A'Shu apologized, saying he had no other possessions to speak of — these two things were all he could offer, and he hoped they would help Lorist and
Lorist thanked A'Shu first, then asked whether A'Shu could help him borrow some tools, since he intended to build a house. Relying on this shack would guarantee they froze to death.
Build a house? A'Shu said in surprise — with only about twenty days until winter, was there really enough time? Back when several dozen people had built that dilapidated wooden hut for the hunchbacked old mountain barbarian, it had taken over two months. Could just the two of them manage?
Lorist nodded and smiled. "Don't forget — I'm a Golden Instructor in Architecture at
The mountain barbarians were straightforward by nature, so A'Shu readily believed Lorist's bold claim. He nodded and said, "All right, I'll go ask the Mountain Chief. If she agrees, I'll bring you the tools."
A'Shu left quickly and returned just as fast. He happily told Lorist that the Mountain Chief had approved their request to build a house, though she wouldn't be sending anyone to help — she would only provide the tools. A'Shu, however, volunteered to take on the role of supervising their work.
Lorist looked over the so-called housebuilding tools A'Shu had brought. Apart from an axe, a shovel, a hoe, and two rusty saws of different sizes, the rest — sickles, rakes, and iron pitchforks — could only be called farming implements. But as A'Shu explained, the mountain barbarians had no custom of farming. At most they tended the climbing vines that grew mountain kudzu root, and these tools had all been left over from long ago. The only time they had seen use was when A'Shu was a child, building that run-down wooden hut. Normally they just sat ignored in the corner of the storeroom.
If Lorist's internal energy and Redi's
Today counted as the first day. Lorist and Redi together tore down the dilapidated shack. Then, using the shack's pit as a center, they marked out a three-meter-by-five-meter square, and the two began to dig. A'Shu stared blankly as he watched. He stopped Lorist and said that building a house so large, with such a vast interior space, would be cold in winter and wouldn't keep warm—the smaller the house, the warmer it would be...
Lorist smiled and said it wouldn't be. The house he was building would be the larger it was, the warmer it would be. He'd understand once it was finished.
A'Shu was skeptical.
On the second day, Lorist asked A'Shu where they could find clay. In the morning, he and Redi hauled a great deal of clay from the riverbank of a small stream at the base of the mountains. In the afternoon, they mixed the clay with the soil dug out the previous day, adding tough, slender vines and dried grass roots to begin making mud bricks.
On the third and fourth days, under A'Shu's supervision, Lorist and Redi went to a distant grove and felled over fifty trees, each about twenty to thirty centimeters wide. A'Shu was of great help here, arranging four packhorses to haul all the cut timber back to the stronghold. Otherwise, it would have taken Lorist and Redi two or three days just to move everything.
On the fifth and sixth days, Lorist and Redi sawed all the trees in half. The mountain barbarians of the stronghold, both old and young with nothing better to do, gathered to watch the spectacle, discussing as they looked at what kind of house these two foolish slaves were preparing to build.
On the seventh day, Lorist and Redi arranged the now mostly dry mud bricks in a ring around the large excavated pit. They used clay slurry to mortar the bricks together. Then Lorist took the tree trunks, cut in half and sharpened at one end, and hammered them into the ground along the pit wall, pressed against the mud-brick wall with the smooth side facing inward. Soon, the entire pit was encircled. Now, looking from inside the pit, one saw smooth wooden walls on all sides. Apart from the doorway left for entry and exit, there wasn't even a single window.
A'Shu was puzzled and asked Lorist why there needed to be a wooden wall inside the mud wall.
Lorist was busy with Redi, pouring clay slurry into the gaps between the tree trunks and the mud-brick wall. He answered A'Shu that if there was only a single layer of mud bricks, when winter came, it would freeze, and the house wouldn't be able to retain any heat. Adding a wooden wall inside would prevent the warmth from escaping. This was called double-layer insulation.
A'Shu nodded, only half-understanding. Then he asked his second question: why wasn't the top of the constructed wall flat, but instead highest in the middle and sloping down on both sides?
Lorist directly drew an inverted V shape on the ground and told A'Shu that the roof needed to peak like this so it wouldn't collapse under heavy snow, and that was why the walls followed the slope of the roof.
Only then did A'Shu understand.
From the eighth to the tenth day, Lorist worked on the roof. The roofs on both sides sloped directly down to the ground, and from the side they looked like a triangle standing upright. A section was left open in the center of the front—that recessed space was the doorway.
On the eleventh day, Lorist began constructing the fire pit and cooking stove. The flue channels had been pre-laid, but the problem with the fire pit was that it had no cover plate, so wooden boards couldn't be laid directly over it. Something was needed to separate the fire from the wood.
Lorist took apart his outer coat, removing six thin steel plates from the chest, back, and shoulder areas—these were armor plates designed to boost the coat's defensive capabilities. Lorist took two of the armor plates and asked A'Shu to hire an Eighth Ring Mountain Spirit Power Ule, equivalent to a Silver Two-Star swordsman of Combat Force, to use his blade glow to cut three slabs of bluestone—one meter long, eighty wide, and an inch thick. He placed these over the fire pit, and then laid long wooden boards on top to complete the setup.
