Bonds of Wood and Fibre

“A rope is not rope, a beam not beam — they are the memory of many hands, holding together against the breaking.” — Proverb of the Rope-Singers

While the forge thundered at the centre of camp, another labour unfolded at its edges—quieter, but no less vital. The mountains offered little wood, yet what grew there was strong: crooked pines, their roots clutching stone like desperate hands, and wiry brush with fibres tough as sinew. These were no towering cedars such as grew in the lowlands, but trees shaped by hardship, and in their twisted forms the settlers saw the likeness of their own journey.

Eadric led the first party up the slopes at dawn. Their axes glinted in Shamash’s cold light, and each stroke rang out sharp against the stillness, startling crows from their perches. The work was dangerous. Loose scree slid underfoot, and more than once a man had to seize another’s cloak to keep him from tumbling down the incline. The air smelled thick with resin, sticky and pungent as they felled the pines, and their hands soon carried the scent deep into their skin.

When the first tree toppled, Amara stepped forward, her cloak billowing in the mountain wind. She pressed her palm to the bark, eyes closed, lips moving in words too soft for most to hear. A blessing, some guessed; an apology, others whispered. When asked, she only said: “The mountain spirits must know we do not take without thanks.” From then on, each tree cut was marked with her touch, and even the most sceptical settlers bowed their heads for a moment before hauling the timber down to camp.

In the evenings, by firelight, carpenters stripped and shaped the logs. Their bronze adzes and axes rang with a steadier rhythm than the forge, less fiery but no less relentless. Shavings curled at their feet, catching sparks from the nearby flames until the ground itself seemed littered with golden curls.

Kiya oversaw their work as closely as she did the smiths. She crouched over each beam, measuring the angle of the cuts, marking with her stylus where the wedges should bite. “A strut too weak will snap under the weight of the wagons,” she said, her voice firm. “A wedge cut wrong will loose a cart upon the slope, and then neither prayers nor skill will save us.” She spoke without softness, yet her exactitude inspired rather than discouraged. The carpenters followed her instructions with a growing sense that their labour was part of something greater than themselves, as if the wagons were already becoming the bones of the city they hoped to build.

Alongside them, rope-makers worked with equal devotion. Women and children gathered hemp fibres and stripped bark from the mountain brush, twisting strands together with raw hands until their palms blistered. Goat-hair, combed and cleaned, was spun into cords finer and stronger than many had thought possible. The fibres were then braided into thicker ropes, their ends spliced with a practised twist.

Rope-making became almost a ritual in itself. Groups worked in circles, their voices rising in old songs to keep time with their twisting. The chants were half practical—ensuring rhythm and strength—but also half sacred. The songs spoke of bonds unbroken, of threads of fate, of the ties between kin and neighbour. Children learned the words as they worked, their high voices carrying over the deeper chants of their elders, until the whole camp seemed bound by one vast cord of sound.

One evening, a boy asked Amara why the songs were needed. She smiled, her hands busy braiding hemp. “Because rope is not only fibres twisted together. It is trust. Each strand must rely upon the others, and the song reminds us of that truth.”

By the fourth day, coils of rope lay in neat piles beside the wagons—thick as a man’s wrist, long as the span of the camp. The settlers treated them with reverence, coiling and uncoiling them carefully, as though each rope were a sacred relic. Some even whispered charms into their fibres before laying them down, binding words of protection into the very twist.

The carpenters, too, began to give names to their strongest struts. One beam, cut from a gnarled pine that had stood alone against the wind, they called Storm-Defier. Another, stripped smooth and polished until it gleamed, they named Faithful Servant. Names gave the wood meaning, and meaning gave the settlers courage.

Gideon, ever doubtful, scoffed at these practices. “A rope is a rope,” he said. “A log is a log. Give them names if it makes you feel braver, but the mountain won’t care.” Yet even he was seen once, late at night, running his hands along a rope coil and muttering under his breath. Whether it was a curse or a prayer, none could say.

By the fourth evening, the camp had changed. Where once there had been only scattered timber and loose fibres, now there stood ordered piles of struts and neatly coiled ropes. The settlers had carved strength out of the mountain itself, weaving its spirit into tools of survival.

As the sun sank, Azariel walked among them, pausing to touch a beam here, a rope coil there, as though blessing each with his hand. “You have taken the mountain’s strength into your own,” he told them. “When we climb, we climb not as strangers, but as those who have earned a place upon its slopes.”

The settlers listened, their faces weary but steady. They had blistered hands, sore backs, and aching arms, but they also had struts strong as spears and ropes bound tighter than kinship. The mountain still loomed above them, vast and unyielding, but for the first time its shadow felt less like a sentence and more like a challenge to be met.