Demesne 204 - The Sled, Completed (Patreon)

"So, suggestion for a new plan," Rian said as they sat down to breakfast the next day. "On consideration, maybe using your boat is too much. We don't really need all the space on it, after all. What if we just put the air jets you made on a couple of boards? They'll be light enough for the air jets to move without any further modification, a smaller profile would reduce friction, and they can be steered by leaning left or right, which we couldn't do with the boat unless we built some sort of mechanism for it."

Lori gave Rian an exasperated look. "So after all that work, your idea is just do something else?"

He shrugged. "We've identified problems with the initial design before we devoted too much time or irrecoverable resources to it. Now is actually the best time to consider changing idea, since nothing has been wasted. The air jets clearly work, it's just the boat was too heavy for them to work efficiently without further changes that would require more building time. I'm simply suggesting we take the only part that works, your contribution, and put it on something lighter. And the rest of the work on it wasn't wasted, since now your boat's safe inside the dungeon."

"Hmm…" Lori mused. She sighed. "Ugh, fine. Don't be wasteful."

"Of course, your Bindership," Rian said cheerfully. "The point is to make something that doesn't weigh much, after all."

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After removing the air jets from the boat, and recovering the bone she'd used to attach it with, Lori took a walk around her dungeon to see how everything was doing. There were people scattered about the dining tables, talking, playing board games, sewing clothes, cleaning tools, sweeping the floor, and coming and going from outside the dungeon. She quickly physically checked the reservoir and found nothing floating on it. It was also reasonably full, and she knew people had been assigned to put snow in the melting box, so it would be renewed soon.

In the second level, the weavers were weaving but there were no spinners spinning, so they'd probably run out of rope weed. She also found many alcoves occupied, with some people napping in the sleeping spaces. At one of the corners of the level, far from the work, some children played some kind of game that seemed to involved standing in seemingly arbitrary spots, holding their arms out to either side, and either trying to tag one another or running from each other. Lori wasn't familiar with the game. It seemed like the sort of thing she'd avoided when she was younger. Among the carpenters, something was being made, while Rian sat on the floor nearby, watching with interest. Ugh, her lord could be so childish sometimes.

Lori glanced at her lord in passing, and he looked up at her, getting ready to stand, but she moved on down to the third level. A quick inspection showed there were no temperatures to correct and everything seemed to be tended and watered. The plots of vigas had sprouted long, bright blades of grass, and the planters of tubers all had green stalks sprouting from the only slightly odoriferous soil. Hopefully in spring they'd be able to fill more plots with grass so they could have a good crop in the dungeon itself…

After that, she went out and checked that all the ice tunnels were both holding as well as properly ventilated, and that the ladder access holes to reach the roofs so they could be cleaned wasn't clogged with snow. She also made sure that the opening in the tunnel that led out to the trees so that people could gather firewood hadn't gathered any snow. Lori didn't go beyond the tunnel, but she saw that the path leading to the trees had been shoveled clear. Good.

Her inspection done, she went to her room to make preparations to expand her demesne later that afternoon.

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Two days later, after breakfast, Lori looked down at the sled lying on the snow. The main body of the sled was paces long and perhaps three-fourths of a pace wide, and looked more gaps than wood. It lay on three pairs of wooden boards that Rian said were called runners, two pairs at the back and a pair at the front. The one of the rear pair of runners was directly under the main body of the sled, while the other pair were on extensions spaced apart very widely, giving the sled a vaguely triangular shape. They reminded Lori of the outriggers on their boats. Supported above the runners beneath the main body was a ladder-like wooden frame, where parallel planks were arranged like rungs, and had gaps between them. At one end was an upright frame that made the whole thing seem like a bed with a head board. Raised planks on the sides added to the impression of a box.

"Why are there so many gaps?"

"It's to reduce weight," Rian said. "After all, it doesn't need to be a solid platform when you're sitting on it. Besides, it makes it easier to mount the air jets."

"Mount the air jets where?"

"Anywhere," Rian said, pointing. "You could mount both on either side of the frame, underneath the frame, on the stabilizing arms for the outer runners, on top of the main frame … though that last will be a bit awkward to ride. The front runners turn on this pivot here—" he demonstrated the pivot "—letting you steer. It will fit… maybe three or four people if they're all friendly and one stands at the back here." He demonstrated what he meant, putting his feet on the ends of the runners under the box-like frame and holding on to the head board-like frame. "The stabilizing arms aren't really made to bear much weight."

"The turning mechanism seems inconvenient," Lori pointed out. While it could turn, there didn't seem to be any actual way to control it.

"We're putting a rope on it, the ropers are just looking for a short length that they've already made so that we don't have to cut any of the long coils," Rian said. He put a hand one the head board-like frame and began to push the sled back and forth. "As you can see, it's far lighter than the boat was, meaning so it will definitely be easier for the air jet to push."

Lori shrugged. "We'll see."

Mounting the triangular bone tubes onto the planks on the sides was simple enough, though Rian suggested lashing them on with ropes as well for added security. The steering rope arrived, and was secured to the runners, with Rian testing if they would turn as intended. Lori allowed herself to be talked into sitting on the sled and grabbing hold of the steering rope while Rian pushed the sled, and she tested pulling at the ends of the ropes to make the sled turn left and right.

…

All right, it was a little fun.

