“Right away,” Walsh promised.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Oldworlders said that men had once lived in palaces—huge structures that they built as level upon level rising higher than the cliffs above the caves. Jemmo had decided that caves were dark, damp, inhospitably shaped, and unbecoming of his status. He wanted to build himself a palace.
The line of rock outcrops connected by earth ramparts that had once been the defensive barrier enclosing the front of the caves was now forming parts of dwelling huts, inner works, and animal pens. The population had grown. And nobody any longer lived down in the swamps, all the people having migrated up to the caves. The extended settlement around the caves was now bounded by a wall built from rocks cemented by dried mud. On the outside of it was a ditch, and on the inside a protected step for defenders, raised posts to provide elevate positions for watchmen and archers. Access was via two gates, one backing the other, made from thick root-wood and branches brought up from the swamps, and woven with thorns. On the heights above the caves was a lookout tower, also built from mud-cemented rocks.
The Oldworlder Wakabe had become Jemmo’s builder. Jemmo wanted him to build the palace. But whatever Jemmo wanted, always, it seemed, all anybody could tell him were the problems. He didn’t want to hear about what couldn’t be done. Just for once, couldn’t someone just agree and do it? The problem with building a palace, he was told, was that of bridging the roof.
He scowled as he stood with Wakabe and a couple of Wakabe’s helpers in front of the four-walled enclosure that Wakabe had built to try out his latest attempt at a solution. The space between the walls was spanned by a mat of woven vines with mud worked into it to form a solid shell. When the mud dried, Wakabe had added another layer on top, and when that dried, another, the intention being that it would become strong enough to support additional loads above. But the work was showing cracks that had spread and widened more since yesterday, Jemmo wouldn’t have risked walking under it, never mind have trusted his weight on top.
“The mud needs to be bound,” Wakabe explained. “It has no strength against extension. We’ve never used it this way before. In the walls it has always been compressed, not extended. It needs grass mixed in to bind it. Or reeds might be better. I have to try different things.”
“You said your Oldworld people built palaces higher than the cliff,” Jemmo grumbled. “Yet you can’t build me just one roof?”
“They had trees then. Beams of wood as thick as a man’s thigh, as long as five times a man’s height. And metal ones, even longer and stronger. We have to learn to work without such things.”
Jemmo seethed inside. But it would only make him look foolish to try and command what could not be. He wanted the cave settlement strengthened and secured in preparation for a campaign to extend his domain to the east. Long-range scouting parties despatched in that direction had encountered other humans survivors from the Great Terror and the Long Night, and engaged them in several skirmishes. But he was still uncertain as to their numbers. It could turn out that he and his people became objects of similar ambitions coming the other way, and so a strong defense was the first essential.
He pointed toward the middle of the space with the rifle he was holding. The bullets had all been used long ago, but he still carried it as an emblem of status, along with his red headband and hide cape fastened with a clasp. “You need to support it there. Why can’t you make a pillar from stones and mud, built as you do with the walls? It needs support in the center.”
“Yes. That might help a lot,” Wakabe agreed deferentially. “It will be done.”
Jemmo felt satisfied, having been seen to add something constructive. He was about to add more, when a shout sounded from the tower above the cliff. People were drawing into groups, chattering excitedly, looking up at the sky. “There!” Wakabe exclaimed, pointing. Jemmo looked.