29 The Construction Race

"Legionnaires!" Markus barked at the assembled trainees the next day after a morning of training and a quick lunch. "The Adventurers Guild say they are going to build a size 4 Evemont Guard Tower to Phase 2 by the next Beast Wave! What does that tell you?"

Twenty trainees, a quartermaster, a drill sergeant and a new agent all stood there in assembly without saying a word. A few of them exchanged puzzled glances. What was that supposed to tell them?

"It tells me that they don't believe in us! They don't believe that the Legion can protect the town on our own, and that we will not be able to keep them safe!" Markus roared.

Again, the exchange of glances. It was obvious that the Legion really couldn't…

"Well, I say we prove them wrong!" Markus exclaimed. "I say we challenge them stroke for stroke! They want to build a Guard Tower? We will build one too! We'll match them size for size… and we'll do it better!"

Fortifications! Everyone lit up. Now that, they understood.

"They're just a bunch of children and wanderers! What can they do?!" Markus snorted. "Let's show them the true strength of the Legion! We'll show them how to build that tower! What say you?"

"Yeah!" the general reply sounded. Regardless of the reasons for it, having stout walls around themselves the next time the Beast Wave hit could only be a good thing in their minds.

"You five, you're with the quartermaster. Max, your squad is to gather materials. That means good lumber!"

"Sir!" Max saluted in acknowledgement.

"You five, with the drill sergeant. Brutus, your squad is to use those materials to build the Tower!"

"Sir!"

"You five, with the agent! Septimus, your squad is to transport the materials from the lumber camp to the construction site!"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"The rest of you, with me! We'll ensure their safety!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Now, let's show those kids how it's done!"

Proudly, the Iron Legion set out to show a good example to the poor children unsuspectingly thrown into a race to build fortifications against fully grown men…

Max Squad had a tree down in thirty minutes flat. They sheared the branches off and then divided the tree into lengths of fourteen feet. Septimus Squad helped them a bit, then began to drag those logs back to Brutus Squad. Brutus Squad had already marked out borders on the land and started digging straight away.

At that time, during the hottest part of the day, Tim was the only one at the Adventurers Guild construction site. He was still marking out borders. He didn't even have a shovel with him.

As Septimus squad started to pile up logs at the construction site, Markus Squad was on patrol, clearing out the random Tier 2 Wild in the vicinity, ensuring that none of them would endanger the workers or the children. Max Squad took down a second tree.

Still, Tim was alone. He sat there waiting all by himself, but none of the other Adventurers were in sight.

"Dig!" Brutus ordered, taking up a shovel himself. Three of his crew dug, the other three carted the dug soil away with hand-carts, heaping it up just in front of their construction zone. After the log walls were built, these mounds would form obstacles three feet high in front of the walls. Sharpened stakes added to them would only help the tower's defenses.

As the heat of the day faded and the early evening began, Tim started waving at something or someone in the distance. Markus didn't pay him too much attention, more concerned about his people getting ambushed while they were at work.

"Wilds!" one of his patrol exclaimed. Markus jumped, turning to where the man pointed…

But he did not order a charge to the rescue. He recognized those Wilds. More to the point, Remian himself was there sitting on top of the one in the lead. Coming from the west side were no less than ten wolfcats, mostly around Tier 3.

"What are they doing?" Markus asked.

Max felled a third tree.

At that time, Remian and Carrie had reached Tim. All at once, ten wolfcats started digging.

"That's…" Markus gaped.

Soil went flying, fountains of dirt spraying into the air five or six feet high. The wolfcats dug with gusto, going down one foot, two feet deep within seconds.

At this point, Brutus and his Squad barely broke two feet deep by two feet long on their three evenly divided lengths.

The digging spread, intensifying. Three feet… four…

Five feet deep, and ten wolfcats without a clear division of areas of responsibility kept tearing through the land with Tier 2, 3 and 4 claws. Six feet, and they were still going down…

"That's…" Markus shook his head. The plans for the tower only went down to six feet. Brutus Squad hadn't even gotten two feet deep across the entire plot yet. Heck they hadn't even covered the entire plot yet…

Max Squad felled a fourth tree.

By that time, the wolfcats had gone down eight feet deep. Brutus' Squad still hadn't gone two feet deep across the plot yet.

"Enough! Even it out!" Tim shouted loudly enough for Max to hear.

At that, the wolfcats started to even out the soil, digging the less-dug places to fill in the over-dug places. Markus could tell with just one look that they would even most of it out at six feet, with perhaps just a little to spare.

