by Eric Ugland
Cool Beans, you’ve learned the skill Surveillance. Now, when you don’t know, try and figure it out! +5% to find the hidden. +5% passive perception.
I opened my eyes again, but acted cool. I reeled the line in, and checked the hook. I made a show of being irritated the fish took the bait off. I got up and took a few steps into the forest, pushing over a few rocks and logs until I found a few grubs. Then I popped a grub on the hook, and I dropped it back in the water.
The water swirled the grub around. The fish still weren’t biting, and I didn’t think they’d go for the grub anyway. But I had an idea, a plan. It was brilliant. Sort of.
I reeled the line in, checked the grub, then pulled the rod back. I cast out hard, straight at the eyes I saw looking at me.
Those eyes went wide a second, then there was a slight crashing as whatever it was bolted.
I didn’t get a better look at what it was, but I had to imagine it was an intelligent creature of some kind, because it definitely understood the hook was coming its way. I reeled the line back in, dropped the grub in the water, and slid the pole back into the bag of holding. Sure, I’d just gained another level in Fishing, but I needed to talk to someone about what I’d seen.
Chapter Sixteen
The days were still long, but becoming increasingly shorter, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to Nikolai until after dinner. The mood about town was jubilant. The progress made over the day had been impressive by any metric.
Well, except for the gate. Having just one mason was proving to be quite the bottleneck, but I couldn’t see any way to speed to process up. In any case, the Sawmill was running, and the smithy would be ready to rock the following day. And speaking of rock, the miners were itching to start poking around the mountains we butted up against and see where they might find something worth digging up. The wall around the non-mountain sides was basically done. We still needed to get gates up, and then erect the towers, but other than that… well, when saying it like, it was clear we still had a ton to do. And yet, it was quite an accomplishment.
I’d like to claim credit for doing the most work, but the team that had formerly been mine was now mostly Lanfrank’s, and they’d done some really impressive work. They had rigged up a crane of sorts high up on the mountain, and were able to use it to hoist up huge logs, getting them in place remarkably quickly. Fast enough that they had finished, for the most part, a whole longhouse. Some of the little touches needed to be sorted out — putting in a wood stove to heat the place, add in some gutters, put some partitions inside the building to provide an illusion of privacy, that sort of thing. Of course, virtually everyone was planning to move in, which, you know, meant a fight broke out when deciding who actually got to go.
Lanfrank and Lee were eating near each other, arguing about who’d won the competition for the day.
It made me happy to see everything going on.
Nikolai sat down next to me, holding a bowl full of meat chunks. Someone had gone out hunting and bagged a large deer, which was providing hot meat to everyone in the town tonight.
“Good day,” I said.
He nodded, and speared a piece of meat on his dagger. He blew on it a few times, and then popped it into his mouth.
It was definitely too hot.
“Want me to give you a minute before we talk?” I asked.
He nodded, wincing as he tried to keep the meat from burning his mouth.
“Well, just for you to think over,” I started, “I caught something watching me from the other side of the river today.”
Nikolai spit the meat out and glared over at me.
“What?”
“Something was watching me.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I didn’t get a good look, just a quick glance.”
“So no contact?”
“Not anything real.”
“I assume you have no ideas about what it might be, do you?” Nikolai asked.
“Nope.”
“Goblins?”
“No. Definitely not. I did get a glimpse of the creature, and it was, I mean, reptilian.”
“Not-goblin is good,” Nikolai said. “Unknown is not-so good.”
“Averages out to okay?”
Nikolai just glared at me while he chewed his venison.
“I will speak to Nathalie about it,” Nikolai said, “see about adding an additional guard to the north wall tonight. Hopefully it is just some curious valley dweller.”
“Maybe someone who’d like to join us.”
“Ah, yes, a perfect segue into the next thing we need to speak about.”
“What is that?”
“Our newest residents.”
“Baldwin and Carolene?”
“They worry me.”
“Why?”
“Where did they come from?”
“A small town in the south.”
“Why did they come?”
“Their brother kicked them out after their father died. I think they’re nobility — Baldwin mentioned something about it.”
“Something feels off about them.”
“Maybe, but—”
“It felt off to you?”
“A little, but—”
“And you still let them into our town?”
“I wasn’t sure what else to do.”
“Send them packing.”
“Because I had a weird feeling about them?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t seem, uh, nice.”
“This is not about being nice. This is about making a safe haven, and we are not in the position where we can allow strangers in.”
“Can’t we always say that? Why even build a tunnel if no one else is allowed to come here?”
“We barely have enough guards to look for threats coming from outside—”
“You think they’re a threat?”
“I do not know who they are or what they may be capable of. And that concerns me.”
“They’re fine,” I said.
Nikolai glared at me.
“Whatever you say, my duke,” he replied, getting up and finding a different place to eat.
“That went well,” I said to no one. Because no one still wanted to talk to me.
