Necromancer: Kingdom Building with My Legion of Undead Knights

Chapter 183: A Manageable Cost

Garren sat on one of the chairs in the hall, reading a book when Darion saw him. The place must have been so dark that he wasn’t the first thing Darion spotted when he entered. The fire had died down to a few flickering flames, and the shadows stretched long across the stone floor

Garren’s figure was half-hidden in the gloom, his face illuminated only by the small lamp on the table beside him.

"Evening, m’lord," Garren greeted, looking up from his pages.

Darion smiled and walked closer. The sound of his boots echoed through the quiet hall. He was tired, his back ached, his throat was dry, and his eyes felt heavy, but the sight of Garren waiting for him made something in his chest relax.

"Evening," Darion replied.

He sat down in the chair opposite Garren and looked at the man, expectant. Of course he should be expectant. Garren had left earlier today with the carpenters to discuss the price of the woods and timbers they would need for the livestock project. That was the whole reason Darion had been free to spend his day at the graveyard. While he was raising the dead, Garren had been doing the practical work: talking to merchants, comparing prices and figuring out what this was all going to cost.

Now that he had returned, the real discussion could begin.

"So," Darion said, leaning back in his chair. "How did it go?"

Garren closed his book and set it aside. His expression was calm and neutral, the face he always wore when delivering news. Darion had learned to read the small tells underneath. A slight relaxation around the eyes meant good news. A tightening of the jaw meant bad. Tonight, Garren’s eyes were relaxed.

Darion remembered when he first came to Percvale, when Garren had been listing the number of debts they owed. Back then, the situation had been dire, fifty thousand gold coins hanging over their heads, the knights starving and the castle falling apart.

Garren’s jaw had tightened slightly as he recited the numbers. That was how Darion learned to read him: jaw tight meant bad news.

But when Garren delivered good news, like how meat sales were going better than expected, or how the knights were finally eating regularly, his eyes would relax. The tension around them would soften. That was the tell. Tonight, Garren’s eyes were relaxed. That meant the timber prices were good.

"We spoke with several sellers in the market," Garren began. "The carpenters knew which merchants were reliable and which ones inflated their prices. We visited four different timber yards before settling on the best offer."

Darion nodded, waiting.

"After calculating the total cost, including the wood and the delivery, we came to a final number."

He paused.

"Five hundred and thirty silver coins."

Darion thought about the price. Five hundred and thirty silver was not a small amount. For a regular person, it would be a fortune, more than most families earned in a year. For a barony that had been starving just weeks ago, it would have been impossible. But for Percvale now? For a barony with thousands of gold coins sitting in a storage room?

He decided it wasn’t that costly.

Five hundred and thirty silver was a lot, surely, but it wasn’t too much. It wasn’t gold. It wasn’t going to drain his treasury. Compared to the ’thousands’ he had spent, and the thousands he still had, this was manageable. Affordable. Almost cheap, when he thought about it.

"That’s it?" Darion asked.

Garren nodded. "The carpenters assured me that the structures we’re building won’t be massive enough to require gold coins. We’re not constructing a fortress or a castle. We’re building pens, fences, shelters, and coops. Wood is wood. The quantity is significant, but the materials themselves are not expensive."

Darion did the math in his head. If he removed five hundred and thirty silver coins from the thousands of gold coins he had, it would seem like the construction project was almost free. The gold would barely notice the difference. The silver was a drop in a very large bucket.

It was a good feeling, knowing that he could afford things now. Not everything, not yet, but enough. Enough to rebuild. Enough to improve. Enough to make Percvale better than it had been in decades.

He nodded slowly.

"Tomorrow," Darion said, "you’ll follow the carpenters back to the market. Buy the wood. Hire wagons or carts or whatever is needed to bring it here. And then begin construction."

Garren’s expression didn’t change, but Darion saw the small nod of acknowledgment.

"So now how long will the construction take?" Darion asked.

He was guessing a week. That was what the carpenters had implied when they first discussed the project, a week for the basic structures, maybe a few extra days for the finer details.

The pens themselves weren’t complicated. The fencing was straightforward. The shelters were simple boxes with roofs. It wasn’t like building a castle or a fortress.

Garren considered the question. "The carpenters estimated a week, maybe two, depending on how many laborers are available. The pens themselves are not complicated, the main work is the fencing and the shelters. With enough hands, it could be done quickly."

With more laborers it would be much faster. That was simple reasoning, an obvious one actually. More hands meant more work done in less time. The carpenters could focus on the skilled work while the laborers handled the heavy lifting: digging post holes, carrying timber, hammering nails where they were told.

More money would be spent paying them, yes, but the cost of laborers was small compared to the cost of the materials. A few extra silver coins to cut the construction time in half? That was worth it.

They could finish before the week was even over if they hired enough people. And the sooner the pens were built, the sooner they could buy livestock, and the sooner the animals would start breeding and producing food. Time was money in its own way.

"Then hire enough hands," Darion said. "I don’t want this dragging on for weeks. The sooner the pens are built, the sooner we can buy livestock, and the sooner we have animals breeding and producing food."

Garren nodded. "I’ll see to it."