Day 2: Afternoon
As the sun reached its apex and began its weak descent, Kael left the exhausted foraging teams under guard and returned to the village perimeter. His next inspection was the most crucial to the barony's longevity: the infrastructure work being overseen by Sergeant Rylen and the Core labor group.
Rylen had positioned his men at the strategic corners of the village, breaking ground for the first geometric bastions, and a separate crew was struggling with the precise leveling required for the water channel near the river ridge. Kael approached the defense construction first.
Rylen, sweat mixing with the omnipresent dust on his brow, stood over two stoneworkers who were attempting to lay the foundation for the northwest bastion. They had begun stacking stones in a near-vertical fashion, following the traditional method of building a thick, high wall.
"My Lord Baron," Rylen reported, saluting crisply. "We have used the plumb line to ensure the vertical stability, and the first stones are set. We will have a six-foot wall by nightfall."
Kael surveyed the work. It was strong, but fundamentally flawed for his design. "You are building a shield, Sergeant. I ordered a weapon."
Rylen frowned. "A wall is a shield, my lord. It is the best way to stop the enemy."
"A vertical wall creates cover for the enemy right at its base," Kael explained, his voice patient but firm. He traced a line on the dirt beside the construction. "The traditional wall requires constant, dangerous exposure for the defender to see the base. The vertical design maximizes impact, wasting the projectile's force."
He pointed to the diagram he had sketched yesterday. "We are building a bastion, Rylen, not a wall. The outer face must be angled. I commanded a forty-degree slope."
Kael picked up a loose, fist-sized stone and tossed it against the near-vertical stones the men had laid. The stone hit with a solid thud, wasting all its energy and falling straight down. He then used his staff to knock down the topmost stones and reset them on the proper slope. He tossed the stone again. It hit the angled surface and skipped harmlessly away, its force redirected.
"The angle of the slope deflects the enemy projectile away from the structure and redirects the energy," Kael explained, referencing basic Newtonian physics without using the terminology. "It conserves the integrity of the stone, and it forces the attacker to climb an unstable surface, exposing their back to the crossfire from the adjacent bastion. This is not about height. It is about geometry and efficiency."
Rylen stared at the deflected stone, recognizing the profound strategic advantage. It was a complete departure from the defensive philosophy of their world. He was learning that Kael's commands, though bizarre, were always backed by a demonstrable, irrefutable logic.
"We will tear down and restart the angle, my lord," Rylen immediately commanded his men, realizing the wasted labor of the morning. "We will achieve the forty-degree angle."
Kael then moved to the river ridge, where another crew struggled to maintain the level required for the aqueduct. They were using rough sighting sticks, resulting in inconsistent heights.
"Elms showed me the tax reports," Kael muttered to Rylen, drawing him aside. "The Duke will send his tax collectors in four months, followed by armed retribution. Our legal appeal for fraud will buy us perhaps two months of delay. After that, we must be able to defend the settlement."
Kael continued, tying the water project directly to the military necessity. "The water channel is not merely for drinking; it is a legitimate infrastructure project that proves we are rehabilitating the land and are therefore a valuable, functioning economic entity. This provides the Emperor's lawyers with legal justification to intervene against the Duke's fraud claim."
Kael took over the level measurement crew. He instructed the two stoneworkers and Rylen to use a precise piece of knotted cord and a bucket of water—a rudimentary water level—to establish a perfect horizontal plane over the distance. He then explained the concept of gradient and how to calculate the required drop.
"We need a drop of precisely one inch for every twenty feet of horizontal distance," Kael commanded. "That drop is sufficient to maintain flow without stressing the wood or eroding the channel. Too much, and the flow is wasted; too little, and the water stagnates and grows deadly. You must measure the horizontal distance accurately, then lower the channel precisely."
The men spent the next hour working with agonizing slowness, carefully measuring, sighting the water level, and setting stone supports. It was dull, repetitive, and mentally taxing work, forcing them to abandon their intuitive 'eyeball' methods for precise, measurable metrics. Kael was teaching them that survival in this new barony required scientific accuracy.
By the end of the long day, Kael returned to the manor, exhausted and coated in dust. The Tuber Hunt had brought in enough food for two more days, the bastions were being rebuilt on the correct deflection angle, and the aqueduct channel had begun its slow, precise crawl toward the river.
He was the Baron of the Ashen Frontier, and he had successfully replaced the territory's crippling superstitions with the cold, hard logic of geometry, logistics, and physics. But the ultimate test lay ahead: turning the poisonous tubers into safe food for 300 people while consuming minimal firewood.