Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 6

“Were there any fires?”

“Nah, it was just Mitra screwing around.”

“I see…”

Xoc’s eyes went back and forth between Saraca and Girika as the rough-looking Nar bodyguard reported his findings. What sort of ‘screwing around’ resulted in lightning bolts falling from the sky?

“Lady Xoc.”

“S-sorry, where were we?”

“The Masons wanted to begin restoration work on the clanhold’s second terrace,” Master Leeds said. “But a handful of Masons isn’t going to get anything done quickly.”

“Right. Uh…”

Following the minting demonstration, Xoc went around trying to figure out how to get started with her clan. The smiths would be minting coins until they ran out of copper to use, and it was up to her to use the coins to get things going. Unfortunately, it felt like everything had to happen at the same time.

In the end, she decided to start by fixing up the old clanhold. At first, she felt that it was a selfish and shallow decision, but both Saraca and Devi agreed that it was the right move. Legitimacy, they called it: she had the means to pay people, but she needed a way to convince others that she was worth working for in the long term and reestablish her clan’s economic and political hold over the surrounding territories.

Impressing people with a nice-looking clanhold – or at least part of a nice-looking clanhold – would provide a much-needed push in the right direction, plus anything that they fixed up would stay that way. Additionally, the restored clanhold would provide security for the Humans and they would be able to incorporate industrial facilities as part of the reconstruction. The faster they could get those facilities up, the sooner they would be able to produce more and better goods and expand her clan’s ‘economic power’.

“What do they need?” Xoc asked.

“Stone,” Master Leeds answered.

Xoc stared blankly at Master Leeds. If they wanted stones, they could just pick them up off of the ground. The guildmaster sighed.

“Are there any quarries in or around the city?” He asked.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about…”

“We haven’t seen anything like an industrial quarry in our time here,” Saraca filled in for her. “They did exist at one point, however.”

“They did?” Xoc looked up at Saraca.

“There are two of them along this ridge,” Saraca told her. “They were probably used to construct the clanhold in the first place. The first is the Cuorocos Cliffs: cliffs don’t look like that naturally, and they probably used the river to move stone around easily. That cliff in the back by the fungus farm project is actually another old quarry.”

“If we can procure materials on-site,” Master Leeds said, “that would reduce our overhead drastically. Hmm…is there some way we can take a look at the ‘Cuorocos Cliffs’ safely?”

“Sure,” Xoc said, “it’s just over here.”

She led them through the old lanes of the terrace to the top of the winding path that led down to the river. Master Leeds nodded to himself, his lips moving silently as he scanned the vista below.

“We may be able to kill two or three birds with one stone here,” he said after a few minutes.

“I thought we were going to use stones for construction,” Xoc said.

“It’s a figure of speech–wait, you don’t have the equivalent saying in your culture?”

“Our natural methods serve us well,” Saraca said. “We don’t resort to using any tools to hunt, so equivalent sayings tend to not exist until we’re exposed to those who do.”

“Huh. Well, what I was trying to say was that we can achieve two objectives by quarrying stone along the riverfront. First, we’ll be getting building materials to fix up everything on top here. Secondly, we’ll be expanding the area below to build proper port facilities for your ships.”

Since there wasn’t room for all the river barges that they came in with, they were anchored further upriver until they were needed. The existing boardwalk was narrow as well – one Beastman had to squish themselves against the cliff to let another pass.

“How big are you going to make it?” Xoc asked.

“That depends on how ambitious you want to be,” Master Leeds said. “I don’t know whether you consider your territory large or small, but as far as Human settlements go, you can stick an entire city on the hill here.”

Now that he mentioned it, Human cities were small. Rivergarden was comparable in land area to her clanhold atop the ridge. The tribes in the Draconic Kingdom said that a Human female could have twenty children in about as many years, so she would probably have a small Human city’s worth of people in a generation.

“What do you recommend?”

