From Londoner To Lord

Chapter 324 319. Wondering

It had been two days since they had found that mixing the root of that weed into the paper pulp improved the quality of the paper, so since yesterday, all the new batches of paper sheets being produced here were of the improved quality. Yesterday morning, Kivamus had also given the baron's medal of science to the worker who had thought of the idea, and the young man couldn't seem prouder of his achievement. The other paper workers had immediately gathered around him to see the medal while saying that next time they would be the ones to get it, giving Kivamus good hopes for the future of Tiranat.

The second hunting group had also been sent out by now, so hopefully the dangerously low levels of food stored in the manor wouldn't turn out to be a curse for the village until they returned with fresh meat. The Rizako mushrooms were already being included in the meals, which resulted in a small but definite decrease in the amount of grain consumed daily.

The sowing had been progressing steadily, and by now they had sown nearly two thirds of the total area marked for farming. Of course, those fifty loggers had continued felling trees in the south - just so they could maximize the amount of wheat harvested in the autumn, which would reduce their dependency on food imports. They had orders not to stop until the rest of the farm area was already sown, which was also increasing the number of logs being moved to inside the village walls using the log-movers. At this point he didn't know if they would get enough seeds to sow the complete area, but he hoped that Trevalo would arrive in time to help them.

He took a step back from the blueprint he had been working on, and glanced at the setting sun through the window in the west. At one point he had even considered pausing the sowing so they could keep more grain for feeding the villagers, but had decided not to do that. All the villagers realized that Tiranat's food situation wasn't good, but they were still managing it so far, even if barely. But by the time autumn came, the village's population would be noticeably higher than today, which would mean their food situation might get seriously bad in the next winter without a good harvest, so he wanted to do his best to prevent that. He had always believed that investing in the future was far more valuable and helpful than consuming something now, whether it was money back on earth or food grain here in Tiranat.

Right now, Gorsazo was out to teach the children and the willing adults in the longhouses, while Hudan was training the guards. The brawny guard captain had used this opportunity of having most of their guards present in the manor to drill them heavily, and all the guards were looking fitter and fitter every day. Of course, it wasn't possible to make everyone a competent swordsman in such a short time, but hopefully it would be enough to make a difference.

That's when the outer door opened, and the majordomo walked inside. Once Duvas had taken a seat near him, he reported, "The sixth watchtower is nearly ready now. Taniok has already completed the sitting platform today, along with the outer parapet, and it will take another day or so to finish the remaining parapets and the roof. When I met Taniok, he looked quite excited to start working on the triphammer and the sawmill soon, which made me remember the last autumn when he and the blacksmith were sitting idle most days."

Kivamus exhaled. "I'm glad to hear that his rivalry with Darora is motivating him to work harder, but I still wish we had more skilled craftsmen here. We are on the right path with both the carpenters and the blacksmith training their apprentice every day, but the results can't come soon enough for me. Anyway, tell Hudan to start posting guards on the sixth watchtower as well. Taniok was smart about finishing the outer parapet first, so our female guards can stay there with at least some safety and keep an eye in the south."

"I'll let him know," Duvas said. "Darora also gave another crossbow today, which makes it 12 in total, but he has used up all the stored parts, so the speed of production will slow down from now. But he said that his apprentices are already trained enough in most of the simple things, so they will still keep providing us new crossbows regularly even without Darora spending most of his time on it. He will only check the quality of the parts made by his apprentice and do the final assembly from now. From tomorrow, he will spend most of his time crafting the parts for the first scorpion."

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"That would be a real boon to us..." Kivamus muttered.

The majordomo nodded. "By the way, his apprentices are also making the frames for the moulds and deckles, so by tomorrow evening we should have half a dozen more of them, so we can double our paper production with that. I don't think we need to allocate more workers on paper making either, since until now they were limited by the number of moulds available. Mixing and beating the pulp is always a difficult process, but other than that, the paper making process involves a lot of waiting until the slurry is boiled with lye, or when waiting for the moulds to get free to put in a new batch of slurry in them. That means those workers can use these new molds to produce more paper. I think we can even give them some more moulds without increasing workers, but you had told me that Cedoron needs to work on scorpion parts first, so I'd only ordered half a dozen moulds this time to save on both time and iron."

"That's fine," Kivamus agreed. "Doubling our paper production will have to be enough for now. Once we have a few scorpions ready, we can make more moulds if needed."

He sighed. "I wish we could have made a few scorpions by now to help in the coming raid, but at least the process will start now. Still, having twelve crossbows means we have one for each woman guard now, so we can start arming the swordsman too from the next ones we get." He grinned. "With two crossbows on every watchtower, it will give a mighty punch in the face to any bandit group who dares to attack us."

Duvas snorted. "I don't doubt that at all. Your order to the fletcher to keep making more and more arrows and crossbow bolts means we have no shortage of them by now - at least the purely wooden ones. I also noticed that Hyola has basically become the leader of all the female guards, and has just announced the start of a daily competition between them from tomorrow to see who can get more headshots on the straw targets."

Kivamus chuckled hearing about the fearless redhead taking the lead. "I can't wait to see the results. In the future we can even start including the male guards in it once they have their own crossbows. In fact, tell Madam Nerida to give an extra portion of food to whoever wins. With not enough food these days, there can't be any better motivator for them to do their best."

"That's a good idea," the majordomo nodded. "As expected, Yufim also wanted to participate in it, but Hyola barred him from it, saying only those who used a crossbow were allowed to participate."

Kivamus laughed, imagining the whiny reaction of the blonde archer at being denied a chance to gloat over the others. There was no doubt that there was simply no match to Yufim's archery skills in the whole village, but the fact that he still wanted to prove it to everyone belied his young age of just 22.

"Yeah, as good as the crossbow women are in their targeting, I don't want the newer ones to be demoralized when competing with Yufim. But give them a few weeks to get more practice with the crossbow, and I have no doubt they could challenge Yufim as equals."

Duvas laughed as well. "That's for certain. Hyola already defeats him more times than not, and it makes me think if crossbows are the future, instead of bows and arrows."

Kivamus snorted. Bows and arrows were going to be outdated soon enough, but even crossbows were only a stepping stone. He didn't know when it would be, but eventually he was going to make guns here. And let the world come at Tiranat after that, 'cause after that? Their enemies will get to know a kind of defeat they couldn't have imagined in their wildest dreams...

He just muttered, "You have no idea, Duvas... Simply no idea."

***

The next evening, Kivamus was leaning on the handrails of the roof of the manor house, with Hudan and Duvas standing nearby. As usual, Feroy had been scouting near the hills last night, so he was taking a nap during the daytime. However, by now Kivamus had started to question the utility of it. It was leading to the ex-mercenary and the other guards they were using to scout in the hills to get excessively tired, and they still had no results to show for it.

Duvas' words interrupted his thoughts. "I wonder if Torhan's raid is going to happen at all... It's not like we had any definite proof of him wanting to take revenge. Feroy's intuition is all we had to go by, and he still hasn't seen anything suspicious out there. It makes me think if we have been worrying for nothing. If we had been sending hunters out regularly, we wouldn't have been so short on food either..."