The Wood Family's Castle

The journey from Wenden Port to the Wood Family's lands took only six or seven days on horseback, provided the weather was good.

But reality always differed somewhat from theory. Spending the night outdoors was not only unpleasant, but plainly unsafe. That was why both men chose to set out in the morning: they wanted more time to reach the farthest village or town they could before nightfall, then continue on the next morning.

Some stretches of road were still muddy after the thaw. It took them two days to reach firmer ground again, and a thin crust of dried mud had formed on the outside of their cloaks. After another six days of stopping in the villages and towns along the way, they returned to Wood Town on the evening of the ninth day.

Like most settlements, Wood Town had been built near a source of water, in a river valley enclosed by low hills. It sat with hills behind it and the river in front, and the land was long and narrow. The river was about ten meters across—not especially wide, but still difficult to cross.

When Old Wood was young, the town had developed on only one side of the river. To cross, people had to make a long detour upstream to a shallow spot, or choose between swimming and taking a boat.

Old Wood had despised this arrangement. To make full use of the land across the river, he built a stone bridge with the leftover materials from the castle's construction. It was a truly public-spirited project.

Ryan and Kraft were crossing that very bridge now. They had to pass through town and make their way to the castle on the low hill behind it.

The castle's location was exceptionally convenient. The side of the low hill facing Wood Town and the river was a gentle slope, while the other side was a sheer cliff. During a defense, they only had to face enemies climbing uphill from the front, which greatly reduced the work needed on the rear.

At the same time, the gentle slope made an attack an unpleasant ordeal. It drained the attackers' strength and made an uphill charge impossible. The defenders, meanwhile, could charge downhill if the situation turned in their favor, building up enough momentum over a short distance to send their foes flying.

Over the course of thirty years, Old Wood first cleared the trees from the hilltop and used the timber to enclose the area with a wooden palisade as a temporary measure. He then built the sturdy tower that formed the castle's core against the cliff, and put up removable wooden buildings around it, including stables, workshops, and a kitchen.

This stage lasted more than ten years and accounted for half of the whole project. It was only around the time Kraft was born that the Wood Family finally replaced the wooden palisade surrounding their castle.

The long construction period was mainly due to economic and practical considerations. In theory, the family's lands included Wood Town and several nearby villages, and their finances were quite good by the standards of minor nobility. But a newly established family had more than one expense. Old Wood also had to set up livelihoods for the old comrades who had returned with him, and their descendants would go on to serve the Wood Family.

Wood Town was no strategic military site. A family castle could certainly guard against all kinds of threats, but there had to be a threat for it to serve its purpose. Even if war did break out, no one would go to the trouble of sending an army to attack the place. The most they would do was send an envoy to accept the lord's surrender as a formality.

Only when the time was right—or, more accurately, when Old Wood felt the family's finances had improved—did the Wood Family begin replacing the wooden walls with real stone curtain walls.

The smaller scale of the work allowed Old Wood to stubbornly raise the curtain walls to more than three meters. Combined with the crenellations along the top, they would prove useful once the Kraft Family could afford enough crossbows and bows.

The outbuildings, which had been patched up over the years, were also replaced by an expanded tower. Gradually, the structures became a solid fortress with a section of tower. By then, the castle was complete: a miserable place to attack and hardly worth attacking in the first place, perfectly suited to serving as the foundation for a family's legacy.

By the time Kraft had grown up, the road from the castle gate to town had been covered with gravel in recent years, preventing many a horse and carriage from slipping.

Kraft and Ryan followed the zigzagging road upward. The setting sun sank slowly behind the castle, stretching its shadow across the sparsely wooded slope. In the future, at every dusk, its shadow would cover the enemies who came to attack, as they struggled to haul their siege equipment up the slope and braced themselves against the heavy boulders rolling down.

Even a soul from another world had to marvel at how powerful the place was in an age of cold weapons. With enough water and food in reserve, it would take several times as many men to besiege a stone complex like this.

They could forget about hauling large siege engines up here. If the stone bridge over the river was destroyed during wartime, even getting across would be a hassle. Any equipment built from timber felled nearby would be a nightmare to push uphill. And after finally making it to the castle, they would have to face a group of militia led by professional soldiers. It was the ultimate ordeal.

That was right: the Wood Family believed in preparing for trouble. They had a standing force, though it was small—only a dozen or twenty men, mostly old comrades who had retired alongside Old Wood.

When Old Wood prospered, they had received land and businesses in the surrounding area. They were also the sort of men who, like Old Wood, enjoyed training the younger generation from childhood. In time, they formed a corps of professional soldiers with a family tradition.

The men Kraft's father had taken to the battlefield as his personal guards were drawn from this group. Add a few temporarily armed militiamen, and they had a small army. Their eventual disastrous fate had been nothing but bad luck; it wasn't because these men, who had trained since childhood, lacked skill.

Kraft's generation also had young men training in the castle. Most of them, however, would spend their whole lives guarding it, with no chance to make their fortunes on a battlefield.

In the dimming light, flames flickered near the castle gate. They came from the torches held by the guards on night watch. The clink of metal could be heard faintly as well.

"John? George? Don't close the gate yet!" Kraft shouted. "No, I don't want to stand outside while you fiddle with that damned winch."

"Ha! Our little baron's back!" Laughter came from the other side of the gate. The clinking stopped, and a young face peered over the wall, holding a torch. "Come on in."

"I'm warning you for the last time, George. There's only one baron here!" Kraft got along well with the young men. After all, they had trained under Old Wood together, and country nobles weren't exactly strict about etiquette. "Don't I have a name?"

Kraft and Ryan took their horses to the stables, then found Old Wood and Anderson having dinner in the dining hall. Bread, thick soup, and sausages made in the castle had been laid out on the long table beneath the candlelight. The gray-haired old man and the balding middle-aged man sat at the table, giving the scene the feel of a public-service ad about looking after lonely elderly people.

"My dear Kraft, you're finally back. Anderson and I were just talking about you." The burly old man set down his bread and warmly welcomed his grandson. "And Ryan, come sit down. You must both be hungry."

"So you never did meet that person?" Once the two men had eaten their fill, Ryan's mention of the stone hand reminded Old Wood that Kraft had gone out for another reason.

The whole trip there and back had taken almost a month. It had snowed and thawed, and it felt as if half the winter had already gone by. If Ryan hadn't brought back a gift, they might have forgotten about the matter altogether.

"That's right. He was just a fraud with poor skills. He burned his own hand and died before we even reached Wenden Port." Kraft folded his arms, sounding resigned. "The things my cousin Ryan bought were more interesting. At least this hand won't set itself on fire."

"Haha, true." Anderson took the hand from Old Wood and turned it over, but couldn't make head or tail of it. "It does look pretty interesting, though. Did the seller say where it came from?"

"He didn't. But I don't think it's from anywhere in Norse." Ryan kept a straight face. "If you want an interesting story, though, you should hear Kraft's. You'll never guess what happened." He left them hanging, but he couldn't hide his grin.

"Couldn't be that Kraft got accepted to Wenden Port Academy, could it?" Old Wood made his usual guess in the least likely direction. The absurd suggestion made Anderson laugh, too.

"..."

"..."

"What is it? Why aren't any of you saying anything? What's so mysterious about this interesting story?" The sudden silence cut Anderson's laughter short. He thought he might have laughed at the wrong time.