Chapter 2: Stone and Sweat
The timber wasn't enough.
Grimbeorn delivered the news on the fifth day, standing in what we'd started calling the planning corner—a flat stone near the old forge where I spread maps and scratched calculations in the dirt.
"We've got enough for the wall or proper housing," he said. His voice rumbled like distant thunder. "Not both. The forest is further than we thought, and the terrain's rough. We're losing half a day just getting the timber back."
I stared at my dirt-scratched numbers. Columns of figures that refused to add up.
[RESOURCE WARNING: TIMBER SUPPLIES INSUFFICIENT]
[CURRENT: 45 UNITS]
[REQUIRED FOR NORTHERN WALL: 80 UNITS]
[REQUIRED FOR HOUSING EXPANSION: 60 UNITS]
Thank you, System. Very helpful.
"What if we do both halfway?"
Grimbeorn rubbed his jaw. "Palisade at half height—four feet instead of eight. It'll slow an enemy, won't stop them. Housing as lean-tos instead of proper structures. They'll keep rain off. Maybe."
Neither solution was good. Both were survivable.
I ran the numbers again. Food supplies dropping. Morale holding, barely. Twenty-three gold coins in my personal treasury—the entire wealth of my bloodline.
"Do it. Half-measures on both. We survive first, we fortify later."
Grimbeorn nodded and left. I heard him calling to the work crews before he'd taken twenty steps.
The next days blurred into a rhythm of labor.
I worked alongside my people. Carried timber when the crews came back. Hauled stones. Dug post-holes until my shoulders screamed. The workers noticed. Some of them stared when they thought I wasn't looking—their lord, covered in dirt and sweat, hands bleeding the same as theirs.
By the third day, my palms were raw meat.
Thorwen found me trying to wrap them myself, fumbling with strips of cloth behind my tent.
"Let me see."
Not a question. She pulled my hands into the light, and her expression went from neutral to quietly murderous.
"These needed treatment two days ago."
"I've been busy."
"You've been stupid." She worked with quick, efficient movements—cleaning, salving, wrapping. It hurt worse than the original wounds. "A lord with infected hands is no use to anyone."
"A lord who doesn't work isn't a lord at all."
Her hands paused. Something shifted in her face—respect, maybe, or the recognition of a different kind of stubbornness.
"Just don't die from something preventable," she said. "I have enough patients."
The rain came on day four.
Not a gentle shower—a cold, driving deluge that turned the ground to mud and soaked through every piece of clothing we had. The half-built palisade stood skeleton-bare against the grey sky. Work stopped. We huddled in shelters that leaked from a dozen places.
A work crew had been returning with timber when the storm hit.
They straggled in after dark, soaked and shivering. Farren was the worst—a quiet man who'd been a farmer before his village burned. He'd given his cloak to Meren, one of Thorwen's young apprentices, and caught the full force of the storm unprotected.
By morning, he had a fever.
[EVENT: ILLNESS OUTBREAK (MINOR)]
[AFFECTED: FARREN (CIVILIAN)]
[TREATMENT REQUIRED: MEDICINAL HERBS, REST, WARMTH]
[CURRENT RESOURCES: INSUFFICIENT]
Thorwen's face was grim when she emerged from the medical tent.
"His lungs are filling. I've seen this before—in the wet season, with no shelter." She met my eyes. "I don't have what I need to treat him properly."
"What do you need?"
"Athelas would be ideal, but we don't have any. Willowbark will reduce the fever. Good broth to keep his strength up. Dry warmth and time."
"Athelas." The word sparked recognition. Kingsfoil. The healing herb of the Dúnedain.
"He'd have better chances with it, but I haven't seen wild athelas in months. It grows near water, usually, and it's rare."
I turned toward our small stretch of territory, toward the stream Maeglin had found.
"I'll look."
Thorwen grabbed my arm. "You're the only thing keeping this place together. Send someone else."
"I know what athelas looks like. Do your apprentices?"
Her silence was answer enough.
I spent half the day searching the streambank. Thorwen hadn't exaggerated—athelas was rare. I found three small plants, barely enough to fill my palm, growing in the shadow of a fallen oak. They smelled sweet and clean, nothing like the mud and wet stone around them.
