Chương 214: 211. Digging

Kivamus explained while looking at others, "Now we have two dozen former stonecutters in the village, who are well versed in this. They have more than enough experience of cutting through much harder limestone, and with no real shortage of tools now, they should be able to do it without too much difficulty.

I have already mentioned that we need to keep the labourers working in the South to clear the forest as long as possible, but we can afford to shift two dozen of them to the eastern hills, so that they can start digging and mining some seat-earth, basically that clay."

"Duvas, I want them to start on this from tomorrow morning. When all the workers return from work in the evening, make an announcement for all the former stonecutters to gather outside the manor. That's where we will explain it to them. You can leave the fletcher, the carpenter Darora, and the guard Hyola out of that group. It will still give us twenty-three trained stonecutters for this task." The majordomo nodded.

"I will talk to them later." Kivamus continued, "I estimate that it will take us at least a couple of weeks for those twenty-three stonecutters to dig enough of that clay to start the construction. Once we have stocked up enough clay to start building the dam, we will utilize as many labourers as we need to make it as quickly as possible, since the snow will start melting within a month. That means we need to try our best to build the dam before that happens."

He added, "I will visit near the location of the coal mines tomorrow to confirm that it is a good quality clay which will do the task. When we start to get enough clay in stock, I will also visit the stream to find a good spot to start building the dam." Duvas smiled.

"I know that it will take a while for it to be ready, and even more time for us to shift that water wheel and build that axle and so on, but if it really works like you said it would, it should help a lot in all the construction in the village, since having a saw mill would take a lot of load off from Taniok's and his apprentices' shoulders. By now we have dozens of piles of criss-crossed logs kept all around the village, each of which easily has over a hundred logs.

So we aren't going to be short on logs for years to feed a new sawmill, especially once all the farmland has been cleared in the South."

"Exactly," Kivamus agreed.

"We are only starting to rebuild the village. The longhouse blocks in the north are only a temporary solution. We just can't keep that many people in such cramped places for too long. I'm not sure when we would have enough free labourers for this, but I want to start clearing the burnt out houses in the middle of the village from that raid by Torhan's group. Once that is done we can start building decent quality houses for the villagers for them to move back in.

Of course, this is only a future plan for now, since there are a lot of other things we need the carpenter to build before we can get to it." At that moment, Lucem entered the hall from an inner door while grinning, being followed by Clarisa walking behind him. The boy ran towards Kivamus with excitement while holding something in his hands.

"Milord, look! Look! I got first place in the sawdust gathering competition today!"

"I was the one who wrote your basket counts though," Clarisa retorted from nearby.

"You can't even write yet!" Trying to prevent an argument between the kids, Kivamus praised, "That's wonderful, Lucem! And you too, Clarisa. I have heard that you are doing excellently in your classes." The kids beamed in pride at the praise, before he pointed at the boy's hand.

"What is that?"

"This is what Ma has made to give to everyone who participated in the competition," Lucem explained as he showed the single cookie in his hands, while still being unable to hide his grin.

"But I got first place so I also wanted some of the prize right now before everyone got it in the classes!"

"I also want my share from it!" Clarisa told the boy with a glare, making Lucem rub his head sheepishly.

"You already know I was going to share..." the boy whined, before both of the kids went to sit on a rug to share the freshly baked cookie. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Kivamus smiled while gazing at the happy kids, both of whom had come a long way from their difficult pasts. Then he looked at Gorsazo.

"Did you already know that he had won it? Why didn't you tell me?" Gorsazo shrugged.

"I wanted Lucem to surprise you. He looked really excited to tell you about it himself and show his prize, which was still being baked an hour ago when I found out about it. Although I still have to announce it in the classes later today. Speaking of which," he added while standing up, his fur coat already around his shoulders, "I really should leave for the long house blocks, or I'll be late for today's classes." Kivamus nodded.

He was just happy to see that the kids of the village were getting something exciting to do while still learning in the process. While Lucem might have been the one to win it today, the winner would be a different kid nearly every day because of the kids' fierce rivalry, which should make the kids a lot more enthusiastic about learning to read and write. The fact that the competition was also helping to reduce the coal consumption in the village, was certainly a very desirable benefit.

Looking at the kids who had already finished eating their delicious prize, the teacher ordered, "Lucem. Clarisa. Come on now, or we'll be late. You both can walk with me to the classes today." Hudan stood up while putting on his fur coat.

"I should also take a round at all the guard posts now. Feroy is the one who usually does it, but until he returns that's also my responsibility." Eventually, Duvas got up as well, while still looking like he was feeling cold.

"The workers will start returning soon, so I need to leave now to call up all the stonecutters. I will send a servant to call you when they all have gathered so you can explain about the digging project to them." Before long, all of them had exited the manor hall to their respective destinations, leaving Kivamus alone with the crackling fireplace. He gazed at the shelf next to the long dining table and the dwindling supplies of the empty parchments kept on it.

He still had to do something about that, but for now he could still make some new sketches on them for the next machine he wanted to build here. He stood up from the armchair, and stretched his hands above his head. It was time to get to work.

It was the afternoon of the next day, and Kivamus had just unmounted from his horse along with Hudan and a few other guards. It had been bitterly cold on the way here, but at least the snowfall had stopped for the moment. Right now he was standing in a narrow valley in the hilly region near the coal mines while looking at all the fires burning there.

Yesterday, he had still been doubtful if the labourers would be able to dig through the frozen ground at all, but when he was explaining about the project to the stonecutters, one of them had suggested a unique method, and that was what was being done here since the morning. When the two dozen stonecutters had arrived here in the morning, they had also brought a loaded wagon with supplies for them.

Most of it was digging tools including pickaxes and shovels, but it also had some dried food for the labourers, and most importantly, they had brought as many long tree branches as they could load on the wagon bed. At the moment there were many such long branches burning all around in the valley near each other, and it was easy to see that the snow had started to melt in the area between the fires, while the snow directly under the burning fires had already melted away.

With there being nearly no wind present here because of the surrounding hills, the narrow valley had become relatively warm at the moment, enough that he was sure that he could go without the fur coat just like the labourers. Soon, he saw a few laborers dragging the long branches of the fire to another place while holding them from the side which wasn't burning, leaving the area of the former fires ready to dig.

Immediately, a few labourers began walking to that place with pickaxes and shovels, ready to start digging in the freshly cleared ground. This process had been going on since the morning, and at the moment there was already a small pile of mud gathered in some places. Gesturing to the guards to follow him towards that mud pile, he decided to use the method told to him by Pinoto - the southern foreman and who used to be a farmer in the past - to check the soil type.

Picking up some of that mud, he kneaded it in his hands until it was more or less spherical in shape and uniform in texture. Then he tossed it up a few times and, catching it again, he noticed that the ball of mud retained its shape well enough, which bode well for this test. Then remembering what he had been shown by Pinoto, he took the mud ball in one hand and squeezed it between his thumb and index finger, until it started to extrude into a strip of mud.