by K. J. Parker
"We won't need that much in the way of lumber," Ziani replied. "How about the steel I asked for? I know that's likely to be difficult."
Carnufex smiled. "Not likely. By a strange coincidence, my wife's kid brother's the superintendent of the steel depot at Colla Silvestris. At least," he added innocently, "he is now; used to be a clerk in the procurement office, but he got a surprise promotion about two hours after I got this commission. A buffoon, but he does as he's told. With any luck, your steel should be there waiting for you when we arrive."
Ziani was impressed. When he'd talked to the previous superintendent, he'd been told there wasn't that much steel in the whole duchy. "That's handy," he said.
"I always knew young Phormio'd come in useful for something eventually," Carnufex replied. "I could never begin to imagine what it might be, but I had the feeling. Oh, while I think of it," he added, "you were asking about skilled carpenters. I've found you some."
"That's wonderful," Ziani said. "How did you manage that?"
The smile again. "I had a dozen seconded from the Office of Works, thanks to the new chief clerk there. My brother-in-law, actually."
Ziani nodded. "Your wife has a large family."
"Bloody enormous."
An hour later, Ziani could see gray patches standing out against the sandy brown of the mountain; also he could hear faint tapping noises, like an army of thrushes knocking snail-shells against stones. The closer to the mountain they came, the louder the noise grew, and before long he could see them, hundreds of tiny moving dots swarming up and down the side of the slope. "How many men work here?" he asked.
"Between eight and nine hundred, usually," Carnufex replied. "Just over two hundred underground, the rest breaking up, cleaning and smelting ore, maintenance, supply, that sort of thing. In fact, we're short-handed, we could do with half as many again. It's a pity nobody pointed out to Valens' father that if you want to double output, it might be a good idea to take on a few extra hands. But there," he added, with a mildly stoical shrug, "we have a curious idea in this country that anything can be achieved provided you shout loud enough at the man in charge."
"I see," Ziani said. "Does it work?"
"Oddly enough, yes."
The tapping was getting steadily louder. It seemed to be coming from every direction (the sound, Ziani rationalized, was echoing off the mountainside) and he wondered if it was like that all the time. "What are those big timber frames?" he asked, pointing.
"They're the drop-hammers," Carnufex replied. "You see where the streams come down off the mountain? They're banked up into races, and they turn those big waterwheels you can just see there, behind those sheds. The wheel trips a cam which lifts and drops a bloody great beam with an iron shoe on the end, which smashes the ore up into bits; then it gets carried down onto the flat-you can see the big heaps of the stuff there, look-and it gets broken up even finer by a lot of men with big hammers. Then it's got to be washed, of course, so it's carted back up the hillside and shoveled into the strakes-look, do you see the lines of conduits coming down the slope? They're open-topped, made of planks, and they carry the millstreams downhill to turn the wheels and eventually join up with the river. You can see they're dammed up at various stages; the dams are called strakes, and as the ore's washed down by the stream, each one filters out different grades of rubbish, so that when it reaches the bottom it's mostly clean enough to go in the furnace. That's the trouble with this seam; there's plenty of it, but it's full of all kinds of shit that's got to be cleaned out. Biggest part of the operation, in fact, preparing the ore." He grinned. "I expect this all looks a bit primitive to you, after what you're used to."
Ziani shrugged. "We don't do anything like this where I come from," he said. "The materials I used to use came in rounds or square bars or flat sections, we didn't mess about breaking up rocks. This could be the state of the art for all I know."
Carnufex looked mildly disappointed. "Ah well," he said. "I was hoping you could give us a pointer or two about improving the way we go about things before you show us how to pull it all down."
