Duskenmoor

The cairn-chapel roof, the Watch's boat frames and every coffin-board on the point come out of Duskenmoor's yard, sixty rafts a season worked round the inlet mouth. Duskenmoor is asked each year to swear the delivery at the Hrimgard assembly and each year sends a written charter instead, which somebody else reads out and nobody answers.

Weir stakes, hurdles and the platform decking at Prospern are cut and driven by Duskenmoor's yard, two hundred stakes a year on a standing order. Duskenmoor knows the same weirs are what Tessarel is suing about and has raised its price for the difficulty rather than pick a side.

Duskenmoor's ironletters found the precedent that lets the Wolds' watch road stand as a garrison work rather than an enclosure, which kept the ridge out of the assembly's hands. The fee came off the yard's grain account, and Belcarrow has since asked for two further opinions on the same terms.

Duskenmoor's yard buys its whole provision off the Wolds, a hundred and twenty quarters of barley and the season's mutton, landed at the yard's own wharf. Belcarrow charges the yard a fifth above what it asks the Falkvald holdings on the same shore, calls the difference a Vaskarni rate, and says so openly.

Duskenmoor's timber charter was granted twice, once by the assembly at Drusenberg and once by a village upriver that believed itself competent, and Drusenberg's have held the second copy since 741 AF. Neither house can produce a rememberer who heard both grants, and both send a factor to the Forge each year to keep the claim from going stale.

Prop timber for Falkbeard's grain cellars, about four hundred lengths a year, goes up the Sturmhalt Water from Duskenmoor's yard on the convict barges. Duskenmoor has delivered against an unsigned order for eleven years and takes payment out of the cellars in grain, and the only objections have been spoken.

Lysathiel is paid to keep the name of Duskenmoor's timber buyer out of the Hrimgard assembly reading aloud, and takes first refusal on Duskenmoor's mast stock instead of coin. A Vaskarni house in Falkvald country with four names in it cannot afford to be formally read, and Lysathiel has not had to raise the price in nine years.

Malgareth advances Duskenmoor's yard its cutting season each spring against the autumn raft price, and sends eight of its own hired men down as escort on the drove track. Duskenmoor pays for the escort whether it wants it or not, which is the yard's standing complaint at the assembly.

Raft dogs, cramp irons and boat nails for Duskenmoor's yard come off Ancarien's single forge, about nine hundredweight a year carried down the tundra flank. Ancarien charges by the piece and will not quote for a season, on the grounds that its charcoal comes out of somebody else's woodland.