FL - Chapter 29: Mac the Foolish Old Man

The workshop rang with hammers and smelled of sweat. Craftsmen and apprentices worked at every station, each part of the operation fitting into the next. Crimson Tide Territory's industrial base was beginning to take shape.

Louis found Mac, the craftsmen's leader, deep in the workshop. The old man was hammering a board with suspicious enthusiasm, plainly trying to conceal that he had just been idling.

"My lord! What brings you here?"

"It is time to build the castle."

Mac lit up. "Give me fifty years, and I will build the greatest castle in the Ironblood Empire."

"In fifty years I will be seventy, and you will be dead."

Mac laughed. "Then my apprentice will finish it. If he dies, his apprentice will."

Louis's mouth tightened. "Are you the Foolish Old Man? Sons and grandsons without end?"

"Who is that?"

"Never mind. Be practical. The castle must go up quickly, work properly, and put defense first."

He handed Mac his detailed blueprint. "Defense is eighty percent of the design. Livability is twenty. Comfort cannot weaken security."

Mac studied it with reluctance. "It is an excellent design, my lord, but a stone fortress would need at least ten years. With this complexity, perhaps thirty or forty."

Louis stared. He had planned for efficiency, not a project lasting decades. Crimson Tide Territory was too fragile to wait that long. The Cold Moon Tribe would eventually push south, while Frost Giants and Snow Kingdom rebels posed their own threats.

"Is there a faster way?"

Mac hesitated, then shook his head. "I am no scholar. I do not have an inventive mind."

Louis dismissed him and searched through the architecture of his previous life: walls, watchtowers, fortresses. None would be fast enough.

Then the answer came to him.

"A Rammed-Earth Fortress!"

He remembered the tulou of his ancestral homeland: vast circular dwellings built by the Hakka to shelter whole communities in wartime. They were sturdy, enclosed, and quick to build—the Eastern Castles.

Louis seized a pen and redrew the blueprint as a huge circular structure.

"Plain," Mac said. "Not very beautiful."

"Who cares? It must protect people. The round shape spreads the force of an attack, and rammed earth is cheap and quick. We do not need decades or endless resources."

Mac studied it again. Crude as it seemed, it was practical and efficient.

Louis laid out the plan. "Build near the hot springs, but not too close. Geothermal heat can warm the building. In winter we can run spring water beneath the floors for radiant heating."

The craftsmen listened in astonishment.

"For the outer defenses, build a circular stone wall roughly three feet thick. Reinforce it with hot-spring clay to form a solid rammed-earth core. Put timber-framed residences inside: heavy logs for pillars, crossbeams for strength, and several levels. The first floor is storage; the second through fourth are living quarters. Use trimmed-tree staircases. Simple and practical."

He sketched the interior as he spoke.

(End of Chapter)