‘You’d better hope he hasn’t,’ Gorgas replied. ‘Because if he has, I might be inclined to ask why it took a day for this to reach me, if the courier got in last night as you just told me.’
The messenger hurried away, his feet squelching on the waterlogged grass of the yard.
‘Clefas,’ Gorgas said, ‘get the wedges. This stuff’s knotted and twisted like you wouldn’t believe.’
Clefas stood for a moment, then slowly walked away. Gorgas took a deep breath, then went back to what he’d been doing. He had a froe jammed in a lengthways split down the trunk of the tree, in too far to budge with the tommy bar, which he’d just contrived to break by jerking on it with his full weight.
‘You’ll never get that out,’ Zonaras said.
‘Watch me,’ Gorgas replied. ‘Here, pass me the side axe. I’ll cut the bloody thing out if I have to.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Zonaras said, handing him the axe, which was bevelled on one side only for cutting at an angle. ‘Watch the head on that, it’s loose.’
‘Really?’ Gorgas said.
His brother nodded. ‘Been loose for years,’ he said. ‘Needs the head taking off and a new wedge knocking in.’
Gorgas hacked away for a few minutes, trying to cut out a slot beside the jammed tool to free it. He hadn’t made any significant progress by the time Clefas wandered back with the wedges. They were heavy and indescribably ancient, and their heads had been smashed into razor-sharp flakes by generations of Loredans pounding on them with big hammers. ‘That’s better,’ Gorgas said. ‘Right, Zonaras, bash in a wedge either side; that’ll open it up.’
Zonaras picked up a wedge in each hand and nestled them in the crack fore and aft of the froe; then he bashed them home with the poll of the surviving felling-axe. The froe came out easily, but the wedges were stuck fast.
‘Marvellous,’ Gorgas said angrily. ‘Solve one problem, make two more.’
Zonaras sighed. ‘Grain’s too twisted for splitting,’ he said. ‘I could have told you that before you started.’
Gorgas straightened his back, pulling a face. ‘We’ll knock in the axe-heads as wedges,’ he said, ‘that’ll get these two out. We’ll get there, don’t you worry.’
Several hours later, when it was getting dark, they gave up for the day. They’d got the wedges out, and the froe (which they’d put back in, jammed solid and got back out again by bashing it to and fro with a hammer) but the axe-heads looked as if they’d never budge. ‘What we need,’ Gorgas said as they trooped back into the house, ‘is a saw-pit. Then we could saw our planks instead of trying to split them.’
Neither of his brothers said anything. They kicked off their boots and sat down on either side of the table, clearing a space to lean on with their elbows. Curious, Gorgas thought, they’re Loredans too; but of course, they’ve never been away from the farm. They were the lucky ones.
‘We could build one down by the river,’ he went on, ‘near the ford, where the banks aren’t too steep. Then we could have a water wheel driving a mechanical saw. I’ve seen them, in Perimadeia. Wonderful things, but it should be easy enough to make one.’
Clefas looked up at him. ‘Down by the river,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ Gorgas replied. ‘Where Niessa used to do the washing. You know the place I mean.’ Of course they do.
‘I reckon so,’ Zonaras replied. ‘But we don’t need a saw-mill. What’d we want one of them for?’
Gorgas frowned. ‘I’d have thought that was obvious,’ he replied. ‘To saw planks, of course, instead of wasting three days bashing lumps of iron with hammers.’
‘But we don’t need planks,’ Zonaras pointed out. ‘Except a few now and then. And we buy them.’
‘Waste of money,’ Gorgas said impatiently, ‘when we’ve got perfectly good timber on the farm. Besides, if we set up a powered saw-mill, we’d be able to supply planks for all the neighbours, at only a fraction of what they’re paying now. It’s a good business proposition.’
Clefas shook his head. ‘And who’s going to work it?’ he asked. ‘Zonaras and me, we’ve got our hands full just managing the farm. Are you going to drop everything and come running every time someone wants a few bits of wood cut up? Don’t see it, myself.’
Gorgas waved the objection aside. ‘As well as planks,’ he went on, ‘we could make our own fenceposts, gateposts, rafters, weather-boards, the lot. We could even build a ship if we wanted to. Yes, I think a saw-mill’s a damned good idea. First thing in the morning, I’ll get some of the men on to it. It’ll give them something to do, at any rate.’
Clefas and Zonaras looked at each other. ‘Well,’ Clefas said, ‘if you’re going to do that, there’s no point us killing ourselves tomorrow trying to split that log. When your mill’s running, we’ll get it sawn up there.’
‘That’s right,’ Zonaras added. ‘I mean, it’s not like there’s any rush. We don’t use the long barn any more, anyhow.’
That night, Gorgas dreamed he was standing outside the gates of a city. It was dark, and he wasn’t sure which city it was – could’ve been Perimadeia, or Ap’ Escatoy, Scona even; any one of a number of places. The gate was barred, immovable, so he was trying to break it up by splitting it, using wedges and an axe. The wedges, he somehow knew, were his brothers; he was the froe, and the axes too, both when they were driven into the split as wedges or swung as hammers. He could feel the hammer-blows on the polls of the wedges (the hammer falls, the steel is compressed, and where does all the force go, pinched between steel and steel?) as surely as he could feel the tommy-bar twist in the socket of the froe. He could feel the un-sustainable stresses in the wood, as the fibres of the grain were wrenched apart – wood’s not like steeclass="underline" if you torture it, eventually it fails and bursts. But steel, the more you hammer it, the more you compress and work-harden it, the harder and stronger it gets. And that, logically enough, is why the Loredan boys aren’t like other people…
Well, it was dream-logic, the sort that melts away as soon as your eyes open.
Gorgas woke up, realised he didn’t stand a chance of getting back to sleep, and resolved to do some work instead. He’d insisted on having the one working oil-lamp in the place, and after a good deal of fumbling with flint and rather soggy tinder, he had light. He also had paper – a few sheets he’d brought with him, and the back of the letter he’d had about the refused treaty, quite serviceable once he’d smoothed it out over the table. He sat down and wrote three letters; one to his niece, one to an employee, giving him further orders, and one to Poliorcis the Son of Heaven, which he managed to make polite and friendly in spite of everything. After all, there was still time for them to change their minds, no point alienating them by being petulant just because it’d feel good to vent his anger. Keeping his personal feelings out of the way of his business decisions had brought Gorgas all the success he’d ever managed to achieve, after all. It was a rule he’d only ever broken where Bardas was concerned, and that one exception had cost him dearly enough, gods know. But Bardas was different; Bardas was his brother, Bardas was the only failure in a life full of remarkable achievements. And very few failures are definitely final, provided you’re level-headed enough to keep your feelings at bay.
When he’d finished writing the letters, it was still dark, too early for anybody else to be up and about, so Gorgas decided to fill in the time with one other minor chore, a task he’d neglected for the past couple of days. In the corner of the room stood a fine embossed-leather bow-case. He opened it and took out his bow, the rather special bow his brother had built for him three years before. People who knew the circumstances behind the making of the bow were amazed, even horrified, to find that he still had it. They’d assumed that he’d got rid of it – burned, buried, thrown into the sea – long before. They couldn’t understand how he could even bear to look at it, let alone touch it. But the fact remained, it was a very fine bow; and since it had cost him so much, the least he could do was use it and look after it – otherwise everything that had gone into making it would be wasted, all to no purpose.