Greg woke early in the morning, long before sunrise, and went downstairs to the refectory. The kitchen staff was just starting to make breakfast, but a fry up of last night’s dinner was already available. He found a place at the end of one of the long tables, as far away from the door and the kitchen as possible. He was the only one eating this early, and the silence was nice.

Two weeks, that was the very most he would be able to travel with the crew of navvies. Was there anything else he should pack, asides from the gear he had bought last night? He tried to remember all that his brothers had said about going on long hunts in the forests with a minimum of baggage. He should have everything, though, shouldn’t he?

Well, everything apart from Andrew’s advice. Greg thought about that part: “Always carry salt,” didn’t sound like it was meant entirely serious?

But then he got up anyway. It might not be essential, but it sure would have been nice if he had been able to spice his game on full moon, even just a little bit.

The single cook in the kitchen glared at him when he asked for salt until Greg explained that he wanted enough to take with him into the forest. In exchange for a whole silver, Greg received a small tin box full of the white gold.

By the time he returned to the dorm room to place the little box securely at the bottom of his pack, the other workers were just getting up. It wasn’t surprising: there was nothing to be done until the sun was high up above the trees and drove the Rot back into the forest.

Greg stepped outside as soon as he thought it was safe. He wanted to have a look around this new quarter that was being pulled up, but he had barely walked out the door when a messenger boy came running past him and vanished inside. Greg was still looking after the kid when inside people started yelling and running about.

An hour before noon, a small army had assembled in the yard. Some of the men were actually armed, mercenaries hired to make sure the convicts didn’t run off. Eyal, Isaac, and their relatives stood together in a tight group, Thoko hidden in the middle. Greg kept himself a little apart, more with the other men that had been hired on, and they all watched as a small group of convicts approached them, escorted by nearly a dozen soldiers of fortune.

Eyal had his arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t look happy to be saddled with the criminals, but apparently, there was nothing he could do about it.

There was no fanfare when they finally moved out, no bands playing and no crowd cheering them on, as it had been when the work for the Imperial harbour line from Deva to Deggan had commenced. No Valoisian official to make a big speech, and no priest to talk about how the power of sacred fire was about to make all their lives easier. Duke George Louis, however, was there in person, looking down at them from the saddle of his horse.

When the troupe walked alongside the last operated fields outside of Eoforwic, they finally did pass a group of onlookers: A small formation of Valoisian guards escorting a priest. They made no move to stop the workers, but Greg had no doubt that a detailed report of what was going on here would soon be sent south. A shudder ran down his spine. Was this the first pebble that would start an avalanche? Or were they more like a stone dropped into a pond, all ripples but no waves?

That would probably depend on whether or not they could get this line all the way west to Sheaf, straight through the forest, instead of taking the much longer way around.

Eyal’s butty gang with all their tools and provisions didn’t move very fast, and by the time they had to make camp, they were still within the range of vision of the walls of Eoforwic. Still, before they put up tents they dug flat ditches to fill with dry wood that was set aflame. It worried Greg a little, how haggard some of the convicts already looked when they had barely walked for half a day, and no actual work had been done.

The truss of workers spent most of the next day walking on until they reached the edge of a forest. This marked the beginning of the stretch assigned to them. An excited young engineer attached to their group pointed out exactly where they were to start building.

Eyal ordered half the gang to dig trenches, and the other half to start cutting down trees. The atmosphere, when the fires were lit and the tents put up, was tenser than the night before. Eyal’s relatives all carried at least one silver coin like a talisman on a string around their necks, as protection against the Rot. A couple of the new hires and most of the mercenaries had actual amulets or silver decorations on their hats. But nobody had a fully coated helmet like the guards back at the company headquarters had worn, so Greg wasn’t sure how much good they would do.

Still, he wished he could wear something similar. He had plenty of silver coins left, but there was no way he would let them touch his skin.

Eyal ran a tight regimen on the men. Even the mercenaries followed his word and let him schedule the fireguards for the night. A quarter of the gang was always up, to keep the ditches filled with wood.

They all smelled of smoke, and for the first hours after nightfall nobody dared to sleep, and they stared nervously across the flames into the darkness.

However, nothing happened. Nothing undead moved outside their camp. This meant that the next morning, the work began in earnest.

First, they had to cut down the trees. Greg had never thought of himself as mollycoddled, but his palms were blistering and sore long before Eyal called a break for lunch. He could feel Thoko’s eyes on himself when he put down his axe for a moment and stared down at them. She was working just like the men, swinging her axe as if the trees had been complicit in murdering her father. Greg picked his tool up again and tried his hardest not to wince at the pain.

