The early morning fog had not yet lifted from the wide, flat expanse of the Silver River floodplain, but the silence of the landscape had already been eradicated.
A half-mile north of the bridge, the temporary chaos of the merchant roadside camps was being entirely eclipsed by the organized violence of heavy construction. The sprawling acreage Arthur von Pendelton had marked on his topographical map just two days prior was no longer an abstract blueprint. It was a massive, fully mobilized theater of industrial labor.
Hundreds of men moved through the low-hanging mist. The sharp, rhythmic strikes of iron pickaxes and heavy sledgehammers echoed across the damp earth. Dozens of heavy timber wains, freshly contracted from the northern mills, rolled continuously onto the site, their heavy iron wheels carving deep, deliberate ruts into the designated delivery lanes. Beside them, massive flatbed carts hauled tons of rough-hewn granite and crushed limestone from the eastern quarries.
