Tiller went to work.

  The earth sigil and the shovel sigil could move a lot of earth in a short time.

  The point of contention had been the planted ground. Cutter had voted to tear that earth up as well and add it to the fortifications. Tiller had refused, insisting that they could find enough earth elsewhere to build their defenses. They had the mountain of earth that had come from the destruction of Gronk’s form. There were walkways, paths, unplanted ground.

  The farm had probably progressed to the point that if meticulously used it could produce a thousand gold per harvest. As it stood Tiller estimated that he had around 750 gold worth of crops in the ground. They weren’t there long, but he thought of the agreement he had made with Willy. The deal gave him nerves. He thought about the way Willy had spoken about having means to make sure people honored their deals.

  Willy traveled the Barren in his huge mechanical wagon. He moved from settlement to settlement with a fortune of goods. If he had existed long enough to become as rich and powerful as he seemed to be then he must surely be equipped with vast capabilities for violence.

  He didn’t want to pause production and create a new problem by being late for Willy.

  Cutter’s attitude could have been surmised concisely by the sentiment: “Fuck Willy, we’ve got a big problem right now.”

  The tiebreaker went to Reader. The mild-mannered mage was torn. He certainly didn’t want to die this night. But neither did he want to die in the near future at the hands of an automaton stranger with unknown powers. In the end what guided his vote was what ultimately motivated all of them. Even Cutter, with his insistence that this was a great big dream, had become increasingly focused on generating the funds needed to buy their way home. For Reader the urge was no less. He thought of the touch of his wife’s soft hands in the darkness of the night. He thought of his children growing in his absence. He opted to keep the crops in the ground.

  Cutter took this poorly at first, storming off, cursing to himself.

  Tiller just took the license and went to work, Reader lending his engineering skill to improve the quality and durability of the walls that Tiller erected.

  They did have enough earth for walls to encompass the entire farm, but compromises needed to be made. Tiller did not assume the ogres to be stupid. Quite the opposite in fact. He had seen how clever and organized they were. He had seen how that belied their appearance. He would not be lulled into thinking them dimwitted monsters. He did, however, expect that they would come with their blood up. He expected they would come angry and confident in both their weight of numbers and superior physical abilities. So he diverted the bulk of the earth to the side of the farm he expected them to approach. He constructed walls on all sides, but on the side nearest the ogre ranch he built them higher.

  The work took some hours. As he worked, they all kept their eyes on the smoke.

  Cutter found himself with his hands hanging. Tiller was busy constructing the walls. Reader was assisting him while working hard on weaves and what remained of their supply of felled lumber. He stood, glancing from his working companions to the pillar of smoke against the rapidly greying sky. Norris stood with him, equally useless during the construction.

  Cutter, staring at the horizon, the black smoke becoming harder to discern as the sky faded further towards darkness, murmured, “I don’t suppose that’s a good sign. We’re all running around like that means bad shit’s going down over on the ranch… but suppose they ran into trouble? It is the Barrens. Maybe the smoke means they got hit by some third party. Maybe they’re getting raided or something.”

  Norris glanced to him. “My dear boy, I can’t fathom where one should even start in response to such a statement. Do you truly believe providence could be so timely? What would be the probability, my good man, that an event of such unexpected advantage would befall them on this very night?”

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  Cutter stuttered, “Well… shit’s fucking weird in this place…”

  Norris went on, “And would that truly be something that we would benefit from? Consider, my good man, just one moment. The ogre ranch is a force that we fear on an existential level. Their combined force of arms substantially exceeds our own. All of this”—he gestured to the construction going on before them—“is an endeavor of hope. Our hope is that we shall not face the full force of the ogre ranch, but rather a subset of their powers. We prepare ourselves to do battle with Tonk’s faction, for against the totality of the ogres’ ranch we could do naught but flee.”

  Cutter said, “What’s your point?”

  Norris cast him a withering glance. “My dear boy… If a force of raiders, this third party you speculate upon, were to descend on the ranch, and have sufficient weight of numbers or force of arms, to do away with them… well then, one would rather expect that we would be next, wouldn’t one? And should we be beset by a force that destroyed the ranch, considering that the ranch exceeds our own capacity, then the force that dispatched them would make quick work of us, would it not?”

  Cutter considered this for a moment. He kept watching the column of smoke, his pupils twitching as he considered this. “Shit… okay. But you don’t think that’s what’s going on?”

  Norris shook his head. “Hardly. That ranch is a generation old at least. It seems beyond the realm of reasonable expectation that it would have survived all this time only to succumb to some unknown actor on the eve of our conflict.”

  Cutter said, “Then what do you think is happening?”

  Norris shrugged, his narrow shoulders rising and falling, “My dear fellow, that I know not. That, I know not.”

  Tiller looked to them from where he worked, bent over his task, shovel in hand. Sweat gleamed on his brow and bare arms. “Civil war.”

  Cutter raised an eyebrow, “What?”

  Tiller’s face sagged from exhaustion, but it quivered to something else as he answered. Guilt maybe? Or remorse? Sadness even. “Cronk was standing up for us. He’s old. He’s coming to the end of his time. I don’t think he wants Tonk taking over the farm. Tonk’s capable, he never indicated anything else. But Tonk’s dark as well. I don’t think Cronk wants his ranch going into Tonk’s hands. I think he feared Tonk would use his campaign against us to rally enough of the family to his side to become the next patriarch.”

  Cutter said, “But that only became a possibility when Cronk objected to murdering the lot of us, didn’t it? Why the hell didn’t he just send the whole gang over here and be done with us.”

  Tiller said, “Because he’s not a bad guy. He’s seen enough fighting and unpleasantness in his long life. He’d rather be a good neighbor. And, well, I guess, even doing that would have been supporting Tonk, wouldn’t it? So he had at least two good reasons to try to avoid this.”

  Cutter raised a brow, “You said ‘had’ there, pal.”

  Tiller looked back at him, “What?”

  Cutter smiled thinly, no pleasure evident in the expression, only consolation. “You said he had two good reasons, not has two good reasons.”

  Tiller paused, a flash of pain lancing across his face. He raised his own head to look toward the smoke. The sky had grown dark enough that it was nothing but a darker shadow against a canvas of darkness.

  He glanced back at Cutter. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  Cutter said, “But there was meaning in what you said, wasn’t there?”

  Norris looked between the two of them, his own expression becoming wrought. “I say, pip pip, there’s no good to come from such speculation.”

  Tiller pointed at the rising smoke. “That’s not a theoretical fire that’s burning over there.”

  Norris pressed his lips tightly together and said nothing.

  Tiller said, “Something bad is happening over there. And you’re right, it’s hardly because of an outside force. Now, you tell me, what you think has that fire going?”

  Cutter said, “Some weird ogre-ish ritual?”

  Tiller shook his head. “I don’t think they’re superstitious. Believe me, they’re certainly not savages. Don’t let what you believe about ogres from the media in our world confuse you. These guys are as smart and civilized as you or me.”

  Cutter frowned. “So you think it means trouble?”

  Tiller said, “I think it means what I said it means. There’s a civil war going on over there. A family feud. And I’ll bet it’s seeing blood spilled. All we can do now is hope the right side wins.”

  He looked down at the shovel in his hands and up the partly finished mounded wall. “Well that, and get ready for the bad stuff.”