On the morning after the oaths, Bucephalus carried Jon up the last slope blowing through his nose, his black neck damp beneath the mane. Jon shortened the reins before the broken gate. Wind lifted the silver hair at his left temple; the rest was tied back, clear of his plain black collar. Water had washed gravel into the wheel ruts during the night; the horse chose the firmer strip between them and stopped with one forefoot raised above a loose stone.
Arthur rode up beside him. Wylla followed on a brown palfrey, holding her skirts clear of the wet flank. A little cart behind her carried their chests, three rolled mattresses and blankets bound in sailcloth. She had packed the cups between Jon's spare shirts and made Ralf find room for the pot she wanted.
A timber cart was climbing towards the turn, its outside wheel close to the soft edge. Jon rode the bend wide enough to judge where the load would swing.
"Cut this bank back. The wagons can turn here and wait clear of the gate."
Arthur rode farther along and looked towards the thorn below the wall. "That hides the lower road."
"It comes out today. Leave the two oaks." Beneath the cart's rumble Jon could hear Miller's Run spilling over the rocks.
The six centuries waited across the slope, Hewyn's First outside the new barrack, Rennick's Second beside the timber sledges, Third and Fourth coming from their tents and Martyn's swords below. Jon handed Bucephalus to a groom and struck the cracked ploughshare that served as the camp's bell.
"Leave the shields. Coats open. Centurions, bring them down to the trial field." He gave Arthur his cloak.
Four of Hallis's guards joined them; the others kept the road and stores. They would exchange places after dinner, giving Hewyn experienced hands for each lesson.
Heward brought the centurions and their leading decani forward while Jon took off his sword belt. The rest waited in their centuries. A man near the back craned to see between two shoulders.
"Another pace apart," Heward said. "The men at the back cannot see between you."
Jon took the officers through the movements. Rymond hurried into his next turn while half his rank still faced the other way.
"Look behind you," Heward told him. "What are they copying now?"
Jon showed him again. Rymond waited this time; Malcolm too had to slow his teaching, showing each movement before naming the next. Heward sent them back to their centuries and followed with Jon. He had Brus face his men for the demonstration. Their smiles vanished when Brus made them hold the movement while he checked their feet.
Heward set the order of the run. Jon took the First towards the stream; the other centuries followed at intervals. The campidoctor mounted a quiet garron and rode beside the lower bend, where he could watch the front and rear of each century without asking his damaged knee to keep pace with either.
At the bend Jon shortened his stride. His legs were warm now, his breath coming harder. One circuit would serve him today. He brought the First back at a walk and stood beside Arthur while the other centuries came in.
The Third had strung out. Heward sent Norren back for his last pair; he returned at a walk beside the two red-faced men, one pressing his side.
"I let the front go too quickly, my lord."
"Keep the shorter course tomorrow," Jon said. "Heward will watch your pace. We lengthen it when they can all finish."
Norren took them to the washing trough. Heward stayed at the bend until the last of Sixth passed.
Only when Brus's last man was through the gate did Jon send the centuries to breakfast. Hallis's guards kept order at the two cook shelters while the tool carts arrived beside the timber sledges. Jon washed and ate the bread Wylla had kept for him.
"Tools by tens," he told the decani. "Return broken iron as well as sound. We can replace a handle."
Some men hefted the picks as if they had hoped never to touch one again. Jon took Hewyn's nearest ten towards the tower. The others brought the carts in, while Rennick cleared turning room down the lane.
The frost crack still ran down the tower's corner. The exposed stone was wet blue-grey, streaked iron-red beneath the old hinge clamps. Ivy hid the other joints; more stone would loosen when the roots came out. The outer wall had two gaps, one made by winter and one by men carrying away building stone. Jon turned towards the low guardroom at the western foot, well clear of the cracked corner. Woods had cleared its doorway during the first barrack work; a new door stood fitted.
Inside, the vault held and the floor was dry away from the threshold, though stale rushes soured the cold air. A narrow slit admitted a grey line of morning above the stone shelf. Jon set Arthur's lantern in the old hollow cut for a lamp. He dragged a broken stool from the wall, uncovering a bird's nest with two white feathers, and carried it out with the rotten wood before returning for the rushes.
"Your chest?" Arthur asked from the doorway.
"Here. I want the bed along that wall, clear of the draught." Jon pushed at the lowest stone with his boot. It did not move. "We can board the slit until there is a shutter."
