EdgarFig
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64. Plans in Action
🕑 Added 2024-09-12 00:17:17 +0000 UTCOnce the ship was loaded, Mark ferried his people across to the mine. He filled the entire rear of the ship and managed to load twelve people. Four guards, six miners, one cook, and an Imperial miner with some basic smelting and metallurgy skills who was selected by Payon to act as the team’s chief. The two had worked together in the past, and Payon knew him to be fairly capable.
Since they had secured a relationship with Alzuz, Mark hoped that would mean the tunnels of the mine itself would remain fairly safe. Because of this, he ordered the guards to focus on keeping the entrance of the mine safe and instructed them to repair the timber gate at the mine’s mouth. It obviously wouldn’t stop an army, but a few men in a tight space and some kind of defenses would hopefully be enough to keep brigands at bay, should they find the place.
Mark also planned to provide more manpower to the mine when he could but he left the small party to start the operation. Once things were rolling, he would ferry more people across. But every person not working within Fort Winterclaw, meant less other projects or resources being developed, and Mark had to be cautious with everything at stake.
Another trip was required to transport goods to the mine since the party had limited amount of goods they could carry in the first run.
Once the mining camp was satisfactorily stocked with food and equipment, Mark returned to Fort Winterclaw.
He then had the ship stocked with food for a visit to the trading post. However, taking so much of their food would be a setback. Fort Winterclaw and its surroundings were hardly a bread basket of the Frontier, which was becoming more and more evident as the population grew.
Rigar bark was a great staple of the Frontier, eaten all across it, but it had its limitations. The trees themselves were quite common, and stripping the bark from one—albeit not entirely if you wanted to keep it alive for further harvests—provided quite a bit of food. The problem was regrowth. The bark regrew painfully slowly. This was rarely an issue in the sparsely populated and forest-covered Frontier. The dotted communities of barbarians could almost always find enough bark-covered trees to feed themselves. Thanks to effort required to process the stuff and the small communities of people that lived in the Frontier, the idea of running out of bark was almost unthinkable. Unfortunately, neither of which was true for Fort Winterclaw anymore.
Mark had mulled on this issue for a while now and knew he needed a solution to this problem. It was the second reason he had wanted to develop outposts. He could encourage his population to spread out if he could create a safe enough region around the fort. That way, their manpower could be focused on harvesting rigar bark, while the population in the fort itself could efficiently process it, allowing for a larger overall population.
He also hoped to relieve this issue a little by transporting some of his people to the trading post. He would put them to work harvesting the bark and pay them a fair salary for doing so. With the efficiency of the steam mill to process the bark, he was guaranteed to profit in this exchange.
Still, it was only kicking the problem down the road. He needed to expand their operations substantially if he was going to keep the fort self-sustainable. The region of stripped rigar trees around the fort was expanding every day, and soon, his people would spend more time traveling to find trees to harvest than they would spend actually harvesting them.
There was also a need to build more wagons. Thankfully, dozens of horses had been retrieved from defeating the cultist army, and while the fort was far from being an equestrian powerhouse, it did have more than enough horses to power a few trade routes.
Developing these trade routes had to be a major priority, as Mark was just too busy to spend all his time transporting goods on his throne ship from one place to another.
Due to its distance from the fort, the mine would have to be a temporary exception to this rule, but once he stabilized the surrounding region, he intended to focus on connecting the two by permanent trade.
Pushing through thick clouds, Mark spotted Frostwind Trader’s Post. The structure surprised him. It wasn’t as impressive as Fort Winterclaw in its current form, but it was considerably larger than the fort had been when Mark first arrived in this world. But it wasn’t just the size of the camp. The palisades were taller and more imposing, and their overall defenses looked considerable.
Mark brought the ship to a hovering standstill over the settlement for a moment, and he took it all in before gradually bringing it down.
The trading post had quite a few cabins and many of them were no doubt abandoned now that so many people had left. In time, it would make for a good secondary settlement to develop, he thought.
Dozens of men from throughout the trading post stepped toward the clearing at the trading post's cente as Mark brought the ship down. He didn’t sense any danger from them; what he felt was curiosity and hope.
These men had essentially been cut off from the outside world with dwindling food supplies, and despite how much they might have cared about their freedoms once upon a time, the desperate looks on the faces made it was clear they were gradually coming to terms with how bad their situation was.
Let’s hope I’m right about this, Mark thought as he climbed out of his seat and made his way to the hatch.
He had only brought food on this trip and was alone. His people would arrive by caravan. However, despite this, he knew that even these so-called free men no doubt understood that no good would come from attacking an Imperator, even if Mark were no doubt a heretic by now and an enemy of the state once the war with the wargs was dealt with.
But that didn’t matter. Whether the men knew of what he was doing and had done, they would understand that taking such law into their own hands was above their station and likely to earn them a death sentence regardless of what Mark was accused of. Ultimately, civilians had no place imposing law on an Imperator, even if that Imperator was a fugitive and heretic.
“You the one,” one of the men pointed at Mark as he stepped out of the ship. “The Imperator thems traders talk of. The one doing funny business with them ferals,”
“Funny business?” Mark raised a brow.
What kind of rumors are people spreading about me?
“You heard me,” the man grinned. “You got a taste for them. For them wild people,” he added, licking his lips.
