~ Kivamus ~

~ Baron's Manor, Tiranat ~

As he entered inside the gates of the manor, Kivamus was feeling quite satisfied now, since everything was going so well after a long time. The bandit raid had been repelled successfully, and apart from a few injuries, nobody had died in that raid either. All their grain stores were intact as well - apart from a small pack of grain that Nokozal had robbed from a villager when running away - but it was only a small amount, and would barely make a dent in their remaining food stores for the winter months.

The enthusiasm and happiness of the villagers during the award ceremony had affected him as well, and he was feeling just as happy as the guards who had gotten the medals. Who knows, maybe Hudan would be able to get rid of that bandit camp completely, and then he would even get two dozen trained workers for free! He couldn't wait to bring those workers here to increase the construction speed of everything!

Right now, he was leisurely walking back towards the manor house with others - all of whom looked satisfied and had smiles on their faces - except for Duvas who was still grumbling about the unnecessary expenses of paying rewards and feeding the stonecutters. But that was fine. Kivamus knew that the old man would come around to his point of view eventually.

And now that there was no imminent threat of a bandit attack, they could focus fully on completing everything that they were building.

"What is the progress of our first longhouse?" he asked Duvas.

"It is nearly ready, milord," the majordomo replied. "All the walls and its roof had already been completed a few days ago, and since then the carpenter has been putting up the wooden floor and the bunks inside the longhouse. He also had to cut up new planks for those bunks, apart from making the smaller gate which Hudan wanted as a second exit, so the completion would be a little later than what we expected. But, as of today around half of the bunks are already fixed in place, so assuming no other problems crop up there, I think the longhouse should be ready to live within a few more days."

"That's wonderful news!" Kivamus praised. "And what about the other things?"

Duvas continued, "A few days ago, Pinoto had told the workers to start digging up the pond in the South so that there would be at least a small ditch where the water from the melting snow can gather after the winter." He added, "Of courses, he will have to stop the digging once the snowfall starts, but that will still allow the new drainage system in the village to start working after the winter. And when the digging work is stopped because of snow, he will put those laborers to clear more of the forest in the South. The women are already picking up the small stones and the fallen branches from the cleared area, so that we can start plowing them for sowing seeds in those fields right after the snow melts."

Kivamus nodded. "We will still have to try to save as much wheat as we can, so that we can at least begin planting after winter, since it will take a while to buy all the wheat we need to complete the sowing. And what about the north?"

"Well, they are also clearing the forests," Duvas replied, "although many of the laborers in the north are busy in sharpening and putting up the stakes for the new village walls. That will take quite a bit of time though, since those walls are going to be quite long including all four sides of the village."

"At least the construction of the walls is progressing now," Hudan commented. "If we already had walls here, those bandits wouldn't have been able to enter the village at all. But at least they will provide us good protection from any future raids."

"That's true." Kivamus thought about the new order he had given the blacksmith to make. "What about the wheelbarrows?"

Duvas replied again, "We did get one more wheelbarrow earlier today, and another one should be ready by tomorrow evening. That will give us a total of three wheelbarrows, although having even a single one has been very helpful to move things around in the manor." He added, "But before making more of them, Cedoron wanted me to ask you again if you still wanted to spend that much iron on them."

"I think three iron wheelbarrows should be enough for now," Kivamus replied after a moment.

"I'll let him know," Duvas nodded. "That being said, I'm still curious about why you wanted to use iron to make the wheelbarrows?"

"We needed a few of them as soon as possible to speed up the construction of the longhouses, and Taniok didn't have any free time to make them from wood since he's already way too busy in cutting up the planks and building the longhouse." Kivamus continued with a shrug, "So the only way I saw to make them quickly was to order the blacksmith to make them from iron, even though I knew it would make them quite costly."

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"Those wheelbarrows are costly enough, that's for sure," Feroy remarked with a snort.

"I realize that," Kivamus said, "but most of our order for new tools was already completed by the blacksmith, so he could easily spare the time to make the wheelbarrows, unlike the carpenter. And Cedoron could hardly make them using wood, can he?"

"That's true enough," Duvas observed.

Feroy said, "Still, I'd say it was a good idea to only allow the manor servants to use them, since if you had given them to the laborers, they might have just stolen them for their iron."

