by K. J. Parker
“Fine.” Ziani made himself calm down; he didn’t like losing his cool while Daurenja was around. “Now, I want you to take a letter for me to a merchant in the town. She’ll give you a letter to bring back. It’s essential that you don’t leave without it. I don’t trust her as far as I can spit; so, polite but firm. All right?”
He wrote out the draft. Carausius had given him the appropriate seal, and ten sticks of the special green wax that was reserved for government business. He thought about what the Chancellor had said; second most powerful man in the duchy. Looked at from that perspective, he’d come a long way from the shop floor of the Mezentine ordnance factory. A reasonable man would consider that a great achievement in itself. “When you get back,” he said, shaking sand on the address, “we need to talk about materials.”
“You persuaded him, then?”
Ziani nodded. “Worse luck, yes. We’ve got ten days to build prototypes. The cart and the foundry.”
Daurenja’s mouth dropped open. “Ten days? He’s out of his mind.”
“My suggestion,” Ziani replied. “We need to get moving. We can’t start full-scale work until we’ve got approval on the prototypes; ten days is as long as I can spare. What are you still doing here, by the way? I asked you to do something for me.”
Daurenja seemed to vanish instantaneously; not even a blur. Ziani took a deep breath, as though he’d just woken up from an unsettling dream, and reached for a sheet of paper and his calipers. By the time Daurenja came back, he’d finished the design for the drop-valve cupola.
“Did you get it?”
Daurenja nodded. “She wasn’t any bother,” he said, handing over a fat square of parchment, heavily folded and sealed. “She told me to tell you, she’s thought about what you were saying about scheduling, and —”
“Forget about that,” Ziani said. “I want you to look at this.” He turned the sketch round and pushed it across the table. “I’m concerned about the gate,” he said. “It’s got to be simple, nice broad tolerances. We can’t expect these people to do fine work.”
Daurenja bent his implausibly long back and studied the drawing for a while. “You could replace that cam with a simple bolt,” he said. “Not as smooth, obviously, but it’d be a forging rather than a machined component. Their forge work isn’t so bad.”
Ziani was looking at the map: a diagram, a different sort of plan; lines drawn on paper, on which everything now depended. “A bolt’s no good,” he muttered without looking up, “it’ll expand in the heat and jam in its socket.”
“Of course.” He could hear how angry Daurenja was with himself. “I should have thought of that, I’m sorry.”
“You were thinking aloud, it’s all right. If we had time, we could make up templates so they could forge the cams, but we haven’t, so that’s that. I’ve noticed with these people: give them a model, a bit of carved wood, and they can copy it pretty well, but they can’t seem to work from drawings.” Ziani traced a line on the map with his finger. Of course, it meant nothing to him; places he’d never been to, mountains conveyed by a few squiggles, a double line for a river. He tried to picture a landscape in his mind, but found he couldn’t. He forced his mind back into the present, like a stockman driving an unruly animal into a pen. “Here’s a job for you,” he said. “Get me a full list of all the competent metalworkers we’ve got on file, and get the Duke’s people to organize the call-up. I want them here, this time tomorrow, with basic tools and six days’ rations. You’ll have to sort out money with the paymaster’s office, and billeting as well. I imagine someone’s got a list of the inns somewhere. Can I leave all that to you, while I get on with the drawings?”
“Of course.” The answer came back like an echo.
“Fine. When you’ve done that, get back here, I should be ready to give you a materials list, so you can get on with procurement. It’ll save time if you go through the Merchant Adventurers’ association; they’ll rip us off unmercifully but so what, it’s not our money.”
“Understood.”
“And then …” Ziani paused for a protest, but of course none came. “Then I want you to get a requisition made out for all the carts and wagons in the country. I think Valens’ people have been quietly making a register for some time, so it shouldn’t be a problem finding them. They can sort out compensation and so forth. Oh, and bricklayers. That’s another job for the Duke’s people. Get me two dozen, any more’ll just get under our feet. Got all that?”
“Yes,” Daurenja said. “Metalworkers, payment and billeting; materials, and the Merchant Adventurers; carts, and bricklayers. You can leave all that to me.”
