Chương 399: 394. Village Tour - II

Kivamus glanced at the farm in the distance, where small sprouts had already started to come out of the ground.

"What's the progress with the farm patrols?"

"I've explained the task to the guards," Hudan reported, "and I got a lot of volunteers who wanted to do this in their off-duty time. But I had to postpone it until the counter raid was over. We'll be short on guards till then anyway."

"That's true enough. How's the recruitment going?"

"We are nearly done, milord." Hudan smiled.

"Including the latest recruits, our current guard strength is 33 women and 58 men. It will only take a few more days to reach your target of 40 women and 60 men. I already have enough applicants, but I have to select which of them are really suited for this. That will take a couple of days. Then we will reach your desired strength of 100 guards.

Tesyb, Kerel and Nesser have already started training the recruits, and I also oversee them whenever I have the time and try to have a mock fight with anyone who is getting too confident."

"Well, that'll take care of any growing egos!" Kivamus grinned.

"Still, this is good progress. It will take a couple of months to bring every recruit to our standards, but after that? We'll be able to take on any attacks except from the mercenaries or the Count." Duvas snorted.

"You keep including the Count amongst your enemies… He is hardly going to burn the village like the mercenaries could."

"Eh… that's only as long as we keep paying him." Kivamus shrugged. He glanced around to confirm there was no one else apart from other guards.

"There's not much difference between them in my eyes. They both want a tribute of gold from us, and neither of them does anything to protect us in return. The only difference is that the Count is taking his extortion money legally, and has named that tribute as tax." Duvas shook his head.

"I wish I had some argument against that, but I've got nothing." Kivamus laughed.

"Come on, let's go to the north now. I also want to see the progress of the third longhouse before we go to Darora to see the scorpion at work." As they started walking back, Hudan looked at him.

"We will reach your target of 100 guards within a few days, but we don't have enough equipment for them though. For 60 men, ideally we'd keep 70 to 80 spears in stock to have some spares and for training purposes, although we could make do with half that number, since the off-duty guards wouldn't need them. As for swords, we should have a personal sword for each man, and a few extra in reserve. Same goes for shields too. On the other hand, daggers are needed for even women, so we need at least 100 of them in total.

We have already given orders to the blacksmith for all of those—and we have more than enough iron for everything—but Cedoron has so many things to do these days that he's always behind on orders. Apart from that, giving everyone even leather armor is also going to become a problem. Leah keeps sewing up usable armors from two or three damaged ones every time we kill some bandits, but it's not nearly enough." They entered through the gates again, and continued walking north.

Kivamus glanced at the vegetable patches on both sides of the widened road, which Madam Nerida was overseeing. It would take a few weeks for them to grow before they could be used to feed the village regularly, but it was an excellent use of empty space. There was still some free ground in the southwest of the village, which would also be covered by some vegetable patches soon. He looked at the captain.

"How many of each piece of equipment do we have right now?"

"We have around 30 good quality swords, and around a dozen rusted ones which we'd taken from bandits. We have no shortage of iron these days, so I haven't sent them to be reforged yet, so the guards will have at least something until we can give them better quality swords. I still had to give away most of the swords we had gotten from Torhan's raid—they were simply unusable. The numbers are similar for shields. We have around 50 spears though, since those are much easier to make.

As for the leather armor, we have around 40 proper ones. We have around 50 daggers too by now." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Kivamus sighed. They barely had half the equipment needed to equip their 100 guards.

"What about crossbows?"

"We have just, uh… 23 crossbows in total, I believe." Hudan grimaced slightly.

"Although we have given two of them to Feroy and Hyola. Usually there are two of them on each watchtower, and nearly each hunting group takes a pair of them as well. Although now that they aren't going out to hunt in preparation for the counter-raid, we have all but two of those crossbows available in the village." Kivamus exhaled. They never had enough of anything here.

"Don't worry, I have no doubt Cedoron and Darora are doing their best to craft them. They both have taken on more apprentices, but it will take time until they can do things without supervision. I just hope the lathe is ready soon. Once we have at least one of them each in the workshop of the blacksmith and the carpenter, the situation will change drastically. That's the only thing which can help us here. Until then we will just have to make do with what we have." Duvas grinned.

"At least the scorpion is ready."

"It's just one scorpion, Duvas," Kivamus sighed.

"We need to build many more of them before we can call the village even somewhat secure." Thankfully, the steelmaking process was progressing smoothly for making more scorpions in the future. The cementation furnace had stopped belching smoke recently, with all its charcoal having burned out by now. Now it would take another two weeks of waiting until the steel cooled down and they could remove it.

The second cementation furnace for making steel had also been completed and baked recently, and Cedoron's apprentices were already forging iron bars to put a fresh batch in the second furnace to make steel. That would take another 3 weeks though. The final third furnace for making steel was being built now, which would meet their current target of using the cementation method to make enough steel. In around a month, they would start getting a fresh batch of steel every week.

The furnace for making coke was also working now and would provide the first batch soon, but they had decided not to make more such furnaces for it for now, since the usage of coke in the village was pretty low right now, and a single furnace could give them sufficient coke for Cedoron's purposes. Once they started needing more of it, they could easily make another furnace for converting coal into coke. He sighed.

Everything was so time consuming at this stage in the village's industry, but at least they would start getting steel soon. He snorted, thinking about what their neighbouring nobles would think if they heard his viewpoint. From the perspective of anyone born in this kingdom—without having any idea of what a good construction pace looks like in 21st century earth—everything was proceeding at lightning pace in Tiranat.

No other place in this kingdom, and likely even in the whole island of Cilaria could have transformed itself as much as this village already had. By the time winter arrived, Tiranat really would be unrecognizable for anyone who had last seen it a year ago. Before long, they reached the wooden walls of the manor and kept walking on the narrow path in front of it. They reached the first longhouse block, and then the second one.

Kivamus finally stopped, looking at the building under construction on the other side of the road. The wall made by the vertical debarked logs as well as the roof of the ground floor were already completed, and by now, the roof of the upper floor was being constructed. The posts and beams crisscrossing to the full height of the two floors right now were slowly being covered up with the planks on the inside—the same planks now coming stacked up in Trevalo's loaned wagons from the sawmills.

Although only a few planks had been used in the third block till now, since their primary usage was to make bunks on the inside, there were already tall stacks of them gathered in the courtyard of the block, which was being used as a construction yard right now. Along with the extra debarked logs, as well as the posts and beams stacked up nearby, he estimated they wouldn't need any more of them.

It would only take a few more days' output from the third sawmill which made planks to get all the construction material ready for the third block. Anything which the sawmills produced after that would be kept in stock for the next block's construction. He smiled. Probably for the very first time in the history of this village, the raw materials weren't the limiting factor anymore in any building's construction. Now they just needed more and more workers. Skilled workers, preferably.

"What's the update here?" Kivamus asked the majordomo.

"How long will it take to get this block finished?"