From Londoner To Lord

Darora had been busy as well, and by yesterday he had handed over two new crossbows, bringing their total number to six. That meant now they had enough of them to keep a crossbow on each of the three watchtowers, while also having three extra ones for the watchtowers which hadn't been built yet. Now that all the seed drills had already been built, Darora had been ordered to keep working to make more crossbows, although the carpenter had told them that he was running out of parts, and would probably only be able to make one more of it from the parts he already had.

The reason for it was that Cedoron had to stop working on the crossbow parts for the moment since he had nearly run out of iron ingots, and the small stock he still had remaining had to be prioritised to repair any coal mining or woodcutting tools which got broken in the coming days. Now that all the snow had melted in the surroundings of the village, hopefully, a merchant would bring a good stock of iron ingots soon, although they would still have to think of a way to find money to buy them, since they certainly didn't have their coffers overflowing with gold these days.

Hudan had also managed to recruit the six guards which had been made reserve guards before the winter, and all of them had happily agreed to join up as new guards. Kerel, Hudan and even Tesyb were giving the new recruits some brutal training in the mornings and evenings, just to bring them up to speed as soon as possible. Yufim and Nurobo had managed to entice some more guards and even a few servants to get some archery training, and they were taking an hour in the mornings and evenings to train them personally, as long as they weren't on watch duty themselves. It won't really make those men excellent archers or anything approaching that, but now that they did have some extra warbows in the manor which were being used by the hunting groups until now, it would be good to have some people who at least had a basic idea of using a bow.

Three of the hunting groups had already returned from their longer trips yesterday, and two of them had brought a good haul of meat with them this time, giving the smokehouse workers a lot more to do, while the third group had also managed to find a couple more sheep and had reported that the snow had nearly melted even in those hills. That meant the losuvil vines should also start putting out new leaves any day now, so the hunters should be able to start bringing some leaves regularly after a couple of weeks. The fourth hunting group, which had been the last one out of the village, had also entered the manor in the morning with a good haul of meat. That meant while they didn't really have any extra meat to fill up their food stores, at least they shouldn't be short on it to feed the village for the coming week.

The guards who had been lightly injured on the Kirnos trip had healed well by now with the help of the losuvil powder, although it was nearly used up by now. On the other hand, the man who had his arm cut-off simply wouldn't be able to work as a swordsman anymore. However, that guard was someone they could implicitly trust, so after some discussion with Hudan and Feroy, Kivamus had decided not to let him go and had kept him on as a guard, although he would only be posted at the manor gates from now on.

Now that the village had a strong palisade wall surrounding it, the primary use of the manor gates was to prevent any unwanted entry by the local villagers, which meant that the disabled guard wouldn't have any problem in working here, unlike the guards being posted at the village gates who would have to fight against wild beasts like adzees or bears, and even bandits in case of a raid. This way, they could continue to post the stronger guards at the village gates, while also having a trustworthy man at the manor gates.

Kivamus had promised in the past that the family of any guard who became unable to work anymore due to a disability or lost his life while on duty would be taken care of, which is why that guard's young wife - who was the only one in his family - would be due to get half the regular wages of a guard without having to work for it in case the man couldn't earn any coin. But the guard hadn't been let go and would continue to earn his regular wages for now, so they wouldn't need to spend any coin for it in this case.

Still, that incident had already demotivated many guards, so when the news spread that there might be an imminent raid on the village - by the same bandit group which had burnt half the village the last time - it had dispirited the atmosphere inside the manor. Many of the guards here were those who had lost their houses and savings during that raid, so there had been an inherent fear in the mind of everyone since last week. What if the bandits did the same this time? What if they killed other guards or their families?

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The rumours about an impending raid had also spread in the village, and even the labourers seemed tense these days. Every guard had also had to remain fully alert since that news, and after a week of the continuous tension of remaining ready for an attack at any time had begun to show in their strained smiles and laughter which ended too early. After the first few days of remaining on continuous alert without much rest, they all had looked ready to snap.

However, the decision to hold back the hunting groups within the village for now, as well as to hire those six reserve guards had been a very good one, even though their coffers would pay dearly for it when the time came to pay everyone directly in coins.

With all the guards from Kirnos' trip already back, along with all of the four hunting groups which were mostly made up of manor guards also present here, it was easy to see that the village had come long way in the past few months from the time of the first raid here and had more than enough trained and ready guards to protect the village.

More importantly, it also meant that for the first time everyone was actually able to see and realize that unlike the time of the previous raid by Torhan, there was no shortage of guards anymore, nor were they the same frail men as in that time. Their training regime over the past few months had meant that every single guard had a fit and muscular body, even including Nurobo who had lost most of his belly fat by now. Unlike the time before he arrived here, when the guards only stayed huddled inside the manor most of the time, by now all of them had gotten some fighting experience, whether that was while accompanying a caravan to Cinran or Kirnos, or when fighting that adzee at the northern gate, or even while they went on hunting.

All the guards - including both men and women - walked more confidently now with full trust in their skills with a sword, a bow or a crossbow, and weren't afraid anymore of venturing outside the manor walls in the night. There were regular patrols by mounted guards inside the village walls - ready to bring the news of any attack to the manor - where even the off-duty guards had been ordered to remain ready to move out at a moment's notice. While some of them had initially protested about it, they had still followed the orders, since everyone realised the consequences of not being ready to defend their homes if bandits attacked. The burnt remains of houses near the market square were readily available proof of it.

However, in the past few days, as more and more guards had returned from the hunting trips and had stayed back instead of going for the another hunting trip, it had meant that for the very first time the manor had a surplus of guards to put on watch duty, and this had allowed Hudan to give full off-days to the guards so they could rest for the whole day, instead of working at least one shift every day which had been the norm until now.

It was a slow process but eventually that time to rest had taken the edge off from the fear of another bandit raid on the horizon, and slowly this extra rest time along with the visible evidence of the presence of so many guards to the village had managed to lift the morale of everyone in the past few days. By now they looked ready to take on whatever was thrown at them, whether from wild beasts or bandits.

Kivamus looked to the left and saw a group of off-duty guards, both male and female, laughing together at a joke near the door of the servants' hall. Some of the guards and maids were talking together in another group near the well, while a few of them were bringing out some horses from the stables along with Hudan, which was the reason he was walking towards them.

There was no definite date on when an attack would happen, or if it would happen at all, so apart from holding the hunters back, they couldn't afford to stop any of the other work in the village. With the dam already complete and the reservoir approaching its full capacity by now, it was time to install the water wheel in its place. That was why he had decided to visit the dam today along with Darora, despite Hudan's warnings against leaving the manor, although the guard captain had eventually agreed to it, as long as they took enough guards with them. After all, there was no shortage of guards at the moment, and they could afford to take enough of them with them today, including some crossbow-women.