by Peter Rhodan
Word came south that Maximus was tied down at Vindolanda. The commander of the troops there was apparently no friend of Maximus and had shut the gates in his face so Maximus had called up some of his infantry and was going to lay siege to the fort. Arcadius and Valerius both laughed at this and Arturo was pleased because it gave him more time to build his power base.
Iron began to flow from the furnace and the drop forge proved its worth quickly in enabling the production of more wrought iron than was common in the area. Ceri and Arturo continued experimenting with some way of making steel in quantity even as work started on a bigger, more efficient furnace. Arturo could remember reading about something called an open hearth furnace but exactly what this was he had no clear idea.
While they worked on various ideas he designed a wheeled plough that dug three furrows at once and could still be pulled by one oxen. Casting the wheels took some experimentation but he persevered having steam powered trains tucked away in the back of his mind. Eventually a simple carriage mounted on cast wheels was produced, the three plough prongs being cast into a weight bearing bar which was hung under the carriage frame. The local farmers were at first leery of the device, but Arcadius adopted it and once he had his people using it and it’s obvious advantages were apparent, he was soon followed by others in the area. Although not improving actual plant growth, it speeded up ploughing allowing farmers more time for other things, such as bringing more land under cultivation. One of the side effects was that land that had been lying idle because it was either marginal or because the owners had died or had left now began to be occupied by those farmers who had ploughing capacity to spare.
Cloth was another area he began making improvements in. He could remember that power looms had been one of the key items in the industrial revolution back on old Earth but he needed power to get anything like that going but what he did know was something about old fashioned looms having seen a room full of them on a backward planet his ship had made contact with. He discovered Meries’ wife Berwyn was one of the main weaving ladies in town and took a good look at her loom. His memory was hazy and he hadn’t really been interested in the primitive looms he had seen all those years before but he soon developed an idea based on a cross between his vague memories and Berwyn’s device. After roughing up a plan he to proceeded set one of the town carpenters to work building a new and much larger loom design.
Arturo finally decided to have a new silver coin die made, again copying the most recent Imperial silver coin he could find and began recasting old coins and buying up any silver objects people wanted to sell so he could get more coins into circulation. The small number of people that had survived in Alauna or had moved in to re-settle the place since the Scotti raid also approached him to come under his control which was gratifying at least.
Valerius and Julianus immediately loved the stirrups and more of the modified saddles were ordered. A Saxoni turned up who knew how to ride and was added to the cavalry force. Arturo also developed a drum that could be worn and played on the march like the ones in the military bands back home. This took some time to work out but eventually a suitable design was developed and several were produced. A couple of local lads were hired to play them and soon his army had a small drum corps that could march and play. A flag was also made up. This was made from red cloth with a blue diagonal cross, another memory of home as this was the basis of the Federation flag. Apparently Rufanig or Ruman armies didn’t use big flags but rather metal dragon heads with a cloth bag that made a strange noise in the wind. Arturo had no problem with them fitting such a device to his flag pole to keep the locals happy!
The experiments with various secondary furnace designs eventually led to them producing a small amount of good steel in a crucible like thing Ceri came up with, much to Arturo’s relief. While the amounts produced were quite small the whole process could be scaled up and a larger version of the successful design was developed, requiring yet another water wheel to power the necessary bellows. A special wagon was developed using the cast wheels from the plough design to carry lumps of the cast iron to the new furnace. The small size of the first furnace also lent it to experimenting with various additives and in the process they developed a type of spring steel, albeit one that was not overly springy and only in small quantities till they could find better sources for the additives.
He had some of this spring steel run into a mould about a metre long and only a few centimetres wide. The resulting bar he had one of the men hammer flat and then had a hole drilled in each end. He then realised he would need to use a wire cable so had to wait till a means of drawing wire was set up. It was fortunate that Ceri had some idea of how to do this and with some advice from Lewarth when the first couple of attempts failed to work as desired, they eventually came up with a workable wire drawing process. In practice it was a slow way of obtaining wire but eventually he had several strands of thin wire which Arturo had wound together into a rope, a laborious process by hand power.
He had previously designed on parchment a geared device based on the hand powered jacks that were still used in the Federation for simple tasks, particularly with ground vehicles under repair. He used some more of the new steel to create dies to cut these shapes from iron and used the die cutting forge to produce several sets. The carpenter building the new looms was approached and his apprentice given the task of modelling a wooden stock for Arturo’s crossbow design.
Not everybody was happy with the changes and growth being wrought in the area by Arturo’s gold especially with more and more people turning up to look for work. In the middle of this burgeoning industrial revolution or at least the first steps towards such a revolution, Jacob also returned from Londinium bringing a cousin named Isaac with him. Jacob was keen on starting the bank Arturo had described to him and soon an agreement was drawn up on some of the limited amount of parchment Arturo had been able to acquire. There was some discussion but eventually they settled on Jacob having thirty percent of the shares, his companion representing a different group would have twenty percent and Arturo would hold thirty percent. He remaining shares would be held for later.