Once more a long rope was tied to the sled so they could slow it down, and Lori again anchored airwisps inside the bone tube into a binding. For now, they'd test it with air again instead of snow converted to vapor. When the bindings were imbued and activated, the air jets began to move the sled immediately. They pushed it slowly at first, but it began to accelerate, building up speed. It soon exceeded the slow walking pace the boat had attained the day before, reaching a fast walking pace before Lori deactivated the bindings and the sled was pulled to a stop by the men holding the rope.

"Were the air jets set at the fastest they would go?" Rian asked as the men went to retrieve the sled and start pushing it back towards them.

"No."

"Huh. And I'm pretty sure that slow start was because it was at a dead stop. If we'd pushed it, it would have started accelerating a lot faster."

"Undoubtedly." Really, did he have to state the obvious?

"I wonder how fast it can go?" Rian mused.

"Youare not finding out," she said sternly. "While I will concede it's a viable vehicle, it does not have nearly as stable a seat as a boat. Turns are likely to result in you falling off."

"Probably not, the pivot doesn't turn very far by design," Rian said.

"Well, you're still not going fast on it. You're too useful to risk."

"It's nice to be appreciated. Well then, mother, how fast am I allowed to go?"

Lori glared at him for the uncalled for remark.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. I like my mother, so it's a compliment."

She rolled her eyes. "It's still uncalled for. I'm far too sensible to be a mother."

"If you say so, your Bindership… Huh. I just thought of something."

Lori sighed. "What now?"

"That mechanism you designed, the one for redirecting the air jet to make it stop accelerating… How are we going to operate it like this? I mean, didn't you say it's meant to be held open at all times so that it would stop by itself if it didn't have any passengers?"

She considered that. "Rian?"

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"Solve that problem."

A sigh. "Yes, your Bindership."

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It took a day to make the flap mechanism and secure it to the ends of the air jet tubes. Rian's solution was simple, and surprisingly didn't require her initial design be altered greatly altered. Instead of controlling the flaps with levers, a rope was tied to the end of each flap. Pulling the rope with serve the same purpose as the lever, closing the flap and letting air pass straight through the tube, which would provide propulsion. Slack on the rope would cause the flap to drop, diverting the air upwards. The ropes were then tied together to a bar at the front of the sled, where they were supposed to be pushed forward by the feet of the person steering the sled.

It was actually much simpler to build than her lever mechanism, and Lori was annoyed she hadn't thought of it.

Still, after fitting the flap mechanism to the air jet tubes and calibrating what she considered a safe, stable speed, the sled was finally functional. While it blasted a long cloud of snow behind it, it moved far faster than a person trying to wade through the snow. However, its limitations in practice required it to be a vehicle that always had two people on it at all times. Open person to steer and operate the flaps… and another person to throw out the bundle of wooden hooks on a rope that acted to slow the sled down.

Which was fine, since someone would need to accompany Rian when he went out on it anyway.

"It's going to need to be a lot faster if we're going to use it to get to River's Fork," Rian told her over dinner that night. "Fast like the boats were, or else we won't be able to make the trip to there and back in a day."

Lori grunted in unwanted acknowledgement of a practical problem as she waited for Mikon to make her move on the chatrang board. "I'll consider it after Riz tells me her impression of the conveyance tomorrow."

The woman in question paused in her eating. "Uh, me, Great Binder?"

"Yes, you," Lori said. "Or are you really going to let someone else go with Rian when he goes to the edge of the demesne tomorrow?" Technically, the location wasn't the edge any more. She supposed it was good Rian was going to investigate it now, since she barely remembered where it had been. Thankfully, the river was a decent landmark, and she'd marked the general area with some deactivated wisps so it would stand out to her awareness.

"I wouldn't mind bringing someone along to help, Great Binder," Riz said.

"Well, go and see if they'll fit on the sled,"

"We'll need to pack spears and shovels to, in case we need to move the snow around," Rian muttered. "By the way, where exactly on the edge am I investigating?"

"I'll mark the location for you," Lori said as she scooped up some meat with her soup and popped it into her mouth.

"Uh, mark how?"

"Lightwisps and darkwisps. I'll make it tall so you can see it over the trees."

"So, tomorrow we're going out on a magic-propelled sled to look for a tall pillar of light and darkness on a quest for our Dungeon Binder," Rian said blandly. "Sounds like a bad fantasy story."

"If it were a bad fantasy story, you'd find a dungeon's core buried in the snow, accidentally bleed on it and somehow become a Dungeon Binder," Lori pointed out.

"True, true..." 

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Rian, Riz and one of Riz's friends set off on the sled after breakfast the next day. Lori wondered if it had been intentional on Rian's part that any passengers on the sled had to sit behind the operator, pressed against their back, arms around their waist. Riz certainly seemed to be enjoying the position. Her friend, sitting behind her, just seemed exasperated.

Lori had nothing in the way of expectations about what Rian would find at the place that used to be the edge of her demesne. The wisps of the binding hadn't been anchored to anything, after all, so there shouldn't be any sort of physical deformation to anything. From the times she had visited the edge after expanding her demesne, the expansion also didn't alter the ground or even seem to move the snow.

So having someone pound on her door late in the morning while she was imbuing the binding for expanding her demesne later was unexpected. Despite her annoyance, she quickly rose to see what it was about, because if they dared disturb her like this, it had to be important.

And if it wasn't, she'd bury them in the snow over lunch.

"What?" Lori said as she opened the door to find Rian. He had a strange expression on his face, and the towel he wrapped around his head like a scarf to keep him warm was in his hands, held like a sack. The improvised sack clearly contained something large and heavy.

"We found something," Rian said, his voice odd. He opened the towel and showed her.