The country

The Fall, and every smaller relative of it in the hills. Sheer, wet most of the year, with the ground a long way below and no line down it that a person carrying anything could take.

From a distance: The horizon has a hard edge and there is sky underneath it. Country that should continue simply stops.

Scrub grown so far into itself that the only way through is to cut, and cutting takes a morning and can be heard from further than you will cut in a morning.

From a distance: The scrub goes from waist height to over your head along a clean line, and stops moving in the wind because there is nothing loose left in it.

A cut too deep to descend and too wide to step, running across the line you wanted to walk. There will be a crossing somewhere. It will not be here.

From a distance: A line of tree crowns at the level of your boots. From any distance it reads as a green seam in the ground and it reads correctly.

Water with no bottom you can see, moving faster than it looks. Nobody in Coldharrow swims, which is not squeamishness -- it is that the people who did are not available to comment.

From a distance: The surface goes smooth and stops arguing with the stones. Smooth water is deep water and it is the most useful thing anybody in this game will teach the player about a river.

A slope of loose stone that is still moving. Not often, and not while you watch it, but often enough that nothing has managed to grow on it in living memory.

From a distance: A pale streak down an otherwise grey-green hillside. Nothing is growing on it, and everything around it is.

Ground that is alight or has been recently enough that it is still working. The Ashwood burns in lines rather than patches, because whatever is left in the soil here burns in lines.

From a distance: The air above it shakes. Standing smoke with no wind in it, running in a line rather than a cloud.

Bright green, flat, and completely still. It is the most inviting ground in the Sedge Plains to look at and there is nothing underneath it at all.

From a distance: A patch of a green that does not match anything around it, dead level in country that is not level anywhere else.

The cut face of the bank is black and wet and there are rusty knuckles of something sitting in it at about knee height, in a line, the way things settle. The cutters turn them up all day and throw them on the spoil heap because they are in the way of the peat.

Round scars in the ground where somebody stacked wood under turf and burned it slow, and the ground is still black in circles you can pace out. Nobody has worked these in living memory and the Ashwood has more standing dead than anywhere in the valley.

The first ground high enough to look back from, and the weather has taken the turf off the top of it. A rust-coloured band runs through the grey at shoulder height for about thirty paces, thumb-wide where it shows and a hand wide where the frost has opened it. It has been showing since before there was a Coldharrow to see it.

The water took the face off this side of the ravine some winter and left three feet of something black lying in the grey like a line ruled through it. It is not shadow. It comes away in your hand and it marks you.

The notch is worn through the ridge to bare rock on both sides, and the north wall of it is green in a way that reads as moss from below and is not soft when you put a hand on it. Whoever used to bring animals up through here walked past it twice a year for a lifetime.

Above the glass, where the fused ground stops, somebody drove a square-cut adit into the hill and shored it with timber that is still standing. It goes in about forty paces and stops at a face that was being worked the week the war ended. There are tools against the wall. Nobody took them home.

Stationary at the anvil, and has been for as long as anyone of age can remember. Sells the way he works, which is without conversation.

He does not stop hammering. "Look. Don't touch what's hot."

Forge and iron

Always has. Whetstone Grit ×3–6, Iron Scrap ×2–5, Sinew ×2–4, Miner's Pick ×1–2, Clay Crucible ×2–4, Field Bellows ×0–1, Prospector's Hammer ×1–2, Charcoal ×2–5

Rolls. 3–5 further items, weighted Weapon 46, Armor 40, Shield 14

Sells what keeps. Has sold to every Proofing for nineteen years and has a fixed opinion about how much bread four people need.

"Four of you." He is already reaching under the trestle. "Nine days. I know what you need better than you do, and you will still argue."

Stall, dry goods

Always has. None ×4–8, Sedge-root ×4–8, Stormsalt ×2–4, Ochre Clay ×3–6

Rolls. 1–3 further items, weighted Trinket 40, Armor 35, Weapon 25

Greens, cures, and the small brown bottles nobody asks about. Knows what everybody in the village takes and does not discuss it.

"Moss and marrow, and don't let the moss get wet." A pause. "Who is it for?"

Stall, greens and cures

Always has. Bittern Moss ×3–6, Marrow ×2–4, Marrow Draught ×2–4, Marshroot Antivenom ×1–2

Rolls. 1–2 further items, weighted Trinket 70, Armor 30

The third stall, and the only one selling anything that was alive this season. Everything on it came off her own ground or out of her own oven, and she can tell you which field.

"That's this year's, that's last year's, and that," -- she does not point at it -- "is not for sale to children." The small beer. She has had this conversation before.

Stall, off the mill field

Always has. None ×6–10, Sedge-root ×3–6, Marrow ×1–3

Rolls. 0–1 further items, weighted Trinket 100

Works the woodpile where the timber comes in. Bows and arrows are the trade and about half the living; the rest is hafts, staves, buckets and handles, because a village fletcher who only fletched would starve.

He holds a shaft up to his eye, sights down it, and puts it on the wrong pile. "Ash for a bow, yew if you can get it, and anything at all for a spear. What are you carrying?"

Woodpile, by the granary

Always has. Sinew ×3–6, Ironbark Resin ×2–4, Pitch ×2–4, Resin Grip ×1–3

Rolls. 2–4 further items, weighted Weapon 70, Shield 20, Trinket 10

Widow. Keeps the parish chest in the meethall: ledgers, two lamps, a box of ochre, and two scrolls her husband bought off a pedlar forty years ago and could never explain.

"You will want the two at the bottom." She does not get up. "Everyone does. Nobody has ever wanted the ledgers, and the ledgers are the reason there is a chest."

The parish chest

Always has. Ochre Clay ×1–3

Rolls. 0–0 further items, weighted