WOODEN fences stretching endlessly into the distance divided the blistering hot field, which shimmered with a haze of heat. Unen’s group had finally arrived at the boundary between Baborak and Chelveny. It was early afternoon.
After establishing their campsite under the handy shade of a gigantic boulder, Unen started her work by inspecting her surveying tools. Drawing the long staff protruding from the pack on her back, she attached a fist-sized pelorus equipped with a compass to the top of it. The surface of the pelorus was always level with the horizon due to its two axes and weights. Unen had made the device herself with the scraps of a brass metal plate she had asked the ironmonger to share with her.
Next, she pulled a coil of rope from her pack. Along its twenty meters, metal hooks gleamed from set intervals for keeping the rope from getting knocked or pulled out of place when measuring lengths. This rope was another invention of Unen’s, and she used it to measure the distance between two locations.
Her pack also contained a fan-shaped, weighted protractor for measuring inclines, and a semicircle pelorus she used for more accurate readings on the azimuths. After confirming each tool was undamaged, she moved them, along with a notebook for recording numbers, into the shoulder bag she brought with her.
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BY the time Ori returned from drawing water from the brook, they had a fire lit in the hearth Irena built. The group took a break while waiting for the water to boil and lightly grilled Zola’s bread over the fire for a late lunch. Small talk had significantly decreased between them after Unen’s comment about her parents, but the savory smell of baked bread gradually brought back a harmonious mood.
They set aside dinner by sticking dried meat inside the leftover bread and decided to allot the rest of the remaining daylight to surveying. They were all of the same opinion that nothing bad would come of wrapping up the work quick.
Leaving the bigger, unnecessary bags at the campsite, Unen brought her shoulder bag filled with surveying tools along with her pelorus staff, and Irena and Ori both took their swords. They set off for the boundary.
Beginning with the north bank of the brook, Irena followed the fence to the north with one end of the rope in hand. From her end, marked by where the fence turned, Unen pulled the rope taut and measured the distance between her and Irena.
Once she was finished with that, Unen let go of the rope for the time being and thrust the pelorus staff into the ground. Aiming the notch of the V standing straight from the edge of the pelorus at Irena, she measured how many degrees she was off from the north.
This was how Unen measured the distance and the azimuth at each bend in the fence. Later, she would draft a map based on those numbers. Naturally, measurement and calculation errors were bound to slip in as the distance increased, necessitating a degree of compensation and correction at every key location. Unen had decided on Mount Viera, looming in the distant east, as her point of interest. By measuring the azimuth from each point relevant to the map to the mountain’s summit, the diagonal lines she would draw to the summit would notably increase the accuracy of the map once she coordinated them to overlap with other focal points.
After each measurement, Unen placed her pelorus staff on the ground so she could promptly record the numerical value. This time however, Ori thoughtlessly called out to her just as she had pulled her notebook from her bag.
“If you tell me what to record, I’ll write it down for you.”
“You can write?”
“Yeah.”
Unen handed her notebook, portable inkwell, and quill over to Ori.
“Um, okay, ‘Starting Point: Wak River’. Next line. 17°W, 18’, 3”. Got it?”
Contrary to animal skin parchment, the paper created from ground wood pulp Unen used was coarse, and on top of the fact that it was easily ripped, ink often ran down it. Yet, despite all that, not once did the tip of the quill catch on the grainy paper as Ori smoothly danced it across the blank space.
“Is this fine?” Ori looked up at her for confirmation.
“Ah, yeah, no complaints here,” Unen said, checking over what he wrote down.
Several swordsmen who made a living guarding others and exterminating wild animals lived around Yezero, but the vast majority were unable to read or write. And those who boasted about their ability to write were nowhere near as familiar with paper as Ori was.
“Sharing the workload will increase efficiency,” Ori stated.
“That’s true,” Unen agreed.
Who in the world is Ori? While deeply perplexed on the inside, Unen externally expressed her gratitude to him.
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THEY returned to the campsite once the sun had set. Cattle that had been grazing in the distance during the day disappeared from the pastures, and there wasn’t a sign of a single person as far as their eyes could see. The gentle breeze from the afternoon completely transformed into a howling gust that blew through the pasture with a noise akin to a lonely cry.
Stuffing their mouths with the dried meat sandwiches, the trio downed the day’s fatigue with soybean tea. Tomorrow they would be surveying the field under the blazing sun all day, right from the early morning. In order to preserve their energy for the upcoming day’s endeavors, they went to bed early.
Irena was assigned to night watch until the morning star that shone in the eastern sky forged a third of the way through the heavens. Ori would take the next third until the star had passed the midsky marker, then it would be Unen’s turn until dawn.
Bidding goodnight to Irena, Unen and Ori each took a blanket with them and laid down where they pleased.