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the way they always do, When you're ridin' sixteen hours
And there's nothin' much to do
Asgeir had slept as well as he ever did in the bed of his wagon, a swath of grass for a pillow. Despite looking at Sangi'lak as his home, it felt more natural to him to sleep where he had always slept.
The carpenter had spent the majority of the past three days working on the relatively small corral. For now it could be used communally by the animals, but Asgeir knew by next time the cows and ewes entered their seasons, he'd want to have separate pens for the males of each species so their breeding habits could be controlled to an extent. He had controlled Sunny and Speck for the same reasons, fashioning a covering for Sunny so Speck could mount, while ensuring no foal would result. He could not afford to have a slowing down, even if it were a cute one.
He had set the beams for the corral, three by three the first night. Then the next day he collected small rocks and water. Asgeir had made a layer of rocks, then used a bit of the dirt he had scraped from the holes to make a thick mud that he put on top of the rocks. He continued layering, rocks, mud, rocks, mud, till he reached the top of the hole, which he covered with plain dirt. When the mud within dried, it would make a seal around the wood and would hold each beam in the hole a bit better. When the posts were standing, he had used his charcoal and a knife to make small, tapering holes that extended just under halfway through the beam. These were where the pegs would go.
The following day he had planed wood, somewhat unevenly, and made tapering holes in them, too. Then with some help, and using mud as a glue, he banged the pegs through the boards and into each beam. It took several tiring hours, but the corral was done and the animals were herded into it. The rest of the day he used cutting down small trees to fashion more beams and, less important, to plane more wood. Each tree yielded between two and four tall beams, and he cut down about a pawful and a couple more trees.
The next day, X'yrin stirred him in the cool of the morning, and he sat up, stretching. He was to lead the building of a barn today, a structure for each individual animal to stay in and then some. It would be a massive undertaking and he did not expect it to be done today. But they would try. Most of the wood was in his wagon already and he headed along the mountain, westward, to the place they had planned to meet to construct the behemoth barn.
They would use nails for this, mostly, he had decided, so he had not concerned himself with fashioning more pegs. He left the beams long, and set out several. He turned his horses loose; they wandered south, exploring but not straying too far. Then he stood, straightening himself from his normally hunched posture to look for the appearance of those who would help them.
You just wish the trip was through
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