When it was finally time to eat, he had a really hard time holding his tin and spoon, in which a sort of stew was served.

“Missing yer cook and maid just about now, I bet?”

Greg glared at Isaac, who had sat down next to him. “What do you want, Isaac?” he growled.

“Hey, I’m just kidding, man. If ye can’t joke at the work, ye gonna go crazy, ye know?”

“I’ll take my chances,” Greg gave back.

“Touchy, huh?” Isaac said, apparently unperturbed by Greg’s mood. “Here, that should help.”

He offered Greg a small jar.

“What’s that?” Greg asked suspiciously.

“It’s for ye hands,” Isaac explained. “Makes the blisters heal faster, ye know?”

When Greg made no move to take the jar, Isaac sighed. “Here, like this, ye see?” he said and opened the lid. The ointment inside was brown and smelled of old fat, but Isaac seemed unbothered as he put the stuff on his own callused hands.

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“I promise it’ll help,” he said. He paused, and added: “Why are ye looking at me like that?”

“I didn’t really think you wanted me here,” Greg said and put his tin down, to finally accept the ointment Isaac was still offering.

“What?” Isaac asked, looking genuinely confused. “I was the one who recruited ye, remember?”

“Right, sure,” Greg muttered. The strange brown paste felt cool on his mangled skin. “Thanks,” he added.

Isaac took his jar back, still looking confused. “Ye didn’t take all that stuff I said seriously, did ye?” he finally asked.

When Greg didn’t reply, he shook his head. “Ye really are a touchy one, ye know that?”

Greg just grimaced and picked up his tin again. When he was done, he rummaged through his pack until he found his old pair of leather riding gloves and put them on to protect his hands. Isaac’s cousins were showing those convicts and new workers who hadn’t brought gloves how to wrap their hands in leather strips for protection.

After the break, Greg spent another two hours cutting down trees, then Eyal put him into another group, which was chopping up the trees they had felled so that they could be used as firewood. Despite Isaac’s ointment, Greg’s palms were soon bleeding underneath the gloves. At night, all the new workers were so exhausted that they all fell onto their cots gladly, and only the guard stayed up.

Eyal and his family, however, gathered in the biggest tent. Greg fell asleep to soft singing wafting through the camp, some kind of religious hymn, he thought, before exhaustion dragged him under.

Greg groaned softly when he was dragged out of his cot for his watch shift. Since the wood they were burning was still wet, the smoke was even worse tonight.

“Let me see ye hands,” Greg was woken the next morning. Isaac was way too awake considering the sun was just rising.

“Told ye the stuff would work,” Isaac exclaimed when Greg relented and let him see his palms.

Greg looked down at his own hands. They felt awfully stiff and sore but looked much better than he had expected. He was fairly sure, though, that Isaac’s weird ointment was not the main reason for that.

This day was spend clearing more trees and digging up the tree stumps. The opening they were cutting into the trees was much wider than needed for a line of track, or even for two rail tracks. When Greg asked, Timothy Smith, the engineer supervising them, explained that they would need room at the sides where they could dig up dirt to even out the trackbed.

“But we’re not laying down any track,” Greg pointed out and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. “We don’t even have the iron for the rails here.”

“You’re an impatient one, huh?” Smith laughed. “Got to clear the trees first, and then even out the ground, finally prepare the trackbed. When that is done, they can put down the actual lines. But that’s not going to be done by you. Or, at least not at this run.”

“Meaning?” Greg asked, swinging his axe again.

“Why do you care?”

“Cause,” Greg grunted with another swing, “felling trees is boring. And you are one of the few people here who has got breath to spare to talk.”

The engineer looked him up and down, but then he smiled. “Fine. The iron rails are made in Sheaf. For the Harbour Line, from Deggan to Deva, they shipped them down the river, as they do with all their iron right now, and then along the coast to Deggan. This line is going to pick them up right at Sheaf, and then transport them via the railway, as that moves forward to Eorforwic.”

“That’s going to take all summer,” Greg said.

“If we are lucky, yes,” said Smith.

Greg thought about that. The engineer was already turning away when he asked: “So, if you are calculating half a year for this line, which is going to be – what, twenty-five miles?”

“Twenty-two,” said Smith.

“Right,” Greg grunted. “So, half a year for twenty-two miles. Eoforwic to Mannin, that’s got to be at least sixty miles. How many years are you all planning for that?”