Arthur set down his own bedroll against the opposite wall. Wylla came in carrying the wrapped cups and looked into the rear recess.
"My bed will fit there. A curtain across the beam, and I shall manage."
Jon took the cups from her. "The room above will be yours when the stair is sound."
"Then see that it is sound before you send me up it." She pushed her sleeves back and went out for the broom. Jon left the door open to the morning air and went to join Malcolm at the run. Behind him, Arthur called two men to bring in their chests.
At the run Murch held the measuring cord, Coll carried the level and Malcolm noted the heights. Jon checked each reading twice. A wrong slope would send water into the barracks; he showed Malcolm how the figures matched the ground before marking the drain to a southern hollow, clear of the proposed granary.
Woods moved the second barrack two paces west to miss a rock shelf, keeping the main lane open. Beyond it Jon allowed room for two tens to exercise under cover, with strong posts for ropes and paving beneath the weights.
"Beds first," he told Woods. "We can fit this out afterwards."
Near the gate Ormund kept new hands hauling sand while his lime cooled. Others cleared roots and loose mortar from the tower; fresh repairs went under reed mats. Jon turned the granary entrance towards the road and left a broad space for carts. The Roman camps he had once reconstructed on paper had been simpler to arrange. Here he could hear the men arguing over a doorway and settle it before they built.
He and Woods marked the enclosing bank within the leased bounds, with a timber walk, corner towers and two towers flanking the gate. Ground inside would remain clear for later recruits. The six centuries divided among drains, road, masonry, timber and unloading, their decani beside the craftsmen, skilled hands helping the new men. After dinner Hewyn and Martyn would take them for drill, leaving only the men the craftsmen could not spare.
At the noon bell William rode up on Iain's shaggy pony with a brass plate wrapped beneath his coat. The hole supporting one of the clock's shafts had split when they tested it with a heavier weight. Jon washed and took a fresh grey horse back to the Black Yard with him, Arthur following.
Ewan wanted the plate reheated and flattened. At the bench William showed Jon the flaw he had traced beyond the punched circle.
"The hole did not make this," William said. "It was in the plate before we bored."
"Would you use it again?" Jon asked.
William turned the brass over. "Not under that weight, my lord."
Jon held it towards the window once more. "Cut through the flaw so Ewan can see how far it runs. Find a sound piece for the new plate." William fetched one while the smith went to see which of his men could bore it before the afternoon's forging.
Four smaller clocks had filled the space left by the Hightower frame. Apprentices fitted the clockwork while two joiners hung case doors. A finished pine clock stood ready for a White Harbor rope and sailcloth merchant; it had kept steady time since yesterday.
"He wound it himself this morning," Olyver said, nodding towards the merchant. "And fitted the spare cord."
The merchant meant to put it in his hall, where his wife had cleared a place. He followed Perkin to pay the remaining hundred and twenty dragons. Jon went back to William, who had laid the new plate upon the damaged one to copy the holes.
"Use the drawing." Jon touched the stretched rim of the first hole. "That one has moved."
William reddened and put the old plate aside. Ewan brought over the drawing and waited while the boy marked the holes afresh.
"Call me when it is fitted," the smith told him. "We shall hang the weights together."
Jon left them at the bench. Perkin caught him at the door with a Gulltown factor offering twice Lord Dustin's price for the fitters promised to Barrow Hall.
"Lord Dustin keeps his place. Offer the factor a smaller clock if he cannot wait." Jon took his gloves from Arthur. "You know what we can finish, Perkin. Settle it with him."
The clerk led the factor back among the cases. Outside, the rope merchant paused beside Jon's grey.
"Captain Denys has ordered more of my best cordage. He paid for the last before the cart was empty—and sent back two coils. I told my men to open the next lot before he does."
Jon had read Denys's letter that morning. Stone Drum had spent twelve days at sea with only ordinary pumping; Salt Wraith had weathered a squall under her new mast. All ten warships were working again, and Denys was sending pairs along the trading coast. Jon asked for the soundest rope before the merchant climbed up beside his clock.
Arthur had an onion pie waiting beside the grey. Jon ate it on the slow ride through the market, catching the drips in its linen wrapper. Beyond the last carts he urged the horse uphill and asked whether the long poles had come from Winterfell.