Closer still, and the tapping was starting to get on Ziani's nerves. He was accustomed to noise, of course; but this was different from the thumps and clangs of the ordnance factory, where the trip-hammers pecked incessantly and the strikers hammered hot iron into swages. It was sharper, more brittle, a constant shrill chipping, and he doubted whether it was something he could get used to and stop hearing after a while. The men swinging hammers stopped work to stare at the newcomers; the leather sleeves and leggings they wore to protect them from flying splinters of rock were caked with dust, their hair was gray with it and their eyes peered out from matt white masks, so that they looked like actors playing demons in a miracle play. Eventually someone yelled something and they went back to work, bashing on the chunks of rock as if they hated them. No, Ziani thought, this isn't like the factory at all. There's no grace here, no patient striving with tolerances in the quiet war against error. This is a violent place.
"The actual workings are over there a bit," Carnufex was saying, as calm and matter-of-fact as if he was showing someone round his garden. "I don't suppose you'll need to bother with anything above ground. I mean, no point sabotaging it; anybody who wanted to could replace the whole lot from scratch in a month or so."
Ziani nodded. He didn't want to open his mouth here if he could help it.
"You can see where the shaft runs underground by the line of wheels," Carnufex went on. He was pointing at a row of wooden towers, each one directly under a branch of the millrace, which gushed in a carefully directed jet to turn the blades of a tall overshot waterwheel. Each wheel's spindle turned a toothed pulley which drew a chain up out of what looked like a well. Piles of ore were heaped up beside each well-head; men were loading it into wheelbarrows and carrying it away to be smashed. As well as the clacking of the wheel and the ticking of the chain, he could hear a wheezing noise, like an overweight giant climbing stairs. "Bellows," Carnufex explained, "inside the tower, they're powered by cams run off the wheel-shaft. They suck the bad air out of the galleries and blow clean air back in."
Bellows, Ziani thought; they'll come in handy. He nodded, careful not to exhibit undue interest or enthusiasm. "Where's the actual entrance?" he asked.
"This way. We might as well dismount and walk from here," Carnufex added. "It can be a bit tricksy underfoot, what with all this rubble and stuff."
The entrance was just a hole in the hillside, five feet or so high and wide, with heavy oak trunks for pillars and lintel. There were steps down, and a lantern on either side, flickering in the draft that Ziani guessed came from the constant pumping of the bellows. Their light showed him two plank-lined walls vanishing into a dark hole. He let Carnufex lead the way.
For what seemed like a very long time, the shaft ran straight and gently downhill. Carnufex had taken down one of the lanterns, but all Ziani could see by it was his own feet and the back of Carnufex's head, his white hair positively glowing in the pale yellow light. To his surprise it was cool and airy, delightfully quiet after the hammering outside. Even the smell-wet timber and something sweet he couldn't identify-was mildly pleasant. But his neck and back ached from walking in a low crouch; he felt like a spring under tension.
"This is the main gallery." Carnufex's voice boomed as it echoed back at him. "Spurs run off it to the faces, where the ore's dug out. We're always having to open up new ones, of course."
"What's holding the roof up?" Ziani asked, trying not to sound more than mildly curious.
"Props," Carnufex answered crisply. "Thousands and thousands of them; it's a real problem getting enough straight, uniform-thickness timber. Without them, of course, this whole lot'd be round your ears in a flash."
"Right." Ziani knew that already. "So if it's the props that keep it from collapsing, how do you dig the tunnels to start off with; before you have a chance to put the props in, I mean?"
"Slowly," Carnufex replied, "and very
, very carefully. Ah," he added, stopping short, so that Ziani nearly trod on his heels. "We've reached the first spur. Do you want to go and have a look?"
"No thanks," Ziani replied quickly. "I think I've seen enough to be going on with, thanks."
"Really?" Carnufex sounded disappointed, like a musician who hasn't been asked for an encore. "Suit yourself. Do you want to go back now?"
Yes, Ziani thought, very much. "Not yet," he said. "I need to take measurements first."
With Carnufex holding the end of the tape for him, he measured the height and width of the shaft at ten-inch intervals, starting at the point where the spur joined the gallery and going back about a dozen feet toward the entrance. As Carnufex called them out, he jotted down each set of figures with a nail on a wax tablet, unable to see what he was writing in the vague light from the lantern. "All done," he said, when they'd taken the last measurement. "Now can we go back, please?"