“We’re cutting into the mountain,” the guildmaster replied, “so I suggest making the waterfront large enough to support the clanhold and its surrounding territories in the future. It’ll be more stone than we need, so we can store that all away for maintenance or renovations later on. As for warehouses, we can excavate storage areas using the same methods that your people used to create the inn.”

“…how much of the hill will be left?”

“Most of it,” Master Leeds smirked. “I was thinking of creating a hundred-metre-long stretch for now. It’ll also carve out fifty metres of the hill and we can cut new berths for your ships.”

Xoc looked down at the waterfront, trying to imagine what the changes would look like. A worrying thought occurred to her.

“With so many changes,” she said, “won’t people get curious about what’s going on? It’s nice that we can do things, but not being noticed is our main form of security right now.”

“That’s true…how long do you think it’ll take to operate safely?”

To be frank, she had no idea. If enough people got it into their heads that Human flesh was worth a try, Xoc wouldn’t be able to defend the clanhold against them. Saraca would probably help if need be, but those who failed were sure to try again once he left.

“Is there some other way of getting stone that keeps everyone out of sight?”

“I’m not sure,” Master Leeds replied. “The others might have some ideas. Developing some infrastructure to better facilitate commerce was the first thing that came to mind as a master of the Merchant Guild. I’ve seen what I wanted to see, so we can head back now.”

They returned to the ‘Human plaza’ on the second terrace, which by now had been transformed into a small village of tents surrounding the square. The Humans had partitioned out the space into different sections housing the different industries represented by the artisans and their families. On its western side was a collection of temporary facilities that made up the ‘forge district’, which consisted of what the Humans considered ‘heavy industry’. Blacksmiths, Masons, Carpenters and Tanners were the most notable – at least to her – amongst them.

Xoc found that most of the Humans in the section were at the smithy, where they had gathered around a table with various rocks scattered on top of it.

“Did we run out of copper already?” Xoc asked.

“No Lady Xoc,” one of the Blacksmiths replied. “But we did run out of fuel. It’ll be a few days until we have a decent amount of charcoal to work with.”

He produced a small bag and offered it to her. Xoc opened the strap and found it half-filled with copper coins. She frowned inwardly at the result of their morning’s work. Winning a bout in the fighting pits earned her about six copper coins. The bag had at least ten times the amount. It made all the risks that she had taken to get ahead laughable in hindsight.

“Thanks,” she said. “Uhm…we were just talking about materials to fix up the clanhold with, but I don’t want to do anything that will put everyone at risk for now. Do you have any ideas?”

The men and women around the table exchanged amused glances with one another before looking down at the rocks displayed before them.

“Since we don’t have any tasks to deal with,” the Blacksmith said, “we did a little ‘prospecting’. Mostly sifting through the ruins of this place and checking what’s under all the dirt that’s built up. We already saw plenty coming up the cliff last night, but what we found confirms what we suspected we’d find.”

“What did you find?” Xoc asked.

“This hill is basalt, so most of the things one would find from it. It’s amazing really – since this place doesn’t have any of the relevant industries, everything that’d be long stripped away around Human settlements is just sitting around here plain as day.”

The Blacksmith pointed to the largest rock on the table. It looked like a huge gold nugget covered in shiny black crystals.

“That one’s a godsend,” he said.

“Is it gold?”

“Nah, it’s magnetite embedded in a chunk of chalcopyrite. In other words, iron and copper. Smelting these ores also produces glass as a byproduct. This is most of what they mine in the Draconic Kingdom’s southern provinces.”

His hand drifted over the table to pick up a milky green crystal.

“This is olivine. Jewellery-grade olivine is known as peridot, which we’ll set aside for our Jewellers. Our Alchemists can get magnesium and glass from the rest. Magnesium is used as a reagent for all sorts of things, including iron and steel production.”

The next sample was a cluster of silvery black crystals. Next to it was a ruddy-looking rock.

“These two look different, but they’re both hematite. The fancy-looking sample is probably better turned into jewellery, but the rest can be smelted into iron. Everything on this table can either be smelted, alchemically refined or turned into jewellery. Those colourful rocks are some random gemstones we found, but I think most of that stuff’s been picked up by your people already.”

