Rise of the Horde

Chapter 835 - 834

Droktagar’s construction crews began the water system’s expansion on the morning after the building council with the energy that the morning’s assignment produced in crews whose previous assignments had been the assignments that the military’s construction requirements demanded and whose current assignment was the assignment that the civilian purpose’s construction requirements initiated. The morning was the morning that followed a night whose sleep had been shortened by anticipation: workers who had lain on their pallets knowing that the dawn would bring work whose purpose made it different from any work the previous dawns had brought.

The difference was the difference that purpose produced in labor when the labor’s purpose shifted from the purpose that the military’s facilities’ construction served to the purpose that the city’s population’s daily life served. The military’s facilities were the facilities that the warriors used. The water system’s expansion was the system that everyone used.

The distinction was the distinction that the workers felt without naming. The crews were not the crews that named things. The crews were the crews that built things. But the understanding was present in the pace of the digging and the care of the lifting and the attention given to the joint that another worker’s hands would seal before the sun reached midday. Understanding inhabited labor the way that water inhabited the pipes the labor produced: invisibly, completely, functionally. The pipe they laid would carry the water that their families drank. The joint they sealed would hold against the pressure that fifty years of use would apply.

No one said this. No one needed to.

Zul’jinn’s clay pipe design arrived at Droktagar’s construction site at midday. The design was drawn on leather, the drawings executed with the precision that the master smith’s engineering standards demanded. The pipes’ dimensions were specified. The pipes’ joints were detailed. The firing temperature was noted. The flow calculations were annotated in the margins in the handwriting that Zul’jinn’s scarred hands produced when precision was what the work required rather than what the forge permitted.

"Big pipes," Droktagar observed, studying the design. "Bigger than anything Yohan has built."

"The pipes serve fifty thousand," Zul’jinn said. The master smith had accompanied the design’s delivery because the implementation’s initial phase required supervision. "Twelve thousand is the current population. Fifty thousand is the population that the chief plans for. The pipes’ size is the size that fifty thousand requires. Building pipes for twelve thousand and then rebuilding pipes for fifty thousand is the waste that building pipes for fifty thousand the first time eliminates."

"Build once, build right," Droktagar said.

"Build once, build right. The principle that Zul’jinn applies to barrels applies to pipes. A barrel that fails kills the warrior holding it. A pipe that fails floods the district beneath it. Both failures are the failures that building right prevents."

The construction proceeded at the pace that the construction’s scale and labor force combined to determine. Droktagar’s crews numbered two hundred and forty workers: orcs, trolls, goblins, and the four ogres whose strength the heavy lifting required and whose direction the lifting’s precision demanded.

The ogres required particular management. An ogre who applied the full strength that an ogre possessed to a clay pipe that a clay pipe’s structural tolerances limited was not an ogre who produced a placed pipe. The ogre was the worker who produced a broken pipe and a delay the schedule could not absorb. Droktagar had explained this to the ogres with the directness that Droktagar’s leadership employed and the specificity that the ogres’ understanding required. The ogres had listened. The ogres had understood. They lifted with the fraction of their strength that the pipes’ survival demanded, and the pipes arrived at the trench’s floor intact.

The workers divided into the teams that the work’s phases required.

The digging team excavated the trenches that the pipes’ underground placement demanded. Three feet below street level: the depth that traffic, weather, and seasonal temperature variation combined to determine was the depth that the pipes’ longevity demanded. The digging team’s progress set the pace that all other work could sustain. A digging team that fell behind produced a laying team that waited, and a laying team that waited was waste that Droktagar’s schedule could not permit.

The firing team operated the kilns that the clay pipes’ production required, the forge district’s secondary kilns, whose capacity the Roarer production’s overflow provided. The clay came from the river’s eastern bank, assessed by Zul’jinn’s geological survey and confirmed as the quality that the pipes’ structural requirements demanded. The firing team’s discipline was the discipline that waiting without idling required. They maintained the kilns, prepared the next batch while the current batch fired, and produced the continuous output that the laying team’s continuous demand consumed.

The laying team placed the fired pipes in the excavated trenches with the care that joint alignment required. The joints were sealed with the compound that Rakh’ash’tha’s alchemical knowledge had developed: a mixture of rendered fat and powite calcium whose combination produced the sealant that waterproofing demanded. Each joint coated, each coating pressed, each pressing allowed the brief setting time that the compound’s chemistry required before the next pipe’s weight tested the seal.

"The healer makes pipe sealant," Rakh’ash’tha said, when the compound’s application was demonstrated to the laying team. "The healer’s alchemical training addresses wounds. The healer’s alchemical training also addresses pipes. The chemistry does not distinguish between the body’s vessels and the city’s vessels. Both require the sealant that prevents the leaking that the sealant’s absence permits."

The observation produced the specific amusement that the comparison generated in workers whose understanding of the healer’s function had not previously included pipe sealant. The amusement was brief, the amusement that workers produce before the work’s resumption replaces it with the concentration the work demands. But it left something behind: an understanding of Rakh’ash’tha that the workers had not carried before that morning and would carry after.

The main line’s first section was completed on the seventh day. The section extended from the northern cistern to the residential district’s central junction, providing the water flow that the current population required at the increased pressure that the main line’s larger diameter produced.

Seven days. Three days of digging, four of firing and laying and sealing, the phases overlapping to produce the efficiency that parallel work created. Complications had arrived, as complications arrived. A kiln had required repair on the fourth day. A trench section had encountered buried stone the geological survey had not recorded. Each complication was addressed. The schedule had held.

The testing was the testing that Zul’jinn supervised with the attention that the testing’s importance demanded. Water entered the main line at the northern cistern’s elevation. It flowed through the pipe at the rate that elevation and diameter combined to determine. It reached the residential district’s central junction without leaking.

The joints held. The sealant held. The pipe held.

"The pipe holds," Zul’jinn said. Quiet, precise, the specific vocal register that genuine accomplishment produced in the engineer whose standards, not the observer’s expectations, determined the assessment. Around the master smith, the three teams stood at the junction where the water now ran, listening to the sound that their labor had made possible.

It was not a remarkable sound. Water moving through a pipe produced only what water produced: a low, continuous rushing. But the workers listened with the attention that the sound’s meaning demanded. They had dug the trench. They had fired the clay. They had placed the pipe, sealed the joint, and backfilled the earth above.

The sound they heard was the sound their work had made.

"The pipe holds," Droktagar repeated. Not for confirmation, the pipe’s holding had been confirmed. The repetition was the repetition that stating a thing aloud produced when the thing’s stating was the acknowledgment that the thing’s achievement warranted.

The water flowed. The first section of the haven’s water system operated. The haven’s construction had produced its first tangible result: water, flowing through pipes that the city’s engineer had designed and the city’s workers had built and the city’s healer had sealed and the city’s population would use.

Not a wall. Not a gate or a forge or a barracks. Water, which was the thing the city’s population required before it required anything else.

The first pillar stood. Eight remained.