As they headed back the way they'd come, Ziani asked Carnufex how long it'd take to dig out the gallery, if it collapsed.
"Not sure," Carnufex replied. "Let's see: ten feet a day, double that for two shifts, so let's say a month. No big deal, if we can get timber for the props."
Ziani nodded, not that the other man could see him do it. "And the ventilation shafts?"
"Trickier. They're lined with brick, you see."
"That's all right," Ziani replied. "With luck I should be able to brace them the same way I'm planning on doing the gallery." Of course, he reflected, that would mean they'd have to be measured too; someone would have to go down each shaft, presumably lowered down in the ore bucket. All in all, not a job he wanted to do himself; but it would have to be done properly, by someone who knew how to take an accurate measurement. Fortunately, though, he knew just the man for the job.
"Certainly." His face hadn't changed at all.
Ziani looked at him, but the dead-fish eyes simply looked back, expressionless except for the permanent, faintly hungry look that made Ziani think uncomfortably of a patient predator.
"You sure?" he asked. "It won't be much fun hanging down there in a bucket."
Gace Daurenja, his absurdly thin, ludicrously tall, appallingly flat-faced self-appointed apprentice and general assistant, shrugged. "I've done worse things in my time," he said. "And confined spaces don't bother me, if that's what you were thinking. I was a chimney-sweep for a time, and a chargehand in a furnace. And this won't be the first time I've worked in a mine, either."
Ziani tried not to frown. He believed him; ever since he'd turned up in Ziani's room with the marvelous winch he'd made to his order, he was prepared to believe anything the thin man told him, though he wasn't quite sure why. Possibly, he'd thought, it was because it was such a huge leap of faith to believe that this extraordinary creature could exist at all. If you could accept that, anything else was easy in comparison.
"Fine," Ziani said. He reached out and pulled a sheet of paper across the table. Immediately, Daurenja's attention was focused on it, to the exclusion of everything else. "Here's the general idea; it's the same for the vent shafts as well as the gallery."
Daurenja nodded slowly. His expression showed that the diagram was the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen in his entire life.
"Steel girders," Ziani said, trying not to let Daurenja's manner bother him. "Really, it's just a steel cage. We build it where we want the cave-in to stop, if you follow me-"
"Perfectly."
Ziani ignored the interruption. "So we stuff the shaft with trash wood, charcoal, old rags soaked in lamp oil, set light to it-those bellows are a stroke of luck, we can get a nice burn going with a bit of air-and that'll burn out the timber props but leave the steel cage intact; it'll look like we've caved in the whole lot, of course, and then when the war's over, they'll only have to dig out as far as the cages; beyond that, the props should be unharmed. Quite simple, really, assuming it works."
"Brilliant."
Ziani ignored that, too. "The problems I can foresee are with what the heat might do to the cage. If it gets too hot we could warp the girders or even melt them, so we'll have to be careful not to get carried away. I'm hoping, though, that as soon as the props are charred halfway or three parts through they'll give way, and the falling rock'll snuff out the fire, or at the very least act as a heat-sink. The cage in the gallery ought to be straightforward enough, but I haven't made up my mind yet how best to anchor them in the vent shafts. They'll have a huge weight bearing directly on them from overhead, even if they're only ten feet or so down the shafts. We'll have to drive pins into the brickwork to take the weight; that'll be a fun job, swinging a sledge in such a tight place."
"I'll have a go if you like," Daurenja said immediately. "Back when I was working in the slate quarries-"
"They're miners," Ziani said, "let them do it. I'll want you with me in the fabrication shop, setting rivets. Not the most exciting job in the world, but it'll have to be done right. Then more riveting, of course, once we've got the bloody things into position."
