3.25: New Guardians

We waited in silence, while Matilda checked the pulses of the bodies sitting on the bench.

They looked as though they were merely napping.

Yara, not so much, with her head wrapped in a rag soaked red with her blood.

When she kept struggling, Rafiel had hefted a goedendag and knocked her out with a swing to the head.

I’d have complained, if we weren’t going to execute her right afterwards.

“It’s done,” Matilda pronounced, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing to her.

Her face remained an unreadable mask as she returned it, then left the building, Emma in tow.

“I’ll have them sent to their families,” Lothar said softly.

I nodded my thanks. I wanted to be done with this dirty business, so I could focus on what I had been planning for months.

Security.

“See you later,” I said, as I left the building with Aprilia.

Back in the courtyard, I turned towards the gate.

“I need to go back to the workshop.”

“No,” she growled, grabbing my hand.

“I do.”

“Jack, you have been working non-stop ever since you arrived. I bet you were working in Nobhart as well. You need to take a break.”

I squeezed her hand back. “I will, after this one thing.”

“What thing?”

“Preparation.”

“For what?”

“A demonstration.”

The morning of the day after the next, our carriage bucked and heaved as it rolled over the uneven terrain of the valley’s interior. My hands remained glued to the long package resting upright between my legs, wrapped in a rag.

Rowan and Ansel sat across us, attempting and failing to hide their nervousness. I was too sleep-deprived to cheer them up.

As the carriage jerked to a stop, my grip on the package tightened even more.

Aprilia chuckled beside me.

“You are treating it like a child.”

“It’s my special rod. It’s very precious to me.”

She shook her head.

“You have bags under your eyes. Did you really have to work late nights?”

“Yes. Once this works reliably, then I can rest.”

Her eyes went back to my package, as her mouth parted for a question.

“All will be answered shortly,” I said, opening the door.

The Ducklings were already there, glancing at a small cart with two large wheels, its contents covered under a tarp and six soldiers surrounding it.

Morning dew had disappeared, but its smell still lingered.

“Are Aramid and Kovar here?”

“We are,” a gruff voice answered.

The craftsmen hopped out from a covered wagon, satchels in hand. The burly blacksmith and the slight carpenter, no, machinists now, still had dark shadows under their eyes.

“Did you not get any rest?” I asked.

“Hard to sleep when I could’ve died,” Kovar replied.

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

He was about to make a rude reply about how I caused that explosion when Aramid stopped him with a kick to his leg.

The Elders stepped out of the carriage that had accompanied ours.

“Everything is ready, Sire!” Lothar called out from ahead.

I undid the knots of the rope tied around my package, then removed the cloth.

As it slid away, a sleek, 4 feet long octagonal tube of iron revealed itself, cradled by a stock of well-oiled cedar wood. It gleamed under the steel gray sky. Its smooth surface was marred only by a tiny post at the front end and a peep-sight at the other end.

It was a Frankenstein’s monster of a weapon. A matchlock packed with advancements from different centuries.

“Say hello to my not-so-little friend.”

Aprilia chuckled beside me.

“What is that, milord?” Ansel asked.

“The future. Come, let me show you the power of chemistry.”

Ahead, three dummies of straw wearing plate armor had been set up in a line, 50 meters behind each other.

To the left was a group of ten, standing close.

I walked a few steps, then turned to face the others.

“This is going to be the Hunters’ new weapon. It uses the same powder that caused the explosion at the workshop.”

All eyes went to the rifled musket.

Aramid handed me a heavy satchel, which I put on. Taking the powder horn from it, I tipped it into a measuring tube. The corned powder hissed as the grains filled the tube, which I tipped into the rifle’s barrel in turn. Then I shoved a woolen wad down the barrel, tamping it with the rod attached to it.

Finally, I took out a small piece of lead, rolling it between my thumb and finger. The bullet that made smoothbores obsolete.

A Minié ball.

Before its invention, soldiers had to shove lead balls down the barrel with considerable force, as they had to be large enough to grip the rifling. It also became more difficult after every shot, as black powder left residue in the barrel.

That meant rifles had half the rate-of-fire of smoothbores, and militaries chose rate-of-fire over accuracy.

The minié ball made rifles just as easy to load by being smaller than the barrel’s bore.

I turned the dull gray bullet in my hand. It wasn’t really a ball. It looked more like a modern bullet, with a point and a base. The base was what made it special; a deep conical depression inside and grooves on the outside. When the powder ignited behind it, the base flared from the explosion, the grooves biting into the rifling as the bullet was pushed ahead, making it spin.

A small change to the bullet mold that doubled the rate of fire.

More like ten molds that I had to carve by hand for two days straight, casting bullets from each, then firing them until I finally found the design which consistently behaved like a spinning bullet instead of a drunkard.

I dropped the bullet in the barrel and it easily slid to the bottom.

I knelt, then slid the cover of the pan attached to the barrel and poured some black powder in it. Theo gave me a smoking slow match that I affixed to the holder.

Hefting the rifle, I blew on the match until it began to glow orange.

I sighted it on the chest plate of the closest dummy, 50 meters away.

Click.

The air roared.

Black sulfurous smoke billowed out from the muzzle.

The newcomers gasped loudly.

Birds took off from the surrounding forest.

Echoes came back to us from the mountains.

I zoomed in.

The dummy remained unharmed.

