The sawmill begins in the afternoon.
It does not ease into motion. It tears into it.
A shriek of iron splits the open air as the blade jerks upward, then slams down in a hard, punishing rhythm. The sound is violent—mechanical and wrong against the wide farmland. Water diverted from the canal rushes through a narrow ditch beside it, glinting under the sun. The current moves with quiet persistence. The machine it feeds does not.
The wheel turns. The cam catches. The blade rises again.
A log is rolled into place by two slave-soldiers, their shoulders already coated in drying sawdust from earlier tests. Their uniforms hang heavy with sweat and grit. One of them hesitates a fraction too long before pushing the timber forward.
"Steady." Aldo says.
Not loud. Not sharp. Just precise.
The log inches ahead. The iron teeth meet wood.
The bite is immediate. Fibers split with a cracking report that echoes faintly off the distant treeline. The blade drives down, shearing through grain that once took hours of manual sawing to conquer. Sawdust erupts in a pale cloud, sparkling in the hard light before drifting down onto skin, into hair, along collars and lashes.
The slave-soldier at the feed end flinches but does not pull away.
Aldo's gaze does not leave the mechanism.
He watches the waterwheel first, its rotation smooth but slightly uneven at the lower arc. He tracks the connecting rod, the cam's catch and release, the exact half-second delay before the blade descends. His eyes measure distance between hand and iron, between hesitation and harm.
"Hands clear before descent." he says.
The second slave-soldier nods quickly, jaw tight.
Planks emerge from the far side: rough-edged, splintered along the margins, still warm where friction burned through the core. Another slave-soldier steps in to pull them aside, stacking them with awkward care. He stares at the fresh-cut boards as if they are something unnatural.
"I thought it would take half a day…" he murmurs.
"Now it takes minutes." Aldo replies.
There is no pride in the statement. Only fact.
The blade slams down again. Up. Down. Up. Down.
Hano stands a little back from the spray, face streaked with grime, teeth flashing when he grins. "I named it Cellon."
Aldo does not look at him. He does not ask why. Names do not change torque or tension.
Instead, he steps closer to the frame, eyes narrowing slightly. The vibration through the wooden supports is stronger than before. One bolt along the guide rail trembles with each impact.
"You." he says, gesturing to a nearby slave-soldier. "Wedge that joint. Now."
The man moves instantly, hammer and shim already in hand. He does not question. He does not delay. Two sharp strikes. The rattling lessens.
Another log is rolled forward. This time the push is smoother. The slave-soldier feeding it keeps his palms flat, fingers splayed safely away from the teeth. Sweat drips from his chin onto the timber.
Aldo watches every descent of the blade.
He counts the rhythm silently. Measures the breathing of the men against the breathing of the machine. The danger is not in the iron alone, but in fatigue—in one misjudged second, one wandering thought.
"Rotate…" he says after the third plank clears.
The man at the feed end stiffens. "I can—"
"Rotate."
No anger. No argument.
Another steps in. The first backs away, chest rising hard, hands trembling now that the tension releases.
Cellon continues its brutal cadence, fed by quiet water and disciplined hands. Around it, slave-soldiers adjust, brace, lift, stack. No one cheers its efficiency. No one praises its strength.
And Aldo stands within reach of the screaming blade, eyes cold and unblinking, ensuring that progress does not claim a finger, a hand, or a life.
Inside the workshop (if it can be called that) the air hangs thick with heat and sawdust. The structure is little more than a reinforced shed: timber beams braced with iron straps, walls of uneven planks hammered into place, gaps left where wood failed to meet cleanly. Sunlight filters through those seams in narrow bands, striping the interior in alternating lines of gold and shadow. Dust drifts constantly through the light, rising and settling with every movement.
At the center stands the machine.
It is not elegant. It is built from heavy timber, pegged joints, iron brackets forged by hand. A broad waterwheel outside the shed turns slowly in its channel, fed by redirected current. The rotation travels inward through a thick axle, into a simple gear assembly, then into a cam fixed off-center. Each turn of the cam lifts the vertical armature. When the cam rolls past its apex, the arm drops. The blade follows.
Up. Down. Up. Down.
The rhythm fills the shed.
Aldo stands near a wooden board mounted against one wall. Chalk dust clings faintly to his fingers. He draws in firm, deliberate strokes: a circle for the wheel, a smaller offset shape for the cam, a straight vertical line for the blade's path. The lines are not artistic, but they are exact.
"This turns…" he says, tapping the wheel. A dull thud of chalk against wood. "…converts rotation into vertical motion."
He sketches an arrow curving around the wheel. Another arrow rising and falling beside the blade.
A slave-soldier nearby frowns, arms folded across his chest. Sweat traces down his temple, leaving a clean streak through sawdust. "Why not just… pull it down?" he asks. "We've always done that."
Aldo pauses. He studies the man briefly, not dismissive, not irritated.
Then he taps the drawn wheel again.
"Because then you get tired," he says evenly. "The water doesn't."
Silence follows, broken only by the steady creak of timber and the muted thud of the blade cycling in demonstration.
