Raven Meadows's Arc

Chapter 17 of 25

Borin's words stayed with Raven all night. Not enough hands. Not enough time. She counted the huts at dawn. Six still stood cold, six mouths breathing fog, six floors that would freeze the people asleep on them. Building them one by one was too slow. She needed a different shape for the whole problem. She found Borin splitting stone at the marsh edge. "Stop building huts," she said. He set down his hammer and waited. "Six small hearths, six small fires, six roofs to lose heat through. It's stupid. What if we built one long house? One great hearth. Everyone under one roof." Borin looked at the cold huts. He pressed his palm flat to the frozen ground. "Sink the floor," he said. "Dirt holds heat better than air. Stone walls above. One chimney down the middle." He picked the hammer back up. "Faster than six. If I had beams. I've no one to fell trees." "I know a beaver," said a voice at the gate. Buck Timberworth stood there in red and black flannel, six axes strapped across his back. He had come through the reeds days ago and taken a token, splitting rails for wages like the rest. Raven had barely spoken to him. He was passing through. He was on his way to fell some famous tree deep in a forest, and he never stopped talking about it. "I fell trees," Buck said. "Straight beams. Clean cuts. How many?" "Enough for a longhouse," Raven said. "Roof and walls. Before the deep frost." Buck looked at the sky, then the treeline. "Two days," he said. "Then I go north. The Ironbark won't wait." "Two days is more than I had this morning," Raven said. Buck unstrapped a cracked-handle axe wrapped in river reed. He walked to the nearest tall pine and swung. Chips flew. The tree came down in the time it took Borin to mark a wall line. Buck moved to the next without a word. By noon he had felled a stand and stripped the trunks smooth. Borin's six apprentices dug the pit floor while Raven hauled stone. They laid the base low in the earth. Buck raised the beams overhead, notching each into the stone. Dotty came with her cart and hung heavy cloth on every finished wall. The great central hearth rose course by course. When Borin lit it, the fire climbed clean up the chimney and warmth spread through the whole sunken hall. By the second dusk it stood finished. Rows of bunks lined the stone. The pit floor held the heat. Fifty people crowded in and stopped shivering at once. The six cold huts sat empty behind it. Buck strapped his axes back on. "Done," he said, and walked north through the reeds. Raven stood in the warm hall. She had beaten the frost for everyone under one roof. But fifty people now slept in one room, and Willow had warned her the arrivals would keep coming. One roof meant one target. And come spring, fifty strangers packed together would need more than warmth to stay one people.