Like a Mighty Army

by David Weber

  Which is why I have to worry about protecting him from the Inquisition, as well, Maigwair reflected glumly, unaware of how his thoughts matched the Earl of Thirsk’s. Not that Thirsk’s worries would have surprised him.

  It was a particularly frustrating thought because there was actually nothing inherently revolutionary in Bryairs’ “circles of production,” as he called them. They were simply an expansion of the traditional workshop environment, but whereas the typical pre-Jihad workshop might have consisted of two or three master gunsmiths, supported by half a dozen journeymen and another half-dozen apprentices, Bryairs’ “circles” used a single master gunsmith to supervise up to twenty-five or, in some cases, even thirty workmen … and women.

  The guilds, needless to say, had screamed like gelded dragons at the very thought. Bad enough to dilute the supply (and earnings) of masters and journeymen, but Bryairs’ circles brought in workmen from completely outside the Gunmakers Guild, as well. Worse, he’d insisted they be given tasks which would have been restricted to apprentice-level guild members … and paid them less than half of what the Gunmakers Guild had previously extorted from Mother Church. And as if determined to make bad worse where the guilds were concerned, he’d brought in women and employed them on tasks which had always previously been the monopoly of accredited guildsmen.

  Obviously, the relatively unskilled workers he’d brought in couldn’t build entire rifles and pistols the way traditionally trained gunsmiths had done it, but Bryairs hadn’t even tried to teach them to do that. Instead, he’d trained each of them to perform a specific task—to make a specific part or to assemble the parts made by others. He had yet to approach the interchangeability the heretics had attained, but within each of his circles the workers quickly became a smoothly functioning team. The parts they produced weren’t interchangeable with those of any other circle, but they required only minor adjusting and fitting within their own group.

  And production had soared. Mother Church’s manufactories were far from matching the output of something like the heretic Howsmyn’s huge facility, but St. Kylmahn’s Foundry’s production rate was double that of any other Mainland manufactory, and there were a great many of those Mainland manufactories.

  Maigwair and Duchairn were aggressively exporting Bryairs’ methods to every other Church facility. The guilds’ opposition was a given, but it had become a muted opposition of late. Not that the guildsmen had suddenly discovered that their faith required them to subordinate their own interests to Mother Church’s survival. It appeared, though, that however suspect the Grand Inquisitor might find the heretics’ new inventions and processes, he saw nothing demonic in simple improvements in the organization of workers using traditional techniques. Not since the tide of victory in the war he’d instigated against Siddarmark had been halted, at least.

  “St. Greyghor’s and St. Marytha’s have both instituted their own circles, now,” Fultyn continued, “although Tahlbaht estimates they’ll take another month or so getting to the production levels we’ve attained here. At the same time, he’s still tweaking our own circles, and we’ll export anything he comes up with to enhance our productivity to the other foundries as quickly as possible. We should have all of Mother Church’s manufactories reorganized by spring, and I understand we’re assuming control of the Harchongese foundries as well?”

  “Yes, we are,” Maigwair said. “I don’t know how well his circles are going to work for Harchongians, but we can always hope. And I think it would be a good idea to explain them to the Dohlarans and Desnairians, as well.”

  “The Dohlarans are already over thirty percent more productive than we were before Tahlbaht’s changes, Your Grace,” Fultyn said—without, Maigwair noted, mentioning his own contributions to St. Kylmahn’s improved efficiency. “I’m not certain we want to disrupt their production until we’ve got our own reorganized fully, not just here but in all our manufactories. It might be better to leave them where they are for now, since their production would actually drop, initially at least, while they shifted to an entirely new organization.”

  “And the Desnairians?”

  “Your Grace, with all due respect, not even Tahlbaht’s circles are going to make a huge difference there. For that matter, I’m not certain it would even be possible to implement them effectively. I’m in favor of anything that will improve matters, of course, but their guilds are even more … resistant than ours.”

  Maigwair grunted in unhappy agreement. With a population almost seventy percent greater than that of the Temple Lands, the Empire actually produced fewer rifles every month, which was ridiculous. Except that it wasn’t ridiculous, given the Desnairian attitude toward anything smacking of “trade.” The epithet “nation of shopkeepers” had been merely scornful when most Mainlanders applied it to Charis; from the Empire’s slave-owning aristocrats, it had been more in the nature of a scathing denunciation, and the Church’s natural wariness of Charisian innovation had confirmed their attitude towards manufactories. Far better to purchase what they required from someone else than to sully their own hands and contaminate their own lands with practices any God-fearing child of Mother Church must find suspect. Especially when those practices upset the traditional social balance. Tolerating the rise of a tide of common-born manufactory owners could only undermine the sense of honor, integrity, and moral ardor which were both the hallmarks and the responsibility of the nobly born. One had only to glance at Charis’ mongrelization to realize that!