Next, he pointed at a ball of yellowish-red clay.

“That’s dirt,” Xoc said.

“It is,” the Blacksmith nodded. “But it’s metal-rich dirt. If it comes down to it, we can get that metal out.”

Xoc furrowed her brow at the clay ball. There was metal in dirt? She didn’t know how much work went into everything, but it sounded as if they didn’t need to go anywhere to get anything.

“Can you find this stuff everywhere?” She asked.

“Yes,” the Blacksmith answered. “Including the Draconic Kingdom, the lands that the Rol’en’gorek runs through are composed of the same rock formations and can contain the same minerals. If you have any other ridges like this in your territory or make connections with other tribes and clans with access to the same features, we’ll have plenty to work with.”

There were plenty of small ridges and valleys in her clan’s former territory, but the problem was that it was former territory. Her ancestral lands, which once covered over two thousand square kilometres, had been lost to the city or the tribes that split off from her clan as it weakened. All that was left was the ridge where her clanhold was and the area along one side of the lake behind the dam.

“How that goes will depend on whether I can pull all of our old tribes back in,” Xoc said. “Is there anything we can do for now?”

“Renovating the clanhold should provide a big pile of materials,” the Blacksmith replied. “We’ve been talking over it with the masons, architects and carpenters. Everyone thinks that it’s better to just rebuild. From what we’ve seen, your people have been making what homes they could out of what’s left of this place, and what’s left is slowly falling apart. We can increase the relative height between terraces by lowering the second and third levels. That’ll give us plenty of construction materials to use, make things more secure, and give everyone more living space. It’ll let us put in some proper plumbing, too.”

“Can you describe what it will look like?” Xoc asked.

“The architects will be imitating the style used in the ruins here,” the Blacksmith answered. “Aside from that, you Beastmen are tall so a two-storey structure would be around seven metres high. Right now, the height difference between each terrace is about five metres. We want to double it to accommodate the new buildings.”

“In that case,” Master Leeds said, “we’ll have more materials than we know what to do with.”

“We’d start from the side facing the river and work our way around,” the Blacksmith said. “It’ll look like a quarry for a while, but once we get buildings up and landscaping’s done, we can refer to what remains around here to fix it up as good as new.”

She wondered whether it would be the case. According to Saraca and his companions, what ‘used to be here’ was extremely advanced – far more advanced than anything in the Draconic Kingdom. Still, having new homes was better than living in the broken remains of old stone structures.

“You can go ahead with that, I guess…” Xoc said, “B-but don’t do everything all at once! I want to see what it looks like before deciding whether it’s worth it or not.”

“Sure, we can do a stretch to showcase the project. Now that that’s settled, we gotta settle the matter of labour.”

Xoc looked down at the bag of coins in her paw. This was the part that she was the most uncertain about. Copper coins could be used to pay labourers, but she needed to keep making them back. Originally, the idea was that the fungus farm would sell fodder for the Nug herds, and the proceeds from that would go toward paying for security and the continued expansion of the fungus farm. Now, that idea extended to all of the industries that the Humans she had brought back with her from the Draconic Kingdom could work in.

Furthermore, Saraca had lectured her on the idea of ‘taxes’ on their trip. They were something like tribute, but more regular and well-defined. Essentially, she would be collecting resources to pay for everything that went into providing security, infrastructure and various other things for the people that lived in her territory.

Figuring out how much she should tax for any given thing was complicated. As it was, it was a puzzle that she only had a few of the pieces to. Most of those pieces involved how much money she needed to spend not only on warriors for security, but also ‘civil servants’ that did all manner of things related to keeping things running. The informal system of warbands and elders that tribes and clans relied on wouldn’t be enough to keep up in a city, as evidenced by Ghrkhor’storof’hekheralhr’s directionless state.