Back at the Old Watch, Jon found the eastern drain twenty paces longer but too high at its outlet. He marked the stretch to deepen while Hewyn relieved Mallador's tired ten for water and their throwing lesson. The well remained covered for the diggers, with drinking water brought from Winterfell in casks. Jon kept the troughs below the sleeping sheds and the privies farther downhill, clear of the well and downstream of the water drawn from the run.
Below the fall, Ewan stood ankle-deep in the channel planned for the waterwheel, his trousers rolled above his calves. Jon unfolded the plans upon a flat stone. The smith recognised the mill gearing at once; he had repaired enough watermills to know the strain a wheel could put upon its shaft. He followed the drawing into the forge and stopped at the hammer.
"These raised pieces turn with it?"
Jon laid a stick between two stones and turned it beneath another. "They catch and lift the hammer's handle. When they pass, the head drops." He pointed to a lever on the drawing. "This frees the hammer from the turning shaft. The wheel can keep the bellows working while the hammer rests."
Ewan took the stick and turned it himself. He held it still with the little hammer raised, then let it fall. Water ran round his bare ankles while he looked from the sticks to the drawing.
"I have never seen a forge worked that way." He tried the movement again. "It will shake this bank to pieces if you put that weight upon a boarded floor."
"The anvil gets its own stone bed beneath the floor." Jon made it larger on the drawing. "We dig that before Woods puts up the building. Keep the hearth back here, and leave this side clear for the long bars."
Ewan shifted his tongs to the place a billet would occupy. "A striker sees when I turn the work. That head will come down whether I am ready or not."
"You will try the release with the shaft turned by hand. Then with the water, before there is hot iron under it." Jon drew the lever nearer the smith's place. "Keep it within reach here. Tell me if you need it moved."
The smith examined the bellows next. "And if I want less blast? There is iron I could spoil with all the wind those will give."
"We choose the gearing to suit your hearth. You still judge the heat." Jon tapped the hammer shaft. "We shall try them together and see whether the wheel can drive both."
Ewan climbed onto the bank to get both hands free. Jon unrolled his plans for the later buildings: more furnaces and hammers, rows of armourers' benches, and room for machines to roll and bore iron. Ewan spread his palm over them as though comparing their size with the small forge he knew.
"All of this for arms?"
"For my men first. Six hundred foot when the centuries are full, and the household besides. Good steel for their helms and plates. More than one armourer can shape and fit them."
Ewan's lips parted. He looked again at the space Jon had allowed for stores, then at the boy holding the drawing flat.
"My lord, men keep steel good enough for that locked in chests. You have drawn room for cartloads."
"We shall make a little at first and test it. The hammers will work the metal while it is still hot, without tiring as men do. I want us to make good steel again and again before I promise hundreds of suits."
Ewan looked back at the plan. "Who taught you this?"
"I am keeping that to myself, Ewan."
Ewan held his gaze. "I will need more than a drawing when we try the steel, my lord. I want to see those first charges." He pulled the hammer drawing nearer. "May I take this to Woods? I want him beside me when we choose the shaft."
"Take it. Bring your questions to the yard tomorrow. You will be there when we try the steel." Jon held the paper while Ewan dried his hands to take it.
Martyn had laid six practice lanes between paired stakes: two broad enough for a spear line, others narrowing like a gate or turning like a tower stair, the last ending at a plank deck smeared with wet clay.
"My shield centuries train there," he told Jon. "Close enough that every wide sword cut punishes a friend."
Arthur and Gawen would take the household onto the high field. Hewyn's veterans would teach the grip and step with the practice javelins, then bring the first ten to Jon to learn a cast together and a withdrawal through the covering ranks. Ewan's iron heads would stay at the forge until they could do it safely.
At supper Jon sat on a sawn block with barley, peas and salt pork between his knees. One thumb still smelled of lime after washing. Woods needed the long poles to rig lifting ropes from the sound wall; the loose blocks above the eastern stair had to come down before men could work beneath them.
"The straight ones beside the gate," Jon told him. "We shall go round together before anyone begins." Once that stonework was down, more hands could go to the barracks and granary.
Hewyn asked to keep Coll's ten for drill the following afternoon. Two already knew the spear and could help the rest. Jon agreed, then called the other centurions over before they left for their shelters.
"Bring the cohort out after supper. Shields and practice weapons. Each century on its own ground. We begin the night drill."
Hewyn glanced towards the men finishing their bowls. "They have had a long day, my lord."