  And just to make bad worse, the Desnairian guilds liked things that way. Charisian goods might be cheaper, affordable by far more Desnairians than domestically produced goods, but what did that matter? If they produced less, they could simply charge more, and they’d forged an alliance with the aristocracy to keep an iron lock on the Empire’s internal markets, systematically excluding foreign competition.

  Not even the requirements of the Jihad were going to overcome that situation anytime soon. Desnairian nobles were almost as stiff-necked and prone to nepotism as Harchongians (although they were thankfully somewhat less addicted to outright graft), the Empire was a long way from the Temple Lands, and its aristocrats were less moribund than their Harchongese counterparts. They possessed a greater sense of national identity, and however inefficient they might be, they were deeply involved in the management of their realm, rather than relying on the monolithic bureaucracy which truly governed Harchong. If those aristocrats and powerful, disgruntled guilds decided to drag their feet in introducing Bryairs’ new techniques, Desnair’s already anemic output of small arms and artillery would drop still further.

  And the bastards will claim it’s all because of our insistence on “imposing techniques foreign to our own experience and practices.” They may work just fine in the Temple Lands, and among those barbarian Harchongians, but they’re clearly totally unsuited to Desnairians.

  “Assuming we leave Dohlar where it is for now and write Desnair off entirely, what sort of production numbers are you looking at?” he asked.

  “Any figure I give you’s going to be based on guesstimates, Your Grace,” Fultyn said. “They’ll be the best guesstimates I can give you, but I’m not in a position to guarantee them at this point.”

  “I understand, Brother Lynkyn. And any estimate you give me will be used only internally and treated only as an estimate,” Maigwair assured the monk. Don’t worry, he added silently. I’m not going to throw any numbers out where Zhaspahr’s likely to hear them and decide to make you an example to encourage our other manufactory managers if we don’t meet them.

  “Well, with that proviso, Your Grace,” Fultyn said, turning to a page of his notepad. “At the moment, we’re producing approximately twenty-four thousand rifles per month in the Temple Lands, Dohlar, Desnair, Harchong, and the Border States combined. We’re also acquiring about five hundred per month from Silkiah now that the Grand Inquisitor’s ruled the demilitarization provisions no longer apply to the Grand Duchy, and we can expect those numbers to c
limb quite a bit, although all that production’s going directly to Desnair. Assuming we bring Silkiah into full production and we’re able to apply Tahlbaht’s methods across the board with the same proportionate increase in productivity we’ve seen here, production would be about fifty-two thousand per month. I’d love to see the Harchongese numbers climb higher than that, and I think they probably would, but it’s far too early to even suggest we could accomplish it. For that matter, it’s entirely possible we’ll be able to tweak our own production still further, but I can’t promise anything of the sort at this time. Too much depends on factors I can’t begin to evaluate meaningfully.”

  “Those numbers are for our present muzzle-loading design?”

  “They are, Your Grace. What I’d really like to do would be to concentrate production of the breech-loading design here in the Temple Lands, at least initially. We’ll have the circles in operation sooner than anyone else, and if my projections are remotely accurate, we could produce on the order of twelve thousand per month of the new weapon.”

  “Even at fifty-two thousand, it would take close to a month’s production just to replace the rifles we lost in July and August,” Maigwair pointed out.

  “True, Your Grace. But we’ll have as many as five or even six months’ production between now and next spring. Well, between now and the northern thaw, anyway, and if my estimates are anywhere near accurate, we should be very close to that level—outside Harchong, at least, and they represent no more than twelve percent of the total—by February.”

  Maigwair nodded, but his expression was unhappy. Every pikeman in the Army of God needed to be rearmed with a rifle if he was going to be much more than a target for the heretics, and even at Fultyn’s fifty-two thousand a month, it would take over two months just to rearm the AOG’s remaining pikemen.

  Except, of course, he thought grimly, that there’s no way that’s going to happen if Rhobair’s little brainstorm works.

  He suppressed a grimace there was no point letting Fultyn see, but Duchairn had certainly been right about how much screaming his—no, their, now—proposal was going to evoke. In fact, the commanders of the army their plans would help most were doing the loudest screaming of all … which probably proved they were on the right track!

  The thought made him chuckle suddenly, and Fultyn looked at him very strangely. He started to explain, then shook his head and brushed the thought away. There’d be time to tell Fultyn about it if—when—everyone finally bowed to the inevitable and allowed Duchairn to have his way.

  “What if we completely halted production of pikes and concentrated that part of our workforce on making additional rifles?” he asked instead.

  “We’re not talking about the same sets of skills, Your Grace. As I say, the critical factor for the new rifle is going to be the speed at which we can turn out the necessary screws for the breech plugs. We might see another ten percent increase, at least here in the Temple Lands and in Dohlar. The increase would be smaller in Desnair and Harchong, although it might be worthwhile.”

  “And if we cut back on artillery production?” Maigwair inquired, fully aware that his question was a counsel of desperation.

  “Again, it’s a completely different set of workmen,” Fultyn replied. “And, frankly, Your Grace, we’re going to need to answer the heretics’ artillery as badly as we need to answer their infantry weapons.”

