Grantville Gazette, Volume 71

by Bjorn Hasseler

  "Worried? Why?" He looked back and forth between them.

  Natalie fidgeted. "You told me you were going to . . . fix things. With Konrad. And you've been shut up in here for days now doing something. Getting dirty."

  "And bloody," Red said quietly.

  "Oh." John flung his arm around Natalie's shoulders, a gesture she would normally have found comforting, but today was only stiff and cold. "You don't think I'm trying to do magic, do you?"

  "Are you?" Red asked.

  John laughed uneasily. "Magic is pretend, Natalie. You know that, right?"

  "Yes." She looked up at him. "Do you?"

  "Of course. There's no such thing as a proton-pack or aliens or magic." His fingers dug into Natalie's shoulder. "I know that."

  "Then you won't mind if we come inside for a minute." Red stepped toward the door and John leapt sideways to put himself between her and his little house.

  "No. Ah. I mean. It's kind of a mess." He licked his lips. "You're right about . . . I've been trying to . . . well, I needed some time to myself. And losing Ray was very hard. So, it's messy in there. And you wouldn't . . . there's no need to come inside."

  "We could help you clean up," Natalie said.

  "No!" He wiped his mouth on his hand and forced a smile. "Thank you. But I'm all right. I just need to be alone right now. Okay?"

  Natalie looked at Red, hoping she would push past John and throw open the door, wanting her to confront him about whatever it was he was doing. But Red was quiet, her face nearly hidden beneath her hood.

  Natalie cleared her throat. "We just want to help, John. Red and I are both upset about Ray, too." Her eyes stung with tears. "We all miss him. Just tell us what we can do to help. Please."

  "You can leave me alone," John snapped. "If you want to help, then go away. Let me . . . let me do what needs to be done."

  "And what's that, John?" There was an edge to Red's voice that Natalie had never heard before.

  John chewed on his lower lip for a moment, as though trying to find the right words. "Grieve," he said finally. "And I don't need either of you around for that."

  "Ah." Red slipped her arm through Natalie's elbow. "All right." She tugged Natalie back towards the path.

  "Red?" Natalie looked at her in confusion. "What—"

  "We'll leave you alone, John. Just like you've asked," Red said loudly. Then softly, to Natalie. "He needs to think we've given up."

  Natalie nodded, drying her eyes with the back of her glove. "Goodbye, John."

  They pushed their way back along the little path, until Natalie, glancing back over her shoulder now and then, saw the white blur of John's shirt disappear. "I think he's gone back inside."

  Red stopped, head tilted as she listened for any sign that John was following them. "I think you're right."

  "So, now what?"

  "You're right. He's up to something stupid." Red looked around for a moment. "There." She pointed to a fallen tree, the trunk nearly covered in a drift of old leaves. "We'll hide and wait to see what he's up to."

  "Don't we need to be closer to the hut?" Natalie asked as they squeezed slowly between the trees on either side of the path.

  "No. Whatever he thinks he's going to do, he'll need Ray at some point." Red climbed over the fallen tree and settled on the other side.

  "But he's . . . oh." Natalie flushed as she understood. "He'll have to go to the cemetery."

  "That's right." Red pulled some of the leaves over her cloak so the red was mostly hidden, lying down on the ground so only the top of her head poked above the fallen trunk. "And then we'll follow him."

  The sun had long sunk from the sky when John emerged from his hut. Natalie knew she was way beyond just getting trouble for ditching school now. Her parents were likely freaking out. She'd be lucky to see the light of day, outside of school, for months when she got home. There was nothing for it, though. If they didn't find out what was going on with John and help him, no one would. They were his only friends left in the world.

  Just as Red predicted, John headed for the cemetery. Quietly, ever so careful not to be seen, they crept along after him.

  When John reached the cemetery he made a beeline for Konrad's grave. Once there, his hands vanished into the depths of his trench coat to re-emerge with five small candles in them. He positioned one atop Konrad's grave and the others around it at four fixed points. John picked up a stick and drew a circle in the dirt around the four candles, muttering something in a bizarre language as he did so.

