Chapter 15: The Greenhouse

The castle was under lockdown.

By dawn, the Great Hall was packed. Every woman, child, and elderly person from the village had been brought behind the stone walls of the Frost-Grip estate. Outside in the freezing courtyard, Giles and forty able-bodied men stood clutching wood-axes, sharpened pitchforks, and a few old hunting bows.

The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. The villagers knew the Outlaws by reputation. They were brutal, desperate men who left no survivors.

Jack stepped out into the crisp morning air, leaning on his cane. He had already unlinked the skeletons of the night shift as well as the other three, returning them to their dormant state in the deep crypts. With only his three core retainers active, the toll on his magic was incredibly light. Combined with the Frost-Cap elixir, his chest felt perfectly clear, giving him the physical stability he desperately needed for the coming days.

Behind him were his three ‘mages.’

Bones, Rusty, and Dusty were completely covered in the chainmail and dark wool tabards Barnaby had forged, their heads encased in iron bucket-helms. To the terrified villagers, they looked like three towering, silent executioners ready for war.

“Lord Jack,” Giles said, stepping forward. “The scouts report no movement from the southern woods yet. But they are out there.”

“They will not attack in the daylight if they can help it,” Jack replied calmly. “They are starving and freezing. They will wait for the sun to drop to mask their approach.”

Giles looked around at the terrified faces of his men. “Waiting is the hardest part, My Lord. The men are freezing out here.”

Jack looked at the men. Panic and idle hands were a dangerous combination during a siege. They needed a distraction, and more importantly, they needed a reason to believe they were going to survive this winter.

“We do not wait idly,” Jack said, raising his voice so the courtyard could hear. “We have a fief to run. The greenhouse frame was finished yesterday. It is time to bring the spring.”

Jack led the way across the snow-covered courtyard toward the newly built glass structure. The large panes of glass were set firmly into the wooden frames, sealing the building tight. At the front of the structure was a large, open fire-pit made of thick stone bricks, which connected directly to the underground trenches Jack’s night shift had dug.

“Bring more coal,” Jack commanded his Head Retainer.

Bones stepped forward in his heavy armor. He picked up an iron shovel and began scooping coal into the stone fire-pit, which was already glowing with fierce, white-hot heat.

“I had my mages light the furnace hours before dawn to test the design,” Jack explained to the gathered crowd, pointing at the firebox. “The mechanism is very simple. The fire burns here. Because the iron lid is shut tight, the hot air cannot escape up into the winter sky. Instead, the fire is forced to push its hot exhaust directly through the stone-lined tunnels we buried beneath the greenhouse. Those stones soak up the heat and warm the soil from the bottom up.”

The villagers gathered around, listening in awe as they watched the smoke vent safely away from the glass.

Jack stepped up to the wooden door of the greenhouse and pushed it open. He motioned for Giles and the men to step inside.

As Giles crossed the threshold, his eyes widened.

Because the furnace had been running for hours, it was not freezing inside the glass building. The air was noticeably warmer than the courtyard, and it was getting hotter by the minute. The heat radiating upward from the underground stone tunnels had melted the frost. The rock-hard ice had turned into dark, damp soil.

“By the gods,” Old Miller whispered, dropping to his knees. He pressed his bare hands against the dirt. “It’s warm. The earth is actually warm!”

Karen hurried into the greenhouse, carrying a small leather pouch filled with the last surviving seeds from the kitchen cellars—hardy winter cabbage, turnips, and fast-growing peas. Her face was glowing with hope as she knelt beside Old Miller.

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She carefully opened the pouch, revealing the small, shriveled seeds that represented their only chance against the winter. Using a short wooden trowel, Karen scored shallow, straight lines across the damp soil. The thawed soil was loose and rich, yielding easily to the wood and releasing a deep, fresh scent of wet dirt that hadn’t been smelled in the valley for months. She carefully dropped the tiny turnip seeds one by one into the furrows, spacing them out just enough so their roots wouldn’t choke each other as they grew.

Old Miller didn’t just watch. His old farming instincts immediately took over. He set his heavy wood-axe aside and crawled over next to her, his scarred, calloused hands moving with practiced care. He gently pinched the warm soil back over the seeds, packing it down with light, rhythmic pats to ensure they were nestled safely against the heated dirt. He then took the larger pea seeds from Karen, burying them slightly deeper near the wooden wall frames where their vines could eventually climb toward the glass ceiling.

The men who had been gripping their axes in terror just moments before suddenly found themselves smiling. The sight of warm, workable earth in the middle of a deadly winter was nothing short of a miracle. It was a promise of life.

“The mages’ design is flawless, Lord Jack,” Giles said, looking back out the glass door toward the towering, armored figure of Bones, who was still shoveling coal into the furnace. “We won’t starve. Even if we are trapped here for months, we can grow our own food.”

Outside the greenhouse, near the castle armory, Barnaby the Blacksmith was helping distribute iron nails to reinforce the wooden gates. But his dark eyes were fixed firmly on the towering armored figure of Jack’s Head Retainer.

Barnaby had forged that armor himself. He knew the chainmail hauberk weighed fifty pounds. The bucket-helm weighed at least fifteen. With the wool tabard and the leather boots, the man inside was carrying nearly eighty pounds of dead weight.