Yozef and the foundry workers stared in disgust at the 6-pounder barrel that peeled back from the opening, the jagged bronze splayed like petals of an opening bud.
“Sorry, Yozef,” said the foreman. “I thought this one would work. The barrel was as straight as we can make them, and the first five shots were successful. Obviously, we’re missing something important in scaling up from the swivel guns to longer and thicker barrels.”
“I know,” said Yozef, “and we weren’t even up to a full powder charge yet. I’m afraid I’m out of ideas. I’d hoped you and your men could figure out the problem by trial and error. I think we have to admit we’re stymied for the moment and give up on the bigger cannon and stick to producing more of the swivels.”
Their failure was both discouraging and ominous. An escaped Preddi slave described what to Yozef sounded like a Narthani field cannon in the 9- to 12-pounder size. He’d hoped they’d be smaller, since 12-pounder cannon had been the mainstay of armies on Earth from the Napoleonic era to the U.S. Civil War, a hundred years later than the approximately early 1700s he associated with Anyar technology.
He wondered whether the mainland wars here had gone on so long and been so intensive, it had accelerated military science. He remembered how the U.S. Civil War led to innovations that revolutionized warfare: ironclad warships, repeating rifles, the use of railways to move armies, military telegraph lines, ambulance corps, balloons for reconnaissance, and Gatling guns.
He stared longer at the ruined barrel. Even if we make 6-pounders, the islanders will still be outgunned.
The carriages with two or three swivel barrels would be useless against real cannon, but were better than nothing and would provide gun crew training if they ever solved the casting problem.
“All right, men. Let’s put the bigger barrels aside for now and concentrate on producing another twenty swivel barrels. This time, only mount them two at a time, instead of three as with the first carriages. That’ll give us three with three swivels and ten with two. Also, go ahead and mount a 6-pounder barrel.”
“Why, Yozef? What’s the point having a carriage with a barrel we don’t dare fire?” asked the foreman.
“What if we figure it out? Even a non-functional 6-pounder will let the gun crews drill with a cannon, instead of the swivels. They won’t fire it, but they’ll have the motions memorized. Then, if we figure out the barrel problem, we’ll have gun crews accustomed to the size of real cannon.”
One positive outcome of developing the swivel carriages was working out canister rounds and powder sacks in predetermined weights. Yozef had hoped to extend the idea to muskets. The Caedelli method of loading muskets was still in the powder horn stage. To load, one had to remove the stopper at the end of a powder horn, pour into the barrel an estimated of amount of powder, ram a musket ball all the way down with a ramrod, rotate the musket ninety degrees and give a rap to let some of the powder into the firing vent, cock the hammer, and pull the trigger to let the hammer point strike a flint that ignited the powder in the vent into the barrel—then do it all again.
The problems included variations in the amount of powder affecting accuracy, firing downhill being plagued by the ball rolling down the barrel if it wasn’t firmly seated, and having to manipulate both the powder horn and the bag of musket balls.
The same escaped Preddi who’d described Narthani cannon also witnessed Narthani ranks of muskets firing more rapidly than any Caedelli, and he had stolen a Narthani cartridge. It was a paper compartment containing a musket ball and a pre-measured amount of powder. The musket man pulled a cartridge out of a bag, held the ball with his fingers, and shook the paper so the powder fell to the bottom of the compartment. The he bit off the end with the ball, poured powder into the barrel, took the ball and the paper out of his mouth, put the ball into the barrel, followed by the paper as a wad, and rammed both home.
The Caedelli had no history in which rapid mass musket firing was a critical advantage; that luxury was now gone. Convincing Denes and Maera of the problem came quickly after he described the Narthani cartridges.
“Imagine two groups of a hundred men firing muskets at each other. Now imagine that one group can reload and fire three times faster than the other. What do you think would happen?”
Denes shook his head. “The slower group would be all dead within minutes.”
“The Narthani,” Maera said. “You’re saying the Narthani use these ‘cartridges,’ you call them, to fire faster than our people can. If three times faster, that’s as if they had three times as many men as they do.”
