26 Saun 722
In concept and theory, rammed earth walls were simple. You set up a mould called a "form" so that the earth actually packed down, rather than just going lower and wider. You shovelled earth into the form, hammered it with a ram until it was compacted to almost half the size and hard as stone, then shovelled more earth into the form and repeated the pounding on that.
In practice, it was slow and tedious and very hard work. There were six people for this, including himself, so Dan split them into pairs, one to shovel and one to pound. Each got a short break while the other worked, and on the hour, everyone took a brief breather, and a swig of water against the Saun heat, and then switched tasks. The time was marked out by a rough sundial that Dan had scratched into the dirt around one of the stakes used to outline where the buildings would eventually stand.
They were shoveling dirt that had been dug out of the ditch the previous trial, and it was still fairly loose, but there was a lot of it to shovel. The ram required less bending and lifting, but jarred the body at every stroke. They used different muscles for each task though, which in theory allowed the others to recover by switching. In practice, you ended up sore in a bunch of different places, but not, Dan had learned, as sore as if you didn't take breaks at all.
It also meant that signed conversations were possible, as long as you didn't mind a very slow pace while you waited for the other person to reach their break in order to respond.
Dan ended up paired with Jack, who could talk more than enough for both of them. As Dan shovelled dirt from one of the piles into the form, Jack chattered cheerfully and rapidly about a silly incident he had once seen on his parents' farm.
"So," Jack said, "I was out with the plough teams this time - I'd just got old enough to work as a ploughboy, leading the oxen while a grown up steered the plough. Anyway, we were turning to start a new furrow, and I looked up, and there, along the base of the wall separating the fields, was a fox. Trotting along, he was, confident as you please, tail up, head up, paws moving elegantly as if he was posing for something and wanted to look his best." He grinned. "Pretty sure he was after a fat bird from our little flock of poultry, because it wasn't very long before he was coming back the other way. This time though, he was in a hurry, tail down, ears flat, looking over his shoulder, all confidence gone. Not even considering elegance. And right behind him, pelting along just as fast, beak right on the tip of the fox's tail, was the goose he must have gone for, taking her revenge for the insult!"
Dan made a small huff of amusement, and dumped the last spade load of dirt into the form. Jack picked up the ram and started pounding, an action which required both his hands, and earned Dan a merciful reprieve from his talking.
Although... he guessed the polite thing to do would be to trade a story for a story. He flicked a glance sideways at the next pair in line, Raven and Linnet, who seemed to be telling each other riddles or jokes. He wasn't sure which, and the format was much the same. They both seemed fine with it, but they were, after all, each others' twin and close enough not to want to be seperated.
"I don't have anything to match that story," he admitted slowly, buying himself time as he rummaged through a handful of possibilities. Most of his memories - the more pleasant ones at least - were routine stuff. Or quiet, end of a long trial, things. Catching fish, hunting rabbits, dealing with the weather. Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as he was concerned. Why would anyone be interested in ordinary trial to trial stuff? "Although, I guess, there was the time a stag picked a fight with a tree?"
Jack raised an eyebrow and made a sound like rather breathless interest, but the dull thudding of his ram against the dirt didn't falter for an instant.
Dan took that as Jack wanting to hear the story and drew in a deep breath to calm his nerves. Attention always made him feel as if he was going to be made fun of, as he had been all too many times when he was growing up in the orphanage. He swallowed, and began, carefully patterning it in the same way as the story that Jack had told.
"I was on the edge of the forest. I was, ah, looking for food? And there was this big old stag leading a bachelor herd. You can tell how old a stag is by the size of his antlers, they get bigger and more complex every time they shed and regrow them, which they do once an arc. His were truly magnificent. Anyway, he took a dislike to one of the trees and went stalking towards it. He circled the tree twice, then backed up a bit, lowered his truly magnificent set of antlers, and charged. He hit the tree trunk hard enough to make the whole tree shudder." Dan grinned wryly. He'd actually been up the tree at the time, and the reason the stag took a dislike to the tree was that Dan had, from his position in it, shot and killed one of the other deer in the herd with his bow. (It hadn't been so much a dislike of the actual tree, as an attempt to knock Dan out of the tree, so that he could be trampled under the stag's hooves.) "Tree was still standing, so he backed up and had another go. Same result. The stag didn't back off for a third run though. It wavered, propped up by the antlers resting against the tree trunk, wobbled for a moment and then toppled, looking almost resentful. So I guess the tree won the fight, in the end."