  "I told you he'd gone off the deep end," Natalie whispered to Red, shooting her a look where they hid in the trees at the edge of the cemetery.

  "Shhh," Red hushed her.

  John lit all five of the candles and moved to kneel at the edge of Konrad's grave within the circle. He began to chant as he removed his shirt. Natalie gasped as she saw the wounds that covered his chest. Red moved quickly to grab her and slap a hand over her mouth. Natalie was thankful she had; otherwise she might have screamed.

  His voice rising, John cried out at the moon and stars above, still speaking in the strange language he had been muttering. One of John's hands slipped down to the top of his right boot. He drew a small knife from it and brought the blade up in front of him, holding up and out into the light of the moon.

  It didn't take a genius to figure out what was going to happen next.

  "I think we've seen enough," Red told Natalie in a gruff voice.

  Red stood up and launched herself from the trees. "John! You put that knife down right now!"

  John spun about to face them. His cheeks were slicked with tears as he stared at them as if he wasn't sure they were really there. "Red? Natalie?"

  "I thought you said you didn't believe in magic John?" Natalie challenged him, anger thick in her voice.

  "Put the knife down," Red ordered him again, more firmly.

  John looked at the knife he held and then at Red. "You don't understand, Red," he started but Natalie was on him before he could finish. Her hand shot out to knock the knife from his grasp. It went flying to land in the grass nearby. "How could you?" she rasped as she hauled back and slapped him across his cheek with all the force she could muster.

  Staggering back a step, John caught himself before he lost his footing and toppled over.

  "Look at what you've done to yourself!" Natalie raged thrusting a finger towards his wounded and scarred chest.

  At that moment, John broke down, collapsing to his knees in front of Natalie. Tears streamed from his eyes. "I don't . . . I don't know how to bring him back Natalie. I've tried everything."

  Red stepped up to stand beside Natalie. "That's because you can't bring him back, John. Konrad is dead. There is no coming back from that."

  "It hurts so much," John sobbed. "Please . . . Please help me."

  Natalie and Red exchanged a look of pity for the broken former leader of the Monster Society and friend.

  Natalie dropped to her knees and pulled John into an embrace. "That's all we've ever wanted to do John, help you."

  "Come on," Red told the two of them. "Let's get you home, John. We need to take a better look at what you've done to yourself and make sure those wounds aren't infected."

  Natalie helped John to his feet and tried to lead him after Red, who was already heading for the trees. John stopped her, looking over at shoulder at Konrad's grave, to which he said, "I'm sorry, Ray. I am so sorry I let you down again."

  Taking hold of him gently by the underside of his chin, Natalie pulled his face around towards her own. "You didn't fail him John. You gave him a life of friends and fun. You were there for him to the very end and even beyond. Konrad loves you, John, even now, wherever he is, he loves you just like we do."

  It was going to be a long night, Natalie knew, as she and Red tended to John and a worse day afterwards as she faced the wrath of her parents, but it was all worth it. The Monster Society was together again and it took care of its own, no matter the price.

  ****<
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  Nürnberg City Hall

  April, 1635

  "You can't be serious?" Master Grünberg just couldn't believe his ears. "You really want to leave all rifles to these . . . these . . . people?" His voice sounded like what he really wanted to say was "northern barbarians," but in the end, his sense of propriety had taken over.

  Ratsherr Hans Petzold, a famous master goldsmith and member of the city council, tried to calm him. "Listen, Master Grünberg, it's a temporary measure. We currently cannot compete with Suhl and Magdeburg on rifles. With our traditional methods it simply takes too long to produce a single one, and even if ours are prettier, there aren't many noblemen left that are willing to wait that long and able to pay twice the price just for a pretty exterior. If we are lucky, they buy their guns in Suhl and then ask us to ‘improve' on it. Until we get the needed machines produced in Essen, we will have to learn and pass the time by making handguns. Small is good, for now. Getting all the information on the necessary steps to reproduce the new Dutch pepperboxes was expensive enough. Let's not waste that investment. We have an order for 600 of them from a cavalry regiment in Berchtesgaden. That's enough work for all of us to keep busy for months."