  Maigwair grimaced, wishing he could dispute the point.

  “I have reached some tentative conclusions about the heretics’ artillery,” Fultyn continued, flipping to another page. “The unexploded shells and shell fragments Bishop Militant Bahrnabai sent back were most informative. Unfortunately, we don’t have any examples of whatever the heretics are using to cause shells to detonate on impact, and their conventional fuses function exactly the same way our own do, although the powder in them burns more consistently, which is what makes them so much more reliable. Oh, there are some detail improvements we can incorporate—in particular, their screw-in metallic fuses are highly ingenious—but even if we adopt their new design, it’s unlikely to make much difference unless we can also improve the powder in them.

  “I haven’t been able to determine how those man-portable angle-guns of theirs work, but I’ve come to suspect it has as much to do with metallurgy as with anything else. Given Lieutenant Zhwaigair’s observations about the quantity and quality of steel they’re using in their small arms, I’m fairly certain the portable angle-guns use high-quality steel tubes, not iron. At present, I question whether or not we could produce similar weapons in quantity, given how much heavier and thicker an iron tube would have to be, but we’re looking at the possibility of designing a spring-powered launcher to fire similar shells. The range would be much shorter, but the launcher might actually weigh less, not more, which ought to make it even more portable, and they’d be even simpler and cheaper—and faster—to manufacture. Assuming it’s possible to produce them at all, of course. That’s something else I have Tahlbaht and his staff looking into.

  “As for the shells themselves,” he flipped another page, “they’re definitely using studs to engage in the cannon’s rifling. We could duplicate that, but I’m inclined to wonder if it might not actually be faster and cheaper to enclose the shells in a lead … call it a slipper, I suppose. I’m thinking in terms of something that would form a sort of skirt—offer a hollow base, like a rifle bullet—that would expand into shallower rifling grooves than the heretics appear to be using with their stud arrangement. If it worked, it would probably mean we wouldn’t need those copper things they fit to the bases of their shells. ‘Gas seals’ we should call them, I suppose. Whatever we call them, though, that’s what they do; seal the barrel behind the shell to prevent the force of the powder from escaping around it. I’m not at all certain a lead coating would work as well as I hope, but I think it should be tried. If nothing else, lead’s a lot cheaper than copper and we wouldn’t have to machine the shell base the way they do to make their gas checks stay put.

  “Whatever we do in terms of acquiring rifled artillery, though, we obviously can’t cast it in bronze, Your Grace. The rifling would quickly erode into uselessness. It might last longer if it turns out we can use something softer than the heretic’s studs to engage it, but I can’t believe it would last long enough to be practical. It might be possible to produce a harder liner that could be inserted into a bronze tube, but it would almost certainly have to be made from wrought iron, which would cost far more time and money.”

  “Why not iron?” Maigwair’s tone was curious, not accusatory, and Fultyn shrugged.

  “Cast iron’s too brittle, Your Grace. We’d have to expand the liner to lock it in place, probably by firing a charge, and cast iron would crack when we did. We might try black iron, instead. It would have most of the properties we need, and it’s less expensive than wrought iron, but it still requires a five-day or more of heat treatment and it’s trickier to ensure quality and consistency.”

  Maigwair grimaced in understanding. Neither he nor Fultyn could have explained the physics and chemistry of the process the way Ehdwyrd Howsmyn could have, but the vicar had received a much more extensive practical education in foundry work than he’d ever wanted over the past few years.

  “Black iron” was a relatively new improvement on the cast iron which had been part of Safehold since the Creation itself. It had first been developed less than seventy-five years ago in Dohlar, where the secret of its manufacture had been zealously guarded until the Charisians—who else?—discovered how to duplicate it. It took its name from the outstanding visual difference between it and regular cast iron. When a cast-iron bar was broken, the exposed metal was gray in color, with white or silvery streaks throughout; when a bar of black iron broke, the fractured surface was far darker and streaked with black. Ehdwyrd Howsmyn could have told them that was because the carbon—anywhere from one and a half to five percent—which produced cast iron’s brittleness and accounted for its gray color
ation had been converted into nodes of graphite, instead. The annealing process which converted the carbon produced a far more malleable metal, suitable for the kind of hammering and forging processes which quickly fractured cast iron and with a much higher tensile strength. Indeed, in many ways it was a better material than wrought iron, and cheaper to produce, to boot. Unfortunately, as Fultyn said, the annealing process took time. It also required a highly experienced ironmaster, and they simply didn’t have enough of those to go around.

  “The heretics could probably do it with a steel tube,” Fultyn continued in the tone of someone making an admission he wished he didn’t have to. “We can’t produce steel in those quantities. Yet, at least. There are some hints in the most recent reports from the Inquisition that suggest the heretics’ve come up with an entirely new process that we might—might, Your Grace—be able to duplicate with more information and a little time. For now though, I’m afraid I just don’t see an affordable way to liner bronze artillery.”