That earned him a small, wry, smile from Jack, but the young man finished his task before he said anything. Only when the dirt was hammered hard did he stop, breathing heavily. "Harder than it looks."
Dan glanced over at the makeshift sundial and nodded. "Break time."
The other pairs stopped with relief, and came over to drink water. The water in the waterskin was warm and flat tasting, but it was wet and it was quenching. Dan shook the skin, once everyone had had some and listened to the slosh inside. There wasn't much left. "I'll refill this," he told them, "before we go on." They nodded, and he went out to the lake and knelt on the shore to dip the waterskin into the clean water of the lake until it was full again. Water splashed as he waited, and when he got up again, his leggings were damp from the knee down. He didn't worry too much about it, not at this time of the arc and this season. They would dry soon enough in the heat of Saun. It would have been different in Zi'da.
He and Jack traded places, Jack taking up the shovel and Dan taking up the ram. Jack made quick work of the shovelling after his rest, and then it was Dan's turn to work. He lifted the ram and slammed it down, lifted it, and slammed it down, each impact jarring his arms and shoulders and chest. Beneath it, the earth slid together, compacting down, getting smaller and harder and more jarring with every blow of the ram. Dan gritted his teeth and kept going, even as Jack started another story to pass the time.
"So there was once this goat, right, that liked to stand on pieces of of bread. If you tried to take the bread away or protect it, the goat would thump you hard with its horns. No one liked the goat very much because of this, and all the people on the farm were tired of not being able to eat their bread in peace. When they asked the farmer why she didn't do anything about the goat, the old farmer considered the question. Finally, she said, 'Well, you see, butter belongs on bread, and if there is anything people can agree about my goat, it's that she's a very good butter...."
And under their hands, story by story, slow inch by pounded inch, the wall around the settlement rose.
"Signed words" Spoken words
In concept and theory, rammed earth walls were simple. You set up a mould called a "form" so that the earth actually packed down, rather than just going lower and wider. You shovelled earth into the form, hammered it with a ram until it was compacted to almost half the size and hard as stone, then shovelled more earth into the form and repeated the pounding on that.
In practice, it was slow and tedious and very hard work. There were six people for this, including himself, so Dan split them into pairs, one to shovel and one to pound. Each got a short break while the other worked, and on the hour, everyone took a brief breather, and a swig of water against the Saun heat, and then switched tasks. The time was marked out by a rough sundial that Dan had scratched into the dirt around one of the stakes used to outline where the buildings would eventually stand.
They were shoveling dirt that had been dug out of the ditch the previous trial, and it was still fairly loose, but there was a lot of it to shovel. The ram required less bending and lifting, but jarred the body at every stroke. They used different muscles for each task though, which in theory allowed the others to recover by switching. In practice, you ended up sore in a bunch of different places, but not, Dan had learned, as sore as if you didn't take breaks at all.
It also meant that signed conversations were possible, as long as you didn't mind a very slow pace while you waited for the other person to reach their break in order to respond.
Dan ended up paired with Jack, who could talk more than enough for both of them. As Dan shovelled dirt from one of the piles into the form, Jack chattered cheerfully and rapidly about a silly incident he had once seen on his parents' farm.
"So," Jack said, "I was out with the plough teams this time - I'd just got old enough to work as a ploughboy, leading the oxen while a grown up steered the plough. Anyway, we were turning to start a new furrow, and I looked up, and there, along the base of the wall separating the fields, was a fox. Trotting along, he was, confident as you please, tail up, head up, paws moving elegantly as if he was posing for something and wanted to look his best." He grinned. "Pretty sure he was after a fat bird from our little flock of poultry, because it wasn't very long before he was coming back the other way. This time though, he was in a hurry, tail down, ears flat, looking over his shoulder, all confidence gone. Not even considering elegance. And right behind him, pelting along just as fast, beak right on the tip of the fox's tail, was the goose he must have gone for, taking her revenge for the insult!"