“I have no idea what you heard, but I can guarantee it’s not true,” Mark said, scanning the crowd of devious eyes glaring at him. “Seriously. There’s no funny business. We’re just trying to survive the winter together.”
“Oh, survive the winter,” one of the men said, winking and nodding. “Gets awfully cold out here. Gotta huddle up. Me and the boys know exactly what you mean.”
“You and the what? Wait, never mind. Don’t answer that. My mind already went somewhere it didn’t want to be. And no, I’m not huddling up with the ferals. People in my fort are provided cabins if they work hard.”
“Sure, whatever you say, Mr. Imperator,” another man winked. “Your secret is safe with us.”
Jeez, nothing is getting through to these guys, is it? Whatever, this isn’t worth continuing.
“Anyway,” Mark shook his head. “This isn’t why I’ve come. We made a trade with you and provided you with food in the past.”
“Aye, ye did.”
“And since there doesn’t seem to be much food production going on here, I’m guessing you’re running out.”
“Who ye think we are, Imperator?” a greasy man spat. “We got hunters and trappers.”
“Shut up, Gerald. You've been sucking on the same meatless bone for two days now, and I’m in need of a real feed. Something to fill me guts,” another man growled.
“Well, you’re in luck. My ship is filled with food,” Mark said, eliciting growls of delight from the men. “But,” he added, raising a hand. “I can’t just go giving it to you. You’re going to have to agree to terms.”
“Terms?” a man snapped. “Ye bastards already took all our whores. We ought to string you up for that, not agree to no terms with a fancy pantsy Imperator.”
“That was a fair trade that you agreed upon,” Mark said, pointing at the man. “Besides, you can’t keep going on like this. Even if I were to hand the food over for free, what’s going happen when you’ve finished it?”
Confused grunts traveled across the crowd.
“You go hungry, that’s what. Without a food source, this camp has no future, and sooner or later, you’re going to have to run back to the Imperium begging for food.”
“Like the God-Lord’s asshole, we will!” A scowling man stepped forward. “I ain’t bowing to no Imperials again.”
“Good, good, I love the enthusiasm,” Mark said. “That's just the kind of men we need. I want to invite you to work for me, and guess what? There’s no bowing involved. You just have to keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Ye gonna feed us for doing nothing?”
“Not exactly,” Mark said. “I’ll be expecting some of you to relocate to my fort. You’ll be expected to work as guards. The rest of you can stay here and guard this trading post as you have been.”
“But?” Another man said.
“But,” Mark nodded. “I will be moving some of my people here. This mash,” he added, pulling out a cloth sleeve that wrapped a ball of rigar mash from his pocket. “Is the food you’ve been giving you. It might not be the best, but it fills your stomach. And if we’re to keep harvesting enough to feed everyone, we will need to spread out. The people I send here will be tasked with harvesting the trees around the trading post, and you’ll be expected to keep this place safe.”
“And the catch?”
“No catch. The people I send here are going to be ferals, of course. But I don’t see how that will worsen your current situation. Unless you prefer huddling up with the boys?”
“Count me in,” a large man stepped forward. “Nigel takes up the whole bed, and the man’s as hairy as a bison. Maybe we can get some feral cuties up in here.”
They are creepers, the lot of them, Mark sighed internally.
“So, do we have a deal?”
“If I can go back to the fort with you, I’m in,” a grizzled man with a thick beard said. “I’m sick of this shithole here. These assholes promised me freedom. Not whatever this is.”
Okay, that was unexpected.
“Me too. You've got my sword as long as you take me away from this place. That sinking bastard Moe doesn't stop farting. Our entire cabin smells like his ass.”
“Aye, aye!”
“Okay, okay,” Mark waved as more hands shot up. "One at a time. Let's figure this out."
These guys really turned this camp to shit, didn’t they?
Within an hour, nearly eighty percent of the men at the trading post wanted to go back to Fort Winterclaw with Mark, but he had to figure out a plan to keep most of them at the trading post. After all, the fort could defend itself, and he didn’t want to send people here to their deaths. Not to mention, securing his outposts was vitally important.
“Okay, okay,” Mark shouted to calm the crowd. “The weekly salary for guards at Frostwind will be an additional four coins, and I’ll look into plans for bringing some of the services we have available in the fort back down here in time.”
Mark’s priority was still the fort. After all, if they needed to flee from their weaker positions in the wake of a warg army, it was still the best place to hold up by far. However, if spreading the wealth a little was the only way to make this work, he could make some compromises.
It took another hour of haggling before they finally came to an agreement. In total, there were 156 men in the trading post, and 30 of them would travel to Fort Winterclaw with wagons left over from the traders and guilders that fled south.
The additional salaries would put a strain on their already tightening finances, but if Mark could get the mine to produce a profitable yield quickly, then it would more than makeup for it.
Saluting his new followers, Mark turned to board his ship. There were still too many loose ends he had to find solutions to, and wasting time wasn't an option.
But first, he would take a quick trip to the south. He needed to see how the war was faring. If either side was close to victory, then his economy building might have to be paused for the sake of battling their enemies, especially if the wargs appeared to be winning.
Come on. Hopefully, we’ve still got some time to figure things out before everything turns to shit again.