“If this is true,” said Denes, “along with what we hear of how easily they destroyed the Preddi, what chances do the clans have against them?”
“Can we make these cartridges ourselves, Yozef?” Maera asked, ignoring Denes’s pessimism.
“I think so. It would take some experimenting, but the principles are simple.”
“Yozef, write down what you know about these cartridges and give us the one from the Preddi. Denes and I can work on this,” offered Maera. “I’ll check in Abersford tomorrow for women to start working on making cartridges, and Denes can have them tested.”
Within a sixday, the first cartridges were found adequate. They took practice to use, and the user’s face and hands ended with powder smears, but the cartridges worked, and the rate of fire more than doubled. The problem was in manufacturing enough cartridges to make a difference, because it had to be done by hand. Maera scoured Abersford for available workers, and within two sixdays the Abersford Cartridge Works was staffed by two men and eleven women, turning out two thousand cartridges a day. The problem was numbers.
“I know it’s important to fire faster,” said Denes. “Think of the numbers, though. At a minimum of a hundred cartridges each, supplying a complete muster of Keelan men would require four hundred thousand cartridges. It would take . . . ,” Denes pursed his lips, doing the math, “most of a year at this rate of production.”
“I know, and it isn’t practical to increase production here, unless we recruit men and women already busy with jobs and families. I’ll write Hetman Culich to see if production could start elsewhere in Keelan. What I suggest is that we arm small groups with the new cartridges and keep the men together, if fighting is necessary. In one month we can arm three hundred men with a hundred cartridges each.” Yozef didn’t elaborate that those hundred cartridges per musket would only last one day’s battle.
Grenades
Yozef had shelved an earlier consideration of grenades for lack of fuses and safety concerns. He envisioned more damage inflicted on their own men through accidents and crude grenades than any damage they could do to the Narthani. He figured they’d eventually get to the fuses and safe protocols. The Moreland raid convinced him eventually was now, and he resurrected the effort.
The first thing he decided was to reduce the grenade to the essentials—a container of gunpowder, a source of shrapnel, and a cord fuse. His fuse problem puzzled Maera, because fireworks were part of each year’s Caernford Harvest Festival, and Yozef had seen the fireworks during two Abersford festivals without it registering that they must use fuses. An embarrassed Yozef discovered the fireworks came from a single shop in Stent Province, and a letter from Culich to Hetman Stent succeeded in getting both the method of making paper gunpowder fuses and a supply of foot-long fuses.
Yozef settled on a tin container the size of a Campbell’s Soup can. A mixture of gunpowder and any small pieces of metal available filled the inside, and the container was glued to a seven-inch wooden handle with the fuse cord attached to the opposite end. It was a crude version of the World War II potato masher grenade of the Germans and could be thrown farther than a round grenade, such as the American military had used variants of for a hundred years.
Lighting the fuse required carrying live coals in a small insulated box. Flints were too slow in getting a spark to the end of the fuse, and matches didn’t yet exist among the Caedelli.
Yo
zef hurried to the shops one day in response to a message that the workers had a surprise for him. He arrived just as a projectile trailing sparks arced into the air, flew over the cartridge shop, hit a tree, and exploded, severing the tree trunk eight feet off the ground and sending pieces of wood and bark showering for thirty yards.
“What the fuck!” yelled a startled Yozef.
A red-faced worker explained he had stumbled while hurrying to aim the crossbow after lighting the fuse.
“Crossbow? Fuse?” queried Yozef. “What crossbow and what fuse?”
The worker showed him a large crossbow and longer-than-usual quarrels with grenade containers tied to the forward ends.
Yozef looked at the apparatus, then at the worker, then back to the crossbow. “You gotta be shittin’ me.”
“They’re not very accurate, but if you’re happy with getting the quarrel within twenty yards of a target two hundred yards away, they’re okay.”