Alongside that challenge came the need for literacy. She needed to pay people for that, too. According to Mitra, what they had could barely be counted as a written language so she suggested that they simply learn what the Draconic Kingdom had. The Human clerks that came with them were more than happy to help with that, but the problem was that there were sounds in their language that Ocelo couldn’t vocalise.

Well, I don’t need any of that to hire labourers, I hope…

Xoc placed the bag of coins on the table and cleared some of the rocks away. She pulled out a pair of coins and placed them in front of her.

“According to Master Leeds,” she said, “we need to pay each common labourer this much, right?”

“Well, a day’s labour is worth three portions of meat,” Master Leeds said, “and a copper trade coin is worth two. The Merchant Guild doesn’t cut coins in half as some countries do with their local currency, so that’s the bare minimum we can pay anyone for a day’s labour.”

“You could just hire someone for two days with three coins,” Saraca said, “or is that unreliable?”

“No,” Devi said, “she should stick to two copper coins per day.”

“Why’s that?” Xoc asked.

“Because one coin is worth two portions of meat.”

“…I don’t get it.”

Devi flicked her ear. Xoc flinched away.

“Say you’re a common labourer,” the Nar Merchant said. “One day of work gets you three portions. One is for yourself. The other is for your mate. The last is for your cub. How do you pay for anything aside from food?”

“Your mate works too. Usually, a family in the city has two or three cubs and both parents work. The extra copper coins go toward other necessities.”

That being said, doing things that way was dangerous. Both adults leaving a den to work not only meant that young cubs were left unattended, but others could come in and take over.

“I know many Merchants and Artisans would say that it’s a result of a highly competitive labour pool, but the situation in Ghrkhor’storof’hekheralhr is such that nearly everyone is living in poverty. If you get badly injured or get extremely sick, you just starve and so does your family.”

“But that’s normal,” Xoc said.

“Rol’en’gorek is overcrowded,” Girika said. “The clans along the borders can just fight the neighbours to make use of their excess population, but the cities can’t. This isn’t unique to Ghrkhor’storof’hekheralhr: every city has a slum, and when you can’t work, you die.”

“That’s broadly true,” Devi admitted, “the situation in Ghrkhor’storof’hekheralhr is a result of Rol’en’gorek’s stagnating economy being stretched thin over the generations. But what’s happening here is not part of that old paradigm. The efficiency of land utilisation and the development of industry under Xoc will increase the capacity of whoever adopts these systems.”

“Which only delays the inevitable.”

“Not necessarily,” Devi said. “If she continues to heed the counsel of Druids like Elder Patli, Xoc will have the opportunity to avoid the same situation before she hits the next growth ceiling. Quality of life will improve as a result of balanced development.”

Girika snorted.

“Yeah, until the impoverished masses who didn’t ‘balance’ their growth come after her clan because they want a piece of their superior quality of life.”

“No one with any expertise on the matter claims that being a Lord is easy,” Saraca said. “Discouraging that sort of thing is part and parcel of running a clan and its territory. We’ve already discussed that part, anyway.”

“But two copper coins is equivalent to a warrior’s pay,” Xoc said. “We can’t pay labourers the same as warriors.”

“That’s another thing I wanted to address…” Devi said, “You’re going to want to develop some sort of pay scale soon.”

“What’s that?”

“A way to compensate people based on their training, skill and time. The way people are paid right now is absurd. You need to attract the best and brightest to participate in your clan’s economy.”

Xoc glanced down at her coins. It felt like she had a lot of them just a moment ago.

“I don’t have to do that right away, do I?”

“No,” Devi shook her head. “Right now, the city is a giant pool of unskilled labourers. The skilled labourers are mostly artisans who are compensated through the goods that they produce. You’re raising warriors out of the members of your own clan, but training them to be more than just a brute will take time.”

