Greg followed the engineers out of the camp, but they didn’t even get close to the river before they slowed down again. They started to poke the ground with their walking sticks, then stared closely at the resulting holes. It took Greg a while to realize that there was some method to this: They were looking to see if water would trickle out of the ground into the holes. As soon as they were on peat, the holes filled up within seconds. Adrien broke off a twig from a brush nearby and stuck it into the ground to mark the spot. He even cut some stripes into it.

“Groundwater’s still dropping,” noted the old man, who seemed to be the leader, and he showed Smith another mark, several steps further away from the river. “This was the edge of the wetland three days ago.”

“I thought you weren’t going out alone,” Smith asked.

“That strange one went with us, Calder was his name, I think,” replied the old man, looking at the stick in the ground in a preoccupied way. After a few seconds, he added: “Why’s he looking human?” nodding in Greg’s direction. “Is he that much faster?”

“Just personal preference,” Smith said.

“In that case, I think I’d prefer if he wasn’t human,” the old man said.

“His personal preference, not ours,” Smith said lightly. “And it makes no difference what so ever, they can sense the Rot way before it gets dangerously close. Even I’ve got a fairly good idea by now of when it’s around. There’s nothing to worry about.

“I promise, there’s nothing to worry about, Mr. Peyman,” he repeated when the old man was still not looking convinced.

“Says the man who ran into this forest without any idea whether it was even possible to beat back the Rot,” Mr. Peyman grumbled. “Forgive me if I don’t find the word of a hothead like you very reassuring, Smith.”

“You should,” Smith said, grinning. “I’ve survived the forest this long, haven’t I?”

Peyman huffed, but, Greg realized, he was smiling at the same time. “Glad to see you alive,” he said after a moment. “I was sure I’d never see you again when you told me you were going off to help build the line through the forest to Sheaf.”

“It was close,” Smith admitted. “If Greg here hadn’t been there, you would have been right.”

“So he wasn’t part of your plans from the beginning?” Adrien asked.

“Sun, no,” Smith said, are rather lopsided grin on his face. “Our plan was to keep the Rot away with fire alone. We’d all have died within the first week if Greg hadn’t decided to hide with our crew.”

“But surely you must have known that your plan wouldn’t survive one good storm,” Adrien asked, a little shocked.

Smith shrugged. “We knew it was a big risk, yes,” he said. “But we figured we stood a chance if we just made sure we always had plenty of wood at the ready.”

“Why even risk it at all?” another young man wanted to know. “I mean, the money is good, but not that great. Certainly not enough that I’d throw my life away for it.”

“I don’t think anyone was on that crew for the money alone,” Smith said. “Have a look around!” He opened his arms, gesticulating towards the meadow and the river, touched in gold by the sunset. “Have you never thought about what this line, and all the others, might mean for Loegrion? If there was a chance to survive the Rot and beat the Valoise in the process, I wanted to be a part of it.”

“And you would have died,” Adrien pointed out again.

“Yes,” Smith said. “But I didn’t, and now we know how to not only survive the Rot but destroy it, too. Great discoveries aren’t made by cowards.”

“No, they’re made by madmen,” somebody muttered.

“Thanks, Charles,” Smith said, grinning wider.

“So...” Adrien asked, glancing at Greg. “What do we do if the Rot does show up?”

“It’s not going to,” Smith repeated. “Just look at the river – the Rot’s been driven out from the whole area. You might as well be standing in the botanical garden of Deva University.”

“But if it comes back?” someone else asked.

Smith sighed. “As I said: We’ll all feel it creeping up. You start feeling unwell, get a bad headache, way before there’s any danger. If that happens, we’ll go back to the camp, and Greg and his colleagues go to investigate what’s going on.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“When the High Inquisitor raised the Rot in Deva, there was no time for anyone to run away,” Peyman pointed out.

“Who would raise the Rot around here on purpose?” Greg asked. “And even if,” he added because the engineers were still nervous, “it wouldn’t be interested in you, while I’m around.”

“That’s right,” Smith said. “Duke George Louis raised it to test Greg’s abilities to fight it, back last autumn, and the creature just ignored us, and went straight for Greg. I suppose that’s why nobody got killed when d’Evier raised the Rot in Deva. Look: I’m not saying it’s all going to be a walk in the park. The more careful we all are, the better. But as long as Greg is with us, we’ll be fine, even if the worst happens, and something really dangerous does show up. We’ll still be within sight of the camp, where three more werewolves are just waiting for somebody to raise the alarm. They can be here in less than a minute.”

“And what about full moon?” asked the other older engineer, who’d been quiet so far.

