At the lower crossing of the Silt River. There, the braided channels came together into the deep shipping reach below Bellwether, the great timber ferry was loading its mid-day passage. The flat-bottomed barge was eighty arm-lengths from stem to stern, its oak bulwarks scarred by the iron bands of wagon hubs, its central deck paved with ribbed fir planks to give purchase to draft oxen.
Tomas and Nessa stood on the gravel approach. She waited as a string of six pack-ponies stepped carefully across the hinged ramp. The ferryman was not Ivo—the old boatman had long since retired to an orchard above the high-water line—but a broad-shouldered younger man named Karr, whose forearms bore the deep, purple lines of cable burns. He worked the great hemp tracking line with bare hands, snubbing the three-inch thick ship rope around a polished locust-wood bitt with easy care.
“Ho, travelers,” Karr called out. He wiped river sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Room for two foot-passengers on the port quarter, if you don’t mind the smell of cured hides from the Brook End tanneries.”
“The hides smell of clean hemlock bark,” Tomas said, stepping onto the ramp. “A man who has carried wet animal fat through the low streets doesn’t complain about honest leather.”