The capital was agreed at one hundred thousand gold coins so Arturo had to put up thirty thousand of it. Here things ground to a halt as both Jacob and Isaac had not realised that they would have to actually carry that much money with them. In the end they put up three thousand and two thousand respectively. Arturo now introduced them to a new surprise. He had Ceri take some Battle Steel, or palladium as he was now calling it, and work it so that the die used for the silver coins could also be used to turn out a supply of palladium coins. These coins were a little larger than the gold coins and with the ostensible ratio set at one to twenty five it was decided that these palladium coins would be worth thirty gold solidi each. A hundred of these provided Arturo with his three thousand gold coin equivalent and he had some extras run off as well.
He also introduced his Jewish partners to decimal numbers something that no one hereabouts used. The concept of zero took them a while to grasp but once they did they were amazed at how elegant this new form of counting was. He had included anyone else who was interested in the class and the two Jewish bankers had been joined by Julianus, Arcadius, Briffet, a man from Alladraef who could read and write as well as a man from somewhere south who claimed to have been a scribe in Constantius’ court before his ignoble end. This man brought a wife and three children to Dervent in his train and appeared to be reasonably well off. Arturo hired this fellow almost immediately as the first bureaucrat in the area.
Using the bank documents as a pattern, Arturo and Ceri had the man draw up proper documents for an iron works company and a group of local tradesmen formed the Dervent Building Company. This immediately borrowed a thousand gold from the Bank of Dervent to finance building a whole new street of brick homes for all the extra people in the area.
Lewarth had been watching Ceri’s iron works grow but lacked the funds to do similar expansion to his own
small works at Wern. After discussing things with Arturo he agreed to form a company as well, with Ceri taking up one tenth and Arturo two tenths. The money the two injected enabled Lewarth to finish building a combined coke oven and furnace at his works as well. At Wern, Arturo found an old man who owned a small farm who knew how to make glass. He set him and his sons up to look at making glass on a large scale, using coal for fuel like the ceramic operation now in full swing at Dervent.
Dileen of Wern would not acknowledge Arturo’s overlord ship, although amicable about it, pointing out that sooner or later Maximus would move against Arturo and then where would Dileen be then. This was something Arturo couldn’t really argue with at this point especially as Combrosius had moved north from Eboracum which movement in turn forced Maximus to raise his siege and retire to Luguwalion. Here he was apparently waiting for Combrosius to assault him and was busy fixing up his defences in preparation for this eventuality.
Talking with Valerius about titles and Ruman history brought up the title of Princeps that the first Emperor had used but Arturo felt it had the wrong connotations and eventually they settled on the term Primarius as his title. He did up a proclamation announcing that he was taking responsibility for the security of the region under the title Primarius and would ensure good government for all under his protection. Dileen still refused to accommodate him and as Wern was the only local town still standing that was also a port Arturo resolved to force the issue while Maximus was still otherwise occupied watching Combrosius.
His design for a crossbow had a few teething problems as the still mild steel they were producing was not really springy enough but after a much frustration he remembered a picture of a layered design used as a spring on early railway wagons, what on old Earth had been known as a leaf spring although the reason it was named thus eluded him and the image he could remember looked nothing like a leaf! After some experimentation a design with three layers of theses leaves evolved, coupled with a wire string and cocked with an adaption of the hand jack gears of his own world. On the final design it took six cranks of the jack arm to pull the wire string back to the locking device. When the simple release trigger was clicked the arrow went down range with considerably more force than any manuballista that Valerius or anyone else had ever seen much to Arturo's relief.
Construction of the new manuballistas began in earnest and the men began training with the first of them almost immediately. After some discussion they settled on each man carrying a manuballista on his back using a strap tied to the bow. They would then carry a shield and spear, the spear having a spike at the reverse end so that when the men were in position they could stick it in the ground upright and lean their shield against thus leaving their hands free to use the new bow.
This meant their combat weapons were close at hand and the shield at least afforded some little protection from the large oval shape and they could in fact crouch behind to reload. It all added to the weight the men carried but once they saw the bows in action they all wanted to have one. In practice they were reasonably accurate out to about a hundred paces and aimable out to about two hundred with practice, but their maximum range was closer to five hundred and Arturo could see some uses for a large volumes of arrows being fired at long range even it they were essentially unguided. The real trick was going to be slowing a charging enemy down enough to decimated them with the archery. At least if the archers were seriously outnumbered.
Chapter 10
The Scotti
Con Lewellius heard the beat of some sort of drum long before those making the sound appeared over the rise. He watched the men of this Arturo fellow come marching up over crest with some trepidation given the things he had heard. The lead group swung right, probably about ten men. The second group turned left, also of ten men. These two groups marched five paces each, right or left then halted. On command the first group turned to face the men of Wern as one, although they kept marching on the spot. The second group did the same moments later. The third group of ten spread out in the centre. Behind them came four young looking men with drums seemingly strapped to their legs and two men who carried huge flags. One was red with a blue diagonal cross. The other was white with a red cross and in the centre of which was a symbol Con couldn’t quite make out at this range. When all thirty, two rows deep, were lined up there was a shouted command upon which they all stopped marching at once. There immediately came a second command and they rested the bottom their large shields on the ground next to them on the left and allowed their spears to drop their butt end down on to the ground to their right.