Meat, and a large clay pot. That was all they had left, because the bag of mountain kudzu root the hunchbacked mountain barbarian elder had given them—supposedly a month's worth of food—was almost gone.
The last two armor plates were given by Lorist to A'Shu as thanks for all his help during this time. A'Shu felt bad about accepting them and procured a dagger for Lorist as a return gift.
Over the next few days, Lorist was very busy. He had to make a door, sew leather clothes for Redi, obtain a sufficient supply of charcoal, carve two wooden bowls and a wooden spoon, and most importantly, procure enough food for winter, along with salt.
Once Lorist's house was completed, A'Shu regarded him with near-divine reverence. He hadn't expected that in just ten-some days, the dilapidated shelter could have been transformed into such a comfortable dwelling. Especially the fire pit that took up half the room's floor space—he had never imagined one could build a fire under a bed, and that the entire house could become so warm. He was utterly amazed.
During the period of building the house, Lorist had learned just about everything he could about the mountain barbarian tribe that belonged to the Lord of the White Snow Mountain, all through A'Shu's accounts. A'Shu said the mountain barbarian tribe had originally been called the Nubike Tribe, and that both he and the Lord of the White Snow Mountain had originally belonged to the Habibaba Tribe. A few years ago, the leader of the Habibaba Tribe had gone to Smolmegren Mountain to attend the Kupavisan Festival, held once every twelve years—the Festival of the Mountain God—where he was named Qambacun of this region at the Bevis Assembly. In other words, a regional chieftain.
After returning, the leader of the Habibaba Tribe began styling himself as Qambacun, leading the tribe's warriors to conquer seven other mountain barbarian tribes in the region, and the Nubike Tribe was one of them. However, after the Nubike Tribe's submission, rather than merging them into the Habibaba Tribe as he had done with the other six tribes, he instead sent his most beloved youngest daughter to serve as the Nubike Tribe's leader. He designated these mountains and the surrounding area as this mountain barbarian tribe's territory, and bestowed upon his youngest daughter the title of Lord of the White Snow Mountain. As a result, the Nubike Tribe was renamed the White Snow Tribe.
A'Shu had been the Lord of the White Snow Mountain's childhood playmate. So when she came to this tribe, he followed along as a bodyguard and attendant. A'Shu told Lorist that the current White Snow Tribe had over thirteen hundred people. Lorist found this strange — he certainly hadn't seen that many. During his time here, he had only seen elderly mountain barbarians, women, and children going out to gather wild fruits and vegetables or chop firewood. Aside from the hundred-odd male barbarians from the cavalry squad that had returned from the grasslands that one time, he hadn't seen any other mountain barbarian men.
A'Shu said it wasn't strange, because the tribe's wule and the other male barbarians — roughly four hundred in total — had all followed Qambacun of the Habibaba Tribe off to war. A year ago, Qambacun of the Habibaba Tribe had gotten into a dispute with the Qambacun of the neighboring region's mountain barbarian tribe. Both wanted to swallow the other's tribe and territory, so they went to war. The White Snow Tribe had also sent four hundred male barbarians to fight. They would return when the first snow of this year fell.
Lorist suddenly understood. No wonder his family's territory had been carrying out vigorous development and construction over the past two years without suffering much harassment and raiding from the mountain barbarian tribes. The only incident was the attack two years ago, when a thousand-strong mountain barbarian force besieged the military outpost at the border between the two mountain ranges, only to be crushed by Josk's mounted archer regiment and Pacheco's garrison squadron striking from both flanks after they rushed to the scene upon receiving the alarm. After that, there had been no more alerts of large-scale mountain barbarian raids. It turned out the barbarians had shifted their targets. At this moment, he genuinely hoped those mountain barbarian tribes would keep fighting each other for as long as possible.
The most amusing thing Lorist had learned was what A'Shu told him: don't let that gold-crowned mountain barbarian woman, the Lord of the White Snow Mountain, fool you into thinking Lorist was her first lowlander slave of any status. In truth, this was the first time she had ever captured a lowlander at all, and she had no idea what to do with Lorist and the others.
It wasn't as if there had never been slaves before. The very shanty area where Lorist and Redi were currently staying was used for housing slaves. But those slaves had all been mountain barbarians. They would stay here for two or three months, gathering and hunting together with everyone else, and then quickly integrate into the tribe, becoming one of its members.
But now Lorist and Redi were so-called lowlanders. Even as slaves, they couldn't simply integrate into the tribe after a period of time the way those mountain barbarian slaves had. Aside from waiting for Qambacun of the Habibaba to return with his army, at which point the Lord of the White Snow Mountain planned to bring Lorist and the others to her father to show off, she had no idea what to do with them.
Moreover, winter was approaching, and the entire White Snow Tribe would retreat into the great cave to hibernate through the cold season. As lowlander slaves, there was no way they would be permitted inside the cave. Precisely because of this, the Lord of the White Snow Mountain had been content to let Lorist and the others build their house, so long as they didn't try to escape. In truth, given Lorist and Redi's physical condition, attempting to flee would indeed be a death sentence.
