Nineteen – Mutiny Part Three
Raidon has the corpses brought up with their armor still on. John ties everything to the rope down the hole, after which the six soldiers pull it up. They do this three times, with a fourth time for John himself.
"There were three corpses down there with full armor," he reports to Raidon.
"That's nice. The more we have, the more soldiers we can recruit. Who knows, maybe this fort has even more secrets."
The corpses appear to be completely mummified. Carefully the armor is removed from the corpses, after which they are carefully buried a little away from the fort. Raidon recites a prayer for the soldiers of the former garrison. Immediately after he has done this, the ground begins to shake violently, only to settle down a little later. Raidon quickly runs back to the fort to see if there are any injuries and if there has been any damage.
It turns out that there is no damage at all. Not a stone has fallen from the crumbling walls. The only difference is that suddenly the sound of water can be heard. The sound comes from the well.
Carefully Raidon lies down to be able to look over the edge. Just in time he pulls his head back, because suddenly a lot of water comes up. With a loud roar, the water sprays up, wetting everything and everyone nearby.
"Oops, should I have turned that lever the other way?" Asks John to no one in particular.
"Lever? Which lever?"
"Uhm, when I was pulled up, I came across a lever that I switched. I think that it turns the well on and off."
John now seems a bit guilt-conscious that he didn't say anything about the lever.
When the power of the water has weakened a bit, Raidon and the others are amazed to see that the well is filling up in a normal way. So full, in fact, that it starts to overflow! "Get everything out of the way!" Commands Raidon. The water flows towards the gate and on the way there are still all kinds of items stacked that they have brought from the training camp.
A number of soldiers quickly remove the last items before those get completely soaked. The water runs in a stream through the gate to the outside, where a number of other soldiers are surprised to look at all the water that flows out.
Slowly the water starts to decrease again, until it is about half a meter below the edge of the well. The water now seems completely clean.
"It looks like the well has washed itself clean," says John. Carefully he makes a bowl of his hand and drinks some water from the well.
"It's delicious!" he exclaims. "I've never had water that tasted this good." To reinforce his words, he immediately takes some more.
"Great," says Raidon, "now we just have to make sure that we don't pollute the well itself. We have to build a wall around it, then we can’t fall in it and no junk can fall into the hole."
Then he asks one of the soldiers: "Jerris, would you please get Duncan?"
A little later Duncan arrives with the soldier. Raidon quickly explains what he wants to happen to the well.
"Duncan, can you make sure that this well gets a raised fence? I’d say a meter high should be enough. You can use John and the rest of first squad for that. After all, he is the one who 'forgot' to tell us that there was a lever."
Then a bang can be heard from the other side of the fort, followed by rumblings of falling debris.
"Now what," Raidon murmurs to himself before rushing toward the sound.
A little later it becomes clear what happened. When Raidon arrives at one of the old buildings, he sees some dusty soldiers standing inside. These tell him that one of them tripped and fell against the back wall of the building. Then the whole wall fell down. Thanks to his armor, the soldier only had some bruises and some scratches on his armor.
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Behind the collapsed wall there appears to be another space.
"Let's see what's in there, guys." Raidon then points out one of the soldiers. "You can go in first with me. After all, you have found this space with your butt, haven't you?"
When Raidon enters the room, it soon becomes clear to him that they are not going to find anything here yet. Not because there is nothing to be found, but there is still so much dust in the air that it is almost impossible to see anything.
It takes almost half an hour for the dust to settle enough to enter the room. It seems as if this was the extra secure part of the former arsenal. In this section, the special harnesses of the legions used to be stored. Here and there are collapsed cabinets surrounded by parts of the harnesses. Raidon has two soldiers bring the parts to the square, while he himself looks further through the room.
A bit away from the spot where the soldier fell through, there appears to be a mechanism. After studying it for a while, Raidon decides that this is the original door. The mechanism must be some kind of lock, but it’s much more complicated than the rivets and closing bars that he is used to. When Raidon wipes the mechanism to better see what this looks like underneath all that dust, it suddenly starts spinning!
