Demesne 328 - A Coldhold Interlude (Patreon)

I was glad I'd had a roof extended to the back of the Coldhold. It solved so many problems, not the least of which was how hot it got when someone was operating the tiller. The sun still managed to shine on whoever was steering during the morning, but that was a tolerable heat.

The trip downriver was routine enough that Yhorj handled the steering while everyone else was cleaning and butchering the seel we'd caught earlier… from the shade cast by the roof. I, being the ‘do everything I ask people to do’ leader that I was, wasn’t as lucky, standing at the front of the boat with only a woven reed hat to keep the sun off held in one hand as I acted as the lookout to give Liggs a break from the hot sun.

It was a necessary post, since despite how wide and deep the river was most of the time, it had submerged rocks in the most awkward places and not all of them had seels conveniently resting on them to mark them out. While I was familiar with most of the rocks between Lorian and River’s Fork, I wasn’t as knowledgeable about the rocks between River’s Fork and the hidden bay that the river let out to. Neither were the rest of the salt crew. While they’d done the trip several times already, it wasn’t yet routine enough that they could navigate it in their sleep—metaphorically—and so the watch was still kept.

Also, this way I didn't have to join in on the cleaning and butchering.

An abuse of my position? Maybe, but I had to stand out here under the sun with only a hat to keep cool with, so who was really suffering?

“You all right up there, Lord Rian?”

Looking directly in front of the ship and not seeing any signs of rocks, I risked turning to look over my shoulder at Hans and gave him a smile. “I’m fine! How about you four? Done yet?” It was very hard to tell when the process of butchering was done by smell alone.

Hans made a face. “Almost done, Lord Rian. Just washing them up and putting them in the cold box. We'll have something more to eat besides the slugs Cyuw found under those rocks this morning.”

"More for me, then!" a cheerful voice called.

Hans and I shuddered. Every time we’d had to eat slug, I told myself it was just like eating tongue, and kept calling myself a liar every time after I was again proven wrong.

“Well, remember not to wash off with bloody water,” I said, going back to facing ahead and went back to keeping a lookout, doing my best to keep covered under the hat. Just because I had darker skin than everyone else didn't mean I didn't get sunburned. Also, it was hot. Agonizingly hot. A part of me wondered if all the sweating I was doing was helping wash off Iridescence. It was technically moving water all over me, after all.

I checked my shadow, but it was still angled. Not yet noon then, which was when we were scheduled to take a dip and wash break, when we jumped into the river and splashed water on things to wash off Iridescence growth. It was particularly important for the stove and cold box bound tools, since unlike the water jet driver bound tool that propelled the Coldhold, those two bound tools weren't under water and getting constantly washed. Lori had said they should last as long as we washed the bound tools every day to free the wisps from being trapped by Iridescence, and I hoped she was right.

Still, that was a problem for later. For the moment, all I had to do was keep watch for rocks, keep the sun off me and relax.

And it was very easy to relax. True, the high-pitched bugsong coming from the iridescence-covered trees on either side of the river could be annoying when you were trying to sleep, but since I wasn't, it provided a nice counterpoint to the sound of the water rushing through the bound tool that moved the Coldhold. On either side, trees covered by iridescence swayed slightly in a breeze that I didn't feel. Probably because we were in the middle of the river. Winds caused by temperature differences went in the direction of relative cold to relative warmth. Maybe we'd feel it if the ship we were on wasn't made of bound ice that didn't exchange temperature?

Even without the wind though, the view was pretty, in the way that a raging fire was pretty even as it destroyed. The trees and rocks and the very ground shifted color as they moved past and the angle I saw things changed. The treetops seemed like a shimmering ocean as leaves and branches swayed to the wind, and the glittering fall of Iridescence dust seemed to color the very air. Bugs shone with colors as they flew through the air, the Iridescence dusting their bodies refracting the light.

The stick in my hand swung, a precise move the slammed into a bug that had gotten too close for my comfort. The stick struck solidly, and the bug went tumbling and splashed into the water. I watched the bug as the water washed away the Iridescence on it, revealing the dull, dark colors beneath that, ironically, blended with the water very well. The bug didn't struggle for long before a dark, sinuous shape emerged from below. With a splash and a flash of pale teeth, the bug was in a seel's mouth even as the fursh dove deep once more, it's long body undulating to propel it through the water.

