3.19: Power

It took five days to prepare everything for the public trial.

During those five days, I assigned a few trustworthy men, including Rowan, to the saltpeter works. At the industrial district, I had another ball mill made; a wooden cask packed with steel balls, its iron bands resting on top of rollers. We dumped crushed charcoal into it, then connected it to the waterwheel. It rattled for hours, as the balls repeatedly crushed the charcoal, turning it into a powder more fine than flour.

Black powder was mostly oxidizer, saltpeter in our case, along with a bit of fuel, such as fine charcoal, and a moderator, such as sulfur. With the oxidizer and fuel taken care of by others, I focused on the moderator. I had the shiny rocks of pyrite crushed into a powder, then hauled them deeper into the valley.

“Why are we moving so far away from the industrial district?” Frida asked as Aldren and I pulled the cart laden with pyrite and coal.

“The process will produce toxic fumes. You don’t want to breathe it in.”

“But it’ll still remain in the air. It could blow over Cradle.”

“It gets diluted in the air. A tiny amount of it isn’t that dangerous.”

Far away from Cradle and the industrial district, we prepared a bed of coals on the ground and placed a three meter long iron pipe with a closed end on top of it. It hissed as we poured crushed pyrite inside it. When a fifth of it was full, we put its open end inside the mouth of a large earthen jar, which had a vent on the side, then lit up the coals.

While the hot coals turned the pipe red-hot, I led the Ducklings away from it and spent some time teaching them. I would rather they didn’t remain anywhere close to the setup, but this crucial knowledge couldn’t remain locked up in my brain alone.

If something happened to me, they would be the ones leading Chadom’s scientific progress.

An hour later, I approached the jar with my breath held and opened the lid of the side vent with a leather glove. Its inside walls, which used to be glazed ashen, were now covered with a layer of bright yellow substance.

“That is sulfur?” Aldren asked through a pinched nose.

“Yes. The heat roasted the pyrite, breaking it into its constituents, iron and sulfur. Sulfur has a low vaporizing temperature, so it turns into a gas. As it travels along the pipe, the gas cools down and condenses on the walls of the jar.”

“Master, why does everything you work with smells horrible?” Tobin asked innocently.

Because I used to make software, not chemicals. Be grateful I know even these methods.

I didn’t say those words out loud. Instead, I inhaled the smell of rotting eggs. “It’s the smell of freedom.”

“Freedom?”

“Yes. We need to be strong to rebuff anyone who would try to take away our freedom. You’ve already seen the power of these smelly chemicals when they are combined just right.”

They exchanged nervous glances, then nodded, remembering the vase that had roared louder than any beast ever could, cracking a wooden plank in two.

“Once our soldiers wield weapons powered by these foul-smelling chemicals, our home will become a fortress.”

“Nobody would ever dare attack us!” Fennar roared.

“Right, Master?” Runa asked timidly.

“I can’t guarantee that, but you will never be so helpless that you have to run away from your home. Ever. That I can promise you.”

She nodded solemnly.

While we worked on perfecting the process of manufacturing gunpowder, ‘Lothar’ kept avoiding me. He was clearly mulling over something, so I decided to give him some time.

He surprised me by coming to talk to me on the morning of the day the trial was to be held. He gingerly walked through the open doors of the lathe workshop, where I was working on our first finished cannon prototype. The smell of sawdust, oil and a faint trace of gunpowder hung in the air.

“General?” I said, while inspecting a heavy bronze screw, with a handle at its back. It was as thick as my arm, and only a little shorter than my, uh, hand, its large threads gleaming in the dull light of the clouded sky.

“Sire,” he said, saluting sharply.

Looking at the screw, his posture broke. “What… is that?”

“A screw breech,” I replied, twisting it in the rear of the cannon, until the threads bit, taking the weight.

“This is going to work just like the vase, right?”

“Yes.”

“That,” he pointed to the breech, “doesn’t look like it would create a perfect seal. Wouldn’t it have been better to just seal this end?”

“Yes and no. A muzzle-loader cannon is more reliable, but it is slow to load and puts the crew in danger every time it has to be reloaded. And yes, the screw breech is not a perfect seal. It could have been better, but I will need to make some rubber for that.”

The latex sap we had brought from Nobhart had clotted into clumps by the time I checked on it.

“So now what?”

“Cartridges.” I pointed to the three long brass pipes, as thick as a woman’s arm, standing on the floor.

“Hmm. They look like containers.”

“They are. For the powder and the gas it will create.”

“Clever,” he commented. “Seems like you have everything in hand, but you don’t look happy.”

My shoulders sagged. “I wanted to use a sliding block.”

“What is that?”

“Just a big block of metal that slides behind the cartridge. Much faster to reload than the screw.”

The interrupted screw could be almost as fast, and it could scale to much bigger cannons than my puny 6-pounder, but the mechanism was a lot more complicated than simply cutting off parts of threads of the screw. Sadly, that was all I knew about it. Better to focus on what I could make and train soldiers on it than to chase after my dreams, leaving us vulnerable.

“With a sliding block,” I explained, “the crew cannon can fire it as quickly as they can reload, but I don’t think gunbronze would survive that much force without warping. The screw distributes it, in exchange for a longer load time.”

“Why not make the whole thing out of iron? It’s tougher.”

