Trench-Lines

What brought the realm's chief genealogist up the Crown Ridge beside the very raider who had smashed the western sluice three hours earlier? Torbrand rested his forearm on the pommel of his hazel spade, favoring his swollen right knee while the drizzle thickened into grease upon the turf. He needed two wagonloads of cured hazel poles before the midnight tide turned the ditch into porridge, and he did not need a prince and an inland captain trampling the green revetment while twenty royal spearmen watched from the pavilion crest.

Valgard halted at the ditch lip, his calves caked in gray silt. The bronze billhook hooked over his shoulder caught the flare of a pitch torch stuck in the parapet. Behind him, Askelund paused on the lower timber balk, his linen tunic soaked black at the shoulders. The nine-fathom horsehair memory cord hung in wet coils from the young man's wrist, slapping against the eel-skin cylinder beneath his ribs.

"You took your time climbing," Torbrand said, keeping his spade planted in the loam. "A ditch does not hold its slope while men stroll through the bracken."

"The slope will not matter by daybreak, digger," Valgard said, his voice raspy with peat smoke. "The lower flats are taking water through the willow hurdles. Two hundred children sleep on wet heather because your royal masters demand dry ground for a corpse."

"Seven cubits," Ormvid croaked from the bottom of the cut, paring a hazel pin with a notched bronze draw-knife. He did not look up. "Three spans of gravel, two of sweet peat, two of clay cap. Give her twenty and the spirits turn sour, and sour earth rots a barley seed faster than salt. Any child with teeth knows that."

Valgard spat into the slurry. "Tell your pin-carver to save his breath. We brought no axes for his gray beard."

Torbrand looked at Askelund. The young genealogist had not touched the tuning rod at his belt. His knuckles were gray from chill, clutching the greased eel-skin wrapping with the stubborn grip of an apprentice holding a guide-line.

"You left the pavilion without an escort, Singer," Torbrand said. "Bodvar's spearmen are drinking small beer beneath the awning. If they see you sharing a ditch bank with the man who burned the western sluice, they will have your skin pegged to an alder rail before midnight."

"Bodvar does not hold the lineage," Askelund said, his voice worn to a harsh whisper. "And Bodvar did not see what Astridr sealed four nights before the fever took her."

He drew the cylinder free, pulled the wooden stopper, and shook an oblong roll of sheepskin onto his palm. He held it out across the cut, where the torchlight showed dark wax pressed flat with a notched signet.

"The raven-bill," Torbrand said.

"Her private mark," said Askelund. "The third claw has the nick she took from a hunting spear at twelve winters. It is her hand, Torbrand. She gave the Crown Ridge to Valgard's people. Two hundred sacks of winter seed-grain and forty yearling bullocks, signed before three witnesses, in exchange for every yard of turf between the western ditch and the salt creek."

Torbrand looked at the wax. He had cut sod for Astridr's grandfather, and he had seen the queen notch seven boundary stones with that bronze ring. The seal was only pig fat and beeswax, but the debt on the parchment was real.

"She sold the grave beneath her feet," Torbrand murmured.

"She bought porridge for children who had chewed willow bark since the harvest surge," Valgard growled, leaning on his billhook. "We hauled the grain to the royal barges six days ago, before her fever turned black. Now her kin sit on the crest with bronze blades, calling us wolves because we came for the terrace she traded away."

"The ridge belongs to the line," Askelund said, staring at the mud between his shoes. "The songs say no sovereign may sleep in salt mud. If we do not seal her barrow in sweet turf, the dynasty becomes water-wraiths, and the songs dissolve."

"Your songs will not bake a bannock," Valgard snapped. "My people are hauling skiffs into the gorse because the outer bank is slipping into the creek. Give us the ridge, or we take the balks down and drag your queen into the reeds."

Torbrand stepped between them, driving the bronze edge of his spade two inches into the clay berm. The dull bite of metal meeting hard blue silt rang through the drizzle.

"Neither of you touches a balk on this cut," Torbrand said.

Valgard stepped forward, his billhook shifting. "You have six old men with spades, digger. I have four score peat-cutters at the lower weir with firebrands."

"And you have three feet of salt water rising behind them on the midnight flood," Torbrand said. "You think you can dig barley terraces on this crest before morning? Look at that bank."

He pointed the hazel shaft toward the western drainage cut.

"That cut is six cubits wide and four deep," Torbrand said. "We threw eighty sledges of heavy blue marine clay out of that trench since noon. It sits behind the hurdles in two heaps. If you fight for this crest, you spend three days burying spearmen, and the spring surge drowns every sack of seed grain Mother Svanhild has hidden under her hides."

Valgard narrowed his eyes, studying the glistening heap of grayish-blue mud. "Clay does not stop an ocean."

"Brushwood does not stop a puddle," Torbrand retorted. "Your people built their bund out of birch scrub and surface turf. It leaks because the water finds the stem-holes. Blue clay has no stems. Take eighty sledges of our ditch-spoil down to your hollow right now, ram it into the face of your brushwood bund, and tamp it with flat balks. It will hold four feet of hydrostatic head without weeping a drop. Your seed barley stays dry. Your huts stay above the brine."

The inland chieftain stood motionless, the billhook resting idle against his shoulder. A practical ditcher knew the temper of earth, and Valgard was an earth-man before he was a raider.

"And what does your queen get for eighty sledges of clay?" Valgard asked.

"Timber," Torbrand said. "You have two wagons of five-year split hazel revetment poles behind the alder copse. I saw the peel-marks when your scouts came through the scrub at midday. I need two hundred poles to line the burial vault and thirty oak stakes to key the sill into bedrock. You give me the hazel, and my boys load your sledges with clay."

Ormvid stood up from his basket, hobbling over to the spoil heap with a short hazel rod. He waved the stick under Valgard's nose.

"Make sure they are cured hazel, not green suckers cut under a waxing moon," Ormvid barked. "Green hazel twists like an eel when the frost bites. If my revetment bows because you brought sap-rotted switches, I will come down to your camp and crack your shins with a spade-handle."

A dry twitch worked at Valgard's mouth. "The poles were cut two winters ago on the high gravel terraces. They ring when you strike them with a bronze wedge."

"Then we have a trade," Torbrand said.

Askelund looked up from the parchment, his eyes hollow. "Torbrand. The charter. What do we do with her promise?"

Torbrand scraped blue mud from his spade with his thumb.

"Astridr promised the ridge to the living, Singer," the old builder said. "And her cousins want her buried in seven cubits of glory to keep their own names grand. Neither side asked the water what it intends to take. Roll your sheepskin back into its sleeve. Tomorrow the ridge may belong to barley, or it may belong to the sea. Tonight, it belongs to the spades."

Valgard lowered his billhook, turning toward the lower path. "Eighty sledges of blue clay. If your boys throw marsh muck instead of bottom silt, the timber wagons stay in the alders."

"My crew cuts true," Torbrand said. "Geirmund! Get the wicker sledges out. We have digging to finish before the moon turns."

Before Valgard took two paces down the bank, a heavy, muffled crack tore through the darkness from the seaward horizon.

The sound was not wind or rain. It was the low, grinding roar of tearing earth and collapsing wattle, rolling across the outer salt marshes like thunder over cold water. Down in the refugee hollow, three signal horns blew a short, frantic blast.

Torbrand stiffened, his fingers locking around the hazel shaft of his spade. Out where the delta met the gray sea, the outer dyke had just broken.