“Splendid.” Ziani was still staring at the map. Just lines on paper; a plan; a plan of action. “You’ll need to take the commission with you. Actually, we could do with some more copies. I expect the Chancery clerks can handle that.”
When Daurenja had gone (like breath evaporating off glass), Ziani laid the map down and frowned into space. He hadn’t felt afraid of anybody for a long time, not since he’d been in the cells under the Guildhall, because the worst anybody could do to him after that was kill him, and in the eyes of the Republic he was already supposed to be dead. Dying would, of course, be an easy way out, practically a let-off, as though the supervisor had told him he could go home early and leave the work to someone else to finish off. Since his escape, the work had been the only thing, far more important than he could ever be. He’d served it, as he’d served the Republic, tirelessly and without any thought for himself. The pain was simply the weight of being in charge, carrying the responsibility of the whole thing being in his mind alone. Now, somehow, here was Daurenja: a man who wanted something, but he didn’t know what; a man who served the work with the same single-minded ferocity as he did, but who didn’t even know what it was. He was exceptionally competent, exactly what Ziani needed, a safe pair of hands, utterly reliable, a godsend and a lifesaver …
(I could ask Valens to have him killed, or deported, or thrown in jail; I expect he’d do it, if I made up some story. It’d be the right thing to do, but he’s so useful …
It doesn’t matter, though. If he doesn’t know what the work is — and how could he? — he can’t damage it. In which case, whatever it is he wants, he can have; his business. But perhaps it would be wise to share these fears with the Duke, so that when Daurenja finally does turn savage, I can be rid of him without any blame rubbing off on me and the work. Perhaps; when the moment arises.)
He covered up the map with a sheet of paper, to stop himself staring at it.
A proper fire is always a good place to start. He’d requisitioned a disused drill-square behind the cavalry barracks, four hundred yards each side, flat and level, with sheds in one corner. The carpenters had already built a scaffold and plank lean-to in the middle, to shelter the fire-pit for the forge. They’d found him the biggest anvil in Civitas Vadanis; it had come out of a chainmaker’s shop, and it had suffered a long, hard life, to judge by the scarred face and rounded edges. Half a dozen smaller anvils were grouped round it, placed so that all of them had easy access to the fire. Simple oak trunks had to do for rollers, to slide the blooms to and from the anvils. The smiths, all there against their will, stood about in small groups, muttering and resentful, while the general laborers lifted and strained on ropes and levers, shifting carts full of baskets of charcoal, limestone, iron scrap. In the far corner of the improvised shed, the nail-makers were already busy, with their own forge, slack-tub, swages, wire plates and blocks. They were slightly happier, since at least they knew what they were supposed to be doing, and could get on with it straightaway. Ziani dismissed them from his mind.
The furnace was a compromise, forced on him by time and lack of materials. The previous day, the bricklayers had built a simple hollow tower, ten feet high and four feet square. In each face, about a foot off the ground, was a hole into which fitted the nozzle of a double-action bellows; above each of these was another hole, shrouded with sheet iron, to
serve as an air intake. Through one side, at the very bottom, protruded a thick-walled clay pipe with a four-inch bore, stopped with a clay bung on a length of wire, draining onto a flat bed of sand. They’d lit a fire inside the tower before he arrived; it had caught nicely, fanned by slow, easy strokes of the four bellows, each blowing in turn. The laborers were tipping in bucketfuls of charcoal mixed with limestone rubble. When the tower was half full, Ziani gave the order and the men started loading the iron scrap, smashed up into lumps no bigger than a man’s hand. There was only enough room in the prototype for about five hundredweight of iron — Daurenja had had trouble finding that much at a day’s notice — before the topping of limestone chunks was tipped in, leaving the chamber about three-quarters full. Ziani told everyone apart from the bellows-workers to stand back, and gave the order to start blowing.
“How’s the mortar?” he asked Daurenja, who was standing beside him (no need to look round to see if he was there). “It’s only had twelve hours to stand, it must still be pretty soft.”
