From what Kivamus had been told, Darora should provide the sixth and the last crossbow by tomorrow, and after then he would be free, since all his other projects like crafting all the mould and deckle frames as well as the dozen seed drills were already completed by him. It was true that the carpenter would have to stop making crossbows after the current one anyway because a shortage of iron was preventing the blacksmith from forging the iron parts, which meant Darora wouldn't be able to make scorpions either until they bought more iron.

The scrap iron they had gotten tonight in the form of bandits' rusted swords would simply not be enough for this. Most of the iron which they had left by the time the snow had begun to melt had already been used to make new and improved farming tools like plows and trowels in the past few weeks, for which Pinoto had guided Kivamus, telling him exactly what was needed so that he could design something better. However, it meant that by now, they barely had enough iron to make repairs of all the tools being used in Tiranat until they bought more ingots.

Kivamus winced thinking about explaining their need to buy even more iron to Duvas from their nearly empty strongbox of gold. Ah well, the pennypinching majordomo would have to accept it. Making a scorpion would certainly be worth it in the medium to long term, since as their town kept growing with the arrival of more and more immigrants, it would also increase in prosperity, and that would make it a much bigger target for bandits as well as nearby nobles.

That meant he had to think about keeping their village safe in the long-term, even if it seemed like his methods would be overkill for the current dangers surrounding him. He had no doubt that as word started to get around about the revolutionary medicine they had created from losuvil leaves, Zoricus and other nobles would start salivating at the thought of acquiring that method, as well as kidnapping their budding scientist Syryne who was the one who had created it.

The sheets of paper which the workers were was creating in the east of the village were primitive, discoloured, crumbly, and rough, but he had no doubt that he could eventually improve it to make a much better quality of paper which even nobles would pay money to use, apart from the merchants of Reslinor who would love to have a cheaper alternative to parchment for maintaining their accounts and books.

However, the know-how of how to make paper profitably would also be something other nobles would try to forcibly seize from him, not to mention all the gold which Tiranat would inevitably earn from selling the medicine and paper, which were two things they could already manufacture in the village, even if at a small scale for now. That meant it was the right decision to plan to defend the village even from neighbouring nobles.

From what he remembered, despite the sorry state of the village when he arrived here, the previous baron of Tiranat still managed to earn around 50 golds every month in pure profit, although that was before the price of wheat had increased this much. They also had to feed more people now which would cost more gold. Still, Kivamus didn't plan to waste that money wining and dining in taverns of Cinran like that greedy idiot, not to mention whatever else the previous baron of Tiranat did in the town to burn that much gold every month.

That meant they should still be able to earn at least some kind of profit every month once the merchants started coming regularly. No wait. They also had to pay the taxes in autumn once again, and this time they would only have around six months to gather that much gold, instead of the full year which every barony was supposed to get. He sighed. The problems never ended in this village, did they? Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on NoveI~Fire.net

No matter. Once they began to manufacture paper and the losuvil medicine at a larger scale, that should provide a good stream of income for them in the coming year. If the farming project went well and their yields were anything like what he expected, they would also have to spend a much lower amount of gold on buying food from Cinran from the coming autumn. They wouldn't be completely independent of food imports any time soon, assuming immigrants kept coming here like he planned, but at least they were on the right track to attain food security for the village.

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He nodded to himself. Okay then. Designing and spending the money to make a scorpion was not a waste, despite the limited amount of gold they had. Duvas would have to understand somehow, while Hudan would jump in joy seeing a possibility of improving their defences further. Remembering the scared faces of Lucem and Clarisa a few hours ago when they had found out that the village was being raided once again finalised the decision in his mind. He had to do his best to keep them and the other children safe, as well as all the other villagers who depended on him.

Coming back to the matter at hand, he knew that this scorpion was going to be a much bigger and heavier weapon than the crossbow, and would have a very different design as well, since it needed to be fixed on top of the parapets while being able to pivot easily. It would also incorporate a pair of gears to use mechanical advantage to allow women to reload it. That meant it was going to take a great deal of practice for Darora to be able to craft it, so it was a good idea to let him know about this design as soon as possible even without the availability of iron to make all the parts. There was no shortage of wood anyway, so after a few trials and errors to find the best way to craft the wooden parts, Darora could start stocking up on them immediately, while he could put his apprentices to stock up on the wooden crossbow parts, even though it would take a while to acquire the required amount of iron to finish it. It was better than keeping their talented carpenter sitting idle.

He nodded with determination and moved towards the shelf kept in the corner to bring up a fresh sheet of paper from there. Walking back to the table he took a seat and spread the sheet in front of him, putting the quill and ink on the table as well. A brazier was burning nearby to provide light from up close, while the fireplace also had enough flames in it to make the room bright enough to draw.

If he started now and worked for a few hours before going to sleep, he should be able to make a preliminary design by the next afternoon, and then he could get opinions of Cedoron and Darora on it before finalising the design by the night. The carpenter could start working on it after he had finished the current crossbow.

If they were able to buy a good stock of iron from merchants in the coming weeks, and if everything else went well, then within a month they could have the first pivotable scorpion with gears to reload it installed on a watchtower. It would surely be too late to help their defence in Torhan's raid, but it wasn't like the carpenter could keep making more crossbows without iron anyway.

Eventually, once they had installed a scorpion on every watchtower - which meant on all six of them, after all the towers were constructed by Taniok - it wouldn't be easy for any bandit to dare to attack Tiranat. Any predatory nobles living in their neighbourhood of Southern Reslinor - even if they had a horde of knights to call upon to fulfil their insatiable greed for power, money and land - would also have to think twice before daring to harm his village or his people.

He grinned as he picked up the quill and dipped it in ink. It was time to work.

***

It was the afternoon of the next day and it was one of the few times when Kivamus had woken up late in this world, the other times also being on the nights after a raid. Last night, he had only gone to sleep when it was nearing morning, after he had worked on the scorpion sketch for all night, so when he was going to his sleeping room on the upper floor, he had told Madam Helga - who was already up to prepare the breakfast - to not wake him up till noon.

Right now, he was back in the manor hall with the others after having what could only be called a brunch. He had already sketched the preliminary design for the scorpion, and had sent a servant to tell the blacksmith and the carpenter to meet with him in the evening. He had been staring at the same sketch to think of any other improvements, when Feroy entered the manor hall along with the guard captain.

Kivamus looked up at the new arrivals. "Did you find out anything new about the bandits we caught? Are any of them going to be trouble for us in the future?"

Feroy shrugged. "Nobody can predict the future, Milord, but I don't think so. This group only had men here because they had left their families and children in an encampment somewhere in the forests north of us. They had planned to loot food from us and take it back to their families."

"An encampment?" Kivamus repeated with his eyebrows raised. "How many people live there?