"Not a problem," Daurenja said, as full of confidence as a lion roaring. "I did a great deal of riveting when I was working in the foundry, and-"
When Ziani had eventually managed to get rid of him, he put on his coat, drew a scarf over his face to filter out the worst of the dust, and went for a walk. He had pictured this place in his mind as long ago as his conversation with Miel Ducas, back in the Butter Pass, but back then it had been nothing but a geometrical design of wheels and levers. It was the ferocity of it that bothered him, the sheer brutality of falling iron-shod beams pounding rock into rubble. He wondered; he'd never seen a flour mill, even. He could feel the cracking and grinding and splintering in his bones, every time the cams tripped and the beams fell. It reminded him too much of things he'd only considered so far in the abstract, rather than in practice. Even the slaughter of the Mezentines, shot down in their thousands by the scorpion-bolts he'd made, hadn't affected him as much as this place did. There was a ruthlessness about it that he was reluctant to come to terms with. On the other hand, he was very close to resolving a number of issues that had been bothering him for some time, areas he'd left blank in the design, knowing they were possible but lacking the precise knowledge of detailed procedure and method. Not a comfortable place, but enlightening.
Daurenja, he thought, and he could feel his skin crawl. With any luck, the rope might break while he was dangling down a vent shaft in a bucket, and that'd be one fewer set of calculations to bother about. He tasted dust in his mouth, in spite of the scarf, and spat.
He walked toward the mine entrance, pausing to look up at one of the wheel towers. Crude, compared to a Mezentine waterwheel. There were no bearings to ease the turning of the spindle, and a significant amount of the water slopped past or over the blades, wasted. But he was here to sabotage the mines, not improve them. He shrugged. Fine by him.
A miner passed him, struggling with a wheelbarrow loaded with too much ore. As he went by he must've caught a glimpse of Ziani's face; he hesitated, the barrow wobbled and ran off line, making him stop. Ziani made an effort not to grin. He was getting used to being stared at, the only dark-skinned Mezentine in the duchy. It usually saved him the bother of having to explain who he was; everybody knew that already.
"Hang on a second," he called after the miner. "Can I ask you something?"
The man let go of the barrow handles and straightened up. "You're him, right?" he said. "The Mezentine."
Something else he was getting used to. Curious, to be known only for a quality he was no longer authorized to have, the thing that still defined him but had been taken away. "That's me," he said. "Ziani Vaatzes. Who're you?" he added.
The miner frowned, as if dubious about answering. "Corvus Vasa," he said. "I'm not anybody," he added quickly.
Ziani smiled. "It's all right," he said. "I just wanted to ask something, if you're not too busy."
Vasa shrugged. "Go ahead."
Ziani sat on the edge of the
barrow. "I was talking to Superintendent Carnufex," he said, stressing the name and rank only very slightly, "and he was saying a man can dig ten feet of tunnel a day, average. Is that right?"
"Dig and prop, yes. I mean, usually there's at least four of you to a face, two digging and two propping, and four blokes'll usually do twenty foot a shift, two shifts a day, forty foot. So we say ten foot a man a day, as a rule of thumb, like. That's in earth," he added, "a bit less in clay. Plus, of course, you've got another two blokes coming up behind you to load the spoil, and another bloke to carry it. Teams of seven's the rule."
Ziani nodded. "Fine," he said. "What if you're cutting through rock?"
Vasa grinned sourly. "We don't," he said, "not if we can help it. You hit rock, best thing you can do is go back and work round it. Plus, you give the surveyor a right bollocking afterward."
"All right," Ziani said, "but supposing there's no way round and you've just got to cut through. That happens sometimes, doesn't it?"
Vasa nodded. "Sometimes," he said. "And it's a bastard. Then it's a man on the drill and another man to strike for him, cutting slots to fit wedges in. Two or three foot a day, depending on what sort of rock it is."
Aiani clicked his tongue. "What about granite?"
"Wouldn't know," Vasa replied, "never had to find out, luckily. I heard tell once that you can shift hard rock by lighting a bloody great big fire, get it really hot, then chuck water on it to split it." He grinned. "Sounds fine when you say it, but I wouldn't like doing it myself."
"I bet." Ziani smiled. "No granite in these parts, then."
"Never come across any. What d'you want to know about that stuff for, anyhow?"
"Oh, just another job I've got to do, sooner or later. Thanks, you've been a great help."