We're Short on Hands
Not enough people. While Haneul-nim pondered this problem as she oversaw the construction of Fort Ara, trouble of a very different kind was brewing down in Tenochtitlan, on the shores of Lake Texcoco.
The beautiful city rising from the water — like a merchant republic of the Mediterranean built upon a lake — was thick now with a gloomy, oppressive air.
"The gods are wroth! Prepare the sacrifices!"
Acamapichtli, chosen as the first Huey Tlatoani, was deeply troubled. People were falling ill and collapsing for no reason anyone could name.
Concluding that the gods must be angry, and that offerings had to be made until that wrath was appeased, he dispatched his warriors to gather sacrifices from the surrounding lands.
And a sacrifice meant human blood and a human heart.
He fed the captives his warriors dragged back a drug that stripped away their fear, then had them hauled up to the altar.
"Pray soothe the gods' anger, oh mighty one!"
Thuck. Crunch.
"Nghhhh…."
With an obsidian knife he cleaved the sacrifice's chest open while the man still breathed, and lifted the heart high.
Having reverently presented the offering at the gods' altar, he severed the head from the lifeless body and passed it aside — the flesh had to be flayed and displayed upon the tzompantli, the skull rack.
Then he went on cutting out heart after heart; sometimes he flayed the skin as well.
"Gyaaaagh!"
"Too loud. Feed it more of the drug."
Since every sacrifice had to be given alive, he was terribly busy. And no matter how much they offered — and they had been offering at this staggering scale for quite some time — the gods' anger refused to subside.
He painted himself in blood all day and threw himself into the work, and before he knew it, the supply of sacrifices was running dry.
"Go and capture more sacrifices!"
"The surrounding tribes no longer have the strength left to pay tribute. What are we to do?"
They had conquered diligently, exacting tribute from the tribes around them — so many captives, in fact, that some places had been emptied of people entirely.
"And what of that silver-scaled monster? Have you caught it?"
"Our warriors only die."
Then there were these new strangers — a tribe clad in gleaming garments, wielding thunder-cracking staves. They were simply too strong.
"Perhaps I should have used our warriors as sacrifices after all?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Would the gods not favor those with stronger life force?"
His warriors sent to subjugate the newly arrived tribe had all been killed, and he regretted the loss — not for their sakes, but because he had been weighing whether offering them up alive might have ended this terrible divine punishment.
"Then bring in the tribes that have submitted to those people."
"They live in hiding around their fortress. It is not easy. For every one we take, ten or twenty of our warriors must die."
Apparently the foreigners' fort was viewed as an altar of sorts.
Occasionally they did succeed. Daehan's children were wounded, sometimes killed, but the tribes living near it were captured with fair frequency — since not everyone lived inside the fortress walls.
But Haneul would come to this place before long. Would the city survive what came then?
In front of the partially completed Fort Ara, the patrol battalion and the staff of the Daehan Company had gathered in tense, anxious knots.
"Is everyone here?"
"Yes!"
"Ready to go?"
"Yes!"
Today was the day they marched out. The road to crushing those cursed wretches, that is.
"Everyone come back safe and sound!"
"Let's go!"
"Move out!"
We all raised our shovels as one.
"Let's tear the whole thing up!"
"Let's go!"
Thwack! Thwack! Crunch!
A shoveling operation with a full thousand people at work. Not everyone dug, of course — roughly two hundred stood guard, two hundred dug, and the remaining six hundred were slated to haul materials.
"Whoa. That's terrifying…."
"Good heavens! They really know how to dig…."
Even Mose, who was not easily astonished, was visibly taken aback.
The earth flew out in great waves, and behind the diggers came crews laying broken stone — carried in by rail cars — tamping it down, then laying track over it. The track stretched forward, and material trains crept along behind it in an endless, rolling rhythm of work.
"You're really going to push all the way to their stronghold like this?"
That's right. The plan was to lay railroad track, build forts, establish supply bases, and work our way south.
"Not a straight line — we'll curve a little as we go."