I decided to walk over to where the three mancers were sitting, and crouched down next to Essie.
She looked over at me, eyebrows up.
“I had an idea,” I said.
“Wut?” she mumbled through a mouthful of meat.
“I was thinking about a treasury of some kind, and I had to wonder, if we make it out of stone, what keeps someone who has similar powers to you from just, you know, casting spells to get in?”
“Wards,” Mercy, the hydromancer, replied.
Tarryn nodded. “There are things we could do—”
“Things?” Essie said. “Things we could do? Spells we can cast. Wards we can set. Well, I can cast and I can set.”
“I’ve got those same damn spells,” Tarryn said. “You think I spent all my time chained up staring at fucking walls? I read spell books.”
“Have you cast them?” Essie sassed his way.
He stared at Essie, and then behind him, at the rock wall, A rectangle, about 10 feet high by five feet wide, cracked. Then it cracked again, forming perfect one-foot bricks.
Essie looked over her shoulder, then half-stood.
“How—“
“I had plenty of time to do nothing,” Tarryn said with a smile. “Book learning.”
“How far back does this go?” Essie said, standing up and putting her hands against the wall.
“Twenty feet,” Tarryn said. “You want more?”
He stood up and held both hands out towards the mountain. I could almost see a ripple of power coming out of him.
A hard snap came out of the mountain.
“Tarryn?” I asked.
“Yes,” Tarryn said.
“Totally impressive work—”
&nbs
p; “Thank you.”
“Maybe next time you could talk to me about placement before you make a giant fucking corridor in the mountain that’s our primary defensive structure at present.”
He opened his mouth, then closed, and nodded.
“Well, that probably would have been wise.”
We were a fair distance from the tunnel, but it wasn’t exactly the spot I was thinking of using as our in-mountain fortress.
“Does it fuck us, Essie?” I asked.
She popped in the last bite of meat from her bowl, then walked over to the wall and put her hands on it.
“It is less than perfect,” she replied. “There is a cave above this area, about 20 feet up. I think there might be water inside.”
Mercy perked up, and darted over. She put her hands next to Essie.
“Oh yes,” Mercy said, “there’s plenty of water in there. It drops down over there,” she pointed to the east, “and comes out in the waterfall about halfway down the canyon downstream from us.”
“So there’s a river underneath our tunnel that goes through the mountains?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said with a big smile.
“And one above this, uh, new tunnel?”
“Yes,” another big smile.
“Does it seem to anyone else that there’s a ridiculous amount of water in and around this valley?”
“I just thought you chose a spot particularly suited for hydromancers,” Mercy replied.
“Back to this ‘tunnel’,” Essie said, happy to get the attention back where it belonged, on her, “I think we will be fine if we do a little shoring up. It would have been better if Numb-nuts there knew anything about structure and design. Maybe weights and crushing forces so he used an arch instead of right angles, but it’s something I can fix.”
“Numb-nuts,” I said, “you have more mana to burn?”
“Not with that nickname I do not,” Tarryn ‘Num-bnuts’ Flynn replied.
“It’s pretty catchy,” I said. “Might be permanent.”
He glowered at me.
“Get with Essie there, and make a room at the back there. A treasury. I want a big thick door that’s impossible to break into, and a bunch of shelves. Big room. I plan to have a lot of treasure.”
“I can do this on my own,” Essie said.
“I want you to take the start,” I said, “and then build some safe rooms in there. Spots we can retreat to if the outside here goes to complete shit. Get a barracks of some sort dug out, and some personal rooms for the people who think they’re important. Also, Mercy, can you get that water into a way that it will be clean enough to drink? And maybe touch base with Lee about setting up a backup waterwheel inside.”
“Build a fortress in the mountain?” Essie said. “Is that all?”
“Yeah. Oh and also, make a secret back tunnel to the other side. Don’t dig the wall all the way out until we can figure out a way to, like hide it.”
“I understand what secret means. And this is going to take forever.”
“You’ve got something else on your dance card?” I asked.
Mercy whispered something to Essie, then Essie curtsied with a really patronizing smile slapped across her face. “No, my lord.”
“Beautiful,” I said. “Now make some magic happen.”
Chapter Seventeen
As perhaps the only somewhat-neutral party in the camp, I asked Eliza Northwoods to be in charge of who got to sleep in the new longhouse and who’d have to wait a day or two and suffer through the stinky house some more.
She offered me a spot, but I politely declined. Instead I walked into the darkness a bit. Still in the boundaries of the camp, but we had virtually nothing in the way of lights around yet.
I made a mental note to talk to Lee about that. Or Zoey. Maybe she could smith up some hanging baskets that we could fill with burning wood, or something along those lines. I had no idea what medieval cities used for lights. Well, magic. But I had zero desire to interact with the mancers again on that particular evening. Instead, I wandered until I found Ragnar standing on the ramparts looking out over the wall.
“See anything?” I asked.
“Those little furballs are fighting each other with bushes,” he replied.