People whispered to each other.

Someone cleared their throat.

“I’m no marksman,” I said to them, as I repeated the motion. “Give me a few shots.”

Powder, wad, bullet.

Ram, then sight.

This time, I listened to my heartbeat.

One.

Two.

And right before the next, squeezed the trigger.

A faint high pitched noise reached me.

Hit.

As we walked closer to the dummy, even the people who had watched the hand cannon months earlier began to whisper.

“How?”

“Is that really iron plate?”

“From that distance…”

The armor had a hole in its upper-left corner. If it had been slightly closer to the center, it would have been a fatal shot.

“This,” I said, hefting the rifled musket, “will allow us to take down armored enemies at even greater distances.”

The Hunters’ eyes widened in surprise.

Longbows could be accurate beyond 50 meters, but only in the hands of archers with decades of rigorous training. The Hunters were that, but even then, they could only kill unarmored opponents at that range.

A high value target, wearing armor, would have to be much closer; usually when they were charging at you on a galloping horse, giving you only a single chance to disable them.

And still, no arrow could penetrate the best of steel plate.

Unless it was launched by an ox-bow or ballista.

Nah. We’re going forward, not backward.

“From now on, neither armor nor distance will protect those who dare raise arms against us.”

It was a bit hyperbolic, but felt right in the moment.

“It’s very impressive, Sire,” Erickson commented cautiously, “but it’s not exactly quick,”

“It is not.”

Not for some time.

“What it has,” I continued, “is range, lethality and accuracy, especially in the hands of a trained soldier. It won’t be replacing our repeating crossbows, only bows. With the saturation attack of our crossbows and the power of the rifle, we can now take out hordes of common soldiers and high value targets with equal ease.”

We walked back in silence, with others deep in thought.

I wondered how many realized that the knight had just been dethroned as the ultimate warrior. Lifelong training and expensive armor could now be defeated by any man with a tube, powder and a few months of training.

Another little step towards making the nobles’ private armies obsolete.

This wasn’t just a weapon, but a social revolution.

I definitely couldn’t show it to the nobles. Not unless I was willing to go to war with them.

“There’s more,” I said, waving a hand to the soldiers surrounding the covered carriage.

The six men pulled it by the hitch to a flat piece of ground.

“Far enough,” I said, approaching them.

Once it had been turned around, I removed the rag that covered the carriage with a flourish.

Unblemished bronze polished to a mirror finish shone brightly, announcing its presence to everyone around.

They just stared at it for some time.

“This works on the same principle?” Eliard asked, looking into the barrel with his head tilted to one side.

“Yes. The cannon can be used to both decimate groups of enemies and bring down fortifications.”

“Even castles?” Rowan asked.

His face paled as he suddenly realized he had spoken the words out loud.

“Well, this one is a little six-pounder,” I said, patting the cannon, “so no.”

“Little?” Aldren asked in disbelief.

Instead of answering him, I walked back to the cannon’s rear and turned the elevation screw until it pointed at the unfortunate group of dummies.

With the target in sight, I unscrewed the breech screw.

Putting it aside, I took out the one thing that had been weighing the satchel.

A cartridge. Powder, wadding and a shell all packed into one package. Not really a shell, but steel balls tied around a wooden post with ropes.

The same balls that had almost killed me.

Aligning the hole on the cartridge’s side, which was covered by a piece of paper, to a mark on the breech, I shoved it inside the cannon. It slid in with just the right amount of friction.

After screwing the breech screw back in, I stabbed the paper cover of the hole in the shell through a hole at the top of the cannon with a large needle like tool, then pushed a foot long fuse into it.

“Please get behind those boulders,” I said to the attendees.

“Why?”

“Unlike the gun, this is the first time we are testing the cannon. If it fails, it could blow up. You want to be behind sturdy cover when that happens. Flesh doesn’t do well against hot flying metal.”

“What about you?” Aprilia asked.

“It’s a long fuse,” I replied. “I’ll be behind a boulder by the time it reaches the powder.”

“I could do it,” Fennar said.

“No.”

After everyone had taken shelter behind boulders, I lit up the fuse with a slow match.

The moment I heard the hiss of the fuse catching fire and saw some sparks, I turned and ran to the closest boulder, then jumped over it and crouched down.

Nothing happened.

Then...

Thunder rolled over us.

The ground shook and boulders vibrated.

A horse panicked behind us. Then another.

The air kept shaking as mountains echoed the thunder back.

While the rest remained behind the boulder in fear, I stood up.

The cannon had rolled back a few feet, the air around it hazy with gray smoke.

Fifty meters away, eight dummies lay toppled on the ground.

“Our new guardians,” I said to the attendees. “Once the soldiers are trained with a few of them, our home will become very difficult to invade.”

Nobody doubted those words.

It was a good feeling.

A few more of these, and Chadom would truly become a haven.

After receiving their congratulations, I went to check on the cannon.

No bowing or fractures.

I touched the breech. Cool enough.

After unscrewing the breech screw, I removed the cartridge, or tried to.

It wouldn’t come out.

I looked at the extractor in my hand. It was just an oversized spanner.

Should’ve made a better extractor.

I used my considerable strength, until my arms shook with the effort.

The extractor slipped, almost taking a bite out of my flesh.

Looking inside, the cartridge had deformed, and not moved a single inch out of the breech.

“Crap.”