Considering the canal we'd dig later, we'd have to lay rail there anyway, wouldn't we? May as well do the work in advance. Kills two birds with one stone.
And all the timber we'd clear along the way could fuel the trains. A shame to waste it, no?
"That's remarkable…."
"…?"
What? Why is she looking at me like I'm pathetic? It's work that has to be done anyway, that's all. Really!
Thwack! Thwack! Crunch-crunch!
Truly fascinating creatures, these people. They work so hard. Watching them dig with smiles on their faces, they must genuinely enjoy it — though for the life of me I can't see why.
"Why do they look so happy doing that?"
"Hehe. I think I have some idea."
"What is it?"
"Hehehe. It might be better if you didn't know, Haneul-nim."
What, is she teasing me? Amazing how much these kids have changed after only a few decades. They really have become true Daehan folk.
Watching them, the scale of it was frankly staggering. The human excavators were working their hearts out, but even laying a single stretch of track required carving out a wide swath of surrounding earth.
"This is going to take far too long, isn't it?"
"Shall we blast our way forward with explosives?"
"I think it'd be better if I did it myself."
"I'm sorry — what?"
Hm? Has she never seen me use my telekinesis? She's in for a surprise, isn't she?
"Just watch."
I waved aside the poor souls sweating themselves half to death. At this rate, even one section a day would be beyond them.
"I'll do the digging, so somebody keep me pointed in the right direction. The rest of you lay the stone and set the rails."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Our lady means to flex a little, everyone!"
"Clear the way! Get up front, quick!"
The way telekinesis works is remarkably convenient. You stare at the ground and concentrate, and at some point a moment arrives — ah, I think I can do this. When that moment comes, you push.
Grrrrrmmmph.
And the earth compresses and sinks like that.
It's far more compact than pounding away with a sledgehammer — this way the ground packs down astonishingly hard.
Ssssshhh….
"Oh?"
This was swampland, wasn't it…. Compress it this much and out comes all the water too, apparently.
"Kids! Punch drainage holes and keep tamping!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Somebody bring the picks!"
They seemed perfectly capable of handling the cleanup on their own. Still, this was worlds easier than digging every inch of it by hand.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
"Ungh! What the — it's harder than rock!"
"Get the stakes and a heavier maul!"
Apparently I'd packed it down quite a bit too well…. Well, someone will just have to suffer through it.
Daehan's standard track gauge is one ja, but we were tamping the bed to a width of ten ja.
Since I'd started putting real force into it, I just went ahead and compacted the ground we'd need later as well, so the cleared space had grown quite broad.
"One section a day, huh…."
"You thought you'd cover two ri a day?"
"I did think it would go faster…."
"Walked at a leisurely pace, that's a distance that would take you an entire day on foot? You do realize that, right?"
The project had grown so large that progress had slowed to a crawl. Come evening, we were all clocking out and heading back to Ara.
We'd camped on site at first, but the raids came every single night — you can't sleep through that. We had the train, so commuting it was. We nearly had a disaster on our hands.
I had watched construction work on site only a handful of times before, and seeing just how much material went into it all made it clear this was no ordinary undertaking.
"If only we had more people. But it's too dangerous to bring ordinary civilians out here."
"You're right. I hear there were three raids yesterday alone."
They really did slink in between the trees in perfect stealth, and they fired arrows and poison darts — without the Holy Water, we would have lost several people for certain.
Even commuting back and forth and working hard the whole while, that first section — two ri of rail — took an entire year.
"Wait? A whole year, just for this?"
At this rate it would take a full seven years just to reach the first objective on the way to the Aztecs.
"Oh my? Did you think laying railroad was simple work?"
"On the Original Continent we did it at incredible speed, though?"
"There was plenty of mountain construction there, wasn't there? Down on the flatlands, the work just keeps coming!"
Is that so? Well, in the mountains there are places you don't have to excavate at all, I suppose. And the bedrock terrain helps too.
You don't have to haul stone from far away like you do here, so there are advantages.