It wasn't the only one. This far down river from the two demesne I had to help keep alive, the fursh didn't have even the little bit of caution that the seels Karina had hunted so assiduously had for anything people-shaped. If it weren't for the seel blood and offal that was still occasionally dripping into the river, the seels would have been curiously rubbing up against the hull and following in the Coldhold's wake. I'd seen it before when we'd gone down to collect salt from the ocean.

At least they weren't climbing onto the outriggers.

I reached down into the bucket next to me and splashed my arms with water to cool them down. "Rock ahead," I called, "twenty paces out! Slow and veer left!"

"Slowing and left," Yhorj acknowledged. It had taken a while for them to see the necessity of the call and respond to make sure that important instructions were heard, but everyone was following it now. It helped that the sound of the water jet driver was pervasive enough that it could be mistaken for loud, and people instinctively tried to talk over it.

I reluctantly put the hat on my head as I grabbed the solid oar, watching both the rock I'd identified and the water ahead of us, in case I needed to use to oar to try and assist in pushing the Coldhold to the side of the rock, but it wasn't necessary. "You're past it! Straighten up!"

"Straightening up!"

With the cold box filling up, we were still on the easy part of this journey. It would get a lot harder once we left the river and the cove at the mouth of it and started crossing the open ocean. Despite what we were using it for, the Coldhold wasn’t really meant to be a deep-water ship. It was too broad, and the draft too shallow. Without the outriggers on either side, extending out on the strongest wooden beams they'd had, it would have been only a matter of time before the waves capsized the ship. As it was, they had to sail near the shallows so that the waves wouldn't overwhelm them, which was why the last journey to Covehold had taken so long.

They'd managed it last time, so I was confident the Coldhold would survive the trip again. Almost certainly. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully?

It was one of my ulterior motives for getting Lori to agree to recruiting a Deadspeaker. With a Deadspeaker who, no offense to Shana, actually knew what they were doing. I wanted hulls. Solid wooden hulls! The kind could be fused to a keel and weighed down with rocks, the kind that has a draft that will work for proper sea-going water craft!

Yes, all the stuff I told Lori about food production applies too, but why only try to solve one problem with one solution? And maybe once Lori grows to trust the men or women I recruit, maybe she'll be amenable to letting them set up an allied demesne near us. With someone to keep trees growing even as they were cut down for wood, and Lori's skill with Whispering, we'd be able to really raise living standards! No more people sleeping one family to a bed! No more single room houses! No more roof repairs! Well, probably still the roof repairs, but they'd probably be done a lot faster with a Deadspeaker!

Admittedly, that was unlikely to happen any time soon. Lori had only authorized this to secure their food supply after the recent losses from the dragon, so that was going to be their priority, and if the past year was any indication, that was probably going to take a long time. However, as lord, I had to think of the future between tomorrow and Lori's far-off dreams of grandeur. I had to think of building more storage buildings, of educating our children, of keeping everyone gainfully employed and occupied, and even of the financial system neither Lori or I really want to try to build but was going to be inevitable so I might as well get ahead of it.

I knew Lori probably had her own opinions on those subjects—I even knew what some of them were—but until she actually mentioned a specific thing she wanted done out loud, I had to organize things as best as I could. The plans for teaching the children how to read and write were already in place, ready to be enacted when I got back.

Hopefully Lori would let me hold classes in the Dungeon. Learning was hard enough without attaching bad memories of being hot and bored to it too.

Those were all future problems, though. Right now, my problems consisted of washing off Iridescence, not getting heatstroke or sunburn, and keeping us from crashing into any rocks. And in the near future, I… well, I had to figure out how to sell wispbeads in sufficient quantities that we actually made a profit on this trip. I was already partly resigned to the thought that we might have to sell directly to Covehold's government and let them worry about distributing the wispbeads as a fuel for bound tools. I hoped I didn't have to do that, but if we became successful and their Dungeon Binder couldn't reproduce what Lori had done in making beads, it was only a matter of time before they passed laws to get their cut of our potential bead sales.

…

Well, that was a future problem as well. For now, I had an easy day in front of me—the sun not withstanding—after almost a month of stress and work.

I reached back down to the bucket next to me and splashed water on my arms again, watching the colors of the Iridescence shift on the wind, and hoped that Umu, Mikon and Riz were getting along without me. And that Lori wasn't getting too aggravated. And Shana wasn't working herself to the bone. And—

Stupid worries. Leave me alone, I'm resting!