Chương 211: 208. The Wood Press

They kept walking and soon they passed the last huts of the village in the south, and began walking through the empty area towards the newly built village walls which were barely visible in the snowfall. On the way they passed the small shed which was being maintained by madam Helga to grow the Rizako mushrooms, where a servant seemed to be replenishing the coal. Wait... no. He realized that it was actually a few small wooden branches which the servant was taking inside the shed.

Duvas must have told them not to use coal here for now. Before long they reached the tall walls surrounding the village, with the small gap in the south-eastern part being busy with a few men working there. Looking closer, he saw Taniok attaching a series of much stronger planks than the ones they had used in the bunks onto a sturdy frame which he had already constructed, while a few other workers helped him in the process. This would become one side of the gate, with the other already fixed to a frame on the wall.

"Doing well, Taniok," he praised the balding carpenter as they paused for a moment to heat up their hands from the brazier burning there. Taniok grinned.

"Should be done in a couple of days. With the adzee threat gone by now, we can use all the hours of the daylight for this."

"Good, good. That will only leave the gate in the south-west," Kivamus commented.

"Just give me a week or so and I'll have both of these gates built," the carpenter boasted.

"I'm sure you will," Kivamus praised with a grin.

"I can't wait for the day when we have strong walls and gates surrounding us from all sides," Hudan commented.

"It would make our job so much easier." Kivamus smiled.

"Only a week, Hudan. Only a week." They kept watching the carpenter at work for a while, using the idle time to heat up their hands and bodies as much as possible from the brazier.

Looking back towards the last houses of the village in the north, he realized that although it felt like it had taken too long to reach the village walls while trudging through the snow, it was probably not even five minutes - but with the visibility quite low in the snowfall, the slowed perception of passing time had made it feel like it had been much longer. Soon, they began to walk again and exited the gap in the walls, with Kivamus immediately noticing just how far the tree line seemed to be now.

With most of the labourers working in the South these days, the southern foreman Pinoto had kept the forest clearing going at an excellent rate. There was easily more than a kilometre of empty space in the South by now. While the first 500 meters of that would be kept empty to give a clear line of sight outside the village walls, the sowing would start in the area ahead of that.

They kept walking and before long they passed a more or less circular depression on the snow covered ground which had been surrounded by a thin rope fixed to small posts. This was where the digging of the pond had been started before the snow had postponed the task for the spring. The new drains that they had dug in the north of the village around the longhouse blocks were also connected to this still incomplete pond, with the long depression in the ground easily making it clear where the drains were.

Not too far ahead of that was the destination, where there was a small crowd already gathered at the moment. Reaching closer, he saw that there was a wide tree stump in the middle, and the new wood press machine was fixed above it on a sturdy frame. A couple of labourers were already using the lever to turn the screw around, while the young carpenter Darora was watching from nearby. A small group of kids, including Lucem and Clarisa, were also watching curiously with empty baskets in their hands.

Seeing him approach, Darora walked closer and grinned.

"It's done, milord! You came at the right time. This is the first trial of the machine so I'm waiting to see if everything works well for a few tries before I go back to my workshop to work on the second crossbow again. That's why I allowed the kids to stay here for now when they begged to see the results of their hard work, after they had brought more than enough baskets of sawdust and wood shavings for us." If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"That's okay for the first trial," Kivamus gave a nod, "but make sure to send them inside soon. It's way too cold for them to stay outside too long." As the labourers strained to turn the lever connected to the screw, he noticed that the screw had been carved directly into a small straight piece of a Fedarus branch. That was the reason it was possible to carve a screw at all - because the grooves were big and wide enough to make it easy to do it by hand - not to mention it had been done in just over a day.

Otherwise it might have taken too long, which would have defeated the purpose of starting to make sawdust briquettes quickly to supplement coal as a fuel. He also noticed a wide wooden plank which had been fixed to a post on the ground. There were already a few scribbles on it, and he saw a young girl arguing with Clarisa while she added to the squiggles. Being surprised about how they could possibly have learned to write so fast, he asked Gorsazo about it. His former teacher gave a laugh.

"They can hardly write at all," he informed in a low voice so the kids wouldn't hear it.

"However, Clarisa has a sharp mind and she already knows how to write numbers up to twenty. Since we can't afford to keep someone literate here all day to keep track of how many baskets each kid has brought, so yesterday evening I came here and wrote the names of all the kids who were interested in doing this along with a unique number in front of each name." Kivamus frowned.

"A unique number? But they can't even read yet... How would they even recognise which series of squiggles - since that's all it must look like to them at the moment - is their name?" Gorsazo grinned.

"I already knew that, which is why in the evening classes yesterday in the first longhouse block, I came up with the idea to allot a number to each kid." He gestured at the small crowd of kids gathered near the board.

"Most of them can't even read numbers yet, but Clarisa has taken that responsibility for every kid for now. Every time a kid brings a basket and drops it into that waiting pile, she asks their unique number, and increments the daily basket tally in front of that unique number on the board. This way she will also get some practice to read the names of those kids, while the other kids who are behind her in learning will be motivated to keep track of their own unique numbers." The teacher shrugged.

"It's hardly an ideal solution, but this way all of them will be motivated to keep learning so they can make sure that their competitor isn't catching up to them in the basket count." Hudan gave a loud laugh at the underhand method to make kids keep learning, while Kivamus looked at Clarisa - the young maid who used to be beaten by the previous baron in the past.

"It does seem to be effective, that's for sure. She already seems to have become a leader of them." Soon, the labourers had turned the screw enough times, and Darora told them to stop.

"That's enough. Now turn the screw around in reverse, and let's see if the briquettes have come out well." Giving a nod, the labourers did as they were asked and soon the sturdy plank began to rise upwards from the tree stump with each turn of the screw. Once it had risen up enough, Kivamus saw that the stump had a series of rectangular indents carved into it in a grid, and that's where the sawdust and wood shavings must have been packed before using the screw to bring the plank down to compress it.

With the kids curiously watching from nearby, one of the labourers planted a chisel on the edge of a rectangle, and gently nudged the briquette upward. Soon, he had in his hands a cuboid shaped brownish material which was roughly around ten centimeters on the two short sides and twenty centimeters on the longer side. He handed it over to Kivamus, who took the briquette in his hands looking around at it from all sides.

He even used a small force from his hands to try to break the briquette in two parts, but it didn't seem easy, although he knew that putting more force would still do it.

"Looks good enough to me," he commented, while the labourers got busy removing the other briquettes. Soon, there was a stack of more than a dozen such briquettes stacked on the snowy ground.

"Will these really burn as good as a log?" one of the guards asked in curiosity.

"Let's try it right now then," Kivamus said. He took the briquette in his hand and walked over to the burning brazier nearby. With the servant having replenished it with some firewood earlier in the morning, it wasn't empty yet, but there was still enough space in the brazier for him to put the briquette inside it. He gestured to the guards to add a couple more of them with the first one, and soon, four of the briquettes started glowing in the heat of the already burning wood in the deep pan of the brazier.

Before long, one of the briquettes caught fire, and soon it was followed by the rest of them doing the same, making the kids clap their hands seeing the product of their hard work producing results. The guard who was curious earlier walked closer and put his hands next to the fire with a frown, seemingly to assure himself that the fire from the briquettes was also real.

"It burns so well, milord," Gorsazo remarked.

"I know it's just wood, so it was going to burn for sure, but it seems to have caught fire way too quickly - much faster than a block of wood of a similar size would have."