From Londoner To Lord

As Kivamus waited for the guard captain to bring the horses, he looked around at the ground which was muddy everywhere, now that the snow had fully melted, and was glad that there was at least some gravel put inside the manor connecting the manor house to the gates and the other buildings. Maybe he should see if the whole ground could be covered with gravel in the future.

There were only a small number of horses present in the stable today, since most of them - along with the small number of nodors they had - were being used diligently by Pinoto and the refugee farmers from Kirnos to plough the fields and get them ready for sowing. Another fifty woodcutters had continued felling trees in the south to maximise the sown area as much as they could.

The half a dozen paper makers working in the east of the manor had continued making new sheets and by now they had a small stack of paper ready to sell to the merchants to generate some more gold. With most of the labourers working to mine coal again, their coal barn already had a small stock of it ready to sell, although it still wasn't a big amount. More importantly, they didn't know how much of a demand of coal there would be at this point, since everyone in southern Reslinor would be prioritising buying food instead of coal, now that winter was nearly over. Of course, visiting merchants continued to buy coal even in the summer, with blacksmiths' forges and bloomeries in Cinran and Ulriga being their regular customers, but that demand would likely be lower this year with the food prices so high. Still, he would get a good idea about that when the first travelling merchant came from the north.

The new mushroom barn they had made in the south of the village was being managed well by Madam Helga, and she had recently replanted the first crop of it to cover a larger area of the barn using more sawdust and old logs as the base. Yesterday, she had mentioned that after the next growth cycle of the Rizako mushrooms in around a month, she would replant a new crop once again, and by that time she would be able to cover the full area of the barn. That meant any new mushrooms grown after that could finally be used to feed the villagers, which would add another source of food and protein in their diets.

Before long, he saw the guard captain walking towards him, with other guards bringing the last two horses available in the manor out from the stables. They couldn't afford to keep horses idle at this time to maximise the ploughed area before sowing, so they were using nearly all of them in the south. That meant it would be a much longer journey today sitting on a wagon.

Soon, the guards hitched the horses to a wagon, and two of them took places on the bench which made the driver's seat.

Hudan glanced at the wagon for a moment. "We are ready to leave, my lord. Darora will meet us on the way."

Kivamus nodded and climbed on the wagon bed first and sat on a folded piece of burlap cloth which was the only piece of cushioning they could afford for now. Hudan followed behind him and sat in front of him directly on the wagon bed, while two other swordsmen as well as two crossbow-women climbed on the wagon after them. That meant for the first time there were seven guards accompanying him, including the female guards.

Looking at everyone's serious expressions in light of the impending raid, coupled with the fact that he was sitting on a wagon instead of riding a horse as usual, for a moment he felt like he was going to a distant medieval war along with some battle hardened soldiers instead of just going to visit the nearby dam, before he remembered that most of the people in this world - including his guards - travelled exactly like this when they went on trading journeys to Kirnos or Cinran. They simply didn't have enough horses for everyone to ride on them, after all.

"Let's go!" he ordered, and the wagon lurched into motion

******

Kivamus was standing on top of the dam, looking at the vast amount of water gathered in the upstream reservoir, which was nearly two-thirds full at the time. The weather was still a little chilly, but with the sun up in the sky, it didn't really feel cold. The sound of water falling through the small gap in the dam near the eastern bank was also giving a musical background to this serene natural scene.

Quite a few trout-like fish were easily visible here as well, which were called Sorjun fish by the locals, many of which were already using the fish ladder on the eastern side of the dam to travel downstream from the reservoir to the stream going further. From what he had gathered from the locals, these fish went upstream to lay eggs before the winter, while every spring those of them which had grown big enough in the past year or two swam downstream. Such a newly created huge water body like the reservoir would certainly cause some changes in their habitats, but getting availability of more water would only help them to breed more. It would likely take at least a few months before enough fish started living in this reservoir for them to begin fishing regularly, but they were certainly on the right track.

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Soon, he saw Darora walking towards him.