"A short lesson, then. Finding their places and moving together."
Two lanterns hung beneath the barrack eaves when the centuries came out. Murch fetched strays from the wrong ten until Jon had each decanus call his own men and keep them still. Tomas brought a household file down to show the turn. At last First could halt without crowding.
Below, Sixth nearly marched into Fifth at the gap between Martyn's stakes. Heward stopped Brus and made both centurions use the same commands. This time Sixth waited for Fifth's last pair to clear. Jon dismissed First and sent word downhill for the others to finish. Men went in rubbing their eyes.
"Again tomorrow?" Hewyn asked.
"After supper. Heward can take them into the meadow when they are ready." Jon looked downhill, where the old man had seated himself upon a timber while Brus brought the last pair back. "I have letters to answer. He need not wait for me."
Jon unfastened his belt a hole and handed the practice shield back to Malcolm. His shoulders ached from the spade, and he wanted his bed.
Jon inspected the sentries with Tomas. He stopped at the horse line on his way back and rubbed the dried sweat beneath Bucephalus's mane. The stallion nosed his coat for an apple. Jon found only the hard corner of his folded drawing. He brought a handful of hay instead and stood there while the horse took it, warm breath moving over his fingers.
Wylla had lit the lamp in the guardroom. The new mattresses lay on low planks supported by short trestles, above the chill of the stone floor. Her bed stood behind a woollen curtain in the recess. Jon's chest was beneath the slit, his spare boots beside it. She was shaking the last shreds of packing straw from his blanket when he came in.
Jon sat to pull off his work boots.
Once both boots were off, Jon spread the drawing across the lid of his chest and held its curling edge with the lamp. Arthur knelt beside him. The stable they had marked would crowd the household's way into the high field. Jon moved it back on the drawing; he wanted to walk the distance with Tomas before Woods began digging.
Arthur brushed a fleck of dried mud from the drawing. "Tomorrow, while Hewyn has the spears."
"After the wallhead." Jon bent closer to the little lane. The lamp blurred. He rubbed his eyes and found grit beneath one lid.
Arthur lifted the lamp off the parchment. "You can see it better in the morning."
Jon wanted to finish the stable. Instead he rolled the drawing, put it inside the chest and eased himself under the blankets. Straw crackled inside the mattress. The bed was narrower than his one at Winterfell, and when he turned, his knee found the cold wall.
Through the open door he heard Hewyn speaking to a man at the fire, the scrape of a pot, and someone coughing in the barrack. Wylla laid his clean shirt on the chest, felt his forehead with the back of her hand and drew the blanket higher. Arthur shut the door and laid a folded cloak against the draught beneath it before lying down. Behind her curtain Wylla unfastened her shoes. The last light went out.
At first light Jon ran with First, had Wylla's bread and warm small beer, and joined Arthur and Woods with the long poles. Cut ivy hung from gaps in the top of the wall. They braced the poles against the sound stonework to support the lifting ropes. Jon climbed the lower platform beside Arthur.
Mallador's ten tightened the ropes around the first loose block. Jon halted them while Woods levered its lower edge free. Then they lowered it past the empty stair. Woods prepared the next block while the spearmen untied the ropes below.
They took the unsafe stonework down through the morning, saving sound timber for the carpenters. As the broken wall grew lower, a room opened to the sky beyond it: an old hearth, a window seat, the dark ends of floor beams rotted in their sockets. Jon stopped beside the hearth long enough to clear loose mortar from its carved lintel with his glove.
"Wylla will have more light up here," Arthur said.
Jon could already see where the bed would stand, away from the window. "She will want the hearth made good first."
Arthur looked down into the yard, where Wylla was taking bowls from a cart and directing a man twice her size towards the cookfires. "She will tell you."
By dinner the condemned wallhead lay in ordered rows beside the tower. The men ate against stones buried beneath nettles yesterday. Jon and Woods chose beams to reuse above the guardroom; then Hewyn's call brought Jon down to the throwing field.
* * *
When Jon went down to the Black Yard that afternoon, Elspeth complained that bread was disappearing from the men's places.
She had found two small loaves inside Aries's clean shirt basket. Gage had lost the heel he left beside his cup. Aries claimed the kitchen cat had taken it, though he had flour down the front of his coat and the cat was sitting in the yard eating a mouse.
Jon caught him at the low wall with a third loaf beneath his arm. A bare hand appeared between the stones on the other side. It vanished as Jon came nearer.
