From Londoner To Lord

Yeden thought about it for a moment. "Give or take a month, I'd say. By then the wall should be fully completed, apart from the gatehouses."

Kivamus nodded, and continued speaking to the carpenter, "We will postpone the gatehouses until after the wall is finished. For now, you should work on the second longhouse block only. And make sure to keep training a few apprentices along with you, so they can take over building simple things to free up more of your time."

Taniok nodded. "I've already selected one of them and described to him how to build a wheelbarrow tray and its wheels from wood. Assuming he does well - and I believe he will, since he is a talented lad - he should be able to regularly build new wheelbarrows from scratch just by himself, as long as the blacksmith provides him with the few iron parts he will need."

"That's excellent!" Kivamus praised. "And of course, Duvas will let the blacksmith know about it. Getting many more wheelbarrows built cheaply during the winter is going to help us a lot when we start sowing seeds in the spring."

He looked around him again, feeling glad by the villagers' enthusiasm for the new longhouse block, which was also going to be the new home for many of them.

"Let's return then," he said to the others, and started walking back towards the manor.

*******

~ Calubo ~

~ Somewhere in the forests southwest of Cinran ~

Calubo pulled up the reins of his horse to stop it from moving. They had been traveling continuously for four days now, and they still hadn't caught any sight of the quarry. It had been much more difficult than he had thought it would be.

He was the one leading the group of guards, so others stopped behind him as well once he slowed down. He looked around him for a moment trying to see if he recognized anything here. But it wasn't easy in this forest where all the trees without leaves looked similar to him, even though he had come many times to hunt outside the quarry with some other bandits. But even though it was quite cold, at least it wasn't snowing yet, or it would be nearly impossible to find their path if everything looked the same around them after being covered with white snow everywhere.

The fur coats that Lord Kivamus had given to all of them had been very helpful to them, and because of them the guards had been able to keep moving for longer, instead of stopping regularly to light a fire and heat up their bodies. Truthfully, he was still surprised that the baron had given it to them instead of keeping it for himself. Maybe the rumor he had heard from other guards about the baron treating even the commoners under him like humans really was true. Discover exclusive content at My Virtual Library Empire

"Do you see anything you recognize?" one of the guards asked in a tired voice.

Calubo just shook his head reluctantly, and prodded the horse to start moving again, with others following behind him after a moment.

It was nearly dark already, so they would have to stop for the night soon. While he knew for sure that they were going in the general direction of the quarry, he still hadn't been able to find something which would give him a reference of the locations.

As they kept moving for a while, he saw something further ahead of them which he thought he recognized. He slowed down, and looked at that small bluff carefully, while turning his horse towards it. As he came closer, he spurred his horse to move around the bluff, and right after he reached behind it, he saw the fedarus tree with a broken branch that he had expected to find there.

Grinning with happiness, he turned to the other guards and pointed at it. "We are very close now. The bandits and I had rested right there a few times when we had come to hunt." He looked around him for a moment, and suddenly the location started to make sense to him. He recognized a clump of trees maybe a hundred feet away from them which they always passed when coming or going from the quarry to this place.

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"We should reach the quarry by the time it gets dark," Calubo told the others. "It's not far away now."

Hudan nodded. "Let's move then." He looked at the other guards. "And be careful from now on, and keep an eye on your surroundings. It's possible that one of the bandits might have come here to hunt again."

The guards nodded in reply, and Calubo turned his horse towards that clump of trees, with others following close behind him.

Before long, he passed around another small bluff, and pulled the reins of his horse again when he saw one side of the quarry just around fifty feet away from him. By this time it was nearly dark, and they were lucky that they had reached here by now, or it would be difficult for them to keep going in the night.

Not making any noise, he held up his hands to stop others behind him, and pointed at it.

Hudan nodded, and gestured to all of them to get off from their horses and to gather closer. All of them had a hand on the hilt of their swords now - just in case.

The guard captain spoke in a hushed voice, "Calubo and I are going to take a look first. You all wait here until then and try not to make any unnecessary sounds."

The other guards nodded, and on Hudan's gesture, Calubo started walking towards the edge of the forest ground surrounding the pit. Soon, he saw the dense thicket of trees at the edge which he was looking for, and pointed towards it to Hudan. The guard captain nodded and both of them dropped down to the ground and started to crawl towards that thicket.

Once they had reached near the edge, they hesitantly put their heads ahead of the edge, and finally saw the bandit camp on the sloping path going to the pit of the quarry.

And the situation didn't look good at all. Although it hadn't snowed here yet, he saw that there was only a small, single fire around which the stonecutters were huddled together on one side, with the bandits sitting on the other side. That was quite unlike the time he used to live here, when they used to burn two big fires to keep the people warm from both sides. It was probably because now there were so few bandits here that they couldn't afford to send someone to bring much firewood because of a fear of the slaves running away, as well as Nokozal's certain punishment if that happened.

As he looked closer, he noticed with relief that there were only four people wearing the fur coats, which meant that Nokozal and the runt hadn't reached here yet. And that was very good news for them, since that huge bastard was a very dangerous fighter even alone.

He also saw that the two nodors were still there, tied to the huts on one side, along with their two limestone carrying wagons kept nearby. But looking at the state of the people sitting hunched up together near the measly fire in their threadbare clothes, it wouldn't be long before the bandits thought of butchering the poor animals, or burning those wagons as kindling. It seemed the guards had reached there on time, after all.

He was also carefully trying to look for Hyola, hoping she was okay. But he couldn't recognize anyone from this far, especially in the darkness, since all of them were using some cloth to cover most of their heads and faces from the cold. But when he counted them, he was relieved to see that there were still twenty-six slaves, which meant that she had to be here! He just hoped that she was still okay, and the bandits hadn't tried anything.

Soon, Hudan, who had been observing the bandit camp with keen eyes, poked him on his shoulder, and gestured him to return towards the others.

Reaching there, the guard captain gathered all of the guards closer, and explained the situation in a hushed voice, including the fact that there were only four bandits here. Hudan continued, "But we still have to keep watch on the quarry for some time. Our plan will be to attack the bandit camp around an hour before sunrise, when they will be the least prepared for a battle."

One of the guards asked, "But it's already dark now. Shouldn't we just rush towards their camp and surprise them? We can take them with our numbers!"

Hudan grunted. "No, we don't have enough information yet. It's possible that there are more bandits who might have gone outside to hunt or relieve themselves. And we cannot take the risk of them flanking us, especially since it's their home turf. So we need to wait and find out everything about them."

The guard captain looked back at him. "How many people do we need to keep an eye on the area? And is there any other entrance we couldn't see?"