Alden clenched his fists. Damn it. There was one problem after another in everything he tried to do. But they really needed the gold to pay the craftsmen. It wasn’t like he could force them to work. The other villagers might not have any choice, but the craftsmen knew that they were valuable enough that they could easily get a job in Garitus or any other city. So if he tried to force them to work at half the rates or something, they would just move out to the fortress city. Garitus could afford to keep their blacksmith within the walls, because it was safe enough, but it would never work in a dangerous place like Sarnok.

  But no matter how he managed it, they needed to pay the craftsmen to continue working and making crossbows and scorpions to protect the village. That was the very least he needed to do to have any hope of surviving the coming winter. And even that might not be enough.

  The current expected rate of making a crossbow every three days was also way too slow. That meant getting just around 20 crossbows and maybe a couple of scorpions before the snow started. He needed to speed that up by an order of magnitude to keep the village and his siblings safe. If only they had something like lathes here…

  Wait, why couldn’t he just build lathes here? What was stopping him? He certainly knew the full design of it, and there were many talented craftsmen in the village. He thought about the requirements for a while. Hmm… they would need to buy steel for sure. At least a small amount of it to make the drill bits. The other parts could be made of wood or iron. And if he managed to build a lathe here…

  Alden looked at the majordomo. “Can we buy steel from Garitus?”

  “Steel?” Roderic asked. “For more swords, you mean? It would be better for sure, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to spend gold on that. Iron swords do well enough against monsters."

  “No, that’s not what I want.” Alden looked at the majordomo, who had been thinking. “So? Can we?"

  Vusato scratched his white beard. “Well, we certainly could. I know a blacksmith in Garitus who deals in steel, but he usually sells it to other armorers so they can make plate armor for the knights, or steel swords for the Duke’s personal guards. That means it will cost a lot. I do mean a lot.”

  “That is fine,” Alden said. “It's an investment in the future of the village and we don't need too much of it for now." He added, "One of our sailboats should arrive here soon, right? When does it leave?”

  “I think it should arrive in two or three days,” Vusato explained. “Assuming they arrive by late morning, they will unload everything they have brought—mainly foodstuff—by the afternoon, and will start loading iron ore after that. That means they can leave by late morning the next day.”

  “Good,” Alden said. “I will tell you the amount of steel we need to buy by evening. Draft a procurement contract and give it to the boat captain, so he can buy it from the steel merchant in Garitus and bring it with him when he returns next time. If the wind is favorable, he can return within 10 days after that. Or around two weeks from now."

  “But we really don’t even have the gold to pay for such a splurge...” Vusato objected.

  Alden chuckled, knowing that the majordomo wasn’t going to like the next part. “We will just have to use some of the tax gold for this. Don’t worry, I don’t plan to use more than 100 gold for this. We only need a small amount of steel, for now."

  “And how are we going to pay the taxes then?"

  “We will think of something. We still have time for that. It wasn’t like the Duke did us any favors, since he mandated all our villagers to pay for entrance, so we can afford to be a little late in paying taxes if needed. Our survival depends on this."

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  Vusato took a deep breath. “I still advise you that this is not a good idea, but as you wish. I'll draft the letter to buy that steel."

  “Good,” Alden said. Once he got that steel, he would be able to make a lathe here, and the first lathe would allow them to create even more accurate lathes after that. With those, they could make crossbows and scorpions at a much, much higher rate than now. Although he might need to buy even more steel to make scorpions—since wrought iron might not be suitable enough for it—he still had time until he needed to make that decision. Crossbows had to come first, for many reasons.

  “We also have to think about how to buy food for the village in the winter,” Vusato said. “The previous winters we could just buy everything from the markets of Garitus, since every villager was already there, but this time it won’t be like that. Thankfully, the Lokir river doesn’t freeze in the winter, so it will remain navigable, but because of the danger, the merchants will not easily agree to sail on the river to bring food here. How to pay for it is another problem."

  “Why can’t we continue to sell ore then?” Alden asked. “In the previous winters, we couldn’t sell ore because we simply weren’t present here. But this time we will be. The demand should also be higher in the winter because of the monster threat. So can’t we keep selling iron in the winter months?"

  Vusato sighed. “The problem is the same. Unless the merchants feel secure enough while traveling on the boat, they will refuse to risk their lives.”

  “Then we can send our guards for it,” Roderic suggested. "They will do anything the village needs."

  “But it will be suicide!” Vusato interrupted. “You were a ranger. You know exactly how dangerous it gets in the winter."

  “What other choice do we have then?” Alden asked. “We own the sailboats, and the captains and the deckhands are our own employees. If the merchants refuse, then we will just have to send guards with a direct procurement letter from us. And don’t worry, I don’t want any of our people to die either. By the time winter is here, we will hopefully have enough crossbows to protect the people on the boats. We can even fix a scorpion or two on each boat, which will allow them to sail far more safely. But either way, we need to continue selling ore in the winter. There is no other way for us to pay for the food otherwise. Thankfully, we have a lot of ore stored, so we can keep selling it even if we stop mining for the winter."

  Vusato shook his head. “That’s not the only problem. There is no space in the village to store much ore. That is why we keep all of it near the mines in the northern hills. So in the winter, we will have to continue sending wagons there to bring the ore back to the village, and then take it to the river. But it gets extremely dangerous outside after the snowfall starts. You know that our palisade walls are not going to defend us if any medium-sized monsters come here, but outside the walls? There is nothing to protect the people who go to bring that ore. If it gets dark before they return, and assuming neither of our moons is up that night, none of the villagers will return alive.”

  Alden was surprised for a moment hearing about two moons, but then he remembered that this world really did have two of them. One was the larger one, around the same size as the moon of Earth, which provided most of the illumination in the night, while the other one was much smaller and red-tinted, and barely reflected any light. Either way, that wasn’t the point here.

  He sighed. “Since we can't pay for everyone's shelter in Garitus, we have no choice but to stay here in the village, which means we need food, and for that, we need to sell ore. Then the only way for that is to make enough defensive measures to continue doing that. We have no other option. It will also help us to gain some extra gold to improve the defenses of the village, or to pay taxes even after using some of it for buying steel."

  Vusato sighed. “You're right… We really don't have any other choice. The villagers are already getting worried about how they will survive the winter here. I've even heard rumors that some people are thinking of abandoning Sarnok just to travel to Garitus and beg them for shelter."

  Alden exhaled. “It won’t work… Father already tried asking the Duke for that."

  “I know, but people are getting desperate after hearing that news,” Vusato said.

  Alden nodded slowly. That was liable to happen after getting such bad news from the fortress city, and they would have to do something about it soon.

  He stood up. “You all know what to do. I also have to work on the scorpion sketch, and then on the lathe… which is something else we need to make here so we can make crossbows faster.”