The track south from Delta Port ceased to be a road within two miles of the outer wharves. It degenerated into a precarious ridge of crushed oyster shells and compacted gray gravel, winding through a lonely maze of salty marshes, tidal mudflats, and sluggish tidal creeks.
The mist had thickened into a dense, clinging sea-fog that smelled of rotting bladder-wrack, cold salt water. The rotten-egg gas that bubbled up from stale peat pockets beneath the mud. Clear sight was reduced to fifty paces. The sun was an indistinct, milky coin hanging overhead, providing neither warmth nor direction.
Tomas walked with his staff in his right hand. He tested the edge of the shell ridge before every third step. His boots were heavy with cold mud that clung to the leather welts like wet bread dough. That added three pounds of dead weight to each foot. His left wrist brace was damp, the calfskin absorbing the salt moisture until it chafed against the puckered ridge of his scar.
Behind him, Sile Rook walked with the heavy, steady, unrushed pace of a soldier who had spent twenty years marching through worse muck than this. The veteran held his oak tall body-shield slung across his back, its oiled canvas cover beaded with moisture, his iron-wood hooked pruning blade balanced easily across his right shoulder.
“The water is salty here,” Nessa observed, pausing by a wooden mileage post that leaned twenty degrees off plumb in the ditch. The post was black with water-rot, crusted with barnacles up to the four-foot mark. She unslung her brass sound horn, holding the small end to her right ear and pointing the wide flare out into the fog toward the western flats.
“What do you hear?” Tomas asked, stopping beside her.
“Tide surge,” Nessa replied without lowering the horn. “The flood is pushing through the outer barrier spit. It sounds like water pouring through a broken under-road drain—a flat, sucking hiss. It’s hitting a blocked path two miles out. Probably the old weir.”
“How far to the Causeway?” Sile asked, glancing into the gray murk.
“The stone begins at Toll-Post One,” Nessa said, tucking the horn back beneath her arm. “Mile Three of the old survey. If the roadbed is intact, it runs straight as an arrow across the salt-pans all the way to Sunken Pilings. Ten miles of dressed dark rock slabs laid on a timber mattress. The empire spent twelve thousand crowns building it sixty years ago so wagons could reach the coastal salt-houses without sinking to the axles.”
“And now?” Tomas asked.
“Now it’s under four feet of un-dredged silt,” Nessa said, her voice dry and devoid of sentiment. “The trade ring only maintains the upper three inches of corduroy timber they laid over the stone. Just enough to run their toll wagons, and just narrow enough that two freight carts can’t pass without one dropping a wheel into the salt mud.”
A sudden sound drifted through the fog from the south. A harsh, metal clink followed by the sharp crack of a wagon driver’s whip and the exhausted, bellowing grunt of a draft ox.
Tomas signaled with his hand, dropping into a crouch beside a clump of salt-bleached rushes. Sile moved up beside him. His hooked pruning blade dropped into a ready guard, the steel hook catching a faint glint of gray light.
Through the mist, fifty yards ahead, a heavy freight wagon was mired up to its hubs in gray clay.
The wagon was a high-sided grain wain, its canvas tilt stained with soot and rain, loaded with sacks of coarse delta salt. A team of four heavy brown oxen stood up to their knees in the sucking mud, their nostrils steaming, their heads hanging low in utter tiredness. Beside the lead ox, a man in a ragged frieze coat was wildly levering a split-pine pole under the left rear hub. Meanwhile, a woman in a gray wool shawl stood by the traces. She held a crying child against her breast.
Three paces away, on the dry crown of the shell ridge, two men sat on horses.
They weren’t river commoners. They wore brigandines of boiled leather heavy with iron plates, heavy riding boots, and short swords sheathed in black grease-leather sword sheaths. Across their chests were pinned the crossed-oar badges of the Silt-Road Trade ring.
“I told you, carter,” the rider on the black mare said. His voice carried the bored, practiced cruelty of an enforcement court guard. “The transit toll for a four-ox wain is two silver crowns. You paid eight silver coins at the outer post. That leaves twelve silver coins outstanding. Until the silver is in my pouch, you don’t use the corduroy bypass.”
“My hub is split, master!” the carter begged, his breath wheezing as he strained against the wooden pole. “The tide is coming up the ditch! In twenty minutes the water will be over the floorboards! The salt will melt where it sits! Forty bushels of fine pan-salt, all I have to pay my winter rent!”
“Then you should have brought silver instead of promises,” the rider replied, adjusting his reins with an iron-studded glove. “Pay the twelve silver coins, or unhitch your beasts and leave the wain. Trade ring rules are posted at the mile-marker.”
Tomas stood up from the rushes.