With a tick that sounds loud in Raidon's ears, the gears turn, to eventually make the whole door turn. On the other side of the door there is nothing to see that looks like a latch or lock. It's just a wall, just like all the others in the fort.
"Well, now Duncan has something to tinker with. Because I have no idea how this works."
When Raidon is outside again a little later, he is told that a total of seven complete armors have been found, with a few spare parts.
"Now we have ten extra harnesses. For that reason alone, it was helpful to go here," Raidon says as he consults with Brandon, Morris and Duncan.
"Indeed, now we have a hundred and ten harnesses and some spare parts," Morris says, to continue, "How do you want to deal with that now? Do you want to recruit ten new men? Or do we leave it like this for now? And if we hire new recruits, do we form a third platoon?"
Brandon foresees difficulties at the same time.
"No, let's have a careful look at that village that is close to the edge of the wilderness. Maybe we can find some recruits there. We can then add those to the first platoon as sixth squad. Ten men is not enough for a new platoon. Also this way it’s not that noticeable that we are with more than the original hundred men."
Then Duncan's question is: "Why don't we make new harnesses?"
To which he gets the negative answer from Raidon.
"Because those harnesses weren't just made. It takes special knowledge to make them this strong. And even if we had that knowledge, there is no smith-priest to make them. We’d also need a special forge. Unfortunately, they did not have a forge in this fort, otherwise we might have been able to find a clue to build our own forge."
That evening Raidon goes looking for his second handbook. Maybe he can find something in there that can help them with the fort. Within fifteen minutes he finds what he was looking for. It is a map with exactly where the different buildings stood in the forts of the legions. Now they can see which buildings are the most important to clean up and put into use. That is much more convenient than randomly cleaning up buildings and then seeing what they can serve as.
The next day he uses the map to find the canteen. This was one of the largest buildings in the fort and if they can clean it up, they can sleep there until barracks are ready.
It appears that the canteen is still in reasonable condition. The roof has collapsed, but the walls still seem to be standing. That same morning they clean up the rubble from the roof. Duncan has figured out how they can make a temporary roof fairly quickly by stretching the canvas from the carts over the roof. With a number of trunks of young trees, Duncan makes a kind of framework, supported by other branches and trees. The canteen has become a tent with stone walls. Only in the evening is the work finished and are all their possessions brought in.
Meanwhile, Raidon and Brandon have not been idle. To ensure that he does not get contradicted by the somewhat older man again, Raidon has involved him in almost every decision he makes. As long as the man feels that he is part of the decision-making process, he is one hundred percent committed to the decisions made.
Today Raidon and his first platoon have worked outside the walls to cut down trees. Brandon and his second platoon have been busy cleaning up the canteen and then removing debris from the outer walls. This turns out to be quite a job. In one place, the wall appears to be entirely destroyed. If there are more such places, then the fort is not nearly as safe as they had first thought.
On the fourth day after arriving at the fort, Brandon and the second platoon finish clearing the debris. The rest of the wall is in reasonable condition, so apart from the gate and one weak spot, the wall is fine. Tree felling, on the other hand, is not as fast. The wilderness around the fort is very dense and it takes the soldiers a lot of effort to remove it. Raidon has already decided not to cut down the trees for now. First, the soldiers remove all bushes and other low vegetation to get a bit better visibility. Even with that, they are only finished on one side of the fort. The other three sides still have to be done.
On the fifth and sixth day, Raidon and Brandon use all the men to remove vegetation. By the evening of the sixth day they are only finally finished with this. Now they have at least some visibility from the walls between the trees.
From the seventh day onwards, the instructors no longer have to stand guard between the trees. Now one squad of soldiers stands guard on the walls, at the gate and at the weak spot in the wall. The instructors can now give individual lessons to soldiers and they can also give tips to the soldiers on duty.
Raidon also has two squads patrolling the wilderness. There are plenty of game trails they can follow without having to plod through the thickets too much.
One of the patrols finds the edge of the wilderness on the second day. This is a welcome discovery, because there should also be a village nearby that Raidon has already seen on his map. Within two days the village is found. The patrol does not yet show itself to the residents, but they do tell Raidon what they have seen.