While half the prinkies were removing the stone blocks from the tunnels Tarryn made, I’d tasked the other half with clearing the undergrowth out to a distance of 500 yards from the ditch. The trees were still there — I figured that was something I could take care of soon, or I could assign it to someone — but I had gross images of the prinkies pushing down the trees on each other if I asked them to do it.
“You have thoughts on the winner?” I asked.
“Pretty sure the blue one is going to thump the yellow one upside the head.”
“Silver piece says the yellow one gets the bush to the pile.”
“Done,” he said.
The blue one did swing the bush at the yellow one. Yellow, being a bit smaller, took the hit and tumbled to the side, but then made a surprising recovery, leaping up and over Blue to grab the bush from the top. This caused Blue to over-balance and crash to the ground. Yellow kicked Blue in the face, snatched the bush from him, and made a mad dash across the ground. Blue charged after. It was a footrace, and though Yellow had the lead, Blue was faster. Blue gained on Yellow, but there was little time to catch up. Blue made a valiant leap and managed to just grab Yellow’s foot. Yellow plowed into the dirt, sending a shower of pine needles up into the air around him.
Blue rolled over Yellow, grabbed the bush, and sprinted the last 10 feet or so until reaching the pile of shrubs, tossing it onto the pile. Then he immediately turned around and headed to get the next bush. Similarly, Yellow was back at work already. It seemed like there were no hard feelings.
“They’re so weird,” I said.
“And yet, profitable,” Ragnar replied, his paw out.
I pulled a silver from my bag and set it in the waiting paw.
“Nice doing business with you,” he said as the coin disappeared onto his person.
“See anything besides the furballs?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“I saw something watching me today, by the river—”
“Something vaguely reptilian. Might have scales. Was communicating with bird calls. Yeah, Nathalie told me. Us. She told Skeld too.”
“How’d she know? I only told Nikolai.”
“You think those two don’t talk?” Ragnar said.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“Haven’t heard any bird calls, not at night at least, nor seen anything reptilian. Or otherwise. Doubt Skeld has either, but you can check with him.”
“Where is he?”
“By the river.”
“Is anyone watching the tunnel?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Who else is on duty tonight?”
“Ragnar and I are on the wall, Daniel is on the ground.”
“Okay,” I said, wishing I knew who Daniel was. “Well—”
“If we see something, we’ll let you know,” Ragnar said.
Feeling incredibly superfluous, I walked down the rampart and I made my way through the empty area of the town towards the main fire and the longhouses.
But I stopped because I had no reason to go over there.
I had nowhere to go, really.
And nothing to do.
I wasn’t tired, and I didn’t have a place to sleep. If I went out chopping down trees, I’d just keep everyone else awake with the noise. And then everyone could be mad at me for being loud and afraid of me for no real reason. Which, you know, tempting, but…
Instead, I just found a nice looking tree, and sat down against it. There weren’t many trees left within the boundary of the village; we’d only left the biggest and best looking. And the ones that didn’t interfere with our proposed building sites. This one was a nice big pine, over a hundred feet tall. Nice and thick at the base, plenty of big
branches. I was tempted to climb up into it, but I knew if I did, that’d be the moment something big and nasty attacked the walls, and I’d have to jump down and I’d probably break something. Which then made me remember that I had a thing to prevent that. I had unbreakable bones.
I popped into my sheets, thinking I’d make sure I had unbreakable bones, but I saw there were some notifications waiting for me.
Huzzah! You have successfully constructed a building in your settlement.
The building (Sawmill) is now operational.
As this is your first industrial building, your holding gains one percent to work efficiency.
Sawmill
Structure Type: Uncommon
Structure Class: Industrial
Material: Wood and stone
Durability: Medium
Description: This sawmill is designed to turn trees into lumber. It is able to accept trees up to gargantuan.
Effects: Serves as a small storehouse for lumber. Turns raw logs into finished lumber. Requires a staff of three for basic operation.
Upgrades: Available but not purchased or installed. Build additional buildings to see more details.
Huzzah! You have successfully constructed a building in your settlement.
The building (longhouse) is now operational.
Longhouse
Structure Type: Common
Structure Class: Shelter
Material: Wood and stone
Durability: Medium
Description: A large building that provides shelter for those interested in sleeping.
Effects: Population growth penalty. Worker efficiency bonus. Increased chances of followers gaining the well-rested condition. Poxivity penalty.
Upgrades: Available but not purchased or installed. Build additional buildings to see more details.
That was cool. I wondered why I was still getting a population growth penalty from the new longhouse. Perhaps, I mused, it’s because people weren’t especially keen on getting it on in a wide open room. Which, you know, I could understand. But frankly, I felt we had enough little ones running around the town as it was. What with all four of them already being more than I’d ever really interacted with in my entire life. Perhaps I could make a small one-room building somewhere. Get a bed of some kind. Call it the breeding hut.