Chapter 13: Night Shift

The morning air was crisp. The Frost-Cap elixir had done exactly what Old Martha promised. When Jack took a deep breath, his chest expanded smoothly, absorbing the cold air without a single hint of a cough or a tickle of blood. His body was still painfully thin, and he still needed to lean on his brass-headed cane, but the looming threat of suffocating on his own magic was gone.

Which was good, because now he had an entirely new set of problems.

Martha’s warning echoed in his mind. Bandits. Starving, desperate men trapped in the valley with them, and they knew the castle was hoarding grain.

Jack stood in the snowy courtyard, watching the villagers arrive. Giles, Old Miller, and four other men who had some experience with carpentry gathered before him. They were wearing coats, looking significantly healthier than they had been just a few days ago.

“You asked for us, Lord Jack?” Giles asked, pulling off his cap respectfully.

“I did,” Jack said. “We have grain, Giles. But man cannot survive a five-month winter on wheat and dried peas alone. It fills the belly, yes, but without fresh green vegetables, a different kind of starvation sets in. A hidden sickness.”

The men exchanged uneasy glances.

“The children won’t grow healthy,” Jack continued, looking at the men to emphasize the stakes. “They will become frail and pale. I will not let my people suffer that.”

Giles frowned, his thick brow furrowing. “I’ve seen the winter-rot before, My Lord. But what can we do? The earth is dead until the spring thaw. We can’t forage in the snow.”

“We aren’t going to forage,” Jack said. He pulled a roll of parchment from his coat and laid it flat on the lid of a nearby barrel. “We are going to grow crops. Right now. In the middle of winter.”

The men stared at him as if he had just spoken in a foreign language.

“Grow crops… in the snow?” Old Miller asked, scratching his beard in complete disbelief. “My Lord, the frost will kill a seed before it even touches the dirt.”

“Not if we change the environment,” Jack explained patiently, tapping the charcoal sketches. “We are going to build a large building. But instead of a solid wooden roof, we will use large panes of clear glass. The glass lets the sunlight pass through, but it traps the heat inside. It will create a pocket of spring air, completely sealed off from the winter wind. I call it a greenhouse.”

Giles leaned over the barrel, squinting at the drawing. “A house made of glass to trap the sun… It is a clever thought, Lord Jack. But the air isn’t the only problem. The ground itself is frozen solid. You can’t plant seeds in ice, no matter how warm the air above it is.”

“Which is why the ground will be heated from below,” Jack said, tapping the bottom of the sketch. “We will dig trenches beneath the soil and line them with stone. A furnace on the outside will push hot air through those underground tunnels. The stones will absorb the heat and warm the soil from the bottom up. But to make it work, I need a large, sturdy wooden frame built above ground, and I need it built quickly.”

Giles looked at the drawings, nodding slowly as the brilliant logic of the design finally clicked in his mind. “We can build the frames, Lord Jack. We have enough salvaged timber from the ruined stables to put it together. But…” The big man hesitated. “It’s going to take weeks of hard labor. And with all due respect, we know the castle treasury is empty. We traded the last of the family silver for the grain. We can’t work for free when we need to be out checking rabbit snares and keeping our roofs clear of snow.”

Jack expected this. He knew that loyalty only went so far when survival was on the line.

“Yes, you are correct, I don’t have silver, Giles,” Jack said. “But I have something better.”

The men looked at him, curious.

“Starting today, anyone who works on the castle grounds will be paid directly in fuel and food,” Jack announced. “Every man who swings a hammer or saws a plank will receive two extra, overflowing bowls of hot, porridge each day. And when the sun goes down, you will each be given a full basket of high-grade coal to take home to your families.”

The men stopped breathing for a second.

To a merchant in the imperial capital, a basket of coal and two bowls of porridge was peasant garbage. But here, trapped in a frozen valley, it was absolute wealth. Guaranteed heat. Guaranteed full bellies.

Old Miller’s eyes widened. “Every single day, My Lord?”

“Every single day,” Jack confirmed. “Until the greenhouse is finished.”

“We’ll start immediately,” Giles said with overwhelming enthusiasm. He turned to the other men, clapping his hands together. “You heard the Lord! Grab the saws! We start pulling timber from the old stables right now!”

Jack watched the men rush off, their faces bright with purpose.

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The barter economy was officially established. By hiring the humans for the visible, above-ground work, Jack had solved two problems at once. He was keeping his people fed and busy, and more importantly, he was creating the perfect cover story. The villagers would think they were the ones building the fief, completely masking the impossible, secret labor that was about to take place beneath their feet.

Midnight arrived, bringing a quiet darkness to the castle.

The human workers had long since gone home, carrying their precious baskets of coal. Karen was asleep in her quarters.

Jack descended the stairs into the crypts.

Rusty, Dusty, Bones, Bucket, Spade, and Scrap were standing in a line. But six workers were not going to be enough to dig the deep trenches required for the underground heating system before the bandits attacked. Jack needed an army.

He walked past his current crew and moved deep into the guards’ resting niches.

He found a long section of the stone wall that held the remains of fifteen ancient soldiers. Jack stopped, taking a deep breath. His lungs were clear, but the sheer mental strain of what he was about to do was not to be underestimated.

He closed his eyes, reaching into his chest. He grabbed hold of the Grey Core and forced it to spin rapidly. He pushed the death mana outward, splitting the grey vapor into fifteen separate, thin streams.

The magic washed over the dusty bones.

The noise was loud. It sounded like a pile of wooden chairs collapsing all at once.

Clack. Rattle. Snap!

Fifteen new skeletons rose from the dust, stepping down from their niches in perfect unison.

Jack gasped, dropping to one knee. His brass cane clattered to the stone floor.