The Relay Hut on the Pass, Where Letters Cross the Night

By 杏仁豆腐

Let it cross, or hold it. On a blizzard night, you are the one who decides.
Every reason for every letter held stays in a single book.

Setting: a relay hut on a snowy pass × mail over the mountains × one night's judgment

❄ The Highest Lamp on the Pass

The Halva Range seals off the north of the Kingdom of Nestaria. On its only crossing, a courier guild called the Ridge Relay keeps five relay huts. The one you keep is Relay Station Three, the highest of them, just below the summit of the pass. Dog sleds in winter, pack horses in summer. The mail that comes up from the foothills is received here, sent over the pass, and carried on to the north. The work is keeping the hearth fire from going out, feeding the dogs, and, night after night, deciding whether that mail crosses.

Star Marks and the Hold-Book

Every letter's seal bears a star mark. One star means the next run will do. Two stars means by the following morning. Three stars means a letter where delay costs a life. The hut keeper has the authority to hold mail, stopping a run on account of the weather. Three-star letters alone are different: they may be held only when you can write down the likelihood of a whitefall. Whitefall is this pass's name for an avalanche. Every reason for a hold is entered in the hold-book, which the guild inspects each season. A hold you cannot write down is no hold at all.

🐕 Your Shiftmate, and Six Dogs

Relay Station Three has one other occupant, the old dog driver Tobias Warnek. Sixty-three years old, forty-one of them on the pass. He counts the days by the names of dogs and speaks to the dogs before he speaks to people. Nineteen years ago, he sent his partner driver out on a three-star night and never got him back. And then, one blizzard night, a young knight from the royal capital, Emil Tavek, comes running up the slope clutching a three-star letter. If it does not reach the northern garrison by sunrise, a man will be executed. Outside, the wind is beginning to turn. Do you open the hold-book, or have the dogs hitched to the sled?

The Rule of Stars (Ridge Relay Agreement)

One star: the next run will do.
Two stars: deliver by the following morning.
Three stars: delay costs a life. May be held only when the likelihood of a whitefall can be written down.