Storm Rising

As he sent off the orders and call for volunteers to be copied and posted, something else occurred to him. Romances, serious ones, were bound to come out of this. And, inevitably, marriages.

Oh, gods. I'd better find some local priests. I have to find out what the local marriage customs and laws are. I'll have to have the men briefed. Gods, and courting customs; I don't want to have cases where one party thinks it's a light flirtation and the other thinks it's a betrothal! Maybe I had better think about partitioning one of the barracks into cubicles for married quarters. Can we afford that? Or should I just tell married couples to make their own arrangements in town? But if I do that, how do I enforce discipline? This sort of thing had never occurred to him before; wives and sweethearts were always left behind when the Army marched off. When the men had been confined to the light women of the taverns, he hadn't had to worry about all that. A lady of negotiable virtue knew what the rules were, and so did her customer. But properly brought up girls of the town and the farms—that was something else altogether—

His hands and thoughts both stilled, as he realized what he was planning.

This is not an encampment anymore. It's a permanent post. I am planning for a long future here.

That was what had been nagging at the back of his mind despite his efforts to deny it. He could have chosen a flimsier structure for the barracks plans, something that would last a few years. Instinctively, he had picked the strongest, most durable structure his designers had offered.

This was no longer an armed camp, it was an armed holding.. He was allocating the men to serve both camp and town. He was planning for the mingling of both. He was planning for a future that included married soldiers, children, families.

Less and less of what he had learned as a military leader would apply, and more and more of what he had learned as the manager of his own estate.

If they all survived the mage-storms and the winter.

He pulled his mind and his planning back to the present. One thing at a time. First, the walls, the barracks, and the harvest. Then worry about what comes next.

* * *

Sandar was evidently overjoyed at the list of barter goods; late in the afternoon his messengers returned from town with answers from the Mayor and Master Kerst. The note from Sandar was good news, but the one from the Master Guildsman was even better. Master Kerst had two stonemasons and their journeymen and apprentices, four brickmasons and theirs, and a Master Builder and his. There were also assorted plasterers, woodworkers, a furniture builder or two, and others that Master Kerst felt might be useful....

Might be useful? Tremane very nearly did a dance around his desk, which would have either scandalized or terrified his aides, depending on whether they thought he was drunk or mad. He'd resigned himself to rough-finished walls in the barracks and the crudest of appointments; the men would certainly have seen worse in their time. Having skilled craftsmen available meant there would be real walls, a floor of something besides pounded earth, real bunks and mess tables for the men. And the answer from Sandar meant he was going to have all this without touching the stores of coin he'd taken from the Imperial coffers!

I wonder if you'd thought about bathhouses or a substitute for latrines? Kerst's note continued. We have men who not only can advise you on both, but who have an idea or two You might want to consider.

Bathhouses and latrines? He scribbled off a note in semiliterate Hardornen to Kerst directly.

Instead of the quiet dinner he usually had, he sat down that night with a tableful of men whose conversational topic was not usually considered appropriate over food.

By now, in order to deal with the locals efficiently, both his staff of chirurgeons and his builders had learned Hardornen, so the conversation was held in the local tongue. That was just as well. It was somehow easier to eat and listen to a conversation about latrines at the same time, if it was held in another language.

'—mix with wood ash and ground cob or chopped leaves, then you spread what you get out on drying racks,' said one of the locals earnestly. 'Depending on the weather, in a day or so you get something dry enough to bag, and that's what we've been selling to the farmers to put on their fields.'

'You just need sewers and the treatment site, don't need sewage tanks see?' finished his coworker. 'Let the sand, gravel, and the rest of it purify the liquid, let it percolate through all the purifying layers, and you don't run the risk of poisoning our stream or our wells.'

His own men nodded wisely. 'We've been doing something like this in the cities and on the large estates, but you need magic,' one of them said. 'I've heard some people had a less sophisticated system on their estates because they didn't have a house mage. This will work.'

'Well, it gets better,' the first man said, grinning. 'Bet you didn't know if you use the same system on cow dung, minus the wood ash and adding dried wood chips or sawdust, or ground woody plant waste, like heavy stalks, you can burn it.'