The bell rang on time.
That no longer meant what it once had.
Eryk woke before it finished echoing through the sheds, the sound already layered with other noises. Coughing. Wood shifting in cold. The low, constant murmur of men rising too fast from thin sleep.
The yard was not late today.
It was crowded.
Too many bodies moved at once through too few channels. Buckets changed hands twice before reaching their usual carriers. Tools waited in stacks without clear owners. Foremen stood in knots, conferring in short bursts before splitting again.
Temporary had become default.
Hala did not shout immediately.
She stood near the great pot with her hands planted on her hips, watching the traffic tangle in front of her. When she spoke, her voice cut sideways through the noise instead of over it.
"Three to pump. Two to yard. One to upper. The rest wait until someone finds where you belong."
The last part was not a joke.
Eryk went to the pump without waiting to be pointed.
Tomas was already there, eyes ringed dark, breath steaming too fast.
"They moved the beam overnight," Tomas said. "Just a hand span. Rope rubs wrong now."
The first pull proved it.
The rope dragged unevenly over the lip. The bucket rose in small, faltering jumps instead of its old smooth climb. Every hitch shivered through Eryk's shoulders like a correction.
Tomas adjusted his grip and tried to find the old rhythm anyway.
It did not fit.
They worked without speaking for a time, trading the handle in a pattern that felt almost right until the rope caught again and reminded them it was not.
Water rose darker again today.
Eryk did not comment on it.
He had learned which facts mattered and which ones only made men stare at their own hands.
When his shoulders began to burn steady instead of sharp, he knew Gerrit would come soon.
The yard always rebalanced when one task became too stable.
Sure enough, boots scraped behind him.
"Hollowford," Gerrit said. "Upper tool intake. They want someone who does not lose count."
Eryk released the handle at the top of a pull and stepped back.
Tomas took it without looking up.
The upper intake had become permanent in everything but name.
Two clerks now worked there instead of one. The younger one had ink stains on both cuffs. His writing had grown smaller. Faster. Less forgiving.
The older clerk's eyes moved like a scale, weighing people more than tools.
Eryk was given a chalk board instead of a plank today.
"Write returns here," the younger clerk said. "Mark failures with a slash. I will transfer it if we have time."
"If not?" Eryk asked.
"Then it stays chalk," the clerk replied, already turning away.
Chalk did not last.
Chalk could be wiped.
Foremen arrived in waves.
They spoke faster than before.
"We lost a hammer head below. Not broken, just gone."
"Chain jam on mid haul. Need two more links."
"Three shovels returned bent. Two cracked."
Eryk marked what he saw.
He also noted what he did not see.
By midday, three tool types were being requested faster than they were returning.
Shovels.
Chains.
Lower picks.
He began grouping the returns with slight separation, stacking the strongest among the worn instead of the broken. When a tool came back with a bend that could still take weight, he laid it where it would be taken first. When one came back with a crack that would fail under strain, he pushed it lower in the stack so it would be seen later.
No one told him to do this.
No one stopped him.
Once, the younger clerk frowned at the spacing.
"You can stack tighter," he said.
"If I stack tighter," Eryk said, "the cracked hide."
The clerk stared at him for a moment, then glanced at the piles again. His mouth worked once, like he was swallowing something he did not want to taste.
"Stack tight," he repeated, quieter, and walked away.
Eryk kept the spacing anyway.
Not wide.
Just enough to read.
Just enough to choose.
Near the second bell, Tomas appeared at the edge of intake, breath fast, cheeks red from cold and effort. His hands were wet to the wrists.
"Gerrit said tell you," he said.
Eryk did not stop writing.
"The path is slick near the third support," Tomas added. "No sand left in the barrel."
"Tell Gerrit," Eryk said.
"Gerrit sent me to you."
Eryk lifted his chalk and made a short line at the edge of the board.
"What does that do?" Tomas asked.
"It reminds me to slow the upper draw after second bell," Eryk said. "Less weight on the return path."
"And the people on the path?"
"They will still carry," Eryk said. "Just fewer, fewer times."
Tomas opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"Is that… safer?"
"For some," Eryk said.
Tomas stared at him.
"Since when do you think like that?"
Eryk did not answer.
The adjustment worked.
By the time the second bell rang, the return flow had thinned. Not because men had rested. Because fewer bodies were forced onto the same ice at once. The foreman cursed about delays, but the carts moved without the same frantic crush. The rope line shifted. A small pocket of space formed where there had been none.
It was not mercy.
It was traffic.
At dusk, the clerks compared chalk to ink.
Two mismatches were corrected immediately.
One was left as chalk.
"We will resolve it in the morning," the younger clerk said, exhausted.
Eryk knew which one it was.
Harn's delayed return from days earlier still sat as a provisional mark.
Neither struck through nor confirmed.
Neither real nor gone.
That night, in the shed, scrapes and coughs layered thick in the dark.
Tomas lay awake beside him, breath uneven.
"You slowed the upper pull today," Tomas whispered. "Two men got shifted off the path because of it. Foreman cursed, but no one slipped."
"Yes," Eryk said.
Tomas was quiet for a long time.
"You chose," he said finally.
Eryk stared into the dark.
"I adjusted," he said.
The difference mattered.
It mattered too much.
Sleep came late.
When it did, it was shallow.
He dreamed of planks with too many marks on them. Of chalk smearing under a sleeve. Of a bucket rising in faltering jumps, each hitch pulling something loose inside him.
In the morning, the bell rang on time.
The yard answered without thinking.
And Eryk moved inside it with small, precise inefficiencies that favored the same shapes of survival again and again.
The machine still worked.
But now it worked unevenly.
And the unevenness had begun to lean.