The majordomo stood up. "I'll go and see if Ustaimo needs any help."

"Don't you know that the knight could be dangerous?" Hudan frowned.

The majordomo laughed. "I'm not the Baron of Tiranat. He has no reason to harm me. What will he even gain by that?" With a shake of his head, Duvas exited through the inner door.

Kivamus stood up as well. "I think it would be nice to take a walk. Dealing with Tuilas has annoyed me enough that I don't want to see him anytime soon."

"As you wish, milord," Hudan nodded. "I'll get a few guards to accompany us. Feroy, you go and take some rest. You'll need to keep an eye on the stairwell again for tonight, so you will need the energy."

Feroy yawned loudly. "Yeah... I think a nap would be nice right about now."

As Kivamus turned to the outer door, Gorsazo followed him. "I'll come with you too. We barely get any time to talk these days."

"Of course. Come on then!"

***

Kivamus was walking in the north of the village in front of the first longhouse block, while the second one was visible only a short distance away. This was the most bustling area in the village these days, since most of the villagers lived here, so he had decided that this was the best place to take a walk. Gorsazo was walking next to him, while Hudan and some other guards had taken positions ahead of and behind them.

It was close to sunset, and a thin stream of smoke was coming out from somewhere inside both of the longhouses. The village workers had already started returning by now to their allotted blocks, which meant their evening meals must already be under preparation. The spring weather was as mild as expected, and it felt like the perfect time to be outside

He kept walking and soon reached near the northern wall, where he saw Taniok walking towards them with a few other carpenter apprentices in tow.

The bald carpenter stopped when he saw him. "Oh, I am glad to find you here, milord. I was thinking of coming to the manor to report to you."

"What is it?" Kivamus asked, before he looked in the northwest where the carpenter had been working these days. "Oh, is the watchtower completed?"

Taniok grinned. "It is ready! I just hammered the last nail in the tower. I know the guards were already being posted on it, but now all the parapets are completed, so they will be much safer keeping an eye around the village." He glanced at the workers waiting near him, and gestured to them to go ahead. Once they were out of earshot, he added, "The secret compartment you had told me and Darora to make were also completed in the morning. I think the crossbows were also kept inside them soon after that."

Kivamus nodded. "Yeah, Hudan had told me about it. Well done, Taniok! If you had been late in completing that, it might have caused many problems for us if the knight had found out about them."

"Yeah," Hudan agreed. "Now it makes sense to put the women guards on duty here, since they will have ready access to the crossbows in case they see anything suspicious out there."

"What do you want me to do now, milord?" Taniok asked.

"The same as we had planned earlier," Kivamus replied. "We need two more watchtowers in the village - one each in the middle of the northern and southern walls, which are longer than the other two. Going by the current rate of construction, it should take you around 10 days or so in total to build them, right?"

Taniok shook his head. "The foundations had only been dug for four watchtowers before the winter, since that is all you had planned at that time. For the next two, we will have to dig those as well, which will make it take longer. Actually, I think that works for us, since I've already used up all the stored planks to build the fourth watchtower and those compartments, so we need more of them anyway. Although now my apprentices can also cut them well enough, so I'll put them on that tomorrow, while I'll supervise digging the foundations and putting the pillars in those holes. By the time the foundation for the next tower is ready, we should have enough planks in stock for us to start building it, but my carpenters have no experience in digging, so I'll need some workers who have dug foundations in the past."

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Kivamus nodded. "I'll talk with Duvas. He'll allot you some of the fire clay diggers from the eastern hills for a few days."

"That will help a lot," Taniok said gratefully. "I think it'll take a few days to dig the foundations, and maybe four or five days after that to build the fifth watchtower. By that time, the foundations for the sixth one should already be completed, so I think it should take maybe two weeks to complete both of these towers."

"It's not ideal, but I guess we can't help it." Kivamus thought for a moment about the iron ingots they had just bought in bulk. "Did Darora talk to you about the scorpion?"

