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FLTL Ch 200. The Water Wheel
🕑 Added 2025-03-31 14:30:04 +0000 UTCA/N: Welcome back! Here is the sketch once again as a reference:
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Regardless of the chronic shortage of craftsmen in Tiranat, Kivamus still estimated that all the gates would be built within ten days or so at the current rate. With the sharpened tops of the stakes which formed the village walls easily standing more than fifteen feet high - and with the gates built till nearly the same height - they would act as a strong deterrent to any wild beast attacks or bandit raids in the future.
The periphery road just inside the village walls - even if it was just a wide track of packed dirt for now - would also allow the guards to quickly ride to the location of any breach in the walls - if it even happened at all with these towering walls.
They kept moving north after passing through the gates, and he watched with satisfaction as the tree line had moved further away from the village walls, which were already nearly a hundred meters away from the last of the houses in every direction. He estimated that by this point the tree line was easily around 300 meters away from the walls, which meant they were close to reaching their target of clearing around 500 meters of land in every direction.
Of course, like he had planned in the past, Madam Helga had been instrumental in finding out those areas which had any useful shrubs or herbs, which is why they had left a few trees in such areas and tied up a rope around those trees to mark it as a small ecological preserve, which would also double as a park for children and the elderly in the future. After the snow melted in the spring, he would even get a small pond dug in the middle of those parks, which would also make them a place for the birds and small animals to eat and rest.
He had also been told that the foreman of the south, Pinoto, had been managing the workers under him quite well, and with the help of the log movers they had already cleared an area of around 600 meters by 600 meters in the south. Of course, that was after leaving a gap of around 500 m in the south ahead of the village walls to make it easier to see an attack early, unlike the time when Nokozal and his band had hidden just outside the village between the trees.
This lopsided progress was mainly because the majority of the laborers were working in the south these days - since all the labourers who had been working in the construction of the second longhouse block were free these days to cut trees in the south until Taniok finished up all the three gates - which is why the progress there was a lot higher than in the other directions. However, that was still less than half of the cleared land they needed to sow enough seeds to feed all the villagers from the next year. Still, he had confidence that they should be able to do it by the time the ground thawed after the winter.
A side-effect of all that logging were the tall piles of criss-crossed logs kept at so many places around the village. Those were going to be instrumental for them in making more buildings in the future.
As the small caravan kept moving on the northern road through the 300 meters of empty area ahead of the village walls, he gazed at all the newly cleared land around him. It would take quite some time before they even filled up the empty area between the last houses of the village and the new village walls with more longhouses, a new marketplace, some warehouses and barns, a barrack, as well as other buildings, but that extra 500 meters of space in every direction outside the village walls would make it easy for them to expand the village further in the future.
That wasn't going to happen any time soon, but he already realized that manpower shortage was one of the major limiting factor for them these days to make the village more secure and prosperous, which is why increasing the population of the village in the future - so they could get a lot more workers - was something he was already thinking about in his free time.
Before long, the expected fork in the road arrived, and they turned towards the east. The flooded coal mines awaited them.
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It was nearly evening time now, and Kivamus was sitting on a small rock overhang next to one of the walls inside a mineshaft, as he waited for Darora to finish the modifications. Earlier in the day, after reaching the coal mines, they had parked the wagons in the small plain area between the hills, and the labourers had started moving the parts to the first mineshaft that needed to be cleared of water. Some of them had taken the small parts in wheelbarrows while pushing them up the hill to the cave-like entrance of the shaft, while the heavier parts had been put in a cart for one of the nodors to start pulling up the hill.
Of course, before entering the shafts he had explained to Tesyb about how to use the safety lamp they had brought with them, and with his eyes full of wonder, he had used the lamp carefully to check the quality of the air inside. Thankfully, there were no harmful gases inside the shaft today, so after verifying it by moving further inside the shaft and checking with the safety lamp, they still had to light the candles which they normally used. A single safety lamp simply wasn't going to give enough light for Darora to work.
It had taken nearly half a day for him to assemble the water wheel with the help of the other labourers, as well as the long trough needed to make the water flow to the outside of the mineshaft, and everything had been completed by late afternoon. However, when the labourers had started to climb on the planks which worked as cleats on the sides of the waterwheel to rotate it, they had immediately found a problem. The angle of the cleats was simply too sharp for them to stand with their full weight without getting disbalanced.
This was exactly the reason why he had brought Darora with him. They had looked at the water wheel carefully and found that it would need only a small adjustment in the angle of the mortises where the cleats were attached to the water wheel. That was what the young carpenter had been working on since then. It shouldn't be long before he is done.
While the carpenter had been working on the modifications in the afternoon, a few of the labourers and guards had taken the time to ride to the stream which was located further in the east, and they had been successful in catching enough fish for everyone. They had roasted them in the empty plain area between the hills, and that had turned into a tasty and fresh lunch for everyone.
Back in the present, he noticed in the flickering light of the candles that Darora had just stood up after attaching the last cleat once again into the new mortises he had cut into the water wheel. Soon, the young carpenter walked towards him. "Milord, it's done. It should work much better now."
Giving a satisfied nod, Kivamus stood up. "Alright, let's try it again then."
At his gesture, Tesyb - who used to be a miner in the past - called up two of the labourers. "Time to work, lads. Each of you take a position on either side of the wheel, and start climbing on the cleats. Make sure to hold the overhead support tightly, or you'll fall right into the water below."
The labourers gave excited nods, and did exactly the same. One by one they kept stepping on the cleats, which moved downwards by their weights, before they climbed to the next cleat. With a groaning noise, the iron axle which they had liberated from the quarry to use as the axle for the water wheel after greasing it properly, began to rotate slowly.
Within the same motion, the waterwheel started to rotate as well, and the square boxes attached at the circumference of the wheel began to dip into the water one by one. Acting as small tilted buckets, they picked up a good amount of water in each of them until the rotation of the wheels brought them to the top of its circular journey, where gravity took over and the water simply flowed down to the sides of the wheel into the troughs fixed on both sides of it, before it joined into a single trough further towards the entrance of the cave.
As more and more water kept falling into the troughs, it began flowing continuously towards the entrance, with everyone following the front line of the flowing water with a lot of enthusiasm by walking alongside the troughs like a small procession. It didn't take long until the water reached the end of the artificial path it had been forced to follow, and eventually it began falling down outside the cave entrance with a splash. Immediately, the cave was filled with the resounding cheers of everyone.
"We did it!" two of the labourers who had helped in assembling the waterwheel exclaimed while giving a double high five to each other.
Hudan was grinning nearby, while Tesyb was celebrating with his former workmates in the mines. Darora was standing next to him, while watching with satisfaction at the continuously flowing water.
"Well done!" Kivamus congratulated the young carpenter. "You have performed outstandingly, once again!"
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Next chapter: FLTL Ch 201. A Cleaner Replacement
