You take Osric’s sounding pole. It has marks you cut last autumn, not pretty, true.

Downstream of the middle cutwater the pole finds stone, then nothing, then stone again—washed foot, a bite. Timber will help, and stone in baskets, and a wattle face to slow the gnawing. This is not a song. It is a patch that can hold until a mason with a proper purse comes, if pontage ever becomes timber.

Col snorts. “Tolls.”

Pontage is a crossing-toll whose job is this: wages, wood, stone, a helper with a pole. If it is written and spent, it is not an insult. If it vanishes into a pocket, it is.

The hole will not wait for philosophy. Bram’s ferry is a backup a mile south. Waymarks on the ridge are another kind of bridge: they keep people out of marsh.

Osric’s marks on the pole are notches you could read in the dark. The bite under the cutwater is a missing tooth. Timber here is not cathedral-oak; it is whatever the village pile holds, plus wool-money if Col unclenches. Pontage exists because rivers eat for a living.