The bald carpenter nodded. "He did, and even showed me the blueprint you had made of it to discuss the design, but it seems far too complicated for me to try my hands in." He snorted. "I'm not as young as that kid, and my eyesight is not the same as it used to be. I'm just fine with constructing new watchtowers and longhouses, but sadly, I can't see well enough to make something as intricate as a crossbow or that scorpion."

"No, no, that's not what I had in my mind." Kivamus explained, "We just received a big shipment of iron today, so we can restart making everything we had paused because of a shortage of iron. I've already told Cedoron to team up with Darora so they can work on making the scorpion together, so you don't have to worry about it. However, now that we have enough iron, I think we can start working on the trip hammer I'd planned to make near the dam. Earlier I was thinking about having Darora work on it, but he will be busy making the scorpion and more crossbows in the future, so once you are done with the watchtowers, I want you to start on the trip hammer."

Taniok looked uncertain. "I have no idea how it would work, milord... I have never seen something like that in my life."

"Oh, I forgot that I had given the blueprint of that to Darora. Get it from him when you meet him next time. Keep taking a look at it in your free time in the next two weeks, and ask me if you have any doubts. It's not that complicated, although it will have some gears which have to work along with a rotating axle, but..."

"An axle?" Taniok interrupted. "I can't make an axle here, or I would have repaired the broken wagon myself before the winter."

"No, this axle won't be made of iron. It'll need to be quite long and sturdy, and we simply can't afford to spend that much iron on it. A straight wooden log will work just as well for this. That log will become the axle, while the gears will also be quite large, so I don't think it would be any problem for you to craft them. There's hardly anything complex in that hammer."

The bald carpenter scratched his chin. "I'll still need to take a look at that blueprint first, but I think I should be able to do it."

"I have no doubt that you can," Kivamus praised, "especially since it doesn't require any intricate work."

Taniok beamed at the praise, a gap in his teeth visible easily. "I'll do my best, milord! What will that trip hammer be used for, anyway?"

Kivamus grinned. "I think you'll like what it's going to do. It has been designed in a way so it can be repurposed to do many tasks. The main reason I had decided to build it was to beat and mix the sawdust pulp properly to make more sheets of paper, but the rotating axle can easily be repurposed to cut planks, like in a sawmill."

"A sawmill?" Taniok repeated. "Like the ones which work using water wheels on the Kal river in Cinran?"

Kivamus nodded. "At a smaller scale, but yes."

"I've seen those in work before I moved here, but it's been more than two decades so I don't remember much about it. I wouldn't know how to use it."

"Don't worry, it is very easy to operate," Kivamus reassured him. "The best part is that your apprentices won't have to waste time working on something as simple as cutting planks - which takes the majority of their workdays. A single sawmill should probably allow you to do the work of a dozen apprentices - or perhaps even more - with only one or two workers needed to operate it. As long as enough logs can be brought to the sawmill and the planks taken back to the village, you won't have any shortage of them anytime soon - especially since we have way too many Fedarus logs stocked around the village." He grinned. "The best part is that this sawmill can keep working around the clock... Uh... I mean the whole day and night without any problem."

Taniok frowned. "I don't think we would be able to work at night... There is simply not enough light for that, but I think I get what you mean. If this really works like you say I'll be able to do a lot more construction for you since this sawmill would allow most of my apprentices to work along with me to speed up building everything." He scratched his bald pate. "Although I think transporting enough logs from here to the dam and bringing back the planks would still be a problem since we don't have that many wagons even now."

"I know," Kivamus agreed. "That's another thing I plan to work on in the future, but for now we will have to make do with what we have. The coal mining wagons stay idle at the mines all day so we'll just have to use them more. By the time you finish the watchtowers, all the sowing will already have been completed in the farms, after which we'll also free up all those horses pulling the seed drills, as well as the wagon used to take seeds to the south."

"We'll still need a couple of workers to drive those wagons back-and-forth to the dam," Taniok suggested, "but as long as it keeps my apprentices free, I'll be happy. Wait, how will the axle change what it is doing? Didn't you say that it will also be used to beat the sawdust pulp? It's not like the axle will know by itself when it has to stop cutting planks and start mixing pulp, right?"