Septimus Squad brought the logs of the fourth tree to the construction site as Brutus Squad finally managed two feet depth across the plot. They started on going three feet deep…

Meanwhile, Mandy arrived with a Tier 4 Bear dragging four 14-feet lengths of log all by itself. Goodness, that was a whole tree…

"To the farm!" Remian ordered. Ten wolfcats, eight Tier 3, a Tier 4 and a Tier 2 all made their way west. The digging was already completed.

By dinner time the first day, the Adventurers Guild had completed their digging when the Legion wasn't even half done with the First Phase.

So they went their merry ways, and the next morning, went on training together.

After lunch, the race began anew.

Once more, the Legion toiled under the hot sun with the Adventurers Guild nowhere to be seen.

But as the heat of the day passed and early evening fell, a handful of children and Tier 2 wolfcats arrived pulling a caravan of hand-carts loaded with stone. The bear brought another load of logs.

Markus scowled as Remian came over to find Max.

"Max!" Remian called. "Is the mortar ready?"

"It's still at the airport site." Max replied. "We haven't had time to cart it over."

The Iron Legion employed a hydraulic mortar made of crushed burnt clay, quartz, and alu- ahem! That's actually a secret…

The point was, they had made a lot of it for the airport, and had decided to use some of it for the Guard Towers first. Markus and Remian together had agreed on that.

"Go." Markus sighed. Race or no race, he could not in good conscience hold Max back at this point.

By the time Brutus reached five feet, Max and Remian were back with a crew of adult adventurers and three priests all helping to cart barrels of mortar to the site.

Priest Kairos was familiar, but two of those priests were new. Together with the latest trainees and agent, they had arrived on the most recent airship. Their names were… Diakonia and Koinonia, or something like that. Markus' early impressions were that Diakonia had some built some serious bulk and muscle; Koinonia looked like he knew how to handle that staff in his hands. Both of them were far fitter for the Frontier than the gangly Kairos and the skinny Remian.

They proved it. The evening of the Third day, as Brutus finally reached six feet and evened out the depth across the plot, the two of them alone proved to be as useful in mixing and pouring stone and mortar as all the Adventurers combined.

At the same time, Brutus Squad and the Adventurers (and priests) set the logs into the ground, with steel mesh in between. With the foundation filled in, those fourteen feet logs would have six feet buried, and eight feet above ground.

That should be enough to hold off Tier 3 and 4 Wilds. Probably.

Filling in that foundation took another day. This, the Adventurers and the Legionnaires and the Priests all did together.

Dinner time arrived on the Fourth Day, and construction ended. Everyone went about their business, eating, then whatever it was they usually did at night.

The Fifth Day, again they trained together. After lunch, once more the Legion set about building their Tower. Max paid the sawmill for the planks with coin and supplies. All four Squads hauled the planks over to the construction site.

Then, Markus called a break. At that point, the trainees were already drained. They had been rushing the past few days and many of them were badly overstrained. It was one thing to ask veterans to keep up this sordid pace day after day. The trainees simply couldn't manage. Also, some of them had gotten hurt in the last Beast Wave and weren't able to do much. Markus, Max and Brutus ended up being the only ones working on the roof while Septimus kept watch and the trainees were given a much-needed day off.

Again, at roughly four in the evening, the Adventurers arrived to continue their work. They set up the stairs leading to the roof. Then, they set plank after plank for the roof with the help of a Tier 4 Wolfcat and a Tier 4 Bear. Mainly they just sat on the Wilds as they maneuvered the planks in place. That way, the Wilds did the heavy lifting.

They had half their roof in place by sunset, Markus finally admitted it. "I give up. There's no way we're winning this race."

"Great! Do we get a prize?" Remian asked.

Markus snorted. "How about the honor of helping us fix our roof? It would take our trainees days to haul planks up to that height and put them in place. Having Wilds that can help you reach that height simply by standing in place is an incomparable advantage. And those wolfcats digging…!"

But of course, they had to finish up their own roof first. This, they did by dinner time on the Sixth Day.

At that point, Markus and his crew were still trying to build the stairs. At the rate they were going, it would take them another five days to set the roof in place. They would then have three more days to either put together a Scorpion, or heap the soil from the digging around the walls to further strengthen the walls, or stick sharpened stakes into the ground, or some such.

It was already remarkably fast for a 24-man crew to put together a bunker of this size in their spare time within two weeks. They had pushed themselves and rushed to do it. But compared to their 11-day result, Remian's crew finishing it in six days was just…

"It wasn't fair." Markus concluded in the end. "Having wolfcats and bears help you out like that… its just not fair."

To that, Remian could only grin in reply.