Chapter 14 - The Palisade

After breakfast, Nara gathers everyone on the marketplace.
“Dear friends, we have planned to erect a palisade at the first breach in the city wall today, and I would like to ask you to support us,” she says, letting her gaze wander over the group. “The guards know the plan and the materials are ready. For everyone else: each person contributes what they are capable of contributing. Whoever can carry wood carries wood. Whoever can dig holes digs holes. Whoever doesn’t know what to do asks the guards and helps them.” She looks at the children hiding behind their parents, and then at Elsa. “Elsa, can you look after the children? They need someone to watch them while we work.”
Elsa nods and the relief in her eyes is visible. A task she knows and can immediately take on.
“And please be careful in the city while we haven’t closed all the breaches yet. Now and then slimes wander into the city. They’re not life-threatening or highly aggressive, but still dangerous. So it’s best to avoid them or call a guard for support.”
Arriving at the first breach, Cerena stations the guards at their positions. The sharpened stakes are ready and the holes are marked. The newcomers stand uncertainly at first until one of them picks up a shovel and asks where to start. Then it begins.
Hendric cannot do heavy work, but he positions himself at the breach, observes what the guards are doing, and begins making improvements. Quietly and precisely, from the experience of someone who has worked with wood his whole life. “The cross-brace should sit lower, otherwise the construction tips over at the first impact.” The guards listen and implement his suggestions. Matthew glances up briefly from his own work, sees what Hendric is doing, nods once, and turns back to his stakes.
Nara watches Hendric and sees how his posture changes. With each stake that is raised, Hendric straightens a little. His voice becomes firmer and his shoulders straighter.
Matthew works like someone for whom physical labor is as natural as breathing. His sons work beside him, with too much enthusiasm and too little technique, which means their stake still stands crooked on the third attempt. Matthew corrects it wordlessly and Bill grimaces.
Nara works alongside them. Not because she must, Cerena tried to talk her out of it and got a look for her trouble, but because she cannot stand by and watch while everyone else toils. She holds stakes steady while others drive them in or passes along tools.
At the edge of the construction site, Elsa sits with the children in the grass. She has made something from wood scraps and cord that keeps the little ones occupied and tells the older ones a story while simultaneously keeping an eye on Hendric.
When the sun passes its zenith, the first palisade stands. It is not beautiful, it is not perfect, and Hendric has found at least three spots he wants repaired tomorrow. But it stands, and the first breach is successfully closed.
The group stands before it and looks at it. No one says anything. Then Matthew taps against one of the stakes with the flat of his hand. It does not wobble.
The palisade is finished earlier than planned. Cerena had sent two guards to hunt early, and their catch now hangs cleaned beside the fireplace.
Nara finds Elsa in the back courtyard of the tavern. The children sit in a circle around her and Elsa winds cord around small pieces of wood that slowly take on the shape of figures. The youngest, Willem’s son, rubs his eyes and his head keeps nodding forward.
“Elsa,” Nara says and sits down on the bench beside her. “I know the little ones are tired. But it would be better if they held out until evening tonight and only went to bed at their normal bedtime.”
Elsa looks at her questioningly. “Why? Children need their sleep.”
“If they fall asleep now, they’ll be awake in the middle of the night and won’t get into a normal rhythm for days.”
“I understand,” Elsa says, and a tiny smile flickers across her exhausted face. It is the first smile Nara has seen from her since her arrival. “Don’t worry, little one. I know sleeping children.” She nudges Willem’s son gently. “Hey, do you want to see how to carve a dragon from a piece of wood?”
The boy’s eyes fly open and he is suddenly wide awake.
The accommodations are tight but functional. The barracks take in most of them, even though the families have to lie close together on the bunks the guards assembled the previous week. Some have draped blankets over the ropes hanging between beds as provisional partitions. The tavern takes in the rest, with Elsa and Hendric sleeping on the ground floor beside the fireplace. No one complains loudly. After the first day on Arthengard, a roof over one’s head is more than most expected.
The next morning, Nara stands with Matthew and his sons before the smithy. She identified the building as usable weeks ago, but it is one thing to judge it from the outside and another to stand with a blacksmith beside it, examining it with an expert’s eye.
Matthew enters without waiting for the others. He walks slowly through the space, taps against the walls and listens to the echo. He examines the furnace, runs his hand over the inside wall and rubs the soot between his fingers. Then he bends down and looks under the beam that buries the anvil. He wrinkles his nose briefly and strikes it with a hammer.
Nara waits in the doorway. Tom and Bill stand behind her and try to peer over her shoulders.
Then Matthew turns around. “Salvageable.”
Nara exhales. Matthew says nothing more, but he does not need to. Already in his gaze lies the calculation of what must be done first and in what order and how long it will take.
While Matthew assesses the extent of the work and feels the places on the furnace that need repair, Nara notices a slow movement behind her. Tom and Bill try to inconspicuously shuffle toward the exit, one half step after another, as if they could become invisible if they only move slowly enough.