“We’ll see,” said the engineer. “If we can get this line build, through ten miles of Rot-forest, if we can show that it’s actually possible, we should be able to hire a lot more people. More people means less time. The Valoise on the mainland claim that they can put down eight miles of track in just one day, on flat ground, obviously, because they have several thousand workers. The Lackland Company has just a couple of hundred in total.”

Eight miles in a day. Greg shuddered. The mere idea seemed impossible, as he swung his axe again and then yelled “Timber!” when the tree he had been working on finally fell over.

He took a few seconds to catch his breath and was promptly called out by Eyal.

“No sleeping on the job, Greg!” the man’s voice boomed through the forest. “Get over here, help pull out these stumps!”

Greg sighed but shouldered his axe and moved over promptly. He preferred to fell the trees over digging them up, not least because the digging was done in teams, and not everyone was always as careful as they should be when they swung their tools. Especially some of the convicts didn’t care at all about who might be standing behind them.

It was Thoko, however, who was already busy laying bare the stump of a huge old beech tree.

“Well, this is going to be fun,” Greg muttered, as he joined her in digging up the roots, many of them bigger around than Greg’s legs. His hands really did not like this new work. After the third delve with his shovel, he stopped and took off his gloves to stare down at his palms. Isaac had let him put on some of his salve in the morning, but they were blistering again anyway. No doubt he would be bleeding again soon.

“If you aren’t even bleeding right now, you clearly were not working hard enough yesterday,” Thoko said. She grabbed one of his hands and stared at them. “What are your palms made of, leather?” she asked incredulously and put her own hand next to his. Even with the leather bandages, hers had turned into a mess of torn skin, blood, and scabbed over wounds.

Greg thought she was probably working too hard.

“Mine was bleeding last night,” Greg said. “Isaac gave me this ointment, and they healed fairly well.”

“They healed overnight?” Thoko asked. “He gave me that stuff, too, but that just means I still have some skin left.”

She grimaced and grabbed her shovel again. “You really aren’t working hard enough, I guess,” she said.

“Funny,” Greg muttered. Thoko was still attacking the trees as if they were in cahoots with the Valoise, but the other new workers weren’t working any harder than he was.

An hour later, he felt one of the big blisters burst insides his gloves, so he pulled it off to inspect the bleeding. “There,” he said to Thoko. “Are you happy now?”

She didn’t answer him, though, didn’t even raise her head, and when Greg looked again, he realized that the handle of her shovel was dripping with blood. He shuddered, when she attacked the dirt around the roots again, as if they had personally insulted her, and followed suit, though maybe with a little less enthusiasm.

Maybe Isaac had been right. Maybe he didn’t belong here. Because if his hands were as bad as hers, he would be taking it slower.

He couldn’t get the picture out of his head, the torn skin of her small hands, the pink flesh naked underneath, and finally, he decided to do something about it.

When they broke for lunch, he dug through his pack until he found a clean shirt, one of his good ones, made of the finest linen. He wasn’t quite sure why he had packed it in the first place, but now he cut it into strips to make bandages and grabbed his better riding gloves.

Isaac was already going around with his jar full of ointment. Thoko, however, shook her head, when he came to her. “There’s nothing to put it on, Isaac,” she sighed.

“Put it on here,” Greg said and gave Isaac a strip of the linen. “Hold out your hands,” he asked Thoko.

“That won’t hold,” Thoko sighed. “I already asked Eyal about it.”

“It will hold,” Greg assured her. “You can put these over the bandages.”

He held up the gloves.

“Are you sure?” Thoko asked. “Those look new. I’ll probably bleed all over them.”

“Yeah, well, then you can keep them.”

“Just take them, Thoko,” Isaac said before she could argue further.

Greg was as gentle as he could when he wrapped her hands in the unguent soaked bandages, and then added a second layer just in case. Thoko kept her eyes closed throughout the process, but tears were running down her cheeks anyway.

“Thank you,” she muttered, and finally, they all began to eat.

At night Greg was on the second fire watch. Through the trees they had cleared, he could see the narrow crescent moon rising, and he couldn’t help but wonder how much longer he should stay with these people. Sheaf wasn’t as far out in the wilderness as he had hoped, because twenty-two miles was a distance a werewolf could travel in a single night. If he stayed with the gang too long, there was no telling where he would end up during his transformation.

On the other hand, he was beginning to enjoy the company, especially Thoko and Isaac, despite his teasing. It was also nice to be part of a team. Maybe he could transform into a wolf a few days before full moon? He had only vague memories of the two extra nights he had spent as a wolf last month, but he remembered following his own trail during the day. So it should be possible for him to turn, right, and start running? If he managed to stick to something close to due north, he should move further away from people. Right?

He really should have brought a map of Loegrion.