The watchtower rose into the air as planned and the pillars slotted into the holes in the foundation stones, placed in lightly dug pits in the earth. Once the watchtower was in place, our master craftsman—the father of the floresiensis who made our mobile walls—checked everything was good before lifting a fist into the air. A huge roar came from the craftspeople. It seemed like it had all gone to plan.
“How about it, Goldilocks? All good?” the younger floresiensis said.
“It’s a real beaut. Safe from the wind, the rain, and the arrows alike.”
“And during peacetime, it’d make a perfect little hideout for two people wantin’ some time alone!” he replied with a guffaw. Due to inherit his father’s craft, he had been watching the construction at my side. His small and light stature made him a perfect candidate for construction or bricklaying, but less so for jobs which called for much in the way of heavy lifting. “One down and four left, huh,” he went on.
“Yes. These’ll make keeping Mottenheim safe far easier. We’ll have longer, cleaner lines of sight—meaning we’ll see any intruders coming a lot sooner and have all the time we need to pick them off at a distance,” I replied.
It was a little hard to believe, but until now Mottenheim’d had only two watchtowers. One was positioned near the highway as a lookout spot, and the other was in the plaza, with a bell inside on the off chance the alarm needed raising. No matter how peaceful things might be, I was utterly flabbergasted to see how lacking their defenses were.
Back in Konigstuhl, we had a total of seven watchtowers, most of them placed at strategic locations, like the entrance to the canton. Of course, we didn’t have people stationed in them all the time, but during spring and fall, when bandits were on the prowl, we’d prop up scarecrows or light braziers to give the impression we were well defended.
It bore repeating to the people here, but a well thought out bluff was a great defensive measure. It was important to make the enemy give up by puffing up your feathers and indicating that you were ready to rumble if it came down to it. No one went into battle knowing that they would suffer losses. There was a reason some of the more famous bodyguards were chosen for their looks rather than their abilities. Wouldn’t you feel more intimidated by a two-meter-tall beefcake than a talented, weedy looking guy?
“There are a lot of these towers, so it might be a bit tricky to keep them maintained, but I’ll do my part to make sure they’re left as warding measures,” the carpenter said.
“Please do. The cheapest form of defense are structures that will put off your average bandit on sight. People’s lives are valuable and expensive.”
People took time to grow. It took five years for a baby to stop needing constant attention, another five years for the child to become able to work and pay back into the system with some form of labor, and another five years until they were a proper member of the workforce or suitable draft candidate. Without fifteen years and ample food, you couldn’t raise a healthy person. People were a huge resource dump.
“Oof, makes my brains hurt,” the young carpenter said as he scratched the back of his head.
As he did so, a little wooden tag jangled from his left wrist. It was a simple thing attached with a piece of string: an identification tag for the napalm mines I’d finished setting just last night. My blood was imbued into these tags, and thus prevented anyone carrying one from setting off any of the mines.
The minefield had been a royal pain. It hadn’t been doing all the enchanting in the first place; no, the true ordeal had been convincing Mister Giesebrecht that this would be a good idea. They were too dangerous to run a demo, but these puppies packed some serious firepower and could immolate just about any flavor of walking dead we could expect to come our way. Very few leaders would readily agree to having tons of explosives planted all around their home. The possibility of an accident and the cleanup work afterward had weighed heavy on his mind. If even one of his constituents died to one of our mines, then literally everything would fall apart. Our defenses and their trust in us would be blown to bits.
Even if a pro had prepared a bevy of safety measures, a layperson could never be fully certain that it was actually as safe as they were told. This had a way of inflaming the very anxieties such methods were supposed to soothe. I was sure that if a mage or magus looked at the measures I’d put into place, they would be satisfied that I’d made sure that the explosions were controlled, but an average person had no way of knowing that the whole minefield couldn’t go off at any moment.
In the end, I also made a little prototype that would simply make a noise when activated and gave a live demonstration. Then I agreed that we would put little pegs with a red ribbon around them to indicate where the mines were buried, at which point he begrudgingly agreed. It was a real hurdle.
Despite all this, there was still grumbling among the locals. They found it annoying to have to carry around the little wooden tags, and they were terrified of the possibility of being blown to bits because they forgot to attach it that morning. Without the excitement and relief of raising up the watchtower the following day, I might have had a little revolt on my hands.