~ Torig ~
Torig stood near the eastern end of the hilltop and watched two of Taniok’s workers guide another fedarus log into place.
The log was thick, heavy, and still rough where the branches had been cut away. It took four men on the ropes and two more pushing from the side to get it moving properly. The pulley fixed to the temporary wooden frame creaked under the strain, but the log rose bit by bit until the workers could lower it into the trench dug for the palisade.
Taniok stood nearby with his hands on his hips, scowling at everyone.
“Slowly,” the bald carpenter snapped. “If you drop it crooked, I’ll make you dig it out yourselves.”
One of the workers muttered something under his breath.
Taniok heard it and turned his head. “What was that?”
“Nothing, Master Taniok.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The gap in Taniok’s teeth showed clearly when he spoke, and a few of the workers looked away to hide their grins. He was in his forties, wiry, weathered, and always grumbling about something, but he knew what he was doing. Torig had learned that much in the last two weeks. Taniok had a habit of complaining about everything, especially when he was under pressure to finish a project on time, but once he agreed to start something, the work got done properly.
The log settled into the trench with a heavy thud.
“Brace it,” Taniok ordered. “And pack the earth tighter this time. I don’t want this thing leaning after the first strong wind.”
Torig watched the guards step in to help. The workers had the skill, but the guards had the extra hands and strength. Since the first day on the hilltop, everyone had been doing whatever was needed. Digging. Carrying. Cutting branches. Pulling ropes. Holding posts upright. It was not guard work, but nobody complained much anymore. They all knew why this place mattered.
Once this encampment was finished and the medicine workers arrived, Tiranat would be able to process losuvil here, closer to the vines. Torig did not know the details. He did not know how the leaves became the red powder the manor called medicine, or how it was stored, or how it was sold afterward, if at all. He only knew that Lord Kivamus considered this place important, and that was enough. If the compound helped the village and helped Lord Kivamus with his plans for Tiranat, then the work was worth doing.
The hilltop wasn't huge, but it was broad enough for what they needed. The palisade was being set where the top began to slope downward, so the whole flat crown of the hill would be enclosed. Anyone or anything trying to attack from outside would have to climb up the slope first. That alone made the position better than building on lower ground.
The first three sides of the palisade were already complete. The last side—the western side—still had gaps, but it would be finished by tomorrow or the day after. Taniok had nearly built the gate as well, and if all went well, it would be fixed in place tomorrow.
Torig felt better every time he looked at it.
The first night they had arrived here, they had heard an adzee howl from somewhere in the hills. The sound had carried through the slopes and trees for a long time, and every man in the camp had gone quiet. That night they had been almost fully exposed, with only campfires, guards, and nervous hands on weapons to protect them. Thankfully, the sound had not come again. Since then, there had been no real danger apart from a boar attack.
Thankfully, that had happened in the evening, when most of the guards were awake. With 18 guards present, the boar had been killed quickly enough. That night everyone had eaten freshly roasted meat around the fire, and for a while the camp had felt less like a dangerous worksite and more like a place where people could live. The workers had laughed. The guards had traded stories. Even Taniok had stopped grumbling for part of the evening, though that didn't last long.
Torig turned and looked east.
Beyond the lower hills, the Arakin mountain range stood clear in the distance. The peaks were much taller than these foothills, and sometimes the clouds gathered around them even when the sky above the camp was open. This close to the mountains, they sometimes even saw bakkores far away in the sky. From a distance they looked like giant birds, but everyone knew better. They were not common, and they usually kept to the taller hills and smaller peaks, but the thought of one noticing the camp still made Torig uneasy.
If a bakkore came down on them, there would be very little they could do.
Adzees were the more likely danger. Huge, grayish-brown, wolf-like beasts that hunted in packs. Strong enough to make even good palisade logs feel insufficient if they struck together. Having some Fedarus trees even here on the hills was a Goddess' gift though. Their wood was strong, and the logs were thick enough to stop most beasts, but that also made them hard to move and harder to plant into the ground.
The pulleys helped a lot.
Torig looked back at the frame the workers were using to raise the next log and shook his head slightly. Such a simple thing, and yet it changed everything. A rope looped the right way, a wheel fixed at the right height, men pulling from the right angle, and suddenly something that would have taken twice as many workers became manageable. He had heard Lord Kivamus had taught the carpenters that method, just like he had taught so many other things.
Torig did not understand how the silver-haired man knew so much.
He was only glad he did.
Still, a palisade would not be enough forever. Torig wanted a watchtower here. Even a small one. From the top of this hill, a tower would let them see far across the surrounding slopes, valleys, and tree lines. It would give warning if beasts approached or if mercenaries somehow came this way. They did not expect bandits here, not this far into the hills, but mercenaries moved through the southern forest areas often enough that it could not be ignored.
One day, he wanted scorpions here too.
He had heard that the first ones were already being built in the village when he left the village for these hills, but there were not enough yet. The village walls would get them first, of course—keeping their families and children safe was more important than anything else. Then maybe the dam site. This place would have to wait months, at least. Still, the thought of a scorpion mounted on a hilltop watchtower made him feel a lot more confident about keeping this place safe.
For now, they had eighteen guards, including six women. They had six crossbows between them, enough that each guard on the active shift could have one ready. The rest carried shields, spears, swords, and the other tools and weapons they had brought. The women had daggers as well, though most of them were already better with crossbows than many men liked admitting.
The shifts were simple. Six guards stayed on watch for eight hours, then the next six took over. It kept everyone tired, with no day for resting. Some guards had complained about it, but until the palisade was complete, Torig did not want to loosen the schedule.
