Chapter 46: Stones and Shadows
Date: November 14, 1178Four days after the Battle of Jacob's Ford
The battlefield had gone quiet. The screams and cries of wounded men had faded into the wind, and now, only the low drone of hammers and pulleys echoed from the hill where the fortress stood.
The air was cold, heavy with the scent of scorched wood and churned earth. Fog clung to the Jordan River at dawn, drifting like ghosts among the dead trees.
But Jacob's Ford was alive again.
Construction had resumed.
Men moved with renewed urgency—masons, carpenters, engineers, ox-drivers, and water-bearers. Laborers repaired broken scaffoldings and repositioned cranes. Stone blocks were hauled up the slope using the new pulleys-and-gear system, a mechanical innovation that Ethan had brought from memory—sturdy wooden winches with toothed cogs and balance weights that tripled lifting speed and cut labor strain by half.
Progress, once agonizingly slow, was now methodical, controlled, and relentless.
Atop the central bluff, the partially built inner keep rose like a defiant fist, its walls thicker now thanks to adjusted designs from Ethan's notes—three meters deep at the base, sloped slightly to better deflect trebuchet fire. The battered sections from the battle were already being reinforced with limestone quarried from nearby cliffs.
The engineers had even begun to dig an internal well, to ensure that in any future siege, the fortress would not fall from thirst.
Command Ridge – Jacob's FordMidday