Demesne 120 - Rian's Problem (Patreon)

At breakfast the next day, Rian sat himself down heavily, the last to arrive. He looked terrible. He had that slightly unfocused look of a man on too little sleep, each blink slow and deliberate as if he was fighting the urge to close his eyes and just keep them closed. With a caution that made the act seem climactic but was probably just him trying not to drop it, Rian set his plank on the table.

"Done," Rian said. "I have a boat design."

Lori glanced at it. "Good. I'll look it over later. After breakfast, go talk to the blacksmiths to find out if they need anything specific for their smithy, I already have a location for them. Ask the… tanners? Ask the ones treating the seel and beast skins the same thing, I never worked in the industry and have no idea what it entails." She'd heard about the smell and decided not to have that in her life.

Rian twitched. "Can I do that in the afternoon? I barely slept last night."

"I told you to not procrastinate."

"You did," Rian nodded. "But I still managed it!"

"Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"Get some sleep before you go decide to go hunting beasts."

"Yes, your Bindership! Don't ride on any rocks until I get back."

He didn’t even look at the bowl of food in front of him as he stood and left, moving with a distinct leftward tilt as he walked back to the door.

There was silence for a moment.

"Someone should probably go after him to make sure he doesn't fall into the river," Lori commented to no one in general.

Umu was up and almost running instantly. Riz blinked a moment before following.

Mikon shook her head, picked up the four other bowls on the table and began to expertly balance all four bowls in her hands. She must have worked at some kind of eating establishment at some point.

Shaking her head, Lori continued eating.

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The design was a bit smudged and some of the lines weren't as straight as they could be, as if perhaps last moment panic combined with sleep deprivation was taking its toll on the person drawing. Still, it was mostly legible.

The shape was basically a larger version of their prototype, the late and unlamented Lori's Ice Boat. Five paces wide, three times that long, and three paces high… and that was just the block of ice that was supposed to be hollowed out for buoyancy. There were outriggers to the sides for stability, and they also seemed to be for increasing the area of the deck? There was practically a little house on top of the block.

Lori couldn't help but feel it was a design that should have gotten to her hands a lot sooner than now.

There were thick black bars in some places, and Lori assumed that was wooden reinforcement, an internal framework for her to anchor the ice to. From what he'd said before, Rian probably also intended to have wooden cladding on the outside of the boat to protect against impacts.

Try as she might, she still couldn't think of a better way to do this than with ice. While bone might be viable, she doubted they'd be able to gather enough of the material before winter, and while stone might work, it… well, it had no buoyancy. Any stone boat would need to be very large to displace enough mass to float, and if she riddled it with bubbles to mimic pumice, it would probably be structurally compromised. Also, she didn't know how to do it. And while they had a lot of dragon scales… it wasn't anywhere near enough to actually make a boat of any structural integrity. They were a mix of materials, and some would need to be alloyed or refined to be usable. Even with her generating heat, that would take a long time.

So, ice. Perhaps next year they could try other options.

While she waited for Rian to regain consciousness, Lori got to work and began working on making a permanent smithy. Or at least prepare the location for one, Rian still had to get specifics for her.

Unlike her initial thoughts, she couldn't put it right outside the entrance. The core was too close on one side, the kitchen was too close on the other, but that didn't mean there wasn't any space. After some walking, measuring and checking, Lori found a space behind the excavated rock pile that she could use. It was close enough to the entrance to safely enclose without digging into the cold storage room next to the kitchen. There was enough space for her to excavate a decently high space so it could have good ventilation even without her putting in bindings. Two of the walls could be open most of the time, and then when a dragon happened she could enclose it.

She had to move her excavated stone stockpile, otherwise the area would be blocked off, but that wasn't too big of a problem. Lori just had to put the pile a little past the smithy area, which wasn't that far and still convenient. However, beyond carving out the space, she wasn't really sure what they needed. When she'd worked at blacksmiths and other metalworking shops, she'd been there as a heat source, not as someone who made the shop. She'd told Rian handle that aspect of it, that was what he was there for.

Provided he remembered to. She'd have to remind him when he woke up.

When Rian woke up and showed up at lunch, the first thing he did was check the plank. He sighed. "Oh good, I didn't draw anything weird or wrong."

"Will this even float?" Lori said.

