Douglas was a few steps behind him, estimating the degree of damage to the wall and the approximate ratio of the stones needed for repair. When he heard this sentence, his eyes moved from the ruins back to Redd's face, and paused for a moment.
He followed Redd through the ruins and really saw the terrain and scope of the ruins clearly.
The natural defenses surrounding Fourteen Flames give this area the advantage of a natural city wall. The soil fertilized by volcanic ash deposits is fertile enough to support food cultivation. The existing ruined structures can be used as the basis for reconstruction rather than being completely cleared.
He made a rough estimate in his mind of the manpower and material resources required for the project, as well as how many more flights the transport fleet would need on the thirteen-day round-trip route to support such a large-scale construction investment.
He was silent for a while, and then replied, "At the fastest, it may take two to three years. Most of the materials are not available on the island, and all need to be transported by sea.
Although the craftsmen have arrived, the number of people and the port's handling capacity are limited. If multiple projects are promoted at the same time, the construction period will be longer. According to a safe estimate, the main body can be completed in five years."
Redd didn't respond immediately after he said that.
He was still looking at the broken towers and broken sculpture bases.
He stood there, his eyes falling on the outline of the basin surrounded by Fourteen Flames in the distance, then turning back to Douglas, and replied in a steady voice, "Try to get it done within three years."
When Douglas heard Redd's words "try to get it done within three years", his shoulders relaxed unconsciously.
It was an extremely subtle movement. If people hadn't been observing him, they wouldn't notice it at all, but he clearly felt that the muscle that had been tense between the shoulder blades for a long time was slowly,
Like a rope that has been continuously tightened and finally loosened a small amount, it is slowly softening, returning to its normal elastic state from stiffness.
He did not let the breath completely come out of his chest, but pressed it into a slower rhythm and slowly released it along the gaps between breaths, leaving only a thin layer of relaxation attached to the surface of the inner wall of the chest.
He stood there, his eyes still falling on Redd's face, confirming that the words were indeed spoken by him, and would not be taken back or modified to a tighter time limit in the next second.
Then he turned his head slightly, as if to put the confirmation he had just settled on in a fixed position in his memory, so that he could find it accurately when he needed to recall it later.
Three years. Not two years, not "as soon as possible", not "I don't care what method you use", but three years.
Although this time scale is still tight, at least it does not have the urgency of "it must be in place tomorrow" when discussing material gaps and wood shortages in the camp.
Douglas has stayed in the Volantis port for a long enough time, and has also witnessed that after City-States, the nine-seat Trade Federation, has been recruited by Redd for several consecutive years, the balance of the warehouse has approached the limit that can be tolerated when operating at full capacity.
It's not that the newly appointed governors don't want to do things, but the materials and manpower they can squeeze out have indeed reached a very tight critical point.
If the recruitment quota is further increased, even if the governors are willing to continue to squeeze in order to save their lives, their City-States will automatically appear the Rift due to long-term overload operation. By then, it will be too late to repair it with a warrant.
Douglas is not going to mention this matter in front of Redd, because Redd is not the kind of decision-maker who will slow down because "the people below can't hold it anymore".
In his thinking framework, resources exist to be used. If they cannot be used, those resources have no value.
City-States's warehouse will be empty when it is empty, the pressure on the governors will be greater, and the lives of civilians and slaves will be sad when they are sad,
As long as the supplies can be delivered on time, and as long as those City-States haven't completely stopped operating, he doesn't think there is anything that needs special attention.
Douglas received brief letters from Theora and Marcus on their way back.
Theora's letter was written concisely and with restrained words, but in those concise sentences, Douglas could still read the deep fatigue hidden in them.
In her letter, she mentioned the current status of several City-States granaries and the supply delays experienced by some garrisons due to tight material dispatch. She also mentioned that she was adjusting the allocation of materials among various City-Statess to share the pressure.
She wrote, "Some City-States have handed over more than 20% of the normal quota of grain for three consecutive months. If this frequency continues, even tightening the belt may not be able to fill the existing gap before the next harvest.
I will continue to coordinate, but if you can mention the situation to His Highness, I will feel more relaxed."
There were no words of complaint in the letter, nor was there any questioning of Redd's decision-making, but Douglas could read the pressure she was under from the words she chose and the arrangement of the paragraphs.
Theora has always been someone who is unwilling to express too many emotions in letters. If she has written the words "relax" in her letter, it means that her pressure is far greater than what she wrote.
Marcus's letter is more direct.
His wording was not so careful, nor was he as restrained as Theora. Halfway through the writing, he even paused at one point and changed to thicker strokes due to the direction of the ink, as if the strength of his hand holding the pen changed when he wrote that paragraph.
He mentioned several cases of unrest caused by the requisition of materials - some low-level traders were dissatisfied with the excessive tax burden and closed their businesses in protest;
A garrison had a brief dispute over the discrepancy between quotas and headcount when distributing rations; there was also a mine where a small number of workers ran away due to over-extraction by the foreman.
Marcus wrote bluntly in the letter, "If you can't find a way to make His Highness's warrant a little looser, I'm worried that it won't be a matter of complaint before long.
Some people are already thinking privately about whether to do something else while His Highness is away."
Douglas When I read that passage, I knew exactly what Marcus was referring to.
He had cleared out unstable Tinder more than once, and each time he cleared out a list or even an entire list, there were quite a few people who tried to change their identities when he was away, but each time they were dealt with before he could actually leave.
But before those leaders were publicly executed, they would always curse at the last moment in the direction of the city gate and curse something related to Redd.
Douglas did not show the two letters to Redd, nor did he relay their contents in a face-to-face report.
After digesting the information, he chose to sort out the parts that might affect the mobilization of materials separately. He mentioned the inventory situation in the granary and the connection issue between City-States in a more neutral way, without touching on the original text of Theora's letter or the more straightforward words and sentences in Marcus's letter.
He put those contents in his memory and said them in the right tone at the right time, ensuring that Redd knew that the difficulty of material dispatch was increasing, but would not make him feel that the governors and City-States were approaching the point of being unable to hold on.