"I just checked the measurements again, and the foundations for the waterwheel were built correctly," the carpenter reported. "The foreman Yeden did well here although I don't see him here today."

"He is supervising cutting of trees in the south of the village these days, now that Pinoto is busy overseeing the ploughing of the new fields," Kivamus replied. "Yeden even managed to cover all the sides of the reservoir with clay in time, but right now we need him in the south to motivate the workers to clear as much of the forest as they can before the sowing is done." He gazed at the wooden foundation by leaning towards the downstream side of the dam. "What do you think about this?"

Darora shrugged. "I have never seen a water wheel working in combination with a dam, but what you have mentioned sounds simple enough since we already have the water wheel parts. I should be able to install it here by the evening, I think. The tricky part is connecting the log-axle to it. We are using a sturdy core of a log cut from a Fedarus trunk for it, and fedarus wood is well known to be used to make ships in the capital, so I know it wouldn't rot with water either. But we will have to use another ball bearing from the wagon axle which we had liberated from the limestone quarry to give support to the log-axle on the side of the bank."

"I am just glad we didn't need to buy new bearings for this," Kivamus agreed, feeling happy that at least that expense was spared. "The supporting frame for the axle was already built on the bank by Yeden's workers, so you will just have to be careful while fixing the axle on both sides, and make sure it can rotate freely with the motion of the water wheel. We can't risk any problems after the water starts flowing from the sluice gates."

"I'll double check it myself," Darora nodded. "Still, I am thankful that you decided to postpone making the gears for the axle on the bank for later. Even after I saw your blueprint for that, it still looks complex enough that I'll need more than a few tries to get it right."

Kivamus shrugged. "Making the gears will need a good amount of iron-cladding, and it'll only be useful when we are able to make the trip hammer - which will also need iron-cladding - as well as a new sawmill here, but we can't build any of that until we buy a lot more iron for Cedoron to forge the required parts, which will take at least week after the merchants arrive with new ingots. For now, just make sure that the axle rotates freely. If that is done without any problems, installing the gears on the axle can be done at any point in the future, without a deadline of the reservoir getting full in a couple of days."

Once the carpenter gave a nod in understanding, Kivamus continued, "Once you've made sure that everything works well here, in the near future you will have to build another water wheel at the closest point of the stream to the village, which should be somewhere downstream of here, and that will be used to lift the water from this stream to a new canal which will take the water to the farms, although that is only needed after we have dug that canal - which will take a while. In the future, we will also install another water wheel under the second sluice gate as well, but that will only be useful once we are using the first one at full capacity, which will again take some time. For now, just make sure to install the first water wheel and the axle by evening, then return to making the next crossbow from tomorrow."

Darora nodded. "As you wish, milord. I think two or three more days should be enough to finish the next crossbow, but after that I won't have enough parts to make more of them."

"That's okay," Kivamus said. "The fields in the south should be ready to start sowing by then, so after that you will be needed there anyway to make sure any problems in the seed drills are taken care of immediately."

"I'll get to work then," Darora said before walking off to start installing the water wheel in front of the first sluice gate - this time permanently - instead of keeping it modular to shift to another mineshift like they were doing until now.

Kivamus glanced once more at the surroundings, and saw no snow in sight, apart from at the peaks of the Arakin mountains in the east. The guards were waiting on the western bank of the river, keeping an eye around the place, while Hudan was the only one who had accompanied him to the top of the dam. A few workers were standing on the eastern bank of the river to patch up the small gap in the dam as the water level kept rising, while the carpenter and his apprentice had already reached the location where they had to install the waterwheel.

"Let's return now," Kivamus ordered, and the guard captain started walking along with him, although he had been looking a little fidgety for a while.

"What is it?" Kivamus asked curiously, having never seen the guard captain hesitate in something before, after making sure that nobody else was in earshot.

Hudan glanced at the guards once, before shaking his head. "It's... it's nothing, milord."

Kivamus looked around and noticed the relaxed posture of the other guards. It didn't seem like they were in any danger, but he was still getting worried about it. "Come on, out with it. Whatever it is, we'll find a solution."