From Londoner To Lord

Hudan added, "We should clear more area than just the farms, my Lord. I'd say we need at least five hundred paces of empty space all around the village, if not more, to be sure to detect any attack in advance."

Kivamus gave a nod. "As Duvas said, in the east there is a stream near the hills, which flows southwards. As long as the land in the south of the village is suitable for planting, it would be much better to start farming in that direction, since it would give us a ready source of water for irrigation."

Without access to any fertilizers and modern agricultural machinery, the yields of the crops were not going to be great, and they would need a much larger area dedicated to farming to get the same amount of grain, than they would have needed if they had such equipment. That did give him a few ideas on some very basic devices, like a seed drill, that he could try to design and build here, even with the materials they already had available in this village. It should help to improve the productivity of farms by a decent amount, but he put it into the back of his mind, to reconsider once the immediate concerns were taken care of.

Thinking about cutting forests on this scale and all the deforestation they were going to cause, Kivamus gave a wry chuckle. It was far from ideal, and it would never be tolerated on Earth, and for good reason, but their situation was desperate enough that they had no choice but to clear the forests, or the villagers would continue to starve. And that was not acceptable to him.

After taking a minute to think, he added, "We also need to think of a way to house the homeless villagers, and we will need logs as well as enough cleared land for it." He pointed towards the north of the village, "Let's say we keep the new housing in the north, which would leave the land in the west empty for other things, like new barns, etc."

Hudan added, "We will need to designate a clear area for that, my Lord, so that we can clear enough trees to have at least five hundred paces of clear land ahead of the new houses."

"True." Kivamus nodded, and asked Duvas, "How many people would you say are homeless right now?"

Taking a moment to think over it, while gazing over the village to their west, Duvas replied, "I can't give an accurate number, my Lord, but I believe the bandits put above a dozen houses on fire, so that means there must be around seventy or eighty people who lost their houses in the bandit attack. Of course, there are some other villagers too, including orphans, who don't have anywhere to live since that thunderstorm damaged or outright destroyed many huts around a month ago."

Gorsazo said, "That's a big number though. We would need to construct fifteen to twenty houses, at least, if we are going to give them a place to live so they don't freeze to death. But I'm not sure we have enough time to do that before the winter hits."

Duvas nodded as well. "Indeed. But it would take much less time if we just constructed bigger halls for them to live in, instead of separate houses."

Kivamus mulled over the idea for a minute. Back on Earth, in some places people lived in longhouses in the past, when building separate houses for everyone was not practical. That seemed like a good option to him in these circumstances. "Why don't we build longhouses then?"

"Long…houses, my Lord?" Hudan asked.

Thinking about how to explain without mentioning Earth, Kivamus said, "I read about those in the library, back in Ulriga Palace."

He looked at Gorsazo, and remembering the vague memories of the original Kivamus, he said, "You know well how I used to spend a lot of time in the library there, every time after my brothers found a new way to mock or ridicule me, and when I didn't want to face others for some time."

Gorsazo nodded. "That's certainly true, my Lord. Many times, I had to search for you in the library for your lessons."

"Indeed." Kivamus continued, "That's where I read about these longhouses that people used to make in the past, in some other countries. Basically," he elaborated while pointing at the barns inside the manor, "they are similar to those barns we have here, but they are only around ten feet high, but much longer than the barns."

Seeing the others listening intently, he continued, "This way, we can put two bunks for sleeping on each side of the longhouse, the lower one only around say, two feet high, while the upper bunk can be around five or six feet high. This would allow us to house two people on one side and two on the other side, that is, a total of four people for every two meters of the length of the longhouses."

Hudan interrupted again, "What is a meter, my Lord?"

"Uh… that book had the units of length in terms of meters," he tried to explain without giving away too much. "A meter is around, uh…" He looked around for something that had the same length, but not finding anything suitable, he just spread both of his hands to what he guessed would be the length of around a meter, and said, "This long. Or a little longer than a pace."

He continued, trying to remember the length of a normal person's step, "I'd say the length of around four paces is the same as three meters. Many of those books I read used a meter as a unit of length, so I am used to thinking in those terms."

"Of course, my Lord." Hudan nodded.