Matthew apparently has eyes in the back of his head. Without turning around, he reaches back and catches both by the collar, pulling them into a headlock. Bill squeaks. Tom surrenders with the dignity of someone who knows resistance is futile.
“Shovel the rubble,” Matthew says. “Until the floor is clear.”
“But Father…” Bill begins.
Matthew looks at him. Bill falls silent and grabs a shovel.
Cerena assigns two guards and a few civilians help as well. Within minutes a rhythm has been established. Rubble is shoveled, filled into buckets and carried outside. Matthew directs the removal with curt gestures, without an unnecessary word.
Nara stands in the doorway for a moment longer and watches. Matthew has already stopped paying attention to her. He is in his element and the rest of the world exists for him only as background noise. Tom shovels steadily and concentredly beside his father. Bill shovels twice as fast and half as effectively and has to pause every few minutes to catch his breath. Matthew does not correct him. Some lessons one must learn oneself.
Nara leaves the smithy and goes to the waiting farmer, Willem.
“I want to show you something,” she says, trying to sound as if it is no big deal. Willem follows her with Berta in tow, who has come along without being asked.
The garden behind the adventurer’s guild lies in the morning light and Nara sees it for the first time through the eyes of a professional. The uneven rows, the puny seedlings, the weeds that keep pushing through despite her efforts. It is her garden and she laid it out with her own hands, and in this moment she wishes she had not done so.
Willem enters the fenced area and stops. He looks around. Nara watches as his gaze wanders from row to row, lingering a little longer at each bed.
Then he starts to talk.
“The spacing between the rows is too small, the plants shade each other.” He takes another step. “And the earth should have been dug at least twice as deep, the roots cannot penetrate the compacted layer beneath.” Another step. “The seedlings here are far too crowded, they’ll suffocate each other.” He bends down and pulls at a leaf. “And this here, this vegetable cannot tolerate any shade at all, it needs full sun.” He straightens up and points to the other side of the garden. “And that over there needs twice as much water as it’s getting, you can see it in the yellow leaf tips.”
His voice gets louder with each step and his speech faster, and Nara stands with her arms crossed, trying not to look as though she would prefer to sink into the ground.
Then she hears a dull smack and Willem winces and reaches for the back of his head. Berta stands behind him and her expression leaves no questions.
“You’re talking to the princess,” she says.
Brief silence. Even the birds seem to hold their breath.
Willem turns to Nara. His face has taken on the color of a ripe tomato. “Forgive me, Your Highness. I didn’t mean that, or I did mean it but not like that.”
Nara waves it away. “You’re right in every point. I’m no farmer and had no one to ask. So I did the best I could, and apparently that wasn’t very good.”
Willem looks at her and Nara sees something change in his face. The embarrassment fades and beneath it comes the respect of a man who understands how much work can go into a bad garden.
“I’ll take it over from now on,” he says, and his voice has a different tone than before. Not the expert tallying mistakes anymore, but someone accepting a task. Then he looks around again, more slowly this time, and his gaze wanders beyond the fence boundary to the surrounding land. “But this area won’t be enough if more people come. We’ll need significantly more land.”
Nara nods. “I understand, I’ll take care of it.”
When the two have disappeared around the corner, Nara stands alone in the garden for a moment. She looks at the seedlings standing too close together and the rows lying too near each other. Then she shrugs her shoulders and returns to the tavern.
Elsa sits with the children at one of the large tables. She is making something from wood scraps that remotely resembles a bird, and the children watch, transfixed. Willem’s daughter already holds her own copy in her hands and turns it thoughtfully back and forth. For a moment the scene looks so normal that Nara almost forgets where she is.
Hendric sits beside them. His bandaged hands lie in his lap. He watches, that is all he can do. Everyone else has a task, everyone else moves, drags, builds, plants. Outside the guards are hammering, in the smithy rubble is being shoveled, in the garden Willem is already turning over the earth. And Hendric sits at a table and watches his wife carve.
Nara pulls up a chair and sits down across from him. Hendric looks up and fear and distrust lie in his eyes.
“Hendric, I need to talk to you about something,” Nara says. “The smithy is being cleared right now. Matthew estimates he can have it operational in one or two weeks. Once that happens, he will forge tools. Real tools, not the rusty scrap we’ve been salvaging from the ruins so far.” She looks directly into his eyes. “This tool is for you. Chisels, saws, planes, and everything you need.”
Hendric does not move. He looks at her and says nothing.
“But I need you to get well for that,” Nara says. “Or at least as well as possible. Your only assignment until then is to get back on your feet. Eat, rest, and move as much as you can without overexerting yourself. Everything else can wait.”
The silence between them stretches. At the next table one of the children giggles at Elsa’s wooden bird. Outside someone calls something and a hammer strikes wood.
Hendric looks at his bandaged hands. Then at Nara again. There is no gratitude in his gaze, not yet. Rather the cautious weighing of a man who has learned that words do not always mean what they say. But somewhere deep down, Nara sees something flicker that could look like hope.
He nods. Once, slowly.