…or so he thought.  Around dusk he heard a disturbance in the front of the house.  Bork ignored it at first, but at lenght he could not.  Muttering idioms in dwarvish the abbot probably wouldn’t approve of he went to investigate.  The dwarf gaped at the activity.  Was the abbot running some sort of sick house here?  Well, of course.  He was an abbot and there was apparently no hospital in Pigeon Spit.  To whom else would these yokels turn if they needed healing?

Helping set broken bones was not a normal part of Bork’s skill set, but apparently this would be the new normal, at least until this Pigeon Spit town got bigger.  Any mining engineer had to know some first aid, of course; people got hurt in mines.  And Bork could help with herbs and such.  But setting broken bones was not part of his normal skillset.

[b]“Dammit, I’m an engineer, not a doctor!”[/b] he would exclaim, too annoyed to care if the abbot minded the breach in etiquette.  This had not been how he had planned to spend this morning. When they were able to take a pause from their ministrations, he pointed to the chest with the medicines in it.  [b]”I can help you more with those than I can setting bones,”[/b] he explained.  Curious, like a snooping house-guest, he peered at the bottles and jars, thinking.  [b]”We could use an herb garden,”[/b] he said after a moment.  [b]”At least some of these plants will grow around here.  Maybe we could start one once I’ve got the wall up.”[/b]

As he listened to the abbot’s ideas, he nodded thoughtfully. [b]”An official building of some sort is a must if this town is to grow,”[/b] he agreed.  [b]”At least one.  That’ll be one of the first things I’ll draw up working on my plan, in fact.”[/b]  And the next thing he would get on with was his plans for his log boom and timber-raft system.  And wheelbarrows.  There wasn’t much hope in much of any building project until they had a solution to moving large quantities of building supplies.

[b]”I’d just have the runner tell the quarrymen to start cutting all the rocks they can.  It’ll take me a while to figure out the right size for the order, but it’ll also take at least that long to fill it, anyway.  Once I have the numbers, I’ll send them so that they know when to stop.”[/b]  The dwarf shook his head.  [b]”We *really* need a wainwright,”[/b] he muttered.

He continued to think through the abbot’s suggestions.  [b]”Irrigation, sure,”[/b] he answered somewhat noncommittally.  People always liked the idea of irrigation systems.  But those could be tricky to design, since it involved changing the course of waterways.  Ideally, Bork would prefer to see what the creeks and rivers were like over the course of a year before designing any major irrigation systems.  But then he had a boss to humor, so perhaps he would just draw something up that looked good.  “Proposed” irrigation systems could always be redesigned before anybody started damming and digging.

Lastly he got to the mining ideas.  [b]“A smelter?  Sure.  But right now the only metal we’re digging up is copper.  We need to find us some other metals like tin, lead, zinc, iron before we can start smelting the good stuff.  As to the blast furnace?”[/b] he shook his head.  [b]”No, Your Grace,”[/b] he said, hoping the title would soften the blow of shooting down the abbot’s suggestion.  [b]”We don’t even have iron yet, let alone any way to make steel.  First things first:  as I said, prospecting for more metals.  Also, I *am* in the process of drawing up a bigger charcoal furnace, which we would also need for steel.”[/b]  In fact, he would be able to show the abbot his design for the furnace before midday.  Charcoal was ideal for smelting, and you definitely needed it for steel.  You could also use it for writing, and to make ink for even more writing.  And for absorbing moisture in a sick house.  And filtering medical preparations and water.  Good stuff, that charcoal.