For the first few days Nedric could get on with his life with hope. He buried himself in his work a bit more than normal. The number of planks he impressed was more than sufficient to cover the days he had been absent. He checked his colleagues’ work and was gratified to see that they hadn’t slacked off, even though he hadn’t been around.

It was the evenings when he was at his lowest. He didn’t want to think about Elsebeth it only worried him and there was nothing more he could do until the rangers returned. He wasn’t in the mood to socialise and his friends and colleagues seemed to realise this and left him alone. He spent a lot of time juggling. Whilst he was engaged in this pursuit he wasn’t thinking about anything else.

He was working on juggling four clubs. Fortunately he had talked a wood turner into making him a set of clubs that were comfortable and used a light but strong wood. His old set were much heavier and tended to hurt his hands.

Most people assumed that he needed to throw the clubs so that they alternated hands. He had learned with four balls that it was unnecessary. It was just two thrown with each hand and no crossing over. This was fairly easy with balls, when it came to clubs it was much harder. Juggling two clubs with his left hand was bad enough and two with the right hand was easy. It was the two combined that was a disaster. The left hand throws tended to drift towards the right and when the clubs collided it was generally right above his face. He spent a lot of time ducking. Sometimes he wasn’t quick enough and a heavy wooden club would hit him.

He really couldn’t say why he persisted with the juggling other than it was enjoyable when he overcame the difficulties of getting his throws as accurate as they needed to be. It was also good exercise, as the dull ache in his arm muscles testified.

When the light began to fail he returned to his room. Lying on his bed he would think through the events of the capture and his escape. Was there any way that he could have attacked Holkum whilst Melkum was in the shed? He tried to convince himself that he could have caught the other off guard but he really knew that there was no chance. He might have been taught a number of ways to defend himself whilst at the keep but he lacked experience, whilst the mercenary had fought against all sorts.

A ranger had been assigned to Nigh now. He arrived a couple of days after the other two and had his own building. He mainly seemed to be offering ways of defending the works from any sort of attack. Nedric felt that this was a little unlikely but everyone was nervous. One of them had been taken and so they all wanted to see something was being done to stop it happening again.

At the moment no one was moving in groups of less than four. It was inconvenient and already people were expressing their dissatisfaction with the arrangement. Some were suggesting that they just built a large wall around the works and spent all their time within the walls. Alhern seemed to be agreeing with this idea and large wooden stakes were being sharpened and put in place all around the site.

Nedric wasn’t sure that this was the right approach. He couldn’t see how hiding from a problem, whichever way you hid, would do any good. At the moment he couldn’t see any way in which to help Elsebeth or stop another kidnapping. He also couldn’t think of any way of preventing anybody being captured if the person trying was determined enough. No one could hide behind walls all the time without being a prisoner. He felt it would be better if the need for the walls were lessened. With that in mind he decided to talk to this new ranger and ask his advice.

Walking across the site of the works, Nedric was struck by how much had been done to the place in the year that he had lived there. He hadn’t really noticed it at the time but the area had probably tripled in size. That wasn’t counting the housing, which was only just beginning to be built and promised to double the area again within the year.

The thought of trying to keep it all behind one wall seemed even less likely than it had the previous night. The wall would forever have to be pulled down and rebuilt. It wasn’t even as if they were at war and needed to repel invaders. This was an area in the middle of a forest. Yes a small army could capture it, but Esteril wasn’t at war with anyone and even if it was, the majority of the people here were from Setherland. No country, Nedric knew, would want to take on a war with two of its neighbours at the same time.

He knocked on the door of the building assigned to the ranger. There was a shout of assent so he entered. The ranger was inside, sat behind a desk and looking uncomfortable with the situation. He was older than the other two but had the same dark looks, albeit that his hair was more grey than brown. The air of menace was the same and his eyes seemed to look straight through Nedric.

“Excuse me sir but do you mind if I ask you a few questions about safety?”

“I’ve nothing better to do.”

“Do you think that building defences will stop another kidnapping?”

“No.”

That took Nedric aback; he hadn’t expected such an honest answer.

“Why are you encouraging the building of walls then?”

