On the outer wharf of the turning basin, the timber gallows creaked under the weight of three stranded birch trunks. The wood was waterlogged, black with river rot, and heavy as cast iron.
Eren Tal stood fifteen paces back from the churned mud lip of the bank. His feet planted was wide on a platform of split-oak planks he had laid down that morning. In his hands he held a twenty-foot ash pole tipped with a forged three-prong grappling hook. A three-quarter-inch hemp tow-line, stiff with boiled linseed oil, ran from the base of the iron shank through an oak snatch-block lashed to the gallows post.
“Don’t lean out over the wash, Bran!” Eren roared at a young carter whose boots were sliding toward the foam-flecked edge. “You step in that mud. The undertow will have you through the under-road drain screen before your mates can spit. Use the pole length! That’s why we cut twenty feet of timber!”
Bran stepped back, his chest heaving, his face pale beneath a spattering of brown river grit. He planted his heels into the planking and threw his weight onto the hemp haul-line.
Beside the gallows, thirteen-year-old Tavi sat on an overturned nail keg, an iron tally slate balanced on his knees. In his right hand, the boy gripped the lanyard of an eight-inch brass stop bell hung from an ash tripod. His left hand moved step by step across the slate with a blunt chunk of white soapstone, recording the time, the…
