Chapter 104: The Wall Moves

Boris chose the western battlement to make his point because from there Raymond could not pretend the problem was theoretical.

The old wall curved around the settlement below them, its stonework scarred by years of weather and repairs, but beyond it the new Althoff was already escaping.

The first avenue passed through an opened gate and continued toward the future Commercial District.

Farther east, rows of new houses stood beyond the protection of the fortifications, some completed, others showing timber frames beneath unfinished roofs. Wagons traveled roads that had not existed a month ago.

Construction yards, drainage trenches, lumber stacks, temporary kitchens, and material depots spread across land that the old defenses had never been intended to protect.

Boris rested both hands on the battlement and said, "My Lord, if someone attacks tomorrow, half the things we’re building are outside the wall."

Raymond followed his gaze across the expanding city. "Closer to a third."

Boris looked at him. "I appreciate the correction. I feel much safer now."

Raymond laughed, but the problem was real. Althoff’s old wall had been built for a frontier town of roughly twelve hundred people.

It enclosed the castle, the oldest residential streets, several workshops, storehouses, and enough open ground for the settlement that had existed before winter changed everything.

Now more than five thousand people lived under House Althoff, and the City Master Development Blueprint anticipated far more. The new Residential District alone pushed beyond the eastern wall.

The planned Commercial, Artisan, Industrial, Warehouse, Military, and Agricultural Processing Districts extended even farther. Raymond privately activated The Lord’s Eye while Boris continued discussing patrol coverage, and the ghostly future city appeared across his vision.

Then the planned outer defenses illuminated around it. Raymond stopped smiling. The future wall was not slightly farther out. It enclosed a territory several times larger than the old town, curving across fields, ridges, roads, and undeveloped ground deliberately reserved for later expansion.

Building it now would be insanity.

Mara confirmed that conclusion when Raymond brought Boris, Cassian, Kael, and Talia to the battlement later that morning.

The Master Plan’s defensive perimeter was designed around the city Althoff could become, not the buildings it currently possessed. If they built the entire wall immediately, quarry output would disappear into fortifications for months.

Thousands of wagon journeys would move stone away from houses, roads, warehouses, drains, bridges, and workshops. Masons would be pulled from every other project.

Lime production would become another bottleneck. Workers would spend enormous labor enclosing empty fields while families still waited for permanent homes.

Boris did not disagree. "I’m asking for defenses, not bankruptcy."

Raymond nodded. "Good. Because I was about to make you personally carry the stone."

Boris looked toward the enormous future perimeter marked on Talia’s map. "In that case, my Lord, I withdraw every concern I’ve ever had about security."

The solution was to begin the wall without pretending they could finish it. Kael’s survey teams received orders to walk the entire future perimeter and mark it physically.

Within days, colored stakes appeared across the countryside, sometimes running through empty grassland so far from current construction that farmers asked whether someone had become lost.

Surveyors measured elevations, soil stability, drainage, slopes, streams, and natural obstacles. Talia adjusted small sections where terrain made the original line unnecessarily expensive.

Cassian and Boris identified high ground that needed towers, approaches vulnerable to attack, and locations where defensive positions could control the main roads. The perimeter was not treated as a sacred line merely because the System blueprint suggested it.

Where a ridge offered better defense fifty meters away, they considered the ridge. Where low ground would create drainage problems beneath foundations, engineers shifted the route.

The blueprint provided the skeleton. Althoff’s people adapted it to the land beneath their boots.

Gate positions came next. The main southern gate would eventually receive traffic from the principal regional road and therefore needed enough width for merchants, wagons, military movement, and future growth.

An eastern gate aligned with the agricultural roads so harvest traffic could reach the Agricultural Processing District without crossing the entire city.

The western route connected toward quarry operations and future resource roads, while northern access remained more defensively restricted because of terrain and the direction of Blackridge.

Smaller service gates were discussed but postponed until the surrounding districts justified them.

At each planned major gate, surveyors drove heavier marker posts into the earth and cleared enough ground that anyone standing nearby could understand the scale of the future entrance.

No stone gatehouses rose yet. For now, Althoff was placing promises into the ground.