“Because there are other dangers to a wealthy but isolated village other than kidnapping. My job is to see that as many citizens as possible are as safe as possible. It isn’t to guard against one specific threat which is particularly difficult to guard against and requires more rangers than are available.”

Nedric really wanted to ask what these other dangers were but his purpose in coming here was to find a way to reduce the chance of anyone else being kidnapped and he was not to be diverted.

“So what can the people here do about being captured?”

“Be vigilant. That’s why I suggested groups of four for a while. It won’t work for long but it will make a point. I’ll start giving classes on self-defence soon. That still won’t stop the possibility but it makes things harder. It is much easier to capture someone who makes themselves a victim. Of course when people relax then it will be that much easier again. By that time we should have much more idea about who took her and why.”

“Have you any ideas at the moment?”

“No more than you. She doesn’t seem to be an obvious target. All I can do at the moment is to try and stop others becoming victims. All you can do is wait and hope. I’m sorry there isn’t any more than that.”

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For a moment, Nedric could see in the ranger’s eyes that he was indeed sorry. Then it was as if a mask had been thrown over him and he was again cool, detached and emotionless. Nedric took the hint and left.

The days passed. After the first week Nedric’s hope began to fade a little. Instead of juggling in the evening he took to working later. Partly because the techniques needed for impressing completely removed him from a life made less and less endurable and partly because nothing else seemed worth doing.

After a while he started to explore the limits of his talent. He knew he could handle two planks at a time, could he manage three? He could, although it was much harder. Four? Perhaps with a lot of practice but not at the moment. What about speeding the process by any method? This seemed to be the restriction.

The whole process of impressing worked by doing one action and getting it to repeat. What would happen if you tried the same process in two parts of the plank at the same time? Would it be faster? Since the length of time didn’t seem to alter whatever the length of plank Nedric could not see how it would speed things up but he thought he might as well try.

He started after normal work times on the eleventh day after the rangers left. The next day would make it two weeks. If it worked quicker than normal then it should be finished before he got there the next morning. It would be something to think about when he arose. Hopefully it would make a distraction from his normal worries over Elsebeth. If everything went normally instead then the plank would still be ready to use the next day, it would just have taken him twice as long to prepare it.

He chose a shed well away from the living area. It wasn’t that he was worried that anyone was watching him; it was more the case that people kept trying to get him involved in the social activities and he wanted nothing to do with them at the moment.

The shed he entered had been freshly stocked with planks. This made it easier as he could use any of them, rather than having to assess which planks had already been impressed. In the past it had occasionally happened that a plank being impressed was left too close to one that had already processed. No one knew anything was wrong for twelve hours and then there had been two planks trying there best to force away from each other.

Sometimes the planks had been able to move sufficiently that one or both of them would go flying through the air. The problem came when an unknowing person had come to move planks that had not had the pressures released. A number of injuries had occurred and one fatality. After that all planks had the date they were impressed written upon them. Workers could then see clearly if two were stacked too close.

There were still a few mistakes made but the plank handlers generally noticed these. It was part of Nedric’s job to make a note of which impressors made mistakes and how often. If someone was being particularly careless he had in the past had a little talk with him. Apart from working slowly it was about the only thing an impressor could do wrong as they rarely saw another person when working.

Nedric chose a particular plank, notable for the absence of knotholes and set to work. Reaching the required frame of mind was harder than it had been two weeks before but he had been doing this for a year. He was fairly quick in changing the plank composition when he had pictured it in his mind. This was the part of the process that got faster with practice. The final stage, where the process was made to repeat itself, was always a little tricky but again it went smoothly.

Keeping the plank still pictured in his mind he chose another point at which to start. He reckoned that to get the fastest effect he should have the two points at opposite ends of the plank. When he had finished he checked how long the process had taken, about three quarters of an hour.

That was a good time. Normally he reckoned on doing two planks an hour. The process was speeded by him only having to picture the one plank rather than break his concentration and then learn a second plank. Of course it meant that he was slower for one plank so he could produce less planks over a given time span but if his theory worked then he could produce a single plank much faster.

He decided to have an early night so that he could check the plank early the next morning. He had almost managed to spend an evening without agonising worry about what had happened to Elsebeth. Maybe the next day she would turn up with the rangers and he would have his experiment to show her.

