the rooms around us as well. I suppose we have to use chamber pots too, and I
can’t imagine how horrible the food will be. Daniel, are you sure we can’t just
camp out somewhere?”
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I started to tell her no and paused, with a glimmer of an idea building. I’d
already seen that working with stone could be amazingly fast, and it was still
early afternoon. I just might be able to swing this.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I told her. “Both of you bring your things, and
follow me.”
I threw the door open and headed back downstairs, headed for the great
hall. I found Sergeant Thomas and Captain Rain there, the latter still in a
stretcher, being chewed out by an irate baron.
“-have known better than to waste good coin on mercenaries.” Baron
Stein was saying. “A useless bunch of shopkeepers and tradesmen. If we
weren’t besieged I’d send you all packing… what?”
He rounded angrily on me.
“I’m going to get started on the wall,” I said blandly. “I’ll need a squad of
men to watch my back while I’m distracted with magic, since I’ll have to stand
outside the wall for most of this.”
He put his hands on his hips. “What, you think I have nothing better for my
men to do than babysit you?”
I shrugged. “How about the useless shopkeepers and tradesmen? All they
need to do is keep watch and sound an alarm if something tries to sneak up on
me.”
“Fine,” he growled. “Keep them out of my sight, and maybe I’ll forget to
wonder why I’m paying them.”
“Very well, Baron. By your leave, then.”
I nodded, and turned to go. The little group of soldiers followed, and I
paused in the courtyard outside the keep.
“I don’t suppose you’re interested in a more reasonable employer?” I
asked.
“I don’t think that would go over well,” Captain Rain replied glumly.
“Besides, I didn’t see any bags full of gold in your luggage.”
“A few days of selling magic items will change that,” I pointed out. “Just
think about it. If you want to make it home I’m probably your best bet. In the
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meantime I’ve got a construction project to start on.”
I had him send a man back to my room to wait on Beri and Cerise, to let
them know where to find me. Then I took four more as guards, and headed back
to the docks.
I’d noticed before that the town wall didn’t actually go all the way down
to the waterline. Instead the low mound most of the town was built on ended
about twenty yards from the river, and the wall followed the top of the mound.
I figured that was probably because the architects had wanted the wall to
completely enclose the town, but had to leave the actual shoreline clear for
docks and what looked like a small boatyard. The gap was small enough that
archers on the wall could cover the whole area during the day, but it would be
easy enough for monsters to slip in at night and attack the dockside district.
It also left me a conveniently situated stretch of unclaimed land.
I paced off the distance from the corner of the wall to the river, thinking it
through. Upgrading the existing defenses would actually be more trouble than
working from scratch, so I started my work fifteen paces out from the line of
the town wall.
First I dug a hole down to bedrock, which turned out to be about twenty
feet down here. Then I started conjuring stone at the bottom of the hole. I had to
be careful not to do too much at once, but I found that a steady flow of a couple
dozen cubic feet per second was just within the power budget of my new
amulet. Hard-packed earth was several times easier, which was a simple way
to fill the space that wasn’t going to be load-bearing. Soon I was back above
ground level, and working my way out toward the river.
Things got tricky there, since I wanted my work to project well out into
the water but I needed to be fairly close to the section I was working on. I
solved that by dropping rocks and dirt through the ice and fusing it together to
make a cofferdam, then scooping the water out with telekinesis. That took most
of an hour, but gave me a relatively dry hole where I could excavate and then
build back up with stone.
I built up a solid circular foundation forty feet across, about half of it
projecting into the river. Ten feet above the waterline I turned that into a tower
instead of just a solid mass of rock and earth, which got a little tricky. Stone
was my only construction material, and it doesn’t have the tensile strength to
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support long horizontal surfaces. I ended up putting a big stone column with a
spiral staircase around it at the middle of the tower, and each floor was
basically one big doughnut-shaped room with an arched ceiling. After some
thought I added four internal walls, each a good four feet thick, to break up the
space and provide extra bracing.
When I’d thrown up three floors like that I went back down to the bottom,
and put in a stairway on the side of the wall facing the town that led up to a
stone door on the first floor. It was heavy stone, and its position well off the
ground would make it hard to bring any sort of siege engine to bear on it.
Then I led the girls in. Tina stared at everything with wide eyes, and
looked at me like she thought I might be a god in disguise or something. But
Avilla got the idea.
“Is this for us?” She asked eagerly.
“That’s right. I’ll put a cistern on the roof and drop a couple of pipes to
the kitchen and bath, maybe put in a magic stove and some eternal torches for
light. Look around and think about how to arrange things, would you? I want to
finish the tower before dark, but then I can come back and spend an hour or
two making the place comfortable before bed.”
“This is wonderful, Daniel!” She smiled. “Thank you! Could you make us
a stove first, and put a warmth spell on Tina’s cloak? Then we can make some
progress on settling in while you work.”
I blinked, and noticed for the first time the way Tina was huddling against
Avilla and shivering. Poor girl.
“Oh, damn. Sorry about that, Tina. It’s easy to forget how cold it is out
here when I don’t feel most of it myself. Come here.”
She obediently hurried over, and I threw my cloak open and wrapped it
around her. She stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed against me.
“Warm. Thank you, sir.”
“No problem. Hold still for a few minutes, and I’ll make yours do the
same thing.”
It was getting easier with practice, but it still took a good fifteen minutes
of intense concentration to set the enchantment. When I finished I found that
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Tina had her face buried against my chest, and my shirt was a little damp.
“Tina? You alright?”
She shook herself. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, I’m just so scared all the time.
This is the first time I’ve felt safe in days.”
I hugged her gently. “I can imagine. This is hard enough for me, and I can
fight.”
Avilla moved in to pat her on the back. “It’s alright, Tina. Did you see
how thick the walls on this tower are? Even a giant couldn’t break in.”
“Yeah, and that’s just the start,” I said reassuringly. “When we leave
we’re going to be a lot better protected than before. But I need to get back to
work now.”
Tina reluctantly let me go, and wiped her face. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry,