Chương 48: Good Problems to Have

The warning horn blew from the village watchtower, but the sound was different this time. It wasn't a long, frantic blast of terror. It was two short, sharp bursts. Up on his castle balcony, Jack pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders. He didn't rush to the primary ballista. He didn't frantically gather his mana to summon Grim. He simply leaned on the stone railing and looked down into the dark valley. Out of the tree line, a pack of mountain hounds charged across the snowy field.

There were roughly fifteen of them, their ribs showing clearly through their matted fur. Driven by starvation, they sprinted blindly toward the village walls. Down in the village, there was absolutely no panic. The militia men, standing on the elevated firing platforms behind the pine palisade, didn't even shout. The front line of hounds hit the hidden caltrop field. The sharp iron spikes easily pierced their paws, dropping five of the beasts instantly into the snow with loud yelps of pain.

The remaining ten scrambled forward, completely ignoring their injured packmates, and hit the edge of the deep moat. Four of them fell straight into the pit, impaling themselves on the sharpened wooden stakes at the bottom. The final six hounds managed to funnel onto the solid wooden ramp leading to the gatehouse.

"Hold steady," Giles ordered calmly from the top of the wall. The hounds charged up the ramp. Standing in the center of the walkway, directly in front of the locked iron-reinforced gate, was Elias. The "Wanderer" didn't draw his sword. He didn't ignite his hands with fire magic. He simply stepped forward, grabbed the leading hound by the thick fur of its neck with his bare hands, and violently twisted. A loud crack echoed in the night air, and Elias tossed the dead beast over the edge of the ramp into the moat.

The militia men thrust their long boar spears through the small gaps in the heavy wooden gate. The spears easily pierced the remaining hounds, the heavy cross-lugs stopping the beasts from sliding forward. In less than ten minutes, the attack was completely over. Up on the balcony, Jack let out a slow, amused breath. Just two or maybe three months ago, an attack like this would have sent the entire village into a blind panic. Women would have been crying, and men would have been praying to the gods for mercy.

Now, the Beast Tide was nothing more than a routine chore. It was like weeding a garden or taking out the trash. The massive tide had been broken by Elias's fire magic a few days ago. What was left in the woods were just desperate stragglers. The village defenses were simply too strong for them to break. Jack turned away from the balcony and walked back into his warm bedroom. The immediate threat to their lives was completely gone. But surviving the winter was only half the battle.

Now, they had to deal with the overwhelming aftermath of their own success. The next morning, Jack walked down the cleared mountain path into the village. The center of the settlement looked like a slaughterhouse. While the smoking sheds were operating at full capacity, processing the meat, the village square was piled high with the leftover animal hides. There were dozens of thick dire wolf pelts, massive snow boar skins, and three enormous mountain bear hides laid down on the snow.

Giles and the militia had scraped the fat and meat off the inside of the skins, but they were still raw. As Jack approached, he noticed a foul, heavy scent hanging in the air. The smell of raw meat and wet fur was becoming stronger. Jack stopped near the massive pile of pelts and poked a dire wolf hide with the tip of his cane. It was stiff and starting to become slightly slimy.

"The freeze is breaking," Jack noted. Giles, who was carrying a bucket of water from the bathhouse, stopped and nodded grimly.

"Yes, Lord Jack. The snow isn't melting yet, but the air is definitely warmer. It's no longer cold enough to freeze the hides solid. If we just leave them sitting in the square like this, they will start to rot within the week. The fur will slip right off the skin, and they will be worthless."

"Then, we need to tan them," Jack said.

"We don't have the supplies for that, My Lord," Giles sighed, setting his bucket down.

"Proper tanning requires oak bark, large vats, and months of soaking. We don't have the time or the materials. The women have been trying to stretch them on frames and dry them by the fires, but they just turn into stiff rawhide. You can't make a proper coat out of rawhide. It won't bend."

"There is a faster way," Jack said smoothly, drawing on the practical knowledge from his past life.

"We don't need tree bark. We have everything we need right here in the carcasses." Jack called for Karen and a few of the older village women who were managing the cooking fires. They gathered around the pile of pelts, looking at Jack expectantly.

"We are going to use the brains of the beasts," Jack instructed. Karen blinked, her face scrunching up in confusion.