[ITEM ACQUIRED: ATHELAS (KINGSFOIL)]
[QUANTITY: 3 LEAVES]
[QUALITY: WILD (MODERATE POTENCY)]
When I returned, Farren was worse. His breathing came in wet rattles. His wife sat beside him, hollow-eyed, holding his hand.
I gave Thorwen the athelas without ceremony.
"It's not much," I said.
"It's more than nothing." She was already moving, preparing the leaves in boiling water. The tent filled with a clean, sharp scent that seemed to push back the damp.
[QUEST UNLOCKED: SHELTER FROM STORM]
[OBJECTIVE: PROVIDE ADEQUATE SHELTER FOR ALL SETTLERS]
[CURRENT PROGRESS: 34%]
[BONUS OBJECTIVE: PREVENT DEATH FROM EXPOSURE]
I sat with Farren through the night.
Not because I could do anything—Thorwen had that handled. But because someone should be there. Because his wife had finally collapsed from exhaustion, and their children were asleep in a neighbor's tent, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd failed him.
The rain hammered the canvas above us. Farren's fever burned and broke and burned again. Thorwen checked on him hourly, adjusting compresses, forcing water between his cracked lips.
Toward dawn, his breathing eased.
"His color's better." Thorwen's voice was rough with exhaustion. "The athelas helped. He should make it."
Relief washed through me—too strong, too personal. I barely knew this man.
But he's mine. They're all mine.
The thought was unexpected. Uncomfortable. True.
I stepped outside as the rain finally slowed. Grey light crept across the camp. The half-built palisade stood at roughly fifty percent, stakes jutting unevenly toward the sky. Our shelters leaked and sagged. People emerged from their tents looking like drowned rats.
One crisis handled. A dozen more waiting.
I found Halbarad standing near the cookfires, staring at our meager food stores.
"We're running low faster than I thought," he said without preamble. "Two weeks of this weather and we'll be starving."
"Then we hunt. Fish. Whatever we can find." I rubbed my bandaged palms, feeling the sting of healing blisters. "I'll take a group out tomorrow. The forest should have game."
"You're needed here."
"I'm needed everywhere. That's the problem."
Halbarad chuckled—a dry, humorless sound. "Welcome to lordship."
Farren woke properly that afternoon.
His wife cried. His children climbed over him in the medical tent until Thorwen chased them out. The whole camp seemed lighter, somehow—one small victory against the grinding weight of survival.
I didn't celebrate.
The palisade was half-done. Our housing was inadequate. Food supplies were critical. And somewhere to the east, orc scouts had passed through territory that was now mine.
That evening, as the last of the storm clouds scattered, I climbed the watchtower again. The System overlaid information across my view—progress bars, resource counts, warnings in amber and red.
[SETTLEMENT STATUS: CRITICAL]
[MORALE: 42 (LOW)]
[FOOD SUPPLIES: 8 DAYS]
[SHELTER ADEQUACY: 34%]
The numbers painted a picture. We were surviving. Barely. A single bad break—another storm, an attack, disease spreading—could end everything.
Maeglin appeared beside me without sound. I'd stopped being startled by that.
"The orc tracks I found. They've returned. Fresher this time."
Ice crept down my spine. "How fresh?"
"Two days. Maybe three. A small group—five or six—moving through the eastern approach. They stopped for several hours on the ridgeline."
"Watching us."
"Yes."
The half-built palisade suddenly looked pathetically small. Fifty percent of a wall meant fifty percent of nothing if orcs came in force.
I closed my eyes. Breathed. Thought.
When I opened them, the fear was still there. But something else had joined it—cold, sharp focus.
"Double the watch tonight. Tomorrow, we push the palisade to completion. No more half-measures."
"We don't have the timber."
"Then we find it. Strip every dead tree within three miles. Work through the night if we have to. I want that wall up before they come back with friends."
Maeglin studied me with unreadable eyes. Then he nodded and disappeared into the darkness.
Farren's fever had broken. But a different kind of heat was building now—one that burned at the borders of my fragile kingdom.