Strategically important sections received more than stakes. Near the eastern residential expansion, where hundreds of civilians would soon live beyond the old wall, Public Works began excavating the foundation for the first new defensive segment.

The trench ran along elevated ground and connected naturally to a temporary earthwork protecting the construction district. Quarry wagons delivered rough foundation stone, which masons packed into the base while drainage channels were installed before the wall could trap water around itself.

Another foundation section began near the future southern gate because the main avenue would eventually pass through it.

Rather than erect kilometers of unfinished wall, Althoff would build strong sections where population, roads, and strategic terrain made them useful, then connect those sections over time as material production increased.

Temporary defenses filled the gaps. Boris refused to leave active construction districts completely exposed while permanent fortifications remained years away. Workers dug shallow defensive ditches around vulnerable approaches and used excavated earth to create low embankments.

Timber palisades protected sections closest to occupied residential streets. Watch platforms rose at key points, built from standardized sawmill lumber.

Lantern posts and Mana Signal Beacons provided communication between outer work areas and established military positions.

Patrol routes expanded beyond the old gates, with conventional soldiers covering the broader perimeter while the Watch remained concentrated around populated streets, markets, and ordinary public security.

None of it could withstand the kind of assault a completed stone wall was meant to resist, but an attacker could no longer simply walk from open countryside into sleeping neighborhoods without being seen.

Boris also changed the military routine. Patrol maps now followed the future city rather than the old wall. Guards who had once considered leaving the gate equivalent to leaving Althoff discovered that houses, warehouses, sawmill operations, construction yards, and roads existed beyond those boundaries.

The wall had stopped defining where the settlement ended. One afternoon, Raymond watched a patrol leave the eastern gate, pass rows of new houses, continue beyond the sawmill road, and disappear toward a temporary watch post near the marked future perimeter.

The distance between the old wall and that post was large enough that the soldiers became tiny figures before reaching it. Raymond suddenly understood why the Master Plan had looked almost ridiculous when he first integrated it with The Lord’s Eye. He had been imagining a larger town.

The blueprint was preparing for a city.

He returned to the western battlement near sunset several days later. This time he came alone except for Lily, who had carried a basket containing bread and fruit because she had decided rulers apparently forgot meals whenever they climbed walls.

Raymond leaned against the stone and looked outward. The view had changed even since Boris first brought him there. New roofs spread eastward in ordered rows. The avenue formed a straight pale line through the landscape. Secondary roads branched from it toward construction zones.

Smoke rose from the sawmill and blacksmith workshops. Quarry wagons crawled along the western road. Beyond the buildings, agricultural fields stretched across dark soil, while tiny workers moved between irrigation channels and spring crops.

Farther still, barely visible marker stakes traced the future defensive perimeter across the horizon.

Lily followed his gaze. "The new wall is really going all the way out there?"

"Eventually."

"That’s huge."

"That’s the problem."

She tilted her head. "I thought huge was good."

Raymond smiled. "Huge is expensive."

He turned and looked down at the old wall beneath his hands. Months ago, these stones had represented the boundary between Althoff and everything outside it.

During winter, people had crowded behind them seeking safety. Guards had watched the gates because passing through meant leaving the settlement.

The Beast Tide had made those defenses feel painfully small, yet they had still defined Althoff’s shape.

Now a completed street passed beyond them.

Families were moving into houses beyond them.

Workers ate lunch beyond them.

Markets, workshops, warehouses, roads, fields, and military positions were spreading beyond them.

One day, if the Master Plan was fulfilled, travelers entering through the future outer gates would walk through entire districts before ever reaching this wall.

These battlements would no longer defend the edge of Althoff. They would stand somewhere inside it, an old ring of stone surrounding the Historical Core, a reminder of how small the territory had once been.

Raymond activated The Lord’s Eye.

The future wall appeared across the distant landscape, enclosing roads, districts, fields reserved for development, and empty spaces that someday would not be empty.

For the first time, he ignored the individual buildings and looked only at the distance between where he stood and where that wall would eventually rise.

Then he understood.

They were not moving the wall because Althoff had grown beyond it.

They were moving the wall because Althoff had only begun to grow.