"The brains, Lord Jack?"

"Yes," Jack confirmed.

"Every animal possesses exactly enough natural oils and fats in its own brain to perfectly tan its own hide. It is an old method." Jack pointed to the butchering area, where several severed dire wolf and bear heads were stacked, waiting to be crushed for bone-meal fertilizer.

"Giles, have the men split the skulls open with their axes," Jack ordered.

"Scoop out the brains. Karen, take those brains and drop them into a kettle of boiling water. Add a few handfuls of rendered animal fat. Boil it all together until it turns into a thick, gray paste." Several of the women looked visibly disgusted, but no one dared to argue with the lord who had kept them alive all winter.

"Once the paste is ready," Jack continued, ignoring their expressions, "you will lay the raw hides flat on the ground. Take the warm paste and rub it aggressively into the inside of the skin. You must work it deep into the hide with your hands. The oils will break down the tough fibers." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"And then they will be soft?" Karen asked, trying to hide her grimace.

"Not yet," Jack corrected.

"After you rub the paste in, you must stretch the hide over a smooth wooden log and pull it back and forth repeatedly while it dries. The constant pulling prevents the fibers from locking together. It is hard, exhausting work. But if you do it right, the hide will turn out as soft as fine cloth. After that, we hang them in the smoking sheds for a few hours. The smoke seals the skin so it won't rot when it gets wet." Giles looked highly impressed.

"It is a dirty job, but if it saves the pelts, we will do it. A premium mountain bear fur, properly softened, will sell for a small fortune when the merchants arrive."

"Exactly," Jack said.

"Get the women organized. Treat this pile of fur like a pile of silver coins. Do not let a single pelt go to waste." The village women immediately got to work. By noon, the village square smelled strongly of boiling fat, but the process was working perfectly. Jack left the tannery operation and walked over to the wooden smoking sheds. He wanted to check on their food reserves. He opened the door to the first shed. The heavy smell of pine smoke washed over him. The shed was completely packed.

Jack opened the second shed. It was exactly the same. Fully packed. He checked the third, fourth, and fifth sheds. Every single hook, rack, and wooden pole was covered in smoked meat. Old Miller walked up behind him, carrying a woven basket full of fresh meat ready for the smoke. The old man looked at the completely full sheds and let out a frustrated sigh.

"We are out of room, Lord Jack," Old Miller reported.

"The men butchered the hounds that attacked last night, but we have nowhere to hang the meat. The sheds are full." Jack frowned, looking at the massive quantity of food. Having too much food was a wonderful problem to have, but it was still a critical problem.

"Can we build more sheds?" Jack asked.

"We can, My Lord," Old Miller nodded.

"But the problem isn't the space. It is the changing weather." Old Miller pointed his finger up at the gray sky.

"The deep freeze is over. Soon, the snow will start melting into slush. The air is going to get incredibly wet and humid. Even properly smoked meat will grow white mold if it sits above ground in a damp, warm wooden shed all spring." Jack realized the old man was entirely correct. They couldn't leave their wealth sitting in simple wooden shacks above ground as the weather warmed up. They needed a cold, dark, and perfectly dry environment to hoard their food safely until the merchants arrived or winter returned.

"Leave the fresh meat outside for today," Jack said.

"I will solve the storage problem tonight." When night fell and the village went to sleep, Jack retreated to his bedroom. He locked the door, sat in his high-backed chair, and pushed his mind down into the dark crypts. He didn't need the entire Night Shift for this task, so he only awakened ten of his skeleton laborers. He didn't march them out of the castle. Instead, he guided them toward the back of the castle's lowest level, far away from the ancestral crypts and the toxic coal mine.

He directed them to an old, empty stone storage room that was directly against the solid bedrock of the mountain. Jack had the skeletons pick up heavy iron pickaxes.

"Break the floor," Jack commanded mentally. The skeletons raised their pickaxes and swung them down in perfect unison. They smashed through the old stone paving and hit the solid earth beneath the castle. Because they were deep inside the mountain, the earth here was shielded from the changing surface temperatures. It was a zone of natural cold. Jack commanded the undead to dig downward. They worked tirelessly, their bony arms swinging the heavy iron tools without a single pause for breath.

