14 – Farm Work Never Ends

When I woke up that morning, after washing up and giving Smoke his breakfast, I had not expected to find Haita and the other two idiots standing to attention behind my gate. Part of me had wanted to just ignore them, but it would have been unnerving to do my daily chores with them just… standing there, silently like a pack of well trained sentinels.

“What in damnation are you three doing here?” I asked, venturing over with my thumbs hooked in my belt.

“We’re here to work, Aniki!” Haita barked. Most of his injuries had healed by now, but there was still a little discolouration around his eye, and thin scars that had not fully faded. He should have considered himself lucky.

I stared at him, my mouth set in a grim little frown. “You want to what?”

“Work, Aniki,” Takeda said, lifting his pointed chin up proudly.

A large part of me wanted to tell them to take a hike, but… well, when I glanced back I could see large stacks of wooden planks and bundles of clay bricks that hadn’t yet been put to use. I had a lot left to do, between building coops, finishing the fence, and laying the groundwork for an extension of the house.

Moreover I had the distinct feeling they wouldn’t leave me alone, and killing them was still more trouble than it was worth. For now, at least.

“Do any of you idiots know how to work with wood?”

Yun raised a hand. “My old man is the blacksmith. He taught me all about working with wood and metal,” he said.

“Then congratulations, you get to be the foreman. Keep these two from doing anything stupid.” I sighed and motioned them in, “Come on then. Don’t make me regret this.”

I’d give them some credit, as we got into the work itself, that they may have been stupid but they were fast learners. Empty heads are good for that sort of thing. And whenever they made a mistake, or looked like they were going to, Yun was on hand to correct them.

“Measure twice, cut once! We don’t have unlimited wood!”

“You’re not gonna saw properly at that angle, you need to get the blade… yes, like that!”

“Please try to keep the position of your thumbs in mind when you hammer the nails.”

And, bit by bit, they worked on the skeleton of the first coop. I’d planned to make a second, in due time, but there was no point in rushing this sort of thing. Eventually I could trust them to do the work on their own (or at least trust Yun to keep an eye on them), and so I set about laying the groundwork for an extension to the house.

The old bastard who had owned the land before me, while Ryuga had called him wealthy, had not invested in making a particularly large house. Maybe he had intended to expand it himself at some point and never got around to it.

Whatever the case I needed more than what he had left me and had kept that in mind when I started on the fields, giving a decent amount of room for expansion.

I’d need a storehouse for one thing, and a workroom big enough to fit a cauldron. I wasn’t much of an alchemist, but I had learned a few things from Novos along with the basic sorcerous arts he had imparted unto me.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Not that I planned on doing too much, but… well, you never knew when you’d need to create a scrying eye. Some time had passed since my dealing with those Snake Flower brats, and I was shocked to find that there had been no reprisal. But I couldn’t relax and assume no attack from them would ever come.

“Er… Aniki?” Takeda said, a hint of nervousness quavering at his voice.

I’d been in the process of marking the land I wanted to put the extension on, using branches and a spool of thread I had bought from Mikan. “Eh?” I asked without looking up.

“You er… you got a hellcat… on your um… your land.”

That made me look up. Smoke was resting on his haunches a few paces from the trio, who had paused their work in their shock. He wasn’t a kitten, so I could not fault them for their worry, but neither was Smoke fully grown by my reckoning. These days he was built like a hunting dog, his head level with my waist when he sat that way.

“Oh, that’s just smoke. Don’t worry about him.”

Smoke opened wide and let out a long meow. And it sounded almost like he was saying ‘yes.’

Funny creature.