He tried to tell himself that he was not worried and that everything would be settled as he lay in his bed. As each day progressed the words he said to himself sounded less convincing. If the rangers didn’t appear soon then he would soon be giving up all hope of ever seeing Elsebeth again.

* * *

The next morning he arose with the dawn. Quickly freshening himself for the day he made his way to the shed. A quick test of the plank and then he could take breakfast. Today he felt confident that the rangers would return with good news. That he had felt that way each on each of the last six mornings only to be disappointed did not worry him yet. Later in the day he would start to worry more but not now.

He went to the shed he had been working in the night before after retrieving his testing board from his office. Testing a plank was easy. All you had to do was hold a small, previously impressed plank over the one being tested. If the small plank was repulsed all the way along the plank then it was properly impressed. If there was no repulsion at all then the plank was untouched and if there was repulsion only from one area then the plank was going through the process. Nedric had got to the point where he could tell by the strength of repulsion how long a plank had to go before it was finished.

When he tested his plank he was sadly disappointed. He could tell that he had set two points in progress but there was still at least an hour before completion. That was just the same length of time it normally took but for extra effort, hardly an experiment worth making. He walked away unhappily. Suddenly the day seemed to only promise gloom. He would check the plank later that day to see if there was anything unusual about it but he didn’t see any future in his idea.

He went to break his fast and then collected the previous days paperwork to be passed on to Alhern. As he was walking over to the supervisors office the main workforce were arriving to start the day.

Most people lived inside the works but away from the manufacturing area. There was a wooden barrier between the two that reduced some of the noise. The workers came through a gate at one end of the barrier, exchanging pleasantries and greetings with their colleagues as they were funnelled through the opening before separating to go to their respective work places.

Along with the workmen moved a tall, dark person. At first Nedric assumed it was the ranger who had been stationed at Nigh. As the man moved closer he could tell it was Daiga. Where were Scabad and Elsebeth? A hundred scenarios rushed through his mind, none of them good. He ran over to the ranger who greeted him with a frown.

“Where is she? What’s happened? Where’s Scabad?”

“Whoa, calm down and I’ll tell you what I know.”

By this time Alhern had made an appearance and ushered them both into his office. Nedric tried to get Daiga to tell him something but the ranger didn’t see his beseeching look until they were all sat down. It was as he was about to tell his story when an explosion rent the air.

Alhern was out the door in an instant, Nedric and Daiga followed. The sound had come from the plank sheds and Nedric’s first thought was to wonder if any of his colleagues were hurt. As they raced over people appeared from everywhere all heading in the same direction.

As they got closer they began to find bits of wood scattered around the place. Their destination became obvious. One of the plank sheds had a large hole in its side. Nedric was becoming more alarmed. It was the shed he had been working in. They looked inside to be greeted by a disaster.

Something had ripped a hole through two opposing sides of the shed. It had also torn apart one of the shelves that held the planks and this had broken several. The shelf had suffered more damage. Designed to hold securely, planks that might be under some pressure through a mistake on someone’s part, it had been ripped in two. As that had happened the shelf had turned and damaged most of the planks on the shelves behind.

The holes in the wall could perhaps have been made by a plank that had hit the wall slightly side on. At one end of the hole it was about the right size for one. As the plank had pushed through the wall the force must have lessened slightly as it had taken more wall with it. This to Nedric’s mind explained the scattering of wood outside. Narwood had a tendency to shred if it dried too fast. This was the outcome of Nedric’s experiment; he could only hope that no one had been injured.

As the confusion around the place abated it soon became clear that no one had been near the shed. Nedric sighed under his breath. Of course Alhern would want to know what caused the explosion but with all the workers only just having entered the place and Nedric sitting in Alhern’s office there was little chance that the cause would be found. It would be an enigma and if never repeated eventually forgotten.

Once Alhern had organised a group of men to tidy the area up and keep everyone else out of the way the three went back to his office. Only could something as major as what had happened have driven thoughts of Elsebeth out of Nedric’s mind even for a minute.

Once they had sat down they waited for Daiga to speak. What had the ranger learned and where was his colleague?