Dan made a small huff of amusement, and dumped the last spade load of dirt into the form. Jack picked up the ram and started pounding, an action which required both his hands, and earned Dan a merciful reprieve from his talking.
Although... he guessed the polite thing to do would be to trade a story for a story. He flicked a glance sideways at the next pair in line, Raven and Linnet, who seemed to be telling each other riddles or jokes. He wasn't sure which, and the format was much the same. They both seemed fine with it, but they were, after all, each others' twin and close enough not to want to be seperated.
"I don't have anything to match that story," he admitted slowly, buying himself time as he rummaged through a handful of possibilities. Most of his memories - the more pleasant ones at least - were routine stuff. Or quiet, end of a long trial, things. Catching fish, hunting rabbits, dealing with the weather. Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as he was concerned. Why would anyone be interested in ordinary trial to trial stuff? "Although, I guess, there was the time a stag picked a fight with a tree?"
Jack raised an eyebrow and made a sound like rather breathless interest, but the dull thudding of his ram against the dirt didn't falter for an instant.
Dan took that as Jack wanting to hear the story and drew in a deep breath to calm his nerves. Attention always made him feel as if he was going to be made fun of, as he had been all too many times when he was growing up in the orphanage. He swallowed, and began, carefully patterning it in the same way as the story that Jack had told.
"I was on the edge of the forest. I was, ah, looking for food? And there was this big old stag leading a bachelor herd. You can tell how old a stag is by the size of his antlers, they get bigger and more complex every time they shed and regrow them, which they do once an arc. His were truly magnificent. Anyway, he took a dislike to one of the trees and went stalking towards it. He circled the tree twice, then backed up a bit, lowered his truly magnificent set of antlers, and charged. He hit the tree trunk hard enough to make the whole tree shudder." Dan grinned wryly. He'd actually been up the tree at the time, and the reason the stag took a dislike to the tree was that Dan had, from his position in it, shot and killed one of the other deer in the herd with his bow. (It hadn't been so much a dislike of the actual tree, as an attempt to knock Dan out of the tree, so that he could be trampled under the stag's hooves.) "Tree was still standing, so he backed up and had another go. Same result. The stag didn't back off for a third run though. It wavered, propped up by the antlers resting against the tree trunk, wobbled for a moment and then toppled, looking almost resentful. So I guess the tree won the fight, in the end."
That earned him a small, wry, smile from Jack, but the young man finished his task before he said anything. Only when the dirt was hammered hard did he stop, breathing heavily. "Harder than it looks."
Dan glanced over at the makeshift sundial and nodded. "Break time."
The other pairs stopped with relief, and came over to drink water. The water in the waterskin was warm and flat tasting, but it was wet and it was quenching. Dan shook the skin, once everyone had had some and listened to the slosh inside. There wasn't much left. "I'll refill this," he told them, "before we go on." They nodded, and he went out to the lake and knelt on the shore to dip the waterskin into the clean water of the lake until it was full again. Water splashed as he waited, and when he got up again, his leggings were damp from the knee down. He didn't worry too much about it, not at this time of the arc and this season. They would dry soon enough in the heat of Saun. It would have been different in Zi'da.
He and Jack traded places, Jack taking up the shovel and Dan taking up the ram. Jack made quick work of the shovelling after his rest, and then it was Dan's turn to work. He lifted the ram and slammed it down, lifted it, and slammed it down, each impact jarring his arms and shoulders and chest. Beneath it, the earth slid together, compacting down, getting smaller and harder and more jarring with every blow of the ram. Dan gritted his teeth and kept going, even as Jack started another story to pass the time.
"So there was once this goat, right, that liked to stand on pieces of of bread. If you tried to take the bread away or protect it, the goat would thump you hard with its horns. No one liked the goat very much because of this, and all the people on the farm were tired of not being able to eat their bread in peace. When they asked the farmer why she didn't do anything about the goat, the old farmer considered the question. Finally, she said, 'Well, you see, butter belongs on bread, and if there is anything people can agree about my goat, it's that she's a very good butter...."
And under their hands, story by story, slow inch by pounded inch, the wall around the settlement rose.
"Signed words" Spoken words