If Lorist and Redi weren't slaves, A'Shu would have been eager to move in with them. He told Lorist that the cave was actually a massive limestone cavern, quite spacious inside, with an underground river running through it. But when the entire tribe of over a thousand people was cooped up inside for three or more months, you might not notice at first, but after a month or so, the stench was indescribable.
Even though the limestone cavern had smaller caves nested within it and several ventilation shafts had been opened, the filth produced by over a thousand people, along with all the horses and livestock, would gradually permeate the entire cave. When people emerged after winter, every last one of them reeked terribly. Don't be fooled by that hunched-over old mountain barbarian who, because of his disability, couldn't enter the cave and had to stay outside in a rundown wooden hut watching the slaves — you had no idea how many people inside the cave envied him.
After the winter was over, it would be possible to have the Lord of the White Snow Mountain order Lorist to help everyone in the tribe build houses this good...
Lorist thought to himself: Forget that. Once his internal energy recovered, he would return to his family's territory — he had no interest in sticking around here for years building houses for them. Still, he kept a smile on his face and asked A'Shu how they could get enough food and salt for the winter.
A'Shu said that since they were slaves, the tribe couldn't distribute any of the communal food reserves to them. Getting one bag of mountain kudzu root per month was already pushing it — if they wanted more, they'd have to fend for themselves. The best way was to go hunting, and whatever prey they caught would be theirs to keep. As for salt, there was a saline lake over the mountain. There were plenty of salt deposits along the shore, and in a couple of days the tribe would be sending a horse caravan that way anyway. He'd have someone bring back a big chunk for them.
So even after becoming slaves, you still had to be self-reliant. What Lorist hadn't expected, however, was that being a mountain barbarian's slave was far more bearable than being a lord's vassal. As a mountain barbarian's slave, all the game you caught was yours. As a lord's vassal, at least half of what you caught went to the lord — some of the harsher ones took three-quarters, or even four-fifths. It was like killing a wild boar only to have the lord show up and collect his tax, leaving you with nothing but the boar's head to carry home.
He wondered how many people would come running and crying to become mountain barbarian slaves once word of this got out... Lorist shook his head and brushed away those absurd thoughts from his mind. A slave had to think like a slave. He was a so-called lowlander, which meant he couldn't wander too far, and he certainly couldn't carry weapons. The large game in the area had long since been hunted out — the best he could catch were small animals like rabbits and pheasants.
Catching rabbits and pheasants didn't require weapons. Lorist knew how to set snares, a practical survival trick he'd picked up during his mercenary days. He fashioned dozens of snares from thin vines and strips of cut sheepskin, setting them under the bushes and in the tall grass overnight. By the next morning, the haul was impressive — three pheasants and four rabbits. Winter was nearly here, and every last one of them was plump and fat. Lorist was delighted; if every day's catch was like this, he'd have his winter food stockpiled in no time.
He traded one pheasant and one rabbit to the hunched-over old mountain barbarian for a bag of roughly fifty pounds of mountain kudzu root, then swapped two rabbits for a piece of magic sheepskin. He gave A'Shu a pheasant as a gift, cooked another pheasant that evening, and smoked the remaining rabbit to preserve it as winter rations.
After another night, he went to check his snares again and caught two more pheasants and three rabbits. This time he traded one pheasant and one rabbit for a wooden bucket to carry water. Before long, the little house was fully stocked with everyday necessities.
A'Shu was amazed, so Lorist taught him step by step how to set snares. What he hadn't anticipated was that once A'Shu learned the technique, it was as good as teaching every last one of those wild mountain barbarian kids. Two days later, when Lorist went to check on his snaring spots, he found that every bush and every patch of tall grass was riddled with snares — densely packed beyond all reason. How were any pheasants or rabbits supposed to land anywhere?
Looking at A'Shu's completely innocent expression, Lorist could only seethe. With no more pheasants or rabbits to be had, he turned his sights on the small river at the base of the mountain ridge.
The mountain barbarians rarely ate river fish. First, they had no nets. Second, they didn't know how to fish. Third, river fish were too bony. Fourth, they only knew how to spear fish—and only the large ones—though they rarely succeeded.
Lorist also had no nets or fishing gear, but that didn't stop him from using his head. He spent a day digging a large pit on the riverbank with Redi, then dug a deep trench to connect it to the small river. The next day, they wove a long wooden frame from branches, inserted it into the river, and then pivoted the frame to drive the fish into the pit. Finally, they blocked the trench and bailed out the water from the pit, catching over a hundred fish in one go, including about twenty large ones half a meter long.
The haul was excellent. After another night, Lorist planned to press his advantage. He and Redi were pulling the wooden frame in the river when they saw the white snow-mountain chief, the golden-crowned barbarian woman, approach the riverbank with a contingent of followers. She told the two of them, "You two come up. I am taking you to see my father."
…(To be continued.)