They carved a wide, deep set of earthen stairs leading down into the bedrock, and then began hollowing out a massive, wide chamber. The sound of pickaxes striking rock echoed faintly through the lower levels of the castle, but the thick stone walls kept the noise from reaching the sleeping villagers in the valley below. By the time the sky began to lighten, the skeletons had excavated a massive root cellar. It was perfectly dark, incredibly cool, and entirely dry.

Jack commanded the skeletons to haul the excess dirt outside and dump it over the cliff edge. Then, he severed the connection and went to sleep. The next morning, Jack brought Giles and Old Miller down to the castle basement to show them the new cellar.

"Your mages… they dug this in a single night?" Giles whispered, shaking his head in disbelief.

"They cut through solid bedrock like it was soft mud."

"They are very efficient," Jack said flatly.

"Giles, have your carpenters build sturdy wooden shelves lining the walls of this cellar. Old Miller, once the shelves are built, I want you to organize a team to move all the smoked meat from the village sheds down into this room. The natural cold of the earth will keep the meat perfectly preserved, regardless of how humid the spring gets, until merchants arrive."

"It is a perfect larder, Lord Jack," Old Miller said happily.

"The meat will be completely safe down here." With the storage crisis solved, Jack returned to his study. He sat down at his wooden desk and opened his primary ledger. He picked up a piece of charcoal and began writing down a list of all their current operations. It was time to look at the big picture of his fief. He wrote down the village population first. Including himself, Karen, Barnaby, and the children, the total population of the Frost-Grip valley was exactly forty-four living human beings.

Then, he started listing the daily tasks required to keep the fief running. The Wall: Giles needed at least ten men to man the palisade firing platforms in shifts, ensuring the village was never caught off guard by a daytime beast attack. The Forge: Barnaby needed at least two strong apprentices to pump the bellows and haul the iron ingots. The Mine: With the toxic gas completely vented to some diatance, and the airtight doors installed, coal extraction was now entirely a peasant's job.

To the villagers' eyes, Jack's "private mages" were elite, powerful figures who commanded fire and slaughtered bears; ordering such men to swing pickaxes in the dirt all day would be absurd and draw immediate suspicion. Therefore, he needed at least six human miners working the deep veins every single day to break the coal, load the carts, and haul it up to fuel the forge and the bathhouse. The Tannery & Kitchen: Karen and the women were working themselves to the bone.

Boiling brains, scraping hides, cooking communal meals, and washing clothes required at least fifteen sets of hands just to keep up with the volume of dead beasts. The Logging Camp: They still needed fresh timber to finish reinforcing the mine supports and build the new storage shelves. That required at least six strong men with axes. Jack added the numbers up. Ten guards, two apprentices, six miners, fifteen women, and six loggers. That was thirty-nine people.

That left exactly five people to handle maintaining the greenhouse, chopping firewood for the cabins, hauling drinking water from the river, and repairing tools. And this math assumed that the young children and the elderly were doing heavy labor. Jack dropped the piece of charcoal onto the desk and leaned back in his chair. The math simply didn't work. His people were stretched incredibly thin. They were working from sunrise to sunset, completely exhausted by the time they fell into their beds at night.

His undead Night Shift was incredible for heavy, mindless tasks like digging cellars and dragging logs, but Jack couldn't use them during the day without exposing his secret to the entire valley. He needed living, breathing human hands.

"We have too much wealth, and not enough people to manage it," Jack muttered to himself. He looked out the window of his study. Soon, the snow blocking the southern mountain pass would melt entirely. The road would clear, and Merchant Gary would return with his caravan. Jack knew Gary would be expecting to find a graveyard. Gary would be planning to buy up the vacant Frost-Grip land for pennies.

Instead, Gary was going to find a fortified military encampment swimming in premium smoked meat, high-grade coal, and luxurious furs. Jack was going to have more trade currency than he knew what to do with. But Jack didn't need Gary's grain anymore. He didn't need salt or basic tools. Jack looked back down at the ledger, staring at the number '44'.

If he wanted to expand the coal mine further, if he wanted to clear the land for actual farming this spring, and if he wanted to keep Karen from collapsing from sheer exhaustion, he needed a massive influx of labor. He needed people who could work in the daylight, people who wouldn't ask questions about the mysterious night mages. Jack picked the charcoal back up and drew a dark circle around the population number.