Relying on this kind of primitive hand-carrying, there was simply no way to support the scale of agriculture he had in mind.
And if a sustained drought came — no harvest at all would be the inevitable outcome.
No. Absolutely not.
Agriculture and grain were the foundation of any medieval society, especially in a domain like his — limited land, growing population.
Three rivers ran through his territory, splitting off from the Moonstone Mountains and flowing down across his lands. The whole domain was a great slope, descending from the mountains to the Green Fork. With proper irrigation infrastructure, it could be one of the finest agricultural zones in the Riverlands.
If things weren't so complicated right now — if the domain wasn't still in the middle of large-scale reconstruction — he would have already started mobilizing people to build a dam up in the mountains.
Solomon pulled his horse around and drove back toward the Lion's Den at full gallop.
He turned in the saddle without slowing.
"Brin!! Find me the most experienced farmers you can! Every one of them! Bring them to me now!!"
The Lion's Den was close. Solomon was off the horse before it fully stopped, leaving the other riders still pulling up behind him.
He went straight to the study. Evelyn was at the table with the account books.
"Evelyn!!"
"Come here, quickly!"
She set down her pen. One look at his expression told her this was not the moment for questions. She rose and came to him.
He went to the great oak table and spread a blank sheet of parchment across it without ceremony, pressing the corners flat.
"Evelyn — take a pen!"
He stared at the blank surface. Knowledge from another world was surging up in his mind — but it wouldn't translate into strokes on paper. Come on. Move.
Shortly, Brin came in, broad-shouldered, wood shavings still on his hands, with a cluster of weather-dark, cautious-looking farmers behind him. They all looked at Solomon staring at the blank parchment with expressions of puzzled uncertainty.
Solomon pressed the pen onto the table.
"Evelyn. Draw a wheel. An enormous one."
Evelyn loaded the quill and began moving it across the parchment.
Solomon thought for a moment. Something like this... yes. Though Westeros doesn't have bamboo, so it will need to be wood.
"Along the rim of the wheel, attach a ring of hollow wooden tubes. The mouths of the tubes should be angled — like this—"
He demonstrated the angle with his finger in the air.
"The lower part of the wheel needs paddle boards that can be pushed by water current."
"Beside the wheel, build an elevated trough — positioned exactly right to catch the water that pours from the tubes."
This technology — the noria, the tube waterwheel — had not yet developed in Westerosi agricultural practice. To everyone in the room, this was a completely alien structure.
The drawing took shape under Evelyn's pen. Brin and the farmers crowded around it, their faces written over with complete incomprehension.
Solomon's finger came down on the diagram. His voice was calm and firm.
"Watch this."
He pointed to the paddle boards at the base of the wheel.
"We position this in the Little Trident. The current strikes these boards and turns the wheel by itself."
His finger moved to the tubes on the rim.
"As the wheel rotates, the tubes dip into the water and fill themselves."
"Then the wheel keeps turning and carries the full tubes upward."
He pointed to the elevated trough.
"Because the mouths are angled, when each tube reaches the top, the water tips out on its own and flows into this trough."
"From the trough, we dig channels — and we can direct the river water to any point on the hillside we choose."
He raised his finger and pointed at all of them.
"My land drops from the Moonstone Mountains down to the Green Fork — the whole terrain is one long slope!!"
"If we build enough of these wheels along the tributaries, and dig out an irrigation network between them, we can bring water to every part of this domain!!"
The study went silent.
Everyone was staring at the drawing and at Solomon with the expressions of people who have just heard something completely unreasonable.
Brin spoke first. His brow was furrowed.
He was a blacksmith — he was looking at the engineering problem. His finger went to the wheel on the diagram.
"Lord Solomon."
"A wheel this size — the weight of the wood alone is difficult to imagine. Can the Little Trident actually generate enough current to push it?"
One of the farmers — Roan — rubbed his hands together. He had followed Solomon to war against House Lege, but standing this close to his lord was still something new. He chose his words carefully, voice dry.
"Lord Solomon... my family has always watered the fields with buckets."
"Water... water only runs downward. That's the rule set by the Seven."
"I've never heard of water going up on its own. This..."
He trailed off.
"This sounds like it might be dark magic."
Their lifetime of experience, their bones-deep knowledge of the land, was resisting. This was natural. People fight what they have never seen. People living in medieval conditions fight it even harder.
Unless — the thing in question stood to benefit them directly.
Solomon looked at the doubt on their faces. He did not feel irritated. He smiled.
He knew that for people without formal education, no argument was as powerful as evidence. He looked at Brin.
"Brin — go find some thin wooden strips and some clay."
"We're not building the large one first. We'll build a small one and see."
Brin had plenty of questions. But Solomon's orders were Solomon's orders. He returned quickly with the materials.
Solomon rolled up his sleeves and worked alongside Evelyn and Brin — following the diagram's proportions, fitting thin strips of wood into a small wheel frame, shaving tiny wooden tubes, fixing them to the rim at the right angles.
The three of them worked together. Within a reasonable time, a palm-sized working model was complete.
They carried it to the water channel inside the castle — a stone channel that fed water from the mountain into the keep.
Solomon lowered the model in carefully, adjusted its position, and let go.
The current struck the small paddle boards.
The model shuddered.
Everyone stopped breathing. They gathered in a ring.
Then — under every pair of eyes in the room — the small wooden wheel began to turn.
One rotation. Then another.
The tiny tubes dipped beneath the surface. The wheel lifted them back up, each one brimming with crystal drops.
When the first full tube reached the highest point of the wheel's arc, the angled mouth tipped — and the water ran out in a clean, accurate stream directly into the small wooden trough positioned to receive it.
Water.
Water.
Time seemed to stop.
The farmers' eyes went wide as brass rings. Their mouths dropped open without them noticing.
A thin, steady thread of clear water ran along the wooden trough and spilled out over the small sandbox someone had placed beside it, soaking the dry sand dark.
Evelyn took the model out of the water and turned it over in her hands, her fingers moving over every joint, every connection, trying to understand the principle from the object itself.
The farmers started making sounds.
"It... it really moved..."
"This... this is impossible..."
"The water... the water went up by itself..."
They stared at the little wheel still turning in the channel — still scooping, still lifting, still pouring — and the amazement broke into something that looked like reverence. They pressed their hands together. Words started coming out in broken murmurs.
"The Seven have appeared before us!! This is the Smith's miracle!! The Smith has given us this!!"
"Lord Solomon must have been blessed by the Smith himself!!"
Evelyn held the model, her sapphire eyes lit with the particular brightness of someone discovering a new continent. She looked at Solomon with an expression she had never worn before — not the steady, composed attentiveness he was used to seeing on her face, but something rawer.
How much more is inside this young man's head?
Solomon looked at Brin. He was smiling.
"Brin."
"Now — do you think we can build the large one?"
Brin's face had gone dark red — partly excitement, partly what looked like shame at having doubted for even a moment.
He answered at full volume.
"Yes, My Lord!! We absolutely can!!"
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