The morning after the double-baffle granite hearth roared to life inside the bunkhouse, Giles Croft stood in the center of the muddy yard, his folding wooden ruler open in his hand. Around him lay the wreckage of seventy felled white pines. Massive trunks had been hacked to pieces by half-starved exiles wielding dull axes. That left behind jagged mounds of woodchips, splintered heartwood, and irregular baulks that no carpenter could join without a barrel of pitch.
Giles tapped the brass hinge of his rule against his thigh, his jaw tight.
A pale amber system window flickered across his outer vision.
“Sixty-five percent material loss,” Giles muttered, exhaling steam into the sharp morning air. “They’re turning four-foot clear pine logs into kindling to get a single lumpy doorstep plate. If a junior builder ran a digging site with this scrap ratio, I’d revoke their site permit before lunch.”
Behind him, Master Joiner Caleb Thorne-Wood wiped sweat from his bearded chin with the sleeve of his leather apron. Caleb stared at a pile of split logs with deep sad. He grabbed an iron broadaxe that bore two deep notches in the cutting bit.
“Lord Giles,” Caleb rasped. His voice was heavy with the tiredness of a tradesman wounded by ugly work. “The pine is straight, but the grain twists when the wedge bites. We split three trunks this dawn, and each one ran out at the middle. We have no floorboards for the sleeping quarters. Fifty people sleep on dry moss, but the ground damp still leaches through the pine boughs.”
“That’s because you’re trying to wedge lengthwise grain without a nonstop groove,” Giles said. He turned to face him. “Wood is a bundle of cellular straws bound by lignin. When you drive an iron wedge, the split follows the weakest shear plane in the grain, not your intended cut plane. If we keep splitting logs with axes, we’ll clear-cut the entire valley before we have enough space-folding lumber to floor a dog kennel.”
Giles snapped his wooden ruler shut with a dry clack.
“We’re building a sawpit. An raised timber frame stand sawpit, eight feet from doorstep to overhead frame, twenty-four feet long.”
Caleb blinked, his calloused hands freezing over his axe wooden handle. “A sawpit, my Lord? Digging an eight-foot trench in this soaked clay? The pit will fill with black water before midday.”
“Which is exactly why we’re building it above grade,” Giles replied. He pointed toward four sturdy green-pine corner posts trimmed to ten-foot lengths. “Raised heavy timber stacked timber frame. Slanted knee braces to resist transverse saw thrust. A top overhead frame framed from nine-inch squared ash baulks. And we’re hanging a six-foot two-man pit-saw from the frame.”
Captain Kenneth Drake marched up the gravel path, his iron-shod ten-foot trench-measuring rod resting against his shoulder like an infantry pike.
“Lord Master builder,” Kenneth said, snapping to attention. “The outer edge watch reports quiet woods, but the frost line creeps closer each morning. If we’re to build timber redoubts along the wooden wall, my men need breastworks, not kindling. What are your orders?”
“My orders are that you’re about to become an engine component, Captain,” Giles said. He gestured toward the timber pile. “Grab four men with spades and help Caleb seat those four foundation posts. I want two-inch true ash and pine planks by sundown.”
For four hours, the clearing rang with frontier construction.
Giles allowed no timber placed by eye. He used his brass sighting scope. He leveled the posts until spirit bubbles rested dead-center. The frame locked together with pegged half-lap joints and white oak trunnels driven home by Toby swinging an eight-pound hickory beetle. Four slanted struts formed a triangulated truss beneath the deck to resist saw racking.
By afternoon, the overhead frame stood eight feet high over a dry, gravel-bedded trench.
Then Giles brought out the saw.
It had been packed in mutton grease at the bottom of the royal supply wagon. A six-foot blade of rolled spring steel, eight inches wide at the upper end and tapering to four inches at the bottom. Its teeth were deep, aggressive rip-teeth with alternate raker gullets designed to plane away wood fiber on the downward stroke.
Master Caleb dropped to his knees before the blade, his rough fingers hovering above the polished steel teeth.
“Ancestors above,” the carpenter whispered. “The teeth are filed with alternating bevels... And set outward to left and right like the teeth of a pike.”
“One-sixteenth of an inch groove set,” Giles said, adjusting his glasses. “The set ensures the cut is wider than the blade plate. Without set, friction heats the steel, causes heat swelling, binds the blade in the groove, and buckles your tool. Borin, bring that animal fat pot.”
Master Borin Bronze-Lung, the exiled dwarf armorer whose apron reeked of charcoal, ambled over with an iron pot of rendered sheep fat. He peered at the saw teeth through his magnifying glass, grunting in grudging admiration.
“Good rolled carbon stock,” Borin rumbled. He tapped the blade until it rang with a clear musical chime. “Spring-hardened. But listen to the lad, Caleb. If you twist this blade three degrees out of true while pulling under load, you’ll put a permanent kink in forty pounds of royal steel.”
“Right,” Giles said, climbing the ladder to the upper platform. “Caleb, you’re Top-Sawyer. You stand on top of the log. You guide the blade along the chalk line, and you lift the saw on the upstroke. Kenneth, you’re Pit-Man. You stand down below in the pit. You provide the main cutting stroke on the down-pull.”
Kenneth stared down into the pit, his scarred brow furrowing. “I... I’m to stand in the earth, beneath the tree, while Master Caleb stands upon the timber?”
“It’s a raised pit, Kenneth. The ground is dry,” Giles said, checking his pocket watch. “You pull down. Gravity assists your cut. Caleb guides the line. Maintain a strict ninety-degree upright stroke. No angling, no sideways twisting force. When the groove deepens past four feet, Toby will drive an oak wedge into the cut behind the blade to keep the groove open so the log doesn’t pinch the steel. Understood?”
