Chương 437: 432. Reports - III

Kivamus nodded.

"Yeah. We cannot afford to send so many trained swordsmen out of the village. Half of the female guards are already experienced enough, so each hunting party should be made of two women with crossbows and two men with swords or bows. That will give them the strength to take on anything smaller than an adzee, and if they see one of them they can just hide or run up a tree. Adzees cannot climb trees anyway. But this way we can send out five hunting groups from tomorrow, while only using 10 swordsmen.

It will also give some good real world experience of fighting to the female guards, which will be helpful in the future."

"How many men will we even have left in the village after all that?" Duvas asked. Hudan had the answer ready.

"Twenty out for hunting, eight with Trevalo, three with Pydaso—four in the future—half a dozen each for the diggers and at the dam. That's... 44 guards. We will mix up all of those protection squads with female and male guards both, to give some experience to the women and to retain some swordsmen here in the village. We also have to put patrols around the farms but that's close enough that they can return to the village within moments if needed.

That still leaves 56 guards here, although many of them will be new recruits, and only around half will be swordsmen." Duvas gave a relaxed exhale.

"That still sounds... safe." Kivamus shook his head.

"No, we also have to send a team to the eastern hills within a day or two to build the encampment there. That will be a dangerous place so it will need a dozen guards at least, especially in the beginning until there is a palisade made to protect the workers making losuvil." Feroy interrupted, "I think we should send more guards there. We cannot risk the safety of Syrene at any cost, or of the other trained workers who know how to make the medicine.

I think we should send 18 guards there—let's say 12 men and 6 women—so that there will be three teams of 4 men and 2 women in each shift. This way they can protect the place from even an adzee attack, which has a higher risk of happening in those hills compared to here. Those huge flying creatures called Bakkores also live in the east—in the taller hills and the mountains—but we can only hope they don't notice the workers." Kivamus grimaced.

He didn't even want to think about Syrene being killed in such an attack, but sending 18 guards out would mean having just 38 guards here in total. That included the crossbow women who would be on duty on the watchtowers, which meant having only a few swordsmen here. Although it would help that the 12 guards who went out to protect the diggers and the dam site would return every evening.

But that was hardly enough to defend from another raid from Torhan, not to mention the strength which mercenaries might bring, or what Kirnos could gather if their Baron got greedy. Duvas was looking at him with a worried expression, probably already expecting his next steps, but alas, there was no other way. Kivamus looked at the captain.

"I didn't think we would need to hire more guards for a few months more, but with the way our areas of interest are expanding continuously, we don't have any choice but to keep recruiting. It will use more of the village's workforce, preventing them from doing other tasks, and it will cost us extra gold to pay their wages as guards than it would have if they were just laborers, but we have no choice.

Now that there is a chance Kirnos might also start getting adventurous in the future, we have to reach a stage where we are invincible to anything Kirnos can throw at us." Hudan nodded.

"Fine by me. However, while the swords and armor we got from these bandits will help but it will still be difficult to arm that many people. We have barely armed half of the guards we already have."

"It will happen in due time," Kivamus forced a smile.

"As our village keeps growing, the only way to protect it is to keep our strength and the number of guards growing along with it. Target to hire 20 new guards this time. Let's say 15 men and five women. That will give Nesser a lot of work including the recruits from the last round of hiring. We will let him train these people for the next month at least, and then we will reconsider if we need more guards." Hudan shrugged.

"There is no shortage of applicants now, so I'll put the word out tomorrow and I'm sure by evening we will have more than enough people willing to participate in the recruitment test. It's just a basic fitness test, but it's a requirement before hiring anyone as a guard." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Good." Kivamus looked at Feroy.

"You mentioned there were some craftsmen amongst these slaves?" The ex-mercenary nodded.

"A former wainwright's apprentice, a fletcher, a man who used to be an apprentice of a blacksmith in Kirnos in the past before he was sold as a slave when he couldn't repay his debt, as well as another carpenter's apprentice. Torhan had kept all of them at that clay mine so they could provide those services for free to that compound." Kivamus smiled.

"They are only apprentices, but it will still help. Duvas, meet with them and send them to the relevant people tomorrow so they can start helping out as soon as they can."

"Of course," the majordomo nodded. Kivamus looked at Hudan.

"I know you keep telling me that you need all the guards to live together to build their bonds stronger so they can risk their lives for each other. So don't worry, I haven't forgotten about your barracks. Once the fourth block is completed, the next buildings to be constructed will be a barracks in the east—along with its dedicated training facilities—and a new double-story mushroom barn in the south. I think the barracks construction can start in around two weeks." Hudan grinned.

"Finally! The new recruits are staying in the longhouse blocks right now, but I can't wait for the day when Nesser sleeps under the same roof as those recruits. It will make it impossible for those new guards to slack off." Everyone chuckled at that before the captain continued, "But we will have 120 guards after that. Likely even more in the future. Are you sure a single barracks can hold that many people? It will need to be as big as a longhouse block then!" Kivamus shook his head.

"No, these men are not going to keep their kids here to play in the courtyard, and there will be no elderly sitting under the shade of a bilona tree in the afternoon, looking after the vegetable patches in the courtyard. This is a barracks, meant for housing our guards only. So it doesn't need to be as big as a longhouse block. I have nearly finished the blueprint of it, and the design will be similar to the single longhouse we were planning to build in the beginning before we converted into a larger block.

So the barracks will be a single long building, but it will be two stories high, and with a pair of bunks on both sides for the guards to sleep. The blueprint says that it will have 48 bunks on each floor of the block—that means nearly a hundred bunks in a single double-story barracks." Hudan frowned.

"That's still not enough though..."

"That's why we will build two barracks—one each for the men and the women. The initial plan was to let the women stay on the upper floor of the same building, but now we have a lot more guards than we had at that time when we made the plan. So there will be one barracks for the men, which will form the northern boundary of the training area, and one in the south for women, which will be the southern edge. We can house nearly 200 guards in those buildings in total, which will satisfy our needs for long enough.

Whatever facilities we need to build for helping the guards train better will be located in the middle of them." Kivamus continued, "We will also extend a smaller palisade wall, which will connect to the eastern wall of the manor and will enclose the whole guard training and barracks area, so that what the guards are doing and what we are planning there cannot be seen by the villagers.

I found out that when you all were training before the raid and the guards were practicing how to attack a walled compound, a lot of villagers had seen that and rumors had started in the village. It didn't affect the mission this time, but I don't want to take that risk for the future. That's why we will also have to stop letting the coal miners bring the coal within the two barns we have here.

We will only keep enough coal here for the manor's use, and the rest will be stored in a dump outside the manor in the northeast." Duvas kept scribbling in a ledger—made by their own paper—while Feroy nodded slowly.

"That's a good idea," the ex-mercenary commented.

"We might need to go on more such counter raids in the future, especially if things sour between us and the southern mercenaries in the future. They have many compounds similar to Torhan's dotted within those forests, so we don't want any villager to start getting ideas if our guards are practicing in a certain formation." Hudan nodded.

"That makes sense." He yawned loudly.

"I think I need some shut-eye now. None of the guards got much sleep last week." Kivamus smiled.

"Go on then. Both of you. You deserve the rest. Make sure to get something to eat first from Madam Nerida. She must have some porridge and bread ready by now. We can celebrate with a small feast tomorrow when everyone has rested properly. Madam Helga will make her signature Rizako stew and the Toloraberry pies, and we will even break out some of the cheese we bought recently." Feroy grinned.

"I can't wait for that stew!" The captain and the ex-mercenary stood up, and with another nod they exited the hall.