“Full moon and new moon are our new holydays, Mr. Bisset,” Smith said. “No work can be done on those, even the company has accepted that by now. I’m sure Captain Reed will have enough cages ready by the time full moon comes around.”

Peyman and Bisset looked at each other but finally seemed to decide that this was good enough. Still, Peyman said: “It’s getting dark. We’ll start first things in the morning tomorrow, but let’s get back to the barracks now.”

Work did start properly the next day. Charles and another young man named Julien carried equipment, and Greg realized that the two of them were students rather than full engineers. Adrien Melvin and Martin Gables were young engineers, like Smith. All three of them had already worked at bridges in the heartlands. Peyman and Bisset turned out to be lecturers from Deva University, even though they weren’t addressed as Professors.

The division of labour was clear: Julien and Charles carried stuff, Melvin and Gables and Smith did the actual work – measurements and calculations – while Peyman and Bisset supervised it all. Since they all wanted to have Greg as close as possible, it was almost impossible for him not to start picking things up. They all stared at him, of course, when he started asking questions, but when Smith answered them like it was the most natural thing in the world, they didn’t object.

They saw no sign of the Rot for days, and slowly, the group was getting less nervous.

The work progressed fast from then onwards. Within a few days, the engineers adjusted a concept already finished to the conditions at the site, and soon there was a construction plan for the new bridge, with lots of diagrams attached. The workers who had been laying the bricks for the platform were redeployed to construct the first abutment. It had to be moved more than a hundred yards away from the river, to safely cross the marshy areas. Greg was quite surprised when he saw in the drawings how much of a valley the Lour had dug. Standing at the settlement, it didn’t seem like much of a slope at all. And still, the bridge would be high enough for the cows to pass underneath it.

If the grass ever came back, that was. The small army of workers trampled most of it when they moved to put in the huge piles that would form the deepest foundation of the bridge.

The farmer didn’t complain, and he didn’t run out of land to graze his cows, either. All around the camp, a large area of woodland was being clear-felled for timber, thus creating more pastures. Greg had a strong feeling that by the time spring came around, somebody would have ploughed a few fields and made them arable enough to plant the first crops.

Until then, it was still a long way to go. Right before full moon came around once more, Bernadette came to see Greg out at the building site. All work ceased for a moment until Smith greeted Bernadette with a smile.

“Morning Bernadette. Getting bored inside the camp?” he asked her, loudly enough for the other engineers to hear him.

“A little,” she said with a half-smile and settled down on a stack of wood. Greg sauntered over since she clearly wanted to talk.

“Any problems here?” she asked quietly when everyone around them went back to work.

“All quiet,” Greg said. “Rot’s way too scared of you to show itself.”

“I’m not worried about the Rot. I think I know what Calder was trying to warn us about. There’s – an issue – with some of the young ones.”

“An issue?” Greg repeated.

Bernadette looked around again, to make sure nobody was listening in. “It’s going to get bad, Greg,” she muttered. “Will you help me talk to this captain? Maybe your brother, too?”

“You’re sure?” Greg asked.

Bernadette just nodded.

Greg grimaced. “All of them?”

“Four, I’m sure are lost,” Bernadette said. “One, might be okay, the last one I reckon will be fine.”

Greg shuddered. “I’ll tell Nathan, we can talk to Reed tonight. No point in waiting until something happens.”

Bernadette grimaced. “Can you go right now? I’ll stay here, Boris and Fleur are just out of sight. Be quick. You’ll have a hard time fighting them off alone if they show up.”

Greg stared at her in alarm. “That bad?” he asked, and then felt stupid. He, of all people, should know how bad it was when a whole group of werewolves went crazy. “Of course that bad,” he muttered. “Let me talk to Smith, then I’ll go.”

The engineer wasn’t surprised when he came over. “Trouble?” he asked.

Greg nodded. “I need to go talk to Nathan.”

“Bernadette is staying?” Smith asked, at the same time as Peyman, who had sharp ears for a man his age, wanted to know: “What kind of trouble?”

Greg wondered whether he should lie but then decided against it. “There’s an issue with some of the young werewolves. I need to tell my brother about it.”

“Your brother.”

“Nathan Feleke, the werewolf hunter?” Smith asked back, before Greg could say anything. “I reckon it’ll be his job to deal with the affected werewolves.”

“And we’re expected to just sit here? Like bait?” Peyman asked, alarmed.

“The rest of the pack is around,” Greg sighed. “Bernadette and the two others. They’ll be more than enough to keep you safe from anything that might bother you. And the faster I go, the faster I’ll be back with Nathan.”

He turned around before anyone could stop him, and walked off. It wasn’t easy to find a balance between speed and not appearing to be hurried, but he seemed to be mostly successful. At least nobody came running after him.