The Sunfall Shire & Millharrow¶
East of the Mireback Sink the causeway puts out a second arm, and at the far end of it the Thawlands stop being a frontier and start being a larder: the Sunfall Shire, hedgerow and orchard and eel-drain, the deepest of the grain country and the reason bread reaches the north at all. Its market town is Millharrow - halfling kitchens, human fields, the Tallyman's fairs, and a weighbridge that is also the bank, because the shire long ago noticed those were the same trust.
The shire funds the frontier and prefers not to visit it. The feeling, among those who visit the shire from the frontier, is that the shire has the better half of the arrangement, and the shire does not argue.
Getting there¶
From Southmere, take the south stile into the deep wold and follow the old track to the Mireback Sink. At the Sink, go EAST along the causeway's second arm. Mind two things:
- The Sink itself. The causeway was built high and wide because of the neighbor, and carters do not stop on the crossing. Neither should you.
- The carr beside the causeway is carr-troll country (level 14). At causeway level you are merely watched; down among the willows you are expected.
The causeway & the carr (levels 13-14)¶
- Carr-trolls hold the drowned osiers, the willow hall, and the black pools - leaner, greener cousins of the Sink's fen-trolls, and the willow hall's sorted bones are their housekeeping. Their hides bring 170 at the pelt yard.
- The old toll stone midway takes coppers nobody collects. Local custom is to contribute anyway. Local custom has reasons.
The Drying Levels (levels 11-12)¶
The eel country: drains ruled straight as ledgers, smoke-sheds, the great sluice, and the shire's first hedge.
- Hythe lurchers - poachers' dogs gone three generations feral - work the drains and netting sheds in loose packs. Good pelts (85).
- Hedge boars break the hedgerows south of the levels and wallow where they please (100 the hide).
- The stilt walk drums underfoot by design. Nothing on the levels has ever been ambushed on the stilt walk.
The shire lanes & the Tallyman's road (levels 12-15)¶
The road from the levels to Millharrow runs cambered and dressed - grain that reaches the frontier is politics, grain that does not is weather - and it is worked from both hedges:
- Orchard scrumpers (level 13) drift up the barge road each harvest to pick what nobody hired them to pick. They carry coin, and often a lockbox.
- Road agents (level 15) work the quiet stretches on behalf of southern interests that stay unnamed. Better coin, better boxes, worse manners.
Millharrow¶
Millharrow is a sanctuary - the arch counts you in, the hearth-law keeps you whole.
| Where | Who | Service |
|---|---|---|
| The Long Loaf | Tansy Underbough | food, drink, seedcake, perry; lodging under the eaves |
| The Weighbridge | Weighmaster Halden Grist | bank: DEPOSIT / WITHDRAW |
| The Herb Garret | Cress Applewhite | herbs, salves, healing |
| Provisioner's Row | Mott Fernbrake | rations, rope, torches, travel gear |
| The Pelt Yard | Brida Toll | buys pelts at 135 (the board explains the arithmetic) |
| The Market Cross | Ewart Penn | the fair's counting-man; all the figures |
| The Green | Nell Dunmow | the crier; all the news, at volume |
| The Hearth-Hall | - | Aude's round fire; the shire's rest and waking place |
The pelt rate is five under Southmere's netmender, and the painted board at the yard gate is unapologetic about it: the furriers are nine miles and one causeway away, and the causeway takes its share of everything.
The Harrow orchards & the sow wallows (levels 12-15)¶
South of town the Harrows' ground runs down from the high field to the wet: cider house, the Long Acre (whose whole yield goes north under the grain contract), and the wallows, which belong to the pigs in law and in practice.
- Hedge boars and scrumpers work the orchard rows.
- At the bottom of everything waits the Harrow Sow - a pig on the scale of civic architecture, entered in the fair's book each autumn as PRESENT, unjudged. Her hide would roof a shed and prices accordingly (280). The notice board at the south gate says do not feed, approach, or price her, and the story behind the third item is worth hearing at the Long Loaf.
The wet margin (levels 14-16)¶
West of the fields the parish's responsibility thins: the carr door, the sedge breaks, a meadow that floats, and the old turbary where the cutting stopped mid-job on a date the town book gives without comment.
- Carr-trolls in numbers, and bolder than their causeway kin.
- At the margin's black heart, the Old Wallow: a carr-troll old enough to have a name, tenant of a round pool deep past sounding. The fowlers speak of it the way carters speak of the Mireback - as geography. Its hide (320) would stop the mill, and the margin, the fowlers hold, would simply grow another tenant.
- The flat stone at the last dry step holds coins, face up, untouched. A deposit, in the Lady of Reeds' own banking. Leave one or don't; do not make change.
The sunfall¶
From the high field the whole shire lays itself out like a meal, and at day's end the sun goes down whole into the carr - the sunfall, the oldest families call it, and the shire is named for the hour. Come at fair time, when the Tallyman's booths stand up out of their post-holes on the green in an afternoon, the perry comes off the racks, and the counting-man works the cross from first light: the north's bread, the shire will tell you, is baked out of exactly this - hedges, ledgers, pigs, and the fair count kept.