  Ferdinand Grünberg shook his grey head. "If you want to go ahead and concentrate on those pistols, fine. They sure are impressive and effective weapons. But I have been a Büchsenmacher all my life. Long rifles are my specialty and I will continue making them."

  "You will go broke making them."

  "Let that be my problem. I am 55 years old, a widower, and I do not have an heir. I have saved enough over the last dozen years to last me for ages. So I'll let you gentlemen worry about your own affairs. Look at it this way: Now the 600 ordered pistols will employ everyone else even longer. Good night to you."

  For a moment, the Ratsherr was tempted to involve his colleagues to make it a formal order. But in the end he figured Grünberg was right: it did mean more work for everyone else.

  Nürnberg, Grünberg house

  April, 1635

  The next morning at sunrise, Master Grünberg sat at his table at the window, studying all the papers he had been able to acquire on the topic of up-time rifles, thanks to the efforts of a former apprentice of his who now was a journeyman in Suhl. He went through them one by one, stopping after each page, considering what he had seen and how it related to what he already knew. From time to time his eyes moved to the remains of an up-time shotgun he had bought cheaply last week. The stock and lock were still in very good shape, but some giant seemed to have squashed the two barrels. He got up and put the distracting thing into a bag that he put on a shelf, then sat down again.

  He was halfway through the stack when Matthias Heckler, his journeyman, entered the workshop, with their single apprentice tagging along. Moritz Maus was fourteen and in his second year of apprenticeship. An orphan at age twelve, he very rarely smiled, almost as rarely as his master. As always, Heckler had bought fresh bread rolls and a couple of broadsheets.

  "Good morning, Master Grünberg!"

  "Good morning, Matthias. Moritz."

  As he had done every day for the last years, Heckler put the bread rolls and the broadsheets on the table, then went downstairs to the shortest of the three dry caves that reached into the stone of the mountain Nürnberg castle was built upon, to fetch some cool milk and cheese. The longest one served as Grünberg's shooting range (with the ‘range' part being defined rather loosely), while the third was used for storing his black powder and guns. Meanwhile, Moritz set the table.

  They were eating in silence, Matthias and Moritz reading the broadsheets, Master Grünberg continuing through his bundle of sheets on up-time guns. Once he was through with them, he looked at his journeyman.

  "Anything important happening in the world?"

  "Not really. But after his fifth beer someone who shall not be named told me yesterday evening that Master Kotter is making progress with his cartridge project. It seems the trick is to use just the right amount of silver in the mix and to seal them with shellac when the cartridge is completed, to keep the bullet more firmly in place and the powder dry."

  "So, how close is he to be able to actually produce workable brass cartridges?"

  "Pretty close, I think, as long as we are talking about small numbers. From what I gathered, they need a lot of soldering and other work to come out right, and he still has to buy the primers from Grantville. So he will be hard-pressed to compete with U.S. Waffenfabrik once they get their production facility up and running. It's frustrating, really. Whenever one of us has a bright idea, we get trumped by up-timer technology."

  Master Grünberg looked out of his window and down to the wall. "Maybe. And maybe not. If I understood you correctly last week, the Suhl people will have a few production lines, concentrating on cartridges for their most common guns."

  Heckler nodded. "That is my understanding, at least. These machines are really expensive. So you need to produce large batches to pay for them."

  "Which means that all that Master Kotter needs are small series of special guns he can concentrate on." Grünberg frowned slightly. Then he picked through the bunch of sheets he had looked through before. Slowly, a grin started creeping up his face. Heckler raised an eyebrow.

  " ‘Small is good' said our revered Ratsherr yesterday. I think he might be partially right. Just not in the way he thinks about it. Let's go to the arsenal."