“It’s dried out quite well since they lit the fire,” Daurenja reassured him. “It’ll probably crack up when the furnace cools down, of course, but that’s all right. This is just a trial run, after all.”
“I hope you’re right,” Ziani muttered. “It’s not going to look too good if the whole lot collapses in on itself when the Duke’s watching.” He looked round. “Shouldn’t he be here by now? When did you tell him … ?”
“I said noon,” Daurenja replied. “It’ll take till then before we’re ready to pour. He won’t want to be standing round with nothing to see, and if he misses it — well, he can still watch the bloom being hammered out. That ought to be spectacular enough, with all the sparks flying.”
The bellows gasped, like a man in a seizure, and puffed, like a fat man running upstairs. Flames were starting to lick the top edge of the tower; still blue. When they turned yellow, the metal would be melted and ready to pour.
“I don’t like the steam coming off the brickwork,” Ziani said. “That’s the damp mortar. The last thing we need is any moisture getting through to the melt, the whole thing could blow up.”
“Unlikely,” Daurenja said, and Ziani was pleased to allow himself to believe him. “The heat’s going outwards, after all.”
Ziani shrugged. He knew that, of course, but he wanted to have something to worry about. “How long do you reckon? Ten minutes?”
“With those bellows? About that.”
They’d have better bellows for the real thing, of course. Ziani had already designed them: true double-actions, with valves on the Mezentine pattern, that blew on both the up and the down stroke. It was essential that the metal be brought up to heat as quickly as possible, to keep it clean. The melted limestone would flux out most of the garbage, of course, but he had no great faith in the quality of Vadani iron. He was saving the Mezentine scrap to sweeten the full-weight batches later on. There were boys on hand to keep the bellows-workers supplied with wet cloths to wrap round their faces and arms; without them, they’d be scorched raw in minutes.
(There’s so much anger in heat, Ziani thought; you can contain it, or protect yourself against it if you’re careful, but all the useful work is being done by anger, a furious resentment of all solid things, that’d reduce me to ash if I stood just a little too close to it; and a single drop of water on the hot brick or the molten iron would do more damage in a second than a hundred men with hammers in a year. The forces I have under my control are unimaginable. I’ve got to keep them that way; just me … )
The Duke had arrived, quietly, while Ziani was looking the other way. He looked tired, thinner and slighter than normal. (I thought he was taller and broader across the shoulders; and he’s younger than he seems when you’re talking to him. If he understood exactly what’s going on inside that brick tower, would he be thinking the same as me?) Ziani went over and greeted him. The small knot of courtiers stepped back to let him through.
“How’s it going?” Valens asked. “Any setbacks?”
Ziani shook his head. “This is everyday stuff,” he said. “That square box there is stuffed with iron and fuel, a bit of sand to stop it chilling and some lime for flux. We’ve cooked up a good fire, which’ll melt the iron; we’ll know when it’s ready because the flames change color; should be any minute now, I think. Then all we do is nip the plug out of that bit of pipe there, and the liquid iron’ll run out onto the sand. It’ll be a moment or so before it takes the cold enough to be moved, and then we roll it over those logs, grab it with big tongs, lift it up onto the anvil and start bashing it flat with big hammers. The trick’ll be to work it down to the right thickness before all the heat goes out of it. In case we don’t, and it’s a fair bet we won’t manage it all in one pass, we’ll have to get it hot again on that forge over there. It’s awkward because the blooms are heavy; we’ve got the rollers to make it a bit easier, but it’s still a fair amount of heavy work.” He realized he was chattering, and fell silent. Valens nodded, and said nothing. He seemed preoccupied, and he was too far away to feel the heat.
The flames turned yellow. Daurenja was the first to notice. He pointed and yelled, as though he’d seen a miracle — for the Duke’s benefit, perhaps. Ziani nodded. It would be as well to let the melt sweat for a while.
“What’s that man jumping up and down for?” Valens asked.
“He’s letting me know the flames have changed color. That’s my assistant, the man we were talking about a while ago.”
“Oh, him.” Valens frowned. “Excitable sort, isn’t he?”
