Scales Letter: Founding the Hearthwardens
| Sent | Hammer 3, 1489 |
|---|---|
| From | Declan Winterhound |
| To | Karma |
| Carried | Two days behind the wagon that brought the crew and the timber up to Nuts Deep |
The letter that stood up The Hearthwardens — from Declan Winterhound to Karma on her elevation to Balancewarden, received at Nuts Deep in the first week of the fortnight's downtime, early Hammer 1489.
Provenance
A wagon came up to Nuts Deep in the first week of the fortnight's downtime, carrying four people, a great deal of sawn timber, and Aldith Fenn, who had already begun asking the fort's cook what the well tasted of before anyone had greeted her. The letter arrived two days after the wagon did.
The letter
Karma,
The wagon should have reached you before this letter did, unless Aldith took the river road, in which case it did not and I am sorry for the confusion. She maintains the river road is faster. It is not, and I have stopped arguing about it.
So — Balancewarden. It is a good rank and you have had it coming for a while. I have handed it to a fair number of people over the years and most of them arrived believing that peace is a thing you declare at people. You already know better than that, which is why the Scales are sending you four workers and a load of timber instead of four healers.
Aldith Fenn runs them. She stays at your fort and does not travel, which suits her, and she has a habit of turning up with the exact thing somebody was about to need. I have never worked out how she does it and I no longer ask. The other four go wherever you send them. There will be a fifth as your name carries further, and a sixth after that.
Three things they can do for you.
The first is settling a place down. I want to explain this one properly, because it is the least obvious of the three and it is the reason I fought for you to have them.
The Cult does not only burn villages. It works on them. It puts a story in the right mouth in the right tavern and then it waits, and the fear does the rest of the labour, so that by the time anyone arrives with a sword the village has already decided who it blames and what it is going to do about it. That costs the Cult almost nothing. Frightened people are cheap and there are a great many of them.
The Hearthwardens are what we have found works against it. Send them into a place the Cult has started on, and they sit in the common room and say the plain true thing over and over without getting angry about it, and they are still there in the morning, which the Cult's people never are. The trouble is that when this succeeds you will not get to watch it succeed. A village that does not turn looks exactly like a village that was never going to.
The second is gathering. Tell them what sort of thing you want — the kind of thing, and roughly where it might grow — and they will go and look. Yessa is very good and the rest have learned enough to carry a basket without ruining what is in it. Be honest with yourself about what you will get. Common and uncommon they will bring you steadily. Something rare turns up now and again, and when it does it is a matter of luck and the season rather than of anybody trying harder. Asking twice does not make it grow.
They gather. They do not hunt, and they do not cut things out of carcasses. If you want that, it is your friend Keyleth's people you want, and there is no shame in the asking — it is simply not what these hands do.
The third is tending, and it is the one I would spend them on if I were you.
Send them to a place that has been hurt and give them a week. They will not nurse it. They will get the roofs back on, re-dig the well, put the walls up, and — this is the part that matters and the part people forget — they will teach the place to finish the rest of it themselves and send word for whatever else it needs. A village we make dependent on us is a village we have failed. A week is enough. It has been enough for thirty years.
At the end of that week the place is standing, and it also knows who came. That is worth a great deal and it does not wear off the way a payment wears off. A village your company has put back together will feed you, hide you, and send word up the road when strangers start asking after you. It will do all of that for your people as well — the Harper girl's agents, the Gauntlet's soldiers, those squires of yours. Nobody will ask whose they are. They will simply be treated as yours.
On moving them: hours to cross a town, three to five days to cross a region, ten days or more to cross the coast. While they are travelling they are building nothing.
Now the part I have to put in writing.
They have no weapons and they are not going to be given any. I have been asked for that more than once and my answer has not changed in thirty years. The moment a Hearthwarden carries a blade, every door on this coast closes to them, and the open doors are the entire worth of the thing.
Which means the judgement is yours and not theirs. They will go where you send them. They will go somewhere you were told was quiet, and they will start unloading the wagon, and if you were wrong about quiet they have no way to fight their way back out of it. They get taken. They get caught up in what is already happening there. Dangerous country stays dangerous for people who turn up meaning well, and meaning well has never once been protection.
So be as sure as you can before you send them, and when you cannot be sure, send to me and I will tell you what I know about the place.
Eldath keep you. Mind the roads, and tell Aldith the river road is not faster.
— Declan Winterhound
See also
- Correspondence — the campaign's letters, gathered
- The Hearthwardens — the crew it stood up, where the letter is also kept
- Scales of Eldath · Declan Winterhound · Karma