Kenneth dropped the timber steps into the pit. He looked up through the slatted overhead frame where Caleb stood framed against the gray autumn sky.
To the forty shivering exiles who had gathered around the outer edge, this was no mere carpentry tool.
Sister Teresa of the Pure Cistern fell to her knees in the gravel, her rosary of iron washers clinking in her trembling fingers. Her dark eyes burned with holy fire as she pointed toward the raised overhead frame.
“See,” Teresa breathed to the gathered exiles, her voice trembling with respect. “The Lord Master builder institutes the Sacred Hierarchy of the Two Spheres! The Dance of the Upper and Lower Heavens! The Sky Man stands atop the holy World-Tree, crowned in light. Meanwhile, the Earth Man descends into the Deep gap of Humility! Together, they wield the Silver Tooth of Judgment, shaving away the chaos of the ancient forest to bring forth the flat planes of Divine Truth!”
In the pit, Kenneth heard the nun’s words and straightened his spine. He gripped the heavy oak cross-handle at the bottom of the blade, his knuckles whitening.
The Earth Man, Kenneth thought, his breath fogging in the cold shadow of the frame stand. I’m the root that anchors the pillar. I take the downward burden so the heavens may remain true.
On the overhead frame above, Caleb spat on his palms, took the upper tiller handle. Then it lined up the teeth with Giles’s red-chalk line.
“Start cutting,” Giles ordered, checking his pocket watch. “Fifty strokes a minute. Keep the tempo steady.”
Caleb pushed the blade downward. Kenneth caught the rhythm, planting his boots wide in the pit and pulling down with the full, knotty power of a lifetime spent swinging broadswords.
The six-foot blade bit into the seasoned green pine with an aggressive, tearing roar. A golden stream of fragrant sawdust cascaded straight down from the cut, showering over Kenneth’s shoulders and woolen cap like warm amber meal.
“Keep it plumb, Caleb!” Giles called down from the narrow high walkway, his folding rule extended to verify the cut angle. “Kenneth, don’t jerk the handle at the bottom! Smooth gaining speed through the stroke length! Toby, drive the wedge!”
Young Toby dashed forward. He drove a narrowed ash wedge into the upper slit of the log with a wooden mallet. The groove sprang open by a quarter-inch, relieving friction on the steel blade.
The rhythm settled into an unbroken clockwork pulse that echoed through the timbers of Rustgate. Sawdust flew in golden clouds. Sweat poured down Caleb’s face, his eyes locked onto the crimson chalk line. Down in the pit, Kenneth roared with each downward heave. He inhaled pine-scented pine dust. His muscles burned as he drove the steel tooth through grain and knot alike.
Twenty minutes later, with a clean splintering crack, a twenty-foot pine board peeled away from the log. Then it dropped onto the receiving frame stands below.
Caleb dropped his handle, panting wildly, and scrambled down the ladder. He threw himself onto his knees beside the fallen timber. His trembling fingertips ran across the face of the wood.
It was two inches thick, dead uniform from end to end, the saw marks faint and rhythmic like ripples on a quiet pond.
“Two inches,” Caleb stammered, tears welling in his red-rimmed eyes. “Two inches true. Not a wave in the cut. Not a fraction out of square. Smooth as a ducal tabletop! We can floor the entire bunkhouse! We can build drying racks, wall lining, bunk beds!”
Kenneth climbed out of the pit, his hair, beard, and shoulders fully coated in fragrant yellow sawdust. He slammed his fist against his chest, saluting Giles with fierce pride.
“The wood obeys the measure, Lord Master builder,” Kenneth declared, his voice hoarse from pine dust. “The Earth and the Sky have spoken.”
“The saw cut true because you kept the blade plumb and Toby kept the groove wedged,” Giles corrected dryly. He tapped the edge of the plank with his rule. “Limit is within one-sixteenth of an inch across twenty linear feet. Perfectly acceptable for subflooring. Now roll the next log up the skids. We have forty-four more boards to cut before dark.”
By late afternoon, the bunkhouse smelled of warm pine sap. The miserable damp dirt floor had been sealed beneath two-inch tongue-and-groove pine planks, raised six inches above the wet ground base on dry cedar sleepers. The settlers lay upon their new floorboards, weeping with relief as the radiated heat from the granite hearth circulated across the smooth, dry wood.
Giles stood on the sawpit platform, noting the daily lumber yield in his pocket ledger, satisfied that the main logistics bottleneck had been resolved.
Then, a wild shout shattered the evening dusk.
“Hold the gate! Hold the gate!”
From the northern tree line, a lone figure stumbled out of the shadows of the spruce forest. He dragged his feet through the mud, falling twice before Kenneth and two armed sentries rushed out to catch him.
It was Orson Reed, the veteran frontier trapper.
His heavy elk-hide cloak was shredded to ribbons. Across his chest, deep, jagged deep cuts were crusted not with clotted blood, but with brittle, pale-blue frost crystals that glittered like shattered glass in the twilight. His lips were blue, his skin gray as animal fat, and his eyes wide with unhinged terror.
“Orson!” Kenneth caught the trapper before he collapsed into the ditch. “What attacked you? Was it a northern bear?”
“Not... Not bears,” Orson choked out, his breath rattling like dry leaves as he clutched Kenneth’s collar with frozen, blackened fingers. “The pack... The pack has crossed the gorge, Giles! They have blue crystal growing straight from their spines... Their breath freezes the iron of your traps into salt!”
Orson seized Giles’s greatcoat sleeve. His trembling voice dropped to a horrifying whisper that carried across the silent stockade.
“They don’t hunt for meat, Lord Giles... They hunt for fire. They eat the warmth right out of your bones!”