“That’s close enough,” said Yozef, suppressing an insane giggle. “Let’s do any future testing down by the beach. We can anchor targets offshore. And for lighting the fuse, let’s make it a rule that the quarrel is in the crossbow already aimed before the fuse is lit by a second person.”
MASH
Successes with things that went bang prompted another “what if” thought by reminding Yozef of consequences when men tried to kill one another. If the Narthani invaded in force and the Caedelli tried to stop them, he cringed at imagining the number of casualties. During a visit to the abbey, Yozef shared his concern with the abbot and the abbess.
They met in Diera’s office in the hospital building.
“Diera, what if the Narthani attack other clans? Have you thought about how medicants will treat injuries if large-scale fighting breaks out between the clans and the Narthani?”
“Large scale?” questioned Diera. “What do you mean by large scale?”
“During the Buldorian raid, you had how many casualties to care for?”
“Perhaps twenty serious injuries and another thirty treated and the people walked away.”
“In that case, the medicants treated the injuries immediately. What if the injuries occurred fifty miles from any medicants? What if instead of twenty serious casualties, there were three hundred? Six hundred?”
“Six hundred!” exclaimed the shocked abbess. “Merciful God!” Diera stopped talking as she weighed his questions.
“This has also occurred to me, Diera,” said Sistian, “though not with the numbers Yozef proposes. However, I’ve known Yozef long enough to realize he’s not just asking a hypothetical question. Am I correct?”
Yozef nodded with a serious expression. “What if the Narthani send their army into the rest of Caedellium? It could be anywhere—Moreland, Stent, Gwillamer, Keelan—or even use their navy to land somewhere else on the island. If the clans resist, battles might involve tens of thousands of men and hundreds or even thousands of casualties. Given the severity of wounds to be expected, how will they be treated in time to save lives?
“I suggest that plans be made to have mobile hospitals to accompany any large groups of clansmen headed for a fight. The sooner the wounded get medicant attention, the better their chances of surviving or avoiding permanent injury.”
Diera sighed deeply and looked at Sistian. “Part of me hates to even think about such things, but Yozef’s right. We need to plan for it. Sistian, you should communicate with Culich about this, and I’ll discuss it with the other medicants here and send messages to St. Tomo’s and a few other Keelan abbeys to alert them and ask their opinions.”
Thus was born the first Keelan mobile army surgical hospital. Yozef never explained why he called the mobile hospital a MASH, since the acronym in Caedelli was KLOP. Culich gave his support, leaving the details to the Keelan medicants, with Pedr Kennrick coordinating. He also communicated the concept to other clans, with mixed responses.
Spies and Assassins
An unpleasant thought occurred to Yozef, prompted by Maera at an evening meal. She glowed, the mild morning sickness having long ago eased, and she looked and claimed she’d never felt better. Even her chronic migraines hadn’t occurred since they’d married and she started swelling with their child.
“I had a wonderful day, Yozef. Why I felt that way I don’t know, it just was. After you left this morning, Elian and I spent two hours sewing clothes for the baby. My God, I never thought of myself as sitting and enjoying sewing and talking with a common woman.
“Then I worked at translating that history of the Landolin kingdoms you wanted to read. I hadn’t refreshed my Landolin for ages and was surprised how much I remembered. It was like I was reading Caedelli. After lunch, I walked to the abbey by way of the beach and took off my shoes and stood in the water until my feet started to wrinkle.” Maera laughed. “Then at the abbey I talked with Diera about the mobile hospitals idea, and I offered to help plan an organized effort for all of Keelan. I’ll also write Father, suggesting he contact the other Alliance member clans to do the same. On the way home I—” She broke off and put a hand on his arm. “Oh, Yozef. Listen to me prattle on. I didn’t ask how your day was.”
He’d been listening, bemused. As much as he liked and respected his new wife, “cheerful” and “prattling” were not two words he’d normally associate with her. The news of Anarynd’s disappearance by the Narthani still lingered, but her moods seemed to improve the further she got into her pregnancy.