"Oh, it'll float," Rian said. "It's ice and intended to be hollow. The only question is how well it will float. We'll have to use lightweight wood. The ice will also need to be as cold and dense as possible for the most strength. Then there's the question of how we actually build the thing. Do we make a wooden internal frame and have you wrap it in ice? Do we make the ice first, hollow it out and add the wood in later? Do we make it all in one piece, or as sections that we piece together?"

"Yes, very hard questions," Lori nodded. "I look forward to what you come up with. This is your project, after all." She waved a negligent hand. "Tell me when you need the ice and I'll see if I can find time for you."

Rian winced. "I don't know anything about making boats!"

Lori glanced down at his design. "Well, you've had a good start to learning," she said dryly.

"I should have just hollowed out a tree," he muttered.

"I couldn't possibly comment," Lori commented. "Please build the boat in a more timely manner than it took you to create the design. This journey must be completed before winter, after all."

Rian sighed. "Yes, your Bindership."

"Now eat your lunch, you missed breakfast. And don't forget to talk to the tanners and blacksmiths."

Rian sighed. "This is a lot more than what you usually have me do first thing in the day."

"That's what happens when you procrastinate, work until late into the night and sleep until noon."

"Yeah, I'm starting to remember why doing it is a bad idea…"

"Riz. Since he'll be busy, I'll need another temporary Rian."

Riz nodded almost as if she'd been expecting it. "Yes, Great Binder."

"Good. You can start by finding out for me what the blacksmiths and tanners need for a place of work."

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Days passed. Work was done.

The seels, who had made themselves scarce during the dragon, eventually returned, meaning the children were able to start catching them again. Not as many of the children did so anymore. Many had begun working as spinners, making thread and cord so that the weavers could make fabric and eventually clothes. Lori suspected it wasn't entirely of their own free will, but no one complained, and children seemed willing. More people learned to play board games with their feet. Not sunk, because picking up all the stones with only one's toe was apparently too difficult, but the other games, where pieces were put down one at a time, managed it.

The smithy was made in the area that Lori had excavated out near the Dungeon's entrance. The forge had to be made with clay bricks, as stone alone had a likelihood of cracking, and mortared with more clay that Lori baked solid with firewisps so that it actually turned into brick itself. To hold in the intense heat, she wrapped the assembled oven in water that she then bound into ice, trapping the heat inside since the ice was unable to absorb heat. There were some cracking sounds as the heat transferred to the ground, bereft of anywhere else to go, but when it was finished, there was a new furnace for the forge.

Lori took out a dragon scale that was mostly iron from the vault and gave it to the smiths for raw material. Soon the smithy was hot and ringing as repairs were made to tools.

The tannery was easier. She raised up stone walls and the hunters put the roof over it themselves, using branches instead of planks. It was a bit of a fire hazard, but what wasn't? She also used packed earth to make vats for them to soak the skins and furs in, then excavated a cave nearby where they could move the skins and their materials in case of a dragon. She'd been inclined to excavate a shallow pit and have them set up there, so she could just bury and cover the entire thing in case of a dragon, but apparently they needed the open sun and air circulation, else the noxious and nauseating fumes would build up. Well, it would be easier to bury just the storage cave anyway, and since the roof was made only of branches, it would be easy to repair.

Now that he had a design and most of the repairs to the demesne were done, Rian finally had the optimum opportunity to build the boat that they would use to go to Covehold. That meant calling another meeting of the carpenters, woodworkers, and smiths to inform them of what needed to be built.

As could be expected, Rian got a lot of weird looks when he got to the part about making it partially out of ice.

"I know it sounds insane, but it works," Rian said. "I mean, you all saw the ice boat make the trip to River's Fork a few times before, you know, the dragon happened. And it won't be all ice. The idea is to have a wooden frame for the ice to freeze around to give it strength, and wooden cladding on the outside to protect it from impacts. Binder Lori will…" He made a vague gesture. "…do magic things to keep the ice from melting, so it can serve as a building material and waterproofing."

He smiled confidently.

Everyone glanced blankly at him. Then they all stared at Lori, as if even Rian's charisma wasn't going to win this argument for him.

"Yes, he's serious," she said blandly. "But we tested it, and the idea looks like it will actually work. If it's any consolation, none of you ever need to ride the boat."

Everyone looked at each other, and there was a consensus that was best described as a shrug.

It was, as things went, not a very optimistic start.

But it was Rian's project, so Lori didn't care. It was all his problem.