“On the note of warriors,” Saraca said, “Humans actually make for extremely good policing forces.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“Why is a question no one has been able to answer, but the results speak for themselves. Assuming the same veterancy as their Demihuman counterparts, Humans tend to become more skilled in their vocation. Beastman tend to have a raw physical advantage over their Human counterparts, but when one is working as part of a civilian policing force, you mostly want them there for their skills. Having a mix of different races to account for various situations is optimal, but right now you only have Ocelo and Humans.”

“But I didn’t get any Human warrior slaves.”

“Ah, but that’s where humanity’s greatest advantage comes in,” Saraca said. “Simply put, Humans have no racial predisposition toward any particular thing. They can become a wide variety of skilled professionals with the appropriate training. I don’t suggest telling your artisans to do this, but you’ll inevitably have Human children growing up in their families that are convinced that they want to do something different from their parents. Rather than forcing them to work some job that they’ll be miserable in, you can just take advantage of their willingness to try something new.”

Every time they broached a new topic, Xoc felt like she was being buried in even more information. She understood that Saraca’s time in Rol’en’gorek was limited and he just wanted to see her off to a good start, but it was overwhelming nonetheless.

“We’d never pay off our indentures on four copper a day anyway,” Master Leeds smirked. “All this discussion aside, what we need right now is strong bodies to carry the stone our masons cut out of the hill. We’ll continue minting copper coins once we get more charcoal, but we’ll also start iron production for spare tools and machine parts.”

“How many coins will we be able to mint per day?” Xoc asked.

“It’s going to be irregular at first, to be honest,” Master Leeds said. “Rol’en’gorek’s artisans only purchase the jewellery-grade stuff, so their suppliers throw away the rest. That’s to our advantage in the long run since it means all the ‘junk’ is cheap to get, but we have to set up supply lines.”

Xoc pointed to the rocks on the table.

“What about these?”

“We’ll likely find more of it,” Master Leeds said, “but metal production in general is going to be erratic until we secure steady supplies through trade. Prospecting might be an option as well…ah, speaking of which, we’d like to check the inside of your inn’s suites for veins of ore.”

“I don’t mind,” Xoc said, “but what do you have to do to find them?”

“We’ll know them by sight. You might have already seen them. They look like streaks running through the stone.”

“Ah, those. We painted them over to make the walls of the suites look nicer.”

The men and women around the table stared at her. Xoc cringed.

“Sorry, I didn’t know!”

“…it’ll be harder, but we’ll still be able to find them. Anyway, refining malachite yields about half its weight in copper, so we’ll have about five hundred coins using what we bought along the way here. We have two Mason families with us, so we don’t need to hire too many labourers. One team should do for now.”

“How many people is a ‘team’?”

“That’s a good question. We don’t know how much Ocelo can haul, but four is probably a good start.”

And, just like that, half of her copper coins were gone in a month. The ups and downs of her finances were going to make her sick.

“A-are you sure this is going to work?” Xoc asked.

“I was actually going to ask if we could use the rest of it,” Master Leeds said.

“What?!”

“Money is meant to be used,” Devi told her. “It’s no good to anyone just sitting around. I know you’re worried about whether your clan can sustain this, but you have plenty of people who know how things work. In the past, you only had yourself to fund things, but you’re supposed to be running a clan now. A Lord can’t personally do every little thing.”

Though she said so, it was still difficult to stomach. Five hundred copper coins was enough for Xoc to feed herself for three years, and now everyone expected her to manage that huge sum and even more ridiculous amounts.

“I’m not sure if this will make things better for you or worse,” Master Leeds said, “but minting coins was just something we wanted to show you first. Those raw materials we bought up along the way are going to be manufactured into goods that are worth far more than five hundred copper coins–”

“ARGH!” Xoc screeched, “Fine! We’ll use everything! What did you want to do with the rest?”

“We’ve covered this topic before,” Saraca told her. “Aside from labour, you need to invest in professional development and infrastructure. You have a project – which is the renovation of your clanhold – and working on that project essentially does that.”

“How does it help with professional development?”

“Your clanhold is pretty big,” Saraca replied. “The workforce you have right now won’t get you anywhere in a sane amount of time. To complete the project in a few years, you’re going to need thousands of people. That’s not only the Masons and hired labourers, but everyone working in the industries directly involved in the renovations, plus all the industries that support those industries. For instance, a Mason requires equipment, and that equipment is created by the artisans in the plaza here. Everyone needs to eat, so you need people for that as well. Putting all those people to work results in the development of a skilled labour pool.”

Conveniently, Humans didn’t only eat meat. Ocelo could go into the trees and forage fruits, nuts, and a variety of edible plants from around the jungle. From her experience hunting monkeys and birds in the canopy, one could easily find that sort of thing simply by locating where their quarry fed. In that sense, Humans could occupy the same territory as Beastmen without competing for the same food, or at least as much of it.

“Does that mean I have to go out and personally hire people for every industry?”

“We can use the guild system for that,” Master Leeds told her. “In a Human city, people who learn a craft from a master artisan are called ‘apprentices’. Those apprentices have to pay for their training, and those without the immediate means to do so usually sign a contract of indenture. This includes children of said artisans, but, obviously, their parents don’t treat them as slaves, nor are they as stringent with compensation as they would be with a stranger.”

“So you’re suggesting that I do the same thing with them as I did with you?”

“That’s right,” the guildmaster nodded. “Just like us, the apprentice becomes a bonded servant. Also, it doesn’t have to be you in the future: independent master artisans are the main source of professional education, and they’ll be doing it too. By the time an apprentice’s work for their master has paid off the cost of their training, they’ll be well on the way to becoming masters themselves. In a way, it’s a guarantee of employment while the apprentice establishes themselves as artisans in their own right.”

“So once they complete their contract,” Xoc said, “they’re free to go?”

“They become freedmen again, yes. In your case, you want them to stick around and put what they’ve learned to use for you. That should be pretty easy. After all, you’ll be the only one with a nice big set of working facilities. At that point, they become employees of the workshops that you build.”

“Will it really work that way?”

“Well, it’s a system that has been refined over centuries. If it didn’t work that way, it wouldn’t work that way. Any potential problems would have to do with the acceptance of those in authority and issues that crop up due to differences in species.”

Saraca cleared his throat.

“The guild system is near universal in the civilised world,” he said. “Since Xoc will be the one in authority, the only issues with acceptance would be from outside of her clan. The work of the artisans will speak for itself, but opponents may try to undermine their efforts for one reason or the other.”

“I’m not sure if they would go so far as to attack her clanhold,” Devi sniffed, “but, even so, it would be to their detriment. Ignoring something useful out of some irrational agenda will only cause those that try to promote that agenda to fall behind. As long as you can defend your assets, you and those who work with you will gain an inexorable advantage while those who do not will languish in darkness.”

When it came to business, Devi was merciless. Even so, she only seemed to do things that were helpful in some way.

“I’ll start asking around for people who might be interested in becoming an apprentice,” Xoc said. “It’s probably going to be hard to explain to them, though.”

“That should take care of itself in time,” Devi said. “As the people around the clanhold see what the Humans are up to, you’ll inevitably have people who decide that they can make a living out of it. A Lord is a being that brings order to a chaotic world. All you need to do, Xoc, is establish and maintain order: those who wish to build upon that foundation will come on their own.”

“Just make sure what they’re building is what you want,” Girika said.

“What do you mean by that?” Xoc asked.

“Well, doing this sort of thing attracts all sorts. People will naturally come to take advantage of the situation, but at least some of them will do it in an undesirable way. Being recognised as the next big thing is gonna bring all of the crooks and parasites of this city straight to you.”

Xoc’s paw went to the scruff of her neck as she tried to calm herself down. More problems. It felt as if every time it looked like she would take a step forward, something threatened to drag her back.

As she continued to puzzle out what to do, a small crowd of Humans gathered on the eastern side of the plaza. Saraca craned his neck to see what was going on, then nodded to himself for some reason.

“This is a good time to take a break,” he said. “Let’s head over there and listen in.”

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