Chapter 34: I’ll Find a Way

The afternoon sun was already sinking behind the mountains, casting long shadows over the snowy valley.

From his balcony, Jack watched the logging crew return from the woods. It was a miserable sight. Many men, including Giles and Old Miller, were trudging through the snow. They were stumbling like defeated soldiers.

Behind them, tied to frayed hemp ropes, were three freshly cut pine logs.

Jack frowned, leaning on his cane. In the past weeks, they had cut and carried timber with some effort, but the winter was now nearing its absolute peak. The snow in the valley had grown much deeper, reaching past their knees, and the bitter cold made the raw pine sap freeze solid.

Jack hobbled away from the balcony, made his way down the stone stairs, and walked out into the courtyard to meet them.

Giles dropped his end of the rope and collapsed onto his knees in the snow. His chest was heaving violently. The other men didn’t even bother kneeling; most of them simply fell flat on their backs, staring up at the gray sky in exhaustion.

“Three logs, Giles?” Jack asked quietly.

Giles looked up, his weathered face pale and drawn. “I am sorry, Lord Jack. The chopping is easy. The axes are sharp, and the woods are full of tall, straight pine. We felled twenty trees by noon. But moving them…”

Giles pointed a shaking finger at the nearest log. It was incredibly long and covered in frozen sap.

“They weigh more than stone,” Giles explained, his voice ragged. “When we try to drag them, the rough bark catches on every buried rock and root in the deep snow. We sink up to our knees. We pushed ourselves to the absolute limit just to get these three back before dark.”

Jack looked at the exhausted men. They were eating well now, and they were finally sleeping in warm cabins, but human strength had hard limits.

Jack did some quick calculations. To build a palisade wall that completely surrounded the new village perimeter, they needed hundreds of logs. If the men could only haul three or four logs a day, the wall would take months to finish.

The Beast Tide was expected in less than four or maybe five weeks. At this pace, the wild beasts would arrive to find a wall that barely covered a single cabin.

“You have done well, Giles,” Jack said smoothly, keeping his face entirely neutral. “The men have worked hard. The timber is cut, and that is half the battle. Go to the bathhouse, wash the sweat off before it freezes to your skin, and get your hot evening meal.”

Giles looked confused. “But the wall, My Lord? Three logs will barely build a gatepost. We have to try again tomorrow. We can build sleds, maybe.”

“Sleds will break under the weight of raw pine,” Jack replied simply. “Do not worry about the hauling. Just focus on resting tonight. My retainers will handle the rest.”

Giles blinked, then a look of profound relief washed over his face. He quickly bowed his head. “Praise the gods for your mages, Lord Jack. We will leave the rest to them.”

As the exhausted men dragged themselves toward the steaming bathhouse, Jack let out a long sigh. He tapped his cane against the frozen earth.

He had promised his people a wall. Which meant he had another long, sleepless night ahead of him.

By midnight, the village was completely silent. The only signs of life were the gentle plumes of smoke rising from the cabin chimneys.

Up in his locked bedroom, Jack sat in his high-backed chair. He wrapped himself in three blankets, closed his eyes, and pushed his mind down into the dark depths of the castle crypts.

He found the dormant mental threads of the Night Shift—his fifteen hard-working, literal-minded skeletons.

“Awake,” Jack commanded.

The familiar pressure settled over his brain. Down in the dark, the fifteen skeletons rose silently to their feet.

“Wait,” Jack commanded before they marched out. “Go to the storage room. Put on the old boots and wrap yourselves in the black cloth and rags.”

He couldn’t risk a villager waking up to use the latrine and seeing bare bone glinting in the moonlight. If the skeletons wore boots to hide their skeletal feet and black cloth to cover their ribcages, anyone looking out a window would simply see shadowy, cloaked figures working in the dark. It fit the cover story of private mages perfectly.

Once they were dressed in the crude disguises, Jack directed them out of the crypts. They emerged into the freezing night. Jack marched them to Barnaby’s blacksmith shop.

Outside the shop was a pile of scrap iron and chains leftover from the ruined mine carts they had salvaged weeks ago to build the winter cabins.

“Grab the chains,” Jack ordered.

The skeletons gathered the iron links. Jack then marched them out of the village and into the woods.

Through the empty eye sockets of the lead skeleton, Jack saw the results of the humans’ labor. The edge of the forest was littered with freshly felled pine trees. Giles hadn’t been exaggerating; there were twenty logs lying in the snow, stripped of their branches and ready for use.

Skeletons were incredibly strong, and they never got tired, but their bodies were just bone. If they tried to pull a log using just their hands, the grip strength required would likely snap their finger bones.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“Wrap the chains around your ribcages,” Jack commanded carefully.

He guided them to take the iron chains and loop them securely under their cloaks, through their rib bones and over their collarbones, creating makeshift harnesses.

Once harnessed, Jack had them tie the other ends of the chains securely around the felled logs. He assigned three skeletons to a single log.

“Lean forward,” Jack instructed. “March back to the village. Do not stop. And do it silently.”

The skeletons leaned into the iron chains. For a moment, the pine log didn’t move. Then, with a quiet crunch, the log broke free from the snow.

The undead didn’t slip. They simply drove their feet into the snow and marched in perfect unison. They dragged the logs through the deep snow easily.

Jack watched from his chair in the castle. It was a perfect display of undead logistics.

The Night Shift hauled the first batch of logs to the village perimeter. Jack had already instructed Giles to dig deep trenches around the cabins days ago. The skeletons dragged the logs to the edge of the palisade trench, unhooked themselves, and shoved the timber into the holes.

They stood the logs perfectly upright, side by side, creating a solid wooden barrier. Then, they kicked the loose dirt back into the trench and stamped it down hard to lock the wood in place.

It was going flawlessly.

By the fourth trip to the woods, Jack was beginning to feel the mental strain. Maintaining the connection for hours while managing complex tasks was exhausting. His eyelids were drooping, and his head throbbed.

He was watching lazily through the eyes of a skeleton dragging a log back toward the village.

Wait.