The Oak at Marrow Cross

The ancient oak lies across the village crossroads, as long as your ship, its heartwood dense and sound—the kind of timber old master shipwrights used for keels. The lord's reeve has roped the tree off to build new gates for the keep, while the village tenants—whose community hall lost its roof in the same gale—stand silently outside the rope with their saws in a handcart.

The massive heartwood beam rests in your hold, dense and rot-proof. Before you cast off, the village carpenter, Hesper Loam, approaches your rail cap in hand. "Our community hall needs a single main ridge beam, and half of your timber would make it. The reeve will burn the scrap branches to ash before he gives us a single stick. I have no silver, captain, but I can pay you in skilled carpentry."

Your cargo winch lifts what forty villagers could never budge by hand. Half the sawn oak is loaded onto their carts when your lookout spots running lanterns cresting the hill: someone alerted the reeve's patrol sloop! Down on the road, the villagers look up at your deck—they cannot lift the remaining timber without your winch.

The port shipwright raps his knuckles against the dense red timber and whistles. "True marrow-oak heartwood—I haven't seen a beam like this in ten years. It never rots and refuses to sink. I can mill it into heavy keel knees to hold your spine together in a crash, or saw it into outer hull planking. There isn't enough wood for both."

With every villager pulling on the ropes, the new hall roof goes up in three days. Once the last oak peg is driven home, carpenter Hesper Loam boards your ship with her measuring rule and chalk. "Marrow Cross pays its debts in craft." She inspects your hull from bow to stern and chalks precise saw lines along your heartwood timber so nothing is wasted. "A shipyard can cut keel knees or armor planking from this—or I can plank your hull right here."