Duvas added, "By keeping each bunk to a length of uh… two meters, even a full-grown adult can comfortably sleep in it."

"Indeed," Kivamus agreed. "And I think, we could keep the width of the longhouse around five or six meters, which would give enough walking space between the bunks, which would be located next to the walls on both sides, while still leaving enough space for a fireplace in the middle. That would keep the long house warm in the winter, as well as be useful for cooking meals there. As for the length, we could keep it around say, twenty-five meters, which would be enough for a dozen bunks next to each other. That way, we could house forty-eight people in a single longhouse easily."

He conceded, "Of course, these are just rough estimates, and we will need to talk with a carpenter who will give us the exact numbers."

"True enough, my Lord," Duvas said. "Those seem like reasonable numbers though. I will still send for the carpenters we have in the village, to talk over the details with them."

Gorsazo commented, "Making these longhouses seems more practical than building individual houses for now. And even with just two new longhouses, we should be able to shelter all the homeless people in the village."

"Indeed," Kivamus nodded. "But instead of making two longhouses simultaneously, we will prioritize building only one of them at first, so that the homeless villagers can have at least some place to live. The temperature is going down every day, and even if it won't be very comfortable to house nearly twice as many people inside a longhouse compared to what it was designed for, it will still be much better for the villagers than sleeping outside in the open."

"That's a good idea, my Lord," Hudan commented.

"There are also many other villagers, who do have a shack in which to live, but those flimsy walls don't hold the cold outside at all," Duvas added. "If possible, once we have finished building those two longhouses, we should construct more of them if possible, so that any of the villagers who want to live in those instead of their own huts can move there. Every winter, there are at least a few deaths from the cold in those shacks and huts."

Thinking about living in such cold temperatures in those huts, made Kivamus feel a shiver, even though it was noontime now. And once the snowfall started in around a month, it would indeed be difficult to survive in those huts. "Good idea. We will do that as well, once the first two longhouses are ready. But we can still house more people than their capacity in the first two longhouses, so people don't have to stay in those huts until more longhouses are ready."

Kuzunalis

Meanwhile, behind the scenes:

Hudan, the ever-stoic guard captain with a beard that could rival a particularly angry badger, seemed to be taking the lack of new ratings personally. Kivamus found him muttering darkly about the indifference of the unseen masses, while polishing his helmet with surprising vigor. Gorsazo, meanwhile, was attempting to knit a miniature suit of armor for a particularly disgruntled-looking rat that had taken up residence in the manor house.

"Why can't people take a few seconds to give us a 5-star...?" Hudan muttered, dark clouds hanging over him. "After I heroically saved those maids from a rogue pickle barrel? Have I trained my entire life just to defend people from that wheel of suspiciously sentient cheese kept in the kitchen, and without even being rewarded with great ratings?"

Kivamus, slumped over his ale, mumbled around a giant pretzel, "And what about my daring plan to put common villagers as trained guards? Do they not find my gambles impressive? My plan, worthy of a bard's song? Though, come to think of it, getting a bunch of 5-star ratings might distract the bandits from even trying to loot the caravan…”

A contemplative silence followed, broken only by the rhythmic clinking of Kivamus' many tankards emptying one after the other. Hudan, uncharacteristically flustered, sputtered, "So, is this what heroism gets you these days? No epic soundtrack, no adoring fans willing to support the author… just… nothing?"

Gorsazo, ever the voice of reason (when it suited him), snorted. "Perhaps the villain, Count Moldybread, has taken up underwater basket weaving to cope with this... Or maybe he’s watching the fight of Dreadlord Snaggletooth vs a particularly aggressive sea urchin, while he figures out which one to eat first?"

A beat of horrified silence followed. Hudan choked on his spit, and Kivamus visibly shuddered. Finally, Gorsazo clapped Kivamus on the back (a little too hard, judging by the yelp) and grinned. "See? The stakes are very high! Won't you be the hero Lord Kivamus needs? A single new 5-star rating could be the difference between Kivamus saving the village and Hudan starting a competitive beard-growing rivalry with a particularly hairy yak he has befriended near the Arakin mountains..."

So, my dear reader, the fate of the story (and possibly the yak's self-esteem) rests in your hands! Won't you take a moment to give this story an awesome rating?