"And there's one difference that dwarfs all the rest."
"Hm?"
"There's hardly anyone here, is there?"
Fair point. It was too dangerous to bring civilians in to build.
Nothing in this world ever goes easily.
BANG!
"Hold! Who are you people?"
Turning toward the gunshot, I saw a band of natives approaching.
"What is this? They don't appear to be armed?"
"Mostly elders, women, and children."
"Can we even talk to them? Why have they come?"
The natives speak so many different languages that conversation is genuinely difficult.
Still, if we gathered the garrison soldiers who had lived around here, some of their words overlapped enough to get the meaning across. Would we have anyone like that on hand?
"We send at least one with every rotation, so there should be someone who speaks it."
Apparently we did have someone who could manage a rough conversation — one of the guards went running out.
They seemed to be talking, but the meaning wasn't quite landing, and they carried on for a long while with hands and feet and gestures.
"This is taking forever."
"Isn't it, though? Can't they understand each other?"
That was exactly my thought. The native tongues are so simple. Me go there. Me eat here. That's the level we're working with.
After a very long exchange, the garrison soldier came back tilting his head, apparently puzzled by something. Listening to what he'd been told, I could see why it took so long.
"Hm? Surrender? Naturalization? Something along those lines, is it?"
"Yes. A plague swept through, their village's warriors were all taken as sacrifices, and these are the only ones left. They say they can no longer defend the village."
With no one left to protect the village, they said other villages raid them — and when they do, they carry off the young women and slaughter everyone else. So it seemed they simply had no choice.
"Well then, we'll have to take them in and put them to work, won't we."
Plenty of locals from these parts already live in Ara, so they'll do fine there.
"I'll feed them something first. They say they haven't eaten in three days."
"Ugh…. I keep telling them to just come inside Ara and live in comfort, and they just won't listen."
We had urged them steadily: come live in comfort in a good land. But those stubborn fools wouldn't believe us.
"People who've always lived with their lives on the line — maybe they're just naturally suspicious?"
"It's not like this is a day or two of hard feelings? You'd think word would get around, or they'd at least pick up on it somehow."
Don't villages trade and talk with each other? Complete self-sufficiency would be terribly hard, wouldn't it?
"There's nothing like a gazette out here, is all. Look at those people — they came to us precisely because they're so afraid of the other villages."
"Do the villages not have any contact with each other at all?"
"It seems almost none."
What an exhausting way to live. Then how do they ever raise an army?
Have all the warriors we've met been slaves? At that point, you'd think they'd just run away, or….
Oh? Those tribes up north that spoke similar tongues — could they be the descendants of ancestors who fled from this place?
"Talk to those people. If they have any friendly villages, pass the word along and encourage them to come here."
"Yes, ma'am! I think that's a fine idea. Surely they trade with at least one or two villages?"
Then that village passes it to the next one over, and on and on — let's build the pyramid. Multi-level recruitment isn't always a bad thing, you know!
The locals joining us turned out to be a surprisingly great asset. Whether it was because they trusted their own kind, or simply because life had gotten so hard they'd half given up and come anyway, we brought in a great many new tribes.
"Lots of people again today."
"Mm. It's nice, though — we're getting more men now, too."
Until now only villages that had lost every warrior had come, but villages with warriors intact — in other words, healthy villages — had begun joining us one by one.
What we offered them was safety and the knowledge of how to farm! In return, we asked exactly one thing of them: no more cannibalism, and no more human sacrifice.
At first they trembled violently, wailing that they wouldn't know what to do about disease — but one taste of the Holy Water and they snapped right to it. Nobody so much as mentions it now.
"It's such a relief the construction is speeding up."
"Mm. We needed the manpower, and it worked out well."
Trying to build with the thousand men we'd assembled for combat had been hard on everyone and painfully slow — but now they handled security around the perimeter while the natives did the digging.
The seventh fort, our target, was not far off now.
And from there, we would turn toward the cities of the Aztecs.