He was in charge of the guards here, and because security came first for now, that made him responsible for the whole camp in a broader sense. Taniok had the final say on carpentry and construction, as he should. The man was a master carpenter. But if something involved safety, guard placement, or whether work could continue in an exposed area, Torig was the one everyone looked to.
It still felt strange.
He was 27 and had been a guard for several years, from before Lord Kivamus ever came to Tiranat. But he had not led men like this before. Not really. He was grateful that Hudan and Lord Kivamus had trusted him with it. He intended to prove they had not made a mistake.
Later, when the encampment was ready, Miss Syrene would come here. Torig had heard that clearly before leaving the village. Once she arrived, she would be in charge of the medicine processing work. Other female workers would likely come with her too, many of them trained already in the manor. For now, though, the workers here were men, because the place was not safe enough yet, and there were hardly any female carpenters in the village anyway—apart from his friend Layita, of course. It hadn't even been a year and Tiranat's other master carpenter Darora already held her in high regard.
But the number of women here would change once the palisade was done.
He walked away from the eastern side and began making his usual rounds through the camp.
The longhouse's foundation had already been dug near one corner of the compound—using the same design as one straight section of the longhouse blocks at the village. Some of Taniok’s workers were setting the foundation beams now, while two others were preparing the vertical posts for the first wall. It would be a simple single-story rectangular hall, long enough and wide enough to hold up to 48 people once the bunks were fixed inside. There would be two layers of plank bunks along both sides, one above another. It would not be as comfortable as living in the manor, but it would be far better and much safer than sleeping in the open.
The placement had been planned carefully. Two, or maybe even three, more of such longhouses could later be built parallel to it, occupying a quarter of the compound, leaving the next quarter for vegetable patches in the same half. One quarter of the other half would be kept for the losuvil processing hall, storage, and whatever else Syrene needed when the medicine work began, while the last quarter would remain empty - letting the guards use it as a training area and for campfires and cooking. Nesser would have their hides if he thought the guards were slacking off here.
The well had become a longer discussion.
At first, some of the workers had assumed they would dig one inside the compound. But after looking at the hilltop and the ground below it, Taniok had grumbled that digging for water from the top would take far too much work and might still fail. The better option was to dig lower down, in the small dip between this hill and the next, where water was more likely to be found. It would be outside the palisade, which Torig did not like, but it was more practical. Once the main defenses were finished, they could build a small fenced cover around the well and send a group of guards whenever workers needed to draw water. Until then, the weekly wagons would keep bringing barrels from Tiranat.
That was another thing he would need to report when the caravan arrived.
The original estimate had been three to four weeks before the encampment would be ready for the losuvil workers. Now it looked like it would take longer. Not because anything had gone wrong, exactly. It was just harder work than it had sounded back in the manor. Cutting trees, clearing roots, digging foundations, setting palisade logs, leveling uneven ground, and doing all of that with a small workforce took time. Taniok had already sent word back last week asking for more workers. Torig hoped the next caravan brought an answer.
He stopped near a pair of guards at the northern side.
“Anything?” he asked.
One of them shook his head. “Nothing close. We saw some movement in the trees earlier, but it was probably deer.”
“Probably isn’t good enough,” Torig said, though he kept his voice calm. “Keep watching that side until the next shift. Tell the guards on the next shift about it as well.”
“Of course.”
Torig moved on.
The evening air was already cooling. Down in Tiranat, summer would be getting uncomfortable by now. In another month, the rains would come, and the village would turn humid and muddy. Torig had never liked that part of the year. Here, on the hilltop, the air moved almost constantly. The higher ground made the heat easier to bear. It was not cold, not yet, but it was pleasant in a way the village rarely was at this time of year.
Winter would come here earlier, of course. It would probably last longer too. In Tiranat, snow stayed for around two and a half months. Here, closer to the mountains, he would not be surprised if it lasted closer to four. The snowfall would be heavier as well.
That did not bother him much.
He preferred cold to heat. He always had.
Perhaps he was lucky to have been chosen for this assignment.
It was supposed to be temporary. Once the encampment was built and the medicine work began, the guards would likely be rotated. But Torig was already thinking of asking Hudan to post him here permanently. He did not think it would be a difficult request. Most guards had families in the village and would want to stay closer to them. Torig did not. His parents had died a few years ago, and he had no siblings. He had friends in Tiranat, mostly other guards, as well as Layita, but no one who depended on him.
That did not mean he did not love the village.
Tiranat was his home. It had been his home since he was a kid and his parents had moved there for the coal mining work. Although in the past year Lord Kivamus had changed the village in ways Torig would never have imagined. Every time the supply caravan came, he looked forward to hearing what had changed next. New roads. New machines. New wages. New buildings. New weapons. Every week there seemed to be something.
But someone had to keep this place safe too.
This encampment was important. Once it started producing medicine, it would help Tiranat a lot. If Torig could serve Lord Kivamus’s plans by keeping this hilltop secure, then that was a good role to have.
He smiled faintly as another thought came to him.
He was 27 now. It was not as if he had no interest in finding a woman one day, maybe even a wife. That had never felt likely in the village, where everyone already knew everyone and where his life had been mostly guard duty. But once the encampment was finished, many of the medicine workers coming here would be women. Most of those who had been processing losuvil in the manor were women, and many were not old. This place was isolated, yes, but that might not be entirely bad. Once the day’s work was done, people here would have time to talk. Time to get to know one another.
Maybe something would come of that.
Maybe nothing would.
Either way, that was for later.
For now, he needed to make sure no one died before the palisade was finished.