“A busy day, Maera. I hardly sat down, except to eat. The foundry workers had an idea and wanted to try again to cast the 6-pounder barrels. After listening to them, I decided it wasn’t a new enough idea to divert from the swivel guns. I also talked to Sister Diera. She wondered if I had any ideas about several patients, but I had nothing to contribute. I’m afraid she and others expect me to have too many answers. I hope they don’t suspect I’m deliberately withholding from them.
“Then I had a fast mid-day meal while talking with Filtin about his latest idea for increasing kerosene distillation, hopefully without blowing up the facility and the staff. Most of the afternoon I spent composing queries and responses, handling written communications to and from Culich, and reading letters from other towns within and outside Keelan, inquiring about using some of the techniques I’ve introduced and the possibilities for franchises in other provinces. Then I did the exercise routine—weapons, running, and weights. I got the usual odd looks about the running.”
“People’ve gotten used to seeing you running, though I admit even I still find it odd,” Maera said.
“I’m sure it looks odd, and it’s certainly something I don’t enjoy. Every time I’m tempted to skip it, though, I remind myself how easily I could have died during the St. Sidryn’s defense. Now there’s you and the baby. I have to feel I’m better prepared to defend all of us, if it comes to that.”
Yozef took a final bite of his meal. “This is about the only non-working time I’ll have all day. Later I have an hour of writing to do, mostly what I remember about more chemistry now that we’ve decided to add a chemistry department to the university, Chancellor Kolsko-Keelan,” he added at the end and was rewarded with a smile.
He didn’t mention he was struggling with how to introduce the concepts of the periodic table and chemical bonds.
Maera sipped water as she listened to Yozef recount, then set the glass down. She finished her plate of food, pushed it aside, and leaned forward, arms crossed and on the table, staring thoughtfully at her husband.
“You know, Yozef, before moving to Abersford, I hadn’t realized exactly how privileged and restricted my life had been, as far as contact with the common Keelanders. I told you about sewing and talking with Elian this morning. It felt awkward at first to be talking normally with regular folk, and I’m surprised at my growing attachment to Abersford and being a part of the community. But then the other news was a letter from Father, reminding us the baby is to be born in Caernford.”
Yozef groaned. “Let
me guess. He pressed again for us to move to Caernford permanently. It seems like a long time ago when I promised to consider the move. I can’t say I’m any more enthused now than I was then. Oh, I can see the logic to moving most of my enterprises to Caernford, but so much effort has gone into setting things up here, plus, I like living here. And our house! We’ve only lived in it for a few months, and we’d have to leave it.”
“Well, you’ve months to think about it before the baby comes, and we don’t have to lose the house. It isn’t that far from Caernford, so perhaps we could spend part of the year here. There’s time to talk about it. For tonight, you need to get to your writing, and I need to write Mother and my sisters.”
They both rose and were carrying dishes to the kitchen sink for Elian to clean in the morning when Maera stopped, holding plates in both hands.
“Oh, another thing, before I forget. While I was walking home, I reflected on how amazing it was that you all beat back the Buldorians when they attacked St. Sidryn’s and how unfortunate it was that the raid happened when so many of the fighting men were away. It reminds us how much of life depends on good or bad luck.”
Yozef had set his plates down and was returning for more when Maera finished speaking. He froze, and his eyes took on a distant focus, as his mind made odd connections.
“Yozef?” she prompted when he remained frozen for more than a few moments. “Yozef?” she said again, this time louder.
His eyes focused again. “Sorry. Just that I had a strange thought from what you were saying.”
“What I was saying?”
“About it being bad luck for the raid to occur when so many men were away. Something just jumped into my head. What if it wasn’t bad luck?”
Maera’s face took on a look of concentration. She placed her plates in the sink, then twirled a strand of hair with her left hand, one of her subconscious “I’m thinking hard about something” habits. “If not bad luck, then you’re saying it was planned? The raid happened when it did because the men were away? That would mean the Narthani knew. How?”
The Pen and the Sword (Destiny's Crucible Book 2) Page 31
