"And the raising of those further two hundred men?" Oliver asked.
"It's coming along, no need to worry on that," Greeves said. "The first trickle might start arriving next week, if we're counting ourselves lucky… And then if we hire some outside builders from Ernest, we might be able to see our walls extended before winter, and we'll have the rest of the repairs complete as well. Not bad going, I'd say."
"Are meetings such as this a common occurrence?" Oliver asked. "It strikes me that it could have gone quite strongly in the opposite direction, given that was their intention from the start… They were looking to strangle the village, and we would have been strangled without your manoeuvring… Have you been doing this all the years that I am away?"