"Come round to the gate," Jon called.
Feet ran away through the nettles. Aries stood very still.
"Who was that?"
"No one."
"He can use the gate." Jon opened it and looked along the wall. The lane was empty. He closed it again without sending men into the town.
Back in the hall, he put Aries upon the bench opposite him. Elspeth reclaimed the loaf, cut the dirty edge away and waited beside the hearth.
"How many?" Jon asked.
Aries rubbed a crumb between finger and thumb.
"How many boys are you feeding?"
"Sometimes they find their own."
"That is not what I asked."
"Six." He said it so quietly that Jon had to lean closer. "Not all at once. Geth finds things. Nibs can't always."
"Did you sleep with them before you came here?"
Aries nodded. His jaw began to work. "They won't come if your men take them."
"Are they orphans too?"
"Timm's aunt went with a wagon. He waited for her. The others have no one."
Jon sent for Wylla and asked her to sit while Aries told them what he would. They slept in a roofless house beyond the dyer's shed when it was dry, beneath a cooper's awning when it rained, and in places the boy would not name. Geth was the eldest. Wrenn had a cough. Nibs had lost the better of his two shoes and wrapped a strip of sacking about that foot.
"You might have told me," Jon said.
"You had one already."
"One what?"
"Me."
Wylla drew the boy's crumb-dusted sleeve out of his mouth. He had been chewing it without knowing.
"Bring them here," Jon said. "Tell the gate guards I sent you. Elspeth will find them something to eat, and Perkin can enquire after their kin, as he did for you."
"You'll keep all of them?"
"I mean to give them somewhere to stay. There is room above the lower hall while we make better beds."
Aries looked towards the kitchen. "They don't all work."
"Neither did you."
"I do now."
"Yes. Tell them what that means. No stealing from the men, no slipping out without leave. They will have work they can do and someone to teach them." Jon glanced towards Heward, who had come in during the account and waited by the door. "There are six centurions whose messages are forever carried by the nearest soldier. Let them teach pages instead."
Heward considered the small red head at the table. "The youngest will need a man to go with him until he knows the camp."
"Then give him one. Reading, figures and light work first. They are not recruits for the fighting rolls."
"And this one?"
"Remains with me."
Aries slid off the bench. "I can find them now."
"After supper, with Gawen," Jon said. "You will not vanish on me a second time."
The knight came back at dusk with five boys and a sixth trailing well behind. Aries kept turning to call him closer. All stopped when they saw the open door and the waiting bowls.
Elspeth had set the food inside, where no passing man could reach over their shoulders. She moved out of the doorway herself. Geth entered first, eleven and already trying to look older. Timm followed with Nibs clinging to the back of his coat. A hollow-cheeked boy began coughing hard enough to lose his first mouthful.
"Wrenn," Aries told Wylla. "He does that at night too."
The last pair stayed close to the door until Elspeth held out their bowls. The boy with the round, dirty face and split lower lip gave his name as Tob. Hake watched Geth before reaching for his own bowl.
Wylla took Wrenn to the bench nearest the hearth. Nibs tried to go after him with a bowl too hot to hold. Aries wrapped a cloth about it and carried it for him, complaining that he was spilling the best part.
"Sit," Jon told him. "There is another bowl for you."
"I ate."
"Then help Nibs with his bread."
The six had scarcely spoken beyond their names. Geth asked what work began in the morning. Jon told him he would first be shown his bed, his washing place and the man who would teach him. Heward named the six centurions and said that the pages would change places at the turn of each moon.
"They must have their lessons together," Jon told Heward. "Whatever work you give them."
Geth looked towards Aries. "Does he learn with us?"
"Yes. His errands will be different, but he has letters to learn too." Jon waited until Aries had put down Nibs's bowl. "Show him the slate."
The red-haired boy fetched it reluctantly. Timm peered at the letters and asked which was the mark for Red.
"Aries," the boy told him, too quickly. Then, when his friend drew back, he turned the slate and began explaining the first letter.
Wylla stayed until all six had eaten. She found a place for their bundles without emptying them in front of the men. Nibs slept before she finished his feet; Geth waited by the door until he saw the little boy tucked beneath a blanket. When Jon passed later, Aries lay beside his friends on the borrowed floor pallet, though his own bed waited upstairs. He had left his new coat folded over Nibs.