Chapter 509: A New Kind of Village
Hours later, as the sun began to slip beneath the western mountains, a carriage bearing Ashlynn and her coven clattered along a recently built dirt road toward the newest village in the Vale of Mists.
"I know it’s a bit rough," Ollie said as the carriage jostled its occupants while bouncing along the road. "Most of the roads connecting villages are designed more for carts than carriages, but with so much material to transport to the village, we needed to be at least able to have wagons coming along the road."
"Then will you let the forest grow back now that you’re done building the village?" Heila asked, gazing out the carriage window at the clear-cut path that had been blazed through the cedar forest to make way for the dirt road. "It’s a lot of work to maintain a road like this."
"I think we’ll pave it," Ollie said, surprising both Heila and Virve with his simple declaration. There were plenty of old ruins of paved roads scattered across the Vale. Still, most of them dated to the days before the Vale of Mists fell to the Lothians, and they’d long ago become overgrown relics of an era that had ended.
"This village is different from the others in the Vale," Ollie explained. "You’ll see when we get there, but the people aren’t as separated from each other as the other villages in the Vale of Mists."
"You sound very proud of it," Ashlynn said, smiling as she looked at the young man Ollie had grown into while she and Heila were away in the Briar. During the months she and Heila had spent training, she’d occasionally regretted leaving Ollie in the Vale of Mists. If she’d understood about covens before she left, she might have brought him along with her, and then he could have benefited from Amahle’s instruction as well.
But, seeing him now, Ashlynn was glad she had left him here. She never would have expected Sir Thane to suggest that Ollie take responsibility for building a village, but the things he’d learned and the ways he’d grown as he rose to meet that challenge were things that accompanying her to the Briar could never have given him.
"I am proud," Ollie said in a tone that was neither boastful or humble. "Look, you can see the dam up ahead," he said, pointing to a large wooden dam that defined the southern slope of the hillside where an old creek had been blocked to create a large pond for the village. "The village is still set back a ways from the pond," the flame-haired youth explained. "Old Nan says that the pond will keep growing through the winter rains and the spring thaws. We won’t have its full size until next summer, but we’re already starting to stock the pond with trout," he grinned.
"You’re trying to lure her to visit your village with fresh fish, aren’t you?" Heila teased. "You know that won’t work. The river Luath flows right by the castle. We won’t ever run out of fish."
"But I’ll still visit," Ashlynn said, looking from Ollie to the village that was slowly coming into view through the carriage windows. "As long as we’re welcome, that is," she said, giving Ollie a concerned look.
The village was indeed different from any other village in the Vale of Mists and that started with the outer palisade wall. Most villages in the Vale of Mistsl, like Orava, made do with a simple wooden wall that served mostly to keep livestock from wandering away and to keep wild animals from wandering into the village. The Vale’s real defenses, its layers of curtain walls, were at the mouth of the Vale along the river Luath to guard against a Lothian siege.