He steps closer to the machine itself and rests a hand lightly on the wooden frame, feeling the vibration through his palm. "A man pulling a saw can give strength for minutes. Maybe hours, if pushed." His gaze shifts to the slave-soldiers gathered around. "But strength fades. Grip slips. Attention wanders."
He gestures toward the spinning axle. "Water does not wander. It does not complain. It does not overreach."
One of the slave-soldiers glances at his own hands: callused, knuckles split from earlier labor.
"With this," Aldo continues, "you guide. You feed. You monitor. You do not exhaust yourself fighting the blade."
His eyes move deliberately across each of them, ensuring they follow. "If you are exhausted, you make mistakes. Mistakes near iron cost more than fatigue."
The slave-soldier who had frowned earlier looks back at the chalk drawing, then at the cam turning within the frame. Understanding settles slowly. Others nod, subtle but visible. They begin to see the separation between effort and output.
Aldo walks to the feed table and places a hand on a waiting log. "You control spacing. Keep hands clear. Let the cam lift. Let gravity drop." He steps aside. "The machine works. You supervise."
They position themselves again. This time, there is less strain in their shoulders. The push is measured, not forced. The blade rises and falls in steady cadence, shearing cleanly through grain.
Up. Down. Up. Down.
Movement smooths. Timing aligns.
Aldo watches without expression, arms folded behind his back. He is not admiring the machine. He is observing the men: breathing patterns, stance, hand placement. Ensuring that effort is conserved, that no one leans too far into unnecessary exertion.
Efficiency, to him, is not speed alone.
It is endurance without collapse.
The water turns. The cam lifts. The blade falls.
And this time, the men move with it instead of against it.
The saw jams near evening.
The blade screeches: a high, awful sound that sends a jolt through everyone nearby and then stops dead.
Someone reaches forward instinctively.
"Hands off!" Aldo snaps.
Silence crashes down instantly. Every movement freezes.
Aldo waits. He watches the wheel until it slows completely, water still flowing but motion gone. Only then does he gesture.
"Now !"
They fix it together.
A pin replaced. A shaft aligned. Fingers work carefully, deliberately, under his direction. No shouting. No threats. No punishment.
The machine resumes with a familiar scream.
No one flinches this time.
Only learning.
Signs go up on the walls by nightfall, written in thick charcoal strokes.
NO HANDS NEAR SHAFT
BLADE CHANGE ONLY WHEN STOPPED
NO ONE STANDS BEHIND FEED
A slave-soldier scoffs as he reads them.
"So many rules !"
That afternoon, a man slips.
His foot catches sawdust on packed earth. His body tilts forward, arms flailing for balance.
He should have lost fingers.
He doesn't.
By evening, no one laughs at the signs.
The sun lowers, light turning amber, then dull red.
Aldo checks the sundial, then his notes.
"Shift change…" he calls.
Groans ripple through the workers. Relief follows close behind. The tired sit. The rested stand. Movements are slower now, heavier, but still organized.
The machines do not stop.
Onaga Kei watches from the edge of the worksite, arms folded, eyes sharp despite fatigue.
"This could run all day," he says.
Aldo doesn't look up from adjusting a flow gate.
"It must!"
By the end of the week, dusk settles over a landscape that no longer resembles the one they first stepped into. The light fades slowly, turning the sky a muted copper-gray, casting long shadows between timber stacks and along the carved edges of earth. What had once been uneven ground and tangled growth now carries visible intention.
They stand among neatly stacked planks, their rough surfaces aligned in careful piles. Cleared forest paths cut through what was once dense underbrush, opening corridors of movement and sight. The canal network stretches outward in deliberate lines, branching across the land like veins traced by a steady hand. The cuts are clean now, reinforced where soil once crumbled. Yet the heart of it all remains absent. No water runs through the channels. The gates are not yet opened. The system exists in structure only, silent, waiting.
The stable stands halfway complete. Its frame is upright and properly braced, no longer leaning with quiet threat. Crossbeams hold firm. The roof is unfinished, but the angles promise shelter. Even incomplete, it suggests endurance.
Nearby, Cellon hums in low, rhythmic obedience. The waterwheel turns at a reduced flow, testing alignment rather than cutting timber. The mechanism no longer screams; it works.
A slave-soldier leans back against a timber post, shoulders sagging, chest rising and falling in slow, controlled breaths. Sweat has dried into pale streaks across his uniform.
"We didn't finish…" he says.
Aldo surveys the site: the canals, the beams, the stacked wood, the machine.
"No." he answers evenly. "But we started something that won't collapse tomorrow."
The men are exhausted. Hands blistered. Muscles strained.
But they are upright.
And nothing around them is falling.
Night settles fully.
The machines are silent now. Water is diverted back to rest. The land exhales.
Aldo sits alone under a lantern, reviewing names, rotations, injury logs. Pages turn quietly. His finger traces lines of charcoal and ink.
No deaths.
No permanent injuries.
Outside, the forest looms: dark, untouched beyond the cut lines. It watches without judgment.
[The battlefield was simpler.] Aldo realizes.
This land will demand years.
He closes the notebook.
Tomorrow, it continues.