Chapter 307 The Canal and the Current

The days began to pass quickly.

The new members trained from sun to sun. The first day was spent showing them what it meant to train until muscles they did not know they had ached. There were men who could not rise on the second day, and they were dragged out of the line with kicks.

On the second day they were taken out.

It was no walk. It was the red forest, with the monkeys screeching in the crowns and the traps marked with stakes, and then the edge of the ash valley, where the ground was warm and nothing grew.

The recruits watched how the front was fought. They watched a man lose his hand and keep fighting. They watched a body carried out in two trips.

No one complained after that.

While the soldiers were polished, Karkadann’s fortress kept rising.

They had raised a castle structure on the shell, with thick walls and arrow slits, and from the ground it looked like a mountain with battlements.

Kellar climbed to inspect it and came up to her neck.

"Is it not too much weight?" asked Kellar.

"No," transmitted Karkadann. "I will be a little slower. Nothing more. Moving a mountain or two is no problem."

"Two?"

"I have already carried two."

Kellar looked at her a while and laughed.

The mobile command center filled with cannons in every direction. Hundreds of Garnis, plus the cannons of the old artillery regiment, mounted on new carriages and aimed outward through every degree of the circle.

Below, in the yard, the reserves were stacked. New cannonballs, rifle ammunition by the crate, and the elemental rounds, wrapped in cloth and separated by type.

Kellar came back to his table that night with points to spare.

He had been saving. The last reward had given him two hundred fifty, and with the kingdom’s upgrade new lines had opened. He had three technologies pending that he had been putting off, and that night he released all three at once.

[Motor]

[Machinery Design]

[Ammunition Design]

Fifty points each. A hundred fifty in all.

They arrived at an excellent moment. By the next day there were plans in the workshop and two giant cranes rigged in the loading yard, with pulley sets able to lift several tons.

Big Horn pulled the mechanism. The bull planted himself in the mud, dropped his head, and hauled, and the final pieces of the structure went up through the air on their own.

Kellar stood watching the bull move what had once taken a whole detachment to move.

Then he opened the list of new technologies.

[Electrical Principles: batteries, circuits, industrial transformers]

[Construction of Electrical Networks]

[Runic Fusion]

A hundred points each.

Kellar stopped on the first one. He was sick of torches. Sick of the smoke in the workshops, of burned hands, of light that moved when the wind blew. He wanted his own grid, his own current, and he did not want to depend on a barrel of grease to keep the valley from going dark.

But first he needed the fundamentals.

He chose Electrical Principles.

[Electrical Principles acquired]

[-100 points]

Kellar took the plans to the workshop.

They were not alone in it. Lennis and Garik already had the table taken, and Kellar set the roll down on top of what they were doing without asking leave.

"Turbines," said Kellar. "Six of them, in series, at the crag stretch. Vertical shaft, curved blades, iron casing."

Lennis unrolled the plan and looked it over top to bottom.

"This does not get done in a day, Great Shaman," said Lennis.

"I know how long it takes."

Garik leaned over the other man’s shoulder.

"And this turns with the water?"

"With the current."

Garik scratched the scar through his eyebrow.

"And what happens when something hits it?"

"That is why I am here," said Kellar. "The fish. There are four in the deep stretch and they are enormous. A back like that takes a blade off you like a branch."

He turned to the door.

"Halvard."

The old man sat on the bench outside with his staff between his knees.

"I need ideas," said Kellar. "To make the blades stronger. So a fish cannot break them."

Halvard came in slowly and set to studying the plan.

"I can carve them," said Halvard. "A rune of endurance on each blade. They get scored, they get scored, and they do not split."

"And the shaft?"

"That too."

"How much do they hold?"

Halvard held his silence a moment.

"Plenty. But a rune is not a wall, Great Shaman. If the beast is the size you say, it will bend the iron before the rune stops it. And when the iron bends, the rune breaks."

Kellar nodded.

Behind Halvard, in the doorway, stood one more man with his hat in his hands and lime dust on his boots.

"Gustav," said Kellar. "What are you doing here?"

"I came with Halvard, Great Shaman," said Gustav Brandt. "I was paving the new road."

"And you finished it."

"No. I left it half done. But while I was at it I saw something."

Kellar folded his arms.

"I have a proposal," said Gustav. "It is a little ambitious. But it might work."

"What is it?"

Gustav came to the table and put his finger on the plan, away from the river.

"We can cut an artificial channel."

Lennis raised his head.

"The lake is too big for these steel things," Gustav went on. "They sit completely unstable, floating on the river. And the beasts go in and out as they please."

"I know that," said Kellar. "That is why we are here."

"We divert the bed," said Gustav. "While I was paving the road to the tiger king’s den I passed several cliffs. The water strikes hard and there is a very steep scarp. We can bring down that crest here."

He struck the plan with two fingers.

"The water goes down this way. We make a small artificial river, as wide as we want. At the right size, the big sea monsters cannot get in. And the small ones go through the blades and get ground to death."

The workshop went quiet.

Garik dropped his hammer on the anvil.

"That is madness," said Garik.

"It is madness that works," said Gustav.

"How much stone has to move?"

"A lot."

"And how long?"

"Three weeks. Four."

Garik looked at him and then at Kellar.

Kellar said nothing. He came to the table and followed the line Gustav had marked with his finger.

The river came in, went around the scarp, and came out the other side as a narrow canal.

The big beasts stayed out. The small ones got in, and the small ones got ground.

And there was not a single grate to clean.

"Can the canal be made narrow enough?" asked Kellar.

"Yes, my lord."

"And if the water does not reach for six turbines?"

"It reaches," said Gustav. "A little is lost in the diversion, but the fall is higher. With a high fall, less water moves the same."

Kellar straightened.

"Halvard," said Kellar. "Leave the runes for the shaft. The blades we make of thick iron, and let the canal do the work."

"As you say," said Halvard.

"Garik, Lennis. You start on the scarp. Gustav marks where."

Garik still had his face twisted.

"Great Shaman, three weeks in the quarry and we will not have a nail for the rest of the valley."

"You will have light," said Kellar. "You will have light, and you will stop casting by torch."

Garik opened his mouth and shut it.

"Fine," said Garik.