Ziani hesitated. “He’s a first-rate craftsman,” he replied, “and he certainly knows how to make himself useful.”
“Fine. Didn’t you say the change in color means it’s ready?”
“I’ll give it a little longer,” Ziani said. “It needs a chance to sweat out the rubbish. If it’s not clean, you can get brittle spots that’ll crack when you hammer it, and that’s a whole plate wasted. Well, that’s not strictly true, you can heat it up and weld it, but that’s more time and effort.” Telling him far more than he wanted to know; a sign of nerves, or maybe he felt an urge to impress, because the Duke was standing so still and quiet. “Right, that’s long enough,” he said, though it wasn’t. “Let’s have the gate open and see what we’ve got.”
Someone tugged on the wire, and the clay bung popped out. Half a heartbeat later, a dribble as bright as the sun nuzzled its way out of the pipe, like the nose of a sniffing mouse; it hesitated, then came on with a rush; stopped as if wary, then began to gush. It was impossible to see because of the dazzling white light — like looking at an angel, Ziani thought suddenly, or how he’d heard some people describe the onset of death, when they’d been on the verge of it. Valens winced and looked away.
“There we go,” Ziani said.
The sand it flooded out onto crackled and popped, and a thin cloud of steam lifted and hung over it like a canopy. Ziani fancied he could see the heat in it moving about, vague dark flickers inside the searing brightness. It had the oily sheen of the melt. Someone approached it with a long stick, presumably to see if it had started to set cold. Ziani yelled at him to stay away.
“When it’s this hot it’ll take all the skin off your face if you get too close,” he explained. “A puddle that size ought to stay white hot for a good long while.”
Valens nodded. “Well, your furnace seems to work,” he said. “What happens now?”
“Nothing, for a minute or two. Soon as it’s cooled down enough to be moved, the real work starts. Talking of which,” he added, and turned round to give the signal to the smiths to light the forge fire. “Shouldn’t be long now,” he said, and he realized he was making it sound as though the delay was somehow his own fault.
The laborers and most of the smiths were closing in, picking up tools. Daurenja, swathed in wet cloth, sidled forward like a nervous fencer and prodded the shining mass with a long poker.
“Ready,” he shouted.
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“Here goes,” Ziani said, and the laborers stepped forward. They had long poles with hooks on, like boathooks. “They’ve got to drag the bloom — that’s the puddle of hot iron — onto the logs. The awkward part is lifting it off the logs onto the anvil. That thing weighs over three hundred pounds, even after all the waste’s been fluxed out in the furnace.”
As soon as the bloom hit the rollers they began to smoke, as the dried bark of the logs caught fire. They did their job well enough, nevertheless, and it wasn’t long before the bloom lay at the base of the big anvil, glowing like a captive star. Three men on one side drove steel bars under it and levered it up on its edge; three more men laid the ends of longer, heavier bars under it, then stepped back smartly as the levers were drawn out and the process was repeated on the other side. That done, men crowded round to pick up the bars and lift the bloom, like pallbearers raising a coffin. Four smiths with long hooks teased it carefully onto the anvil and jumped out of the way as their colleagues stepped in with sledgehammers.
The first blow shot out a cloud of white sparks — drops of still-molten metal, Ziani explained, scattered by the force of the hammer. A dozen smiths were striking in turn, timing their blows so that there was no gap between them. The sound was like the pattering of rain, the chiming of bells, the crash of weapons on armor. To begin with, it seemed as though they were having no effect at all. As Valens watched, however, the bloom gradually began to squeeze out at the edges, gradual as the minute-hand of a clock but constantly moving, like the flow of a very thick liquid. With each strike, the target area dimmed a little. The blinding white was starting to stain yellow, like snow made dirty, and the smiths were straining to strike harder. They were working in a spiral, starting at the edges and working inward to the center, then back out again, the same pattern in reverse. Each blow slightly overlapped each other, and as the hammer lifted, a vague blur of shadow appeared in the metal and faded, like a frown. Occasionally there was a crack and a sizzle, as sweat from someone’s forehead landed on the surface. All twelve of the smiths were wringing wet, as though they’d been out in the rain.