"Perhaps," Duvas commented. "But anyway, now that everyone has seen how useful it is, they all are claiming that they should be the ones to get the next wheelbarrow."

Kivamus chuckled. "That's good to know." The log-mover and the wheelbarrow were such simple things, and yet he was glad to see that they were helpful to the villagers already.

Duvas explained further, "I have already allocated the first wheelbarrow for Taniok's use during the day for any work in the longhouse construction, while the manor servants use it in the nights after they get it back to transport coal to the braziers." He continued, "However, Pinoto wanted the second wheelbarrow since he claimed that they would allow the laborers in the South to move the stones and small branches from the fields much more easily and quickly, while Yeden wanted the second wheelbarrow in the north for help in transporting the tools to build the village walls."

"You just said there are two new wheelbarrows which will be made by tomorrow, right?" Kivamus asked. "So just give one to each of them."

Duvas nodded. "That's a simple enough solution for now, and I was already going to do that, but I just don't think that just three wheelbarrows would be enough for the whole village. We need a lot more of them, especially in the south and the north."

Kivamus gave a nod. "Yes, we do. But we can't afford to make them from iron anymore. So everyone will have to wait until Taniok and his apprentice get some free time - however long it would take - and then you can tell him to make more of them using wood. Those will still need a small amount of iron, but it would be a lot less than what was used in the first three wheelbarrows, since we made their whole trays from iron. And those wooden wheelbarrows wouldn't be very costly anyway, so we can even allow the villagers to keep them wherever they are needed, instead of bringing all of them inside the manor every night."

"I'm not sure when Taniok is going to get enough free time for that," Duvas commented, "since he has to start working on the second longhouse after this, and then he will have to make the gates for the walls, as well as the new watchtowers we plan to make. And you have also mentioned some other things as well. Having more carpenters here would have helped us a lot."

Kivamus snorted. "Well it's not like I can produce a new carpenter out of thin air! But those workers who are helping Taniok in making the longhouses would still be getting a lot of experience in woodworking. And I have already told Taniok to keep an eye out for those of them who show good talent for it, so that he can take them on as permanent apprentices later on."

"It will take some time for sure," he continued, "but by the time all that work you mentioned is over, we should have more people who are capable of doing some basic woodworking. And at that time we can tell Taniok to teach them how to make a wheelbarrow from wood, so that they can keep making more of them on an ongoing basis. And once we have enough for our construction tasks, we can even start selling them to the village merchants or whoever wants to buy them from us."

"Well, we can only hope that that time will come soon," Duvas muttered.

Kivamus nodded. "Once the wooden wheelbarrows are available in good numbers, we can reuse the metal in the three iron wheelbarrows to make something else from them. We can even do that for the iron stands of the braziers, since we had to get everything built from iron to produce them quickly."

"That's... actually an excellent idea," Duvas said with a rare grin.

"Well... it's good to know that saving money still makes you happy," Kivamus muttered. "At least I don't have to worry about you emptying my treasury with unnecessary spending any time soon."

Everyone laughed at that statement, while Duvas just looked proud of his money management.

Still chuckling about it in his mind, Kivamus kept walking towards the manor house along with others, with satisfaction in everyone's hearts that everything was finally going so smoothly.

As he reached closer to the manor house, suddenly, he heard a huge commotion from the storage barn on the left side of the manor, near the stables and the cattle shed. In the light of a brazier which was burning there, he saw that many servants and maids had gathered there. But why? There wasn't even anything precious kept in that barn, except for some feed for the horses and their cattle.

He looked at Hudan, who was walking next to him as well. "What's happening there?"

"Give me a moment and I'll find out." Hudan started walking faster towards that barn, but before went too far, a servant came running towards them with panic on his face.

Immediately, Kivamus and others jogged towards that servant as well, who had stopped to catch his breath for a moment.

The young servant looked completely shocked, and he glanced at Kivamus for a moment with fearful eyes, then looked back at Hudan, then eventually settled back to looking at Kivamus' face again.

"What is it?" Hudan bellowed. "Tell me!"

The servant pointed towards that barn with a shaking hand, and spoke in a stuttering voice. "He's... he's dead..."

"What?" Kivamus asked with shock. "Who's dead?"