saw that the splinter was only in shallowly. She grasped it carefully with her other hand and eased it out, then sucked hard on the finger to ease the sting. She dropped the spinter itself onto the forest floor.

by **Dove Brown** on November 21st, 2015, 4:44 pm

On the second trunk, Dove found herself setting the wedges as well as hitting them. The other more experienced labourer had been redirected to felling new trees. She tried to put it in too close to the narrow end of the crack, but it bounced out again and landed on her foot. She winced, and hurriedly picked it up and tried again. This time it stuck and the crack lengthened as she hit. She grabbed another wedge, pushed it in, and hit again. This time she didn't quite hit it straight, and as a result, the crack veered off the straight too, so that she found herself with a split that only went two thirds of the way down the trunk and then split off. The axeman rolled his eyes and started another crack at the other end to split the last third off. Dove hung her head as embarrassment flooded her cheeks and hit slower and more carefully. Maybe the odd bit could be used for firewood.

She got through the rest of that log eventually, but then she was switched onto carrying duty. She handed back the mallet, sure it was because she'd wrecked the log and they didn't want any more bad planks, and hoisted a sack onto her shoulder. She trudged it up the slope to find a lot of the root mat had been cleared back and post holes cut in the stone underneath. Half the hillock already had a rough palisade around it and more posts and fencing were going up as she watched. So was a long cruck house for shelter. As she looked, one of the uprights wobbled dangerously and began to fall. She hastily dumped her sack with a pile of others and ran to help. She got there just in time to shove it back where it should be before it brought down the upper half and the people working there. One of them called down, "Thanks! Hold it steady a moment, while we fix up here. Then we'll come get it nailed down!"

Dove nodded and braced hard earned muscles to hold it in place. Even so, that gave her time to let her aching legs recover before she had to face the slope again. This wasn't so bad, she decided, tipping her head back to look up past the framework to the sky. It was better than supply hauling. But then again, anything was better than supply hauling...

by **Elias Caldera** on January 19th, 2016, 12:19 am

Behold, Your Just Reward!

Dove Brown

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Solo [Bronze Woods] If you go down to the woods today