  ****

  Like many weaponsmiths, Grünberg had elected to pay most of his taxes to the city by equipping the city guard with weapons. His specialty in this respect had been, for a long time, all kinds of Hakenbüchsen. Those were huge rifles (unlike their earlier smoothbore predecessors of the same name which became known as harquebuses in French), about two yards long, which would be used as wall guns. Those were either equipped with trunnions that could be locked to swivel mounts on city walls or with hooks (Haken) or spikes that could be rammed into the top of an earthen rampart to keep the weapon there and transfer the enormous recoil into the earth instead of the shoulder of the user. Most of Grünberg's guns were especially long and had both options; they were thus called Doppelhaken. Unlike many of his colleagues in other cities, he had rather soon, after some experimentation to find the optimal bullet, settled on a single bore size and caliber of balls. His guns thus had very similar performance profiles.

  Traditionally, those very precise guns were used to snipe at enemy generals (who rarely came into range of the walls any more, though) and, more importantly, sappers and the crews of siege guns and mortars. At five hundred yards, the heavy bullets the gun fired could still cut through most provisional fortifications put up by enemy sappers. Recently however, Hauptmann Reinhold Gerber, captain of the city watch and an old friend of Grünberg, had told him that due to the increased range of the USE artillery, his Hakenbüchsen had lost most of their tactical value and they would soon have to require him to deliver normal rifles instead. Grünberg had been rather upset when he received that news.

  Sure, he could easily afford to pay his taxes in cash and not even feel any effects. This was not about money; it was about pride. The pride of a man who had until recently made some of the best rifles in the world and now was relegated to amateur status. That would be hard to accept for anybody. For Grünberg, whose only wife had died giving birth to a stillborn son years ago, his work was all he had left. By now, though, he started to suspect that that dark cloud had a huge silver lining to it. Or was it a golden lining?

  ***

  As Grünberg had expected, Hauptmann Gerber was at the city arsenal, inspecting part of the weaponry. Since the guard was well-acquainted with the master weaponsmith, he had no problem being admitted, while Matthias and Moritz waited at the entrance.

  "Gott zum Gruße, Hauptmann Gerber!" Given that he visited his friend in his official capacity, there was no way he would address him by his given name.

  Gerber raised his eyebrows for a moment, then smiled. He knew Grünberg well enough to understand
the reason for the formality and to feel that he had overcome his righteous anger at Gerber's decision not to employ Hakenbüchsen any longer.

  "Master Grünberg. A pleasure to see you here. How can I help you?"

  "I wanted to talk with you about my Hakenbüchsen." He held up a hand. "No, don't worry. I am not trying to convince you to keep them in service when they can't perform their task any longer."

  "That is very understanding of you. So what about these guns?"

  "Well, you know, you might not have much use for them anymore. But when making them I gave them my very best, each time. Every single one of them is worthy of a master, I think."

  "No doubt about that. It really is a shame they have lost their defensive value for us. And of course they are too heavy to use in the field."

  "Still, they are my children and I don't want to see them melted down to make muskets out of them—or pistols for that Scottish colonel. So I want to buy them back."

  Gerber grinned. "Hm. So you mean to pay the taxes you avoided by giving us the guns?"

  "Don't be ridiculous. You got years of good service out of them. A decade, for some of them. No, I am going to pay you what you'd get from a metal collector."

  Gerber considered the demand, but only for a moment. While not a guild in the formal sense, the weapon makers were quite influential in the city. Having good relations with them was especially important for the city watch. Given the insult Grünberg must have felt when he was informed of the new tactical realities, this offer was the perfect way for all concerned to save face. And if the deal lost the city council a few thaler, it was still worth it.

  "Einverstanden. Last time I checked, there were 24 of your long guns here at the arsenal. Let's see if we can find them all . . .

  ****

  After Matthias and Moritz had dragged a little wagon filled with the guns up the hill to Grünberg's house, they took the time for a second breakfast, consisting of a glass of beer, some bread, and a little bacon.