“It’s also brittle. When a bronze cannon fails, it splits open. When a cast iron cannon fails, it shatters into pieces. Pieces that fly around with tremendous power, killing everyone in their path.”

“What about steel? We must make more in a week than all of Nahnon.”

“Steel cannons are my ultimate goal. They will be lighter and stronger than this one, but we’re struggling to produce steel of consistent quality for even crossbows right now.”

“This is frightening enough,” he said, running his hand over the cannon. “I shudder just thinking about what this thing can do.”

“Kill whoever is in front of it. No amount of personal armor will save a man facing it, or dozens.”

“Dozens?” he asked, eyes wide.

I sucked in a deep breath.

I’m really going to bring it into this world, aren’t I?

“Grapeshot,” I forced the words out. “I’ll show you later.”

He visibly trembled, then shook himself out of his thoughts.

“I… wanted to talk to you about Hyde,” he said cagily.

“What about him?” My voice came out colder than I had intended.

“You haven’t been to the cells to meet him.”

“What would be the point? He couldn’t keep his hate and anger in check, despite his age, so now he will face punishment for his crimes.”

“I get it. If you see him, it becomes… personal.”

My jaw clenched on its own. Because of that fool, Lothar almost died and Aprilia was almost…

I breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly, to let go of the anger.

“Would you please meet him?” he asked.

“Why?”

“You know why he hates Nahnon so much?”

“A nobleman kidnapped his granddaughters. That does not excuse his actions!”

“It does not, but if you promise to find and rescue them, maybe he won’t try to rile the people against you at the trial.”

“I don’t care. Let him try. If you care so much about it, why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“It has to be you.”

His face was wilted, but his jaw was clenched shut. He was not going to budge.

I met his eyes. “I’m getting sick of your secrets.”

“Please?”

I sighed. “Fine.”

“Good. Um… there are rumors spreading,” he said, glancing at me.

“About what?”

“About the punch. The soldiers think I cuckolded you.”

I looked at him for an explanation.

I didn’t choose Aprilia just for her looks. I trusted her, but I also knew about the past reputation of the man in front of me. The man who used to be a womanizer when he was Jack Nobhart, then for some reason became celibate ever since I came into this world.

His hands went up immediately. “Nothing happened between us! We got close during the training, but not in that way. She’s like a sister to me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “When you were Jack, weren’t you a Casanova?”

“A what?”

“A womanizer.”

His face wilted, guilt and sadness openly warring on it.

I stared at him, waiting for an explanation.

None arrived.

My irritation grew further. I looked around. We were alone in the workshop.

“Are we going to finally talk about us?”

He shook his head. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“That’s it? You’re going to live as Lothar, the General of the Cha, and I as Count Jack Nobhart, with no further explanation?”

“I don’t see any problem with it.”

“You’re never going to meet your mother and sister?”

“They are safe. I know you will look after them. That’s good enough for me.”

“What if I reconcile with Eirica?” I goaded him. “What if we get really close?”

“If she is fine with it, I… I wouldn’t get in your way.”

His face wilted further, dousing my anger.

“I… I wasted that life,” he croaked. “You are doing a much better job at being me than—”

Suddenly, the world exploded.

My stance widened to keep me steady as my ears rang sharply, as if someone had jammed a nail through them. I looked up. The workshop shook, raining dust over us.

Knees bent, adrenaline running in our veins, we waited for a heartbeat, ready to run. Then another.

Nothing happened. The workshop remained standing.

I heaved a breath of relief.

Hearts racing, we ran to the room that held the boring machines.

Coughing, I waved the dust aside to look at the view of devastation. A part of the wall on the far side had simply vanished, turned to splinters that covered the entire room. The gun boring table had fallen on its side.

“Shit,” I whispered.

“What happened?”

“The ball mill was on the other side. It blew up.”

“How?”

“I had filled it with the first batch of gunpowder just an hour ago.”

Luckily there was no one in the workshop besides me today. I had ordered Lothar and Aramid to take a day of rest. As the dust settled, glittering steel caught my eye. Steel balls were embedded halfway in the wood of the wall on our side, like oversized musket shot. That wall was all that had stood between certain death and us. I felt a chill crawl up my spine. If someone had been in this room…

“Jack? Are you fine?” Lothar asked.

“Yes.”

I shook myself awake.

The mill blew up. Why would it blow up? There is no source of fire nearby.

As I pulled a ball free from the wall, my stomach dropped.

Of course.

Steel balls.

“I’m a moron,” I said, clutching my head.

“What?”

“I used the leftover steel balls from bearings in the ball mill. Steel, if struck hard enough, can produce a spark. That must’ve ignited the gunpowder.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Mistakes happen. Nobody was hurt.”

“By sheer luck! If anyone had been here… if I had been working here instead of the other room, or if this wall had been any thinner, someone would have been dead!”

As boots thundered outside, I lowered myself to the dirty floor, cold sweat running down my spine. My eyes found themselves drawn to the balls embedded in the wall.

It reminded me of Count Zock. If one of the balls had hit me, it would have popped my head like a watermelon, just like what a boulder from our trebuchet had done to him.

I looked at Lothar, and an involuntary chuckle left me.

“This is what grapeshot can do.”

All color drained from his face.

In my relentless effort to harness power, I had forgotten what an undiscriminating, heartless bitch it was.