“Stay behind the cart, Olla,” Tomas said quietly to the apprentice. He glanced at Sile. “No steel unless they draw.”
“Steel is expensive,” Sile rumbled, stepping onto the shell ridge. “Oak is free.”
Tomas walked down the track, his iron-shod cart driver boots striking the shell gravel with a firm, rhythmic crunch. The riders turned their horses at the sound. Their hands dropped naturally to the handles of their short swords.
“Who goes there?” the rider on the black mare challenged, turning his mount across the path. “This is private trade ring right-of-way. Turn about.”
Tomas stopped ten paces away. He kept his hands in plain view. His right held his staff, his left resting lightly against the buckles of his wrist brace.
“This is the Great Delta Causeway,” Tomas said, his voice flat and clear. “Chartered as a Sovereign Public Highway in Year 017 under the Great Delta Maintenance Bond. Transit across crown causeways is free to all working freight carriers under the Common Road Act.”
The rider sneered, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “Another tavern lawyer from the city. Look at the mud under your feet, boy. You see any crown highway? You’re standing on trade ring timber. We laid the logs, we keep the ditch, and we collect the silver. Move off before I lay this quirt across your face.”
Tomas didn’t move. He reached into his courier satchel, withdrew a stamped sheet of thick parchment, and held it up.
“I’m Tomas Reed, licensed carrier and custodian of the Office of Unfinished Claims,” Tomas said. “I’m here under lawful warrant to audit the condition of the Causeway Maintenance Bond. Under Section Twelve of the Road Act, any vehicle mired in a public right-of-way due to negligent ditch upkeep is entitled to emergency clearance without toll, debt, or surcharge.”
“Section Twelve?” the rider laughed, drawing his short sword four inches from its sword sheath with a sharp, oily click. “I’ll give you Section Twelve across your shoulders, porter.”
Before the rider could clear his blade, Sile Rook took two long strides forward.
The veteran didn’t swing his hooked pruning blade. He drove the bottom rim of his heavy oak tall body-shield straight into the shoulder of the black mare with a dull, bone-rattling thud. The horse grunted, shying wildly sideways into the ditch, its hooves churning the wet clay. The rider swore, clutching at the handle knob to keep his saddle as the mare slid down the slick embankment into knee-deep mud.
The second rider reached for his sword, but stopped instantly. The curved, razor-sharp beak of Sile’s hooked pruning blade was hovering two inches from his throat, held as steady as an iron fence-post by Sile’s scarred, massive arms.
“Keep the steel in the leather, lad,” Sile rasped softly. “Salt mud is hard on blade polish.”
Tomas turned to the carter, who was staring in wide-eyed shock from beside his bogged wagon.
“Take your pole out from under the hub,” Tomas commanded. “Nessa, drop the measuring chains. Sile, loop the three-strand thick ship rope to the rear axle.”
Tomas unslung his ash-wood pack frame, setting it on the dry gravel. From the side loops, he uncoiled twenty deep-water lengths of heavy, three-strand manila hemp rope. Tarred, stiff, and smelling of pine pitch. He tied a clean bowline knot around the wagon’s iron axle-tree, tossing the free end to the carter.
“We have twelve minutes before the tide hits the ditch,” Tomas said, rolling up his sleeves and adjusting his calfskin brace. “Heave on the count of three.”
Nessa set her boots into the gravel beside Tomas. Her small hands gripped the coarse hemp behind his right shoulder. She didn’t speak. She braced her hip against the slope, her knuckles whitening as the manila bit into her palms.
“One,” Tomas called, setting his heels into the shell ridge.
The hemp rope tightened, shedding droplets of water as the tension pulled the coils rigid. In his left forearm, the gristle of his scar burned with a sharp, searing ache. But the calfskin brace held the bones lined up.
“Two!”
The four oxen lowered their heads, their shoulder muscles bunching under the yoke. The carter cracked his whip against the damp air.
“Three! Heave!”
Tomas threw his whole body backward, using his legs and lower back to lever the load. The manila rope groaned, fibers popping under the huge strain. For three painful heartbeats, the wagon refused to budge. It was locked in the suction of the delta clay. Then, with a loud, wet sucking gasp, the left rear wheel pulled free of the mud. It rose onto the split-alder corduroy logs with a heavy crunch.
The oxen lunged forward, dragging the salt wain onto the firm crown of the ridge. Just then, the first gray wave of the tidal surge began to lap into the ditch.
The rider in the ditch hauled his muddy mare back onto the road. His face was dark with fury, but Sile Rook’s hooked pruning blade remained balanced in his path.
“Take your wagon down to the shell mound, carter,” Tomas said, his chest heaving, his fingers slowly uncurling from the rope. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “The road is open.”