Each man was wearing a greenish blue uniform and besides the large shield and long spear they looked to have some weapon strapped to their backs and a leather container rather like a short quiver on their right hips. On their heads they wore a simple helmet that looked like it was iron and most sported some sort of metal scale armour although a couple had ring mail vests instead.
“Damn that’s impressive.” He found himself saying to Dileen.
“If anything Bryn understated how scary they are.” Dileen answered quietly. ”I am awfully afraid he was right about their effectiveness.” As they watched there was another command and the soldiers drove their spears into the ground. He couldn't see but he presumed that each had a butt spike as they spears stayed upright. The men the moved their shields over so they leaned against the spears and smoothly pulled the other weapon around from behind them. Bryn had told them of the new manuballistas they were supposed to be armed with, but this was the first time Con had seen one. He decided almost immediately that being in front of them was not a good place to be!
Con nodded to his partner. “I thought he was exaggerating I must admit. Seeing them lined up opposite us is much more intimidating than I anticipated.” A quick glance at townsmen lined up behind him showed they were impressed as well. The casual attitude was gone and they all looked very serious now.
Dileen nodded. “Aye, that's the truth.” He noticed a group of mounted men had moved up to the right of the infantry. One of them now rode forward. He appeared to be a man of average looking height although it was hard to be certain as he was mounted. He wore a Rufanig cavalry helmet on his head, and a dark, almost black breastplate. He had a strangely shaped shield strapped to his horse behind the saddle and his feet were in some sort of metal foot rest hanging from the saddle in leather straps.
He halted maybe fifty yards short and sat looking at the men of Wern for a few moments. “I am Arturo, Primarius of the Ruman Republic. I would speak with Dileen, Mair of Wern.” He bellowed.
“Here we go.” Dileen said to Con and strode forward. After a moment Con decided he had better back his boss up and followed him forward but staying a couple of paces back so as not to look too threatening.
Arturo watched as a solid man who he guessed was in his fifties stomped out of the loose formation of troops facing his men. He wore a plain helmet with cheek pieces, mail armour and an oval Rufanig style shield with a sun pattern on the front. Another man followed him shortly after but stayed behind. Arturo presumed the fellow must be the second in command. The sheild pattern identified him as someone who had served in Legio Praesidienses, one of the Legiones that had been stationed in Brittania until Constantius took them to the continent from where they had never returned as a body. Several of the men Arturo had under arms had also served in it and he knew the design from them.
“Greetings Dileen. I see you have heard of our coming.” Arturo said waving his arm at the sixty or seventy armed villagers clumped together thirty paces away.
Arturo’s nonchalant approach obviously worried Dileen who scowled at him. "What do you want?" The man asked halting ten paces short of Arturo. "You and your little army?” The man said loudly obviously trying to sound confident and a little belligerent. As he might, given that he outnumbered Arturo nearly two to one, although he did lack any cavalry.
”I felt it was time for a show of force, so to speak. I am trying to restore order
to this area. More than that I am trying to foster economic growth and in the process hopefully improve everyone’s lot. It is clear that things are not as, ah, healthy as they once were.” Arturo finished waving his hand a slightly in the direction of the run-down fort Dileen called home. Now that Arturo was able to see it closer the Rufanig fort appeared not only run down but falling down as well! In fact it looked worse than the fort at Derventio had looked when Arturo first arrived.
Dileen did not seem prepared to argue this point merely grunting then pointed at Arturo's men and responded. “Yes, well be that as it may, the main question is what are you going to do when Maximus comes calling?”
Arturo grinned. “Well hopefully he will be open to negotiation.”
Dileen spat then smiled wryly. “Don’t know him well do you?” He replied, and Arturo felt he was only half joking.
Arturo nodded. “Others have had a similar reaction to my plans. The best result all round would be a negotiated arrangement with him but no one seems to think I will succeed. Give the general consensus amongst my advisors I shall certainly not be relying simply on diplomacy I can assure you.” He stopped and looked beyond Dileen’s men to where there had appeared a man running and waving his arms. “I hope we can come to an arrangement because it will definitely be easier with your assistance.” He broke off as the running man got closer and could be faintly heard yelling. He nodded in the fellow's direction to awaken Dileen to the man's approach. “It appears you’re wanted.” He said dryly.
Dileen turned as a couple of his men made to intercept the man but he waved his arms yelling something that Arturo couldn’t make out and they let him pass. As he approached he could be heard to be yelling “Dileen!” repeatedly. Dileen waved to acknowledge this and thus save the fellow his breath. As he ran up Arturo quickly classified him as a farmer, from his simple rough tunic which was an off-white grey brown colour and the man’s dirty woollen trousers which had clearly seen better days.