"The recruits continue to keep in good spirits, and are eagerly looking forward to their new weapons…"
I was half-asleep in the regal chair as I listened to Kurt's daily debriefing.
I had hoped that after defending my thesis, I would finally get some decent sleep for a change. But alas, it was not meant to be.
There was simply too much exciting work to be done.
Every day I woke with first light and stayed up well past the last. I spent whole days drawing schematics for various tools and weapons, planning resource distributions, experimenting with pendulums to define consistent measurement units, solving lift equations by hand, and much, much more. Worse still, I would often get up in the middle of the night just to write down whatever idea had come to me, for fear I would forget it by morning.
If someone saw my pale face and dark circles, they would probably cart me off to a hospital. Make it a psychiatric one, once they saw the incoherent scribbles covering my bedroom wall.
The walls of the great hall were not much better either...
Since ousting the bailiff, I had made the former feasting hall my base of operations. The high table became a drawing desk, the stone walls blackboards, the bailiff's prayer books sketching paper, and the long feasting table a surgical table where my new medical corps practised their craft on animal carcasses. Not even the kitchens were spared. I had remade half of them into an improvised chemistry lab using whatever mugs and plates I could find.
I even pulled out all the door hinges to get as much raw iron as possible. Which, in retrospect, may not have been the best idea, given how much harder it became to keep out the winter winds.
"…and there is nothing else to report. Seems that girl Erika's idea turned out great at getting 'em into shape, despite Diet's doubts."
No, great was an understatement — her idea had been brilliant! For the cost of one bite wound and a few bruises, we restored morale, the troops got some genuine fighting experience, a promising officer candidate, and even a surge of public interest in the soap I had made. All at once.
I glanced over at Erika as she raised her head at the mention of her name. She offered a polite smile before returning to studying the boar's heart spread open on the desk.
She was currently one of my most valuable assets in the village.
She had the education one might expect from a peasant woman on the frontier—which was to say, almost none. But what she lacked in formal knowledge, she more than made up for with curiosity and relentless diligence. In that way, she reminded me a great deal of myself when I first discovered the pull of engineering. I found myself wondering what kind of genius she might have been if she had grown up in the 21st century.
Especially so since there was one aspect she was much better with than I ever was: dealing with people.
It was her idea to stage a ‘controlled battle’ when the men took a break near the edge of the forest so that they could see the true value of what they were learning. And with one of the recruits getting accidentally hurt beforehand, it turned out even better than expected, as the stakes were higher.
Without her, I would probably still be tearing my hair out over how to motivate the recruits.
Food and the threat of the Count’s counterattack had kept them in the ranks well enough. But weeks of exercises whose purpose they could not see had steadily drained their spirit. And high morale is crucial for any army. Morale and discipline.
"All is good then, Captain Kurt," I answered in a tired voice and gave a salute. Since I had insisted they use proper military address, I had to lead by example. "Let your troops know the weapons are coming soon and to keep up the good work."
“Alr— I mean, sir, yes, sir!” Kurt saluted back with a smile, a bit awkwardly as always, and turned to leave.
With the morning audience finished, I splashed a little water on my face to freshen up and turned back to my desk. It was time to return to the pressing issue at hand: weapon production. I had promised the army weapons as if they already existed, when in truth they were nowhere near complete.
The problem was—as it so often is—the stubbornness of people set in their ways.
***
"Prince Karl," Otto grumbled as soon as he saw me in the workshop doorway. "I told Kurt already. My answer is the same. It won't work, and I want no part in it."
I swallowed an internal groan and closed the door behind me. Inside, everything was amber and shadow. Charcoal glowed in the hearth, and bellows wheezed in long, slow exhales.
"So I heard. That's why I came myself." I pulled a folded piece of parchment from my coat and spread it on the cleanest corner of the workbench. Sketched across it in precise, slightly cramped lines were two designs: a leaf-bladed spearhead and a crossbow trigger mechanism. "I need sixty spearheads and twenty triggers as soon as possible."
Otto glanced at the drawings. His expression did not change.
“And I need a new bellows and a roof that doesn't leak,” He coughed into his sleeve. “We don't always get what we need."
"The spearheads aren't the problem, and you know it." I kept my voice even. I had already rehearsed three versions of this argument on the walk over. "It's the method I'm proposing you object to."
"Sand casting." He said it like a diagnosis. "Yes. I object to it."
"Because cast iron is brittle."
“Because cast iron is brittle.” Otto picked up a short iron rod from the floor and held it up. “I've seen what cast iron does when it catches a shield boss at the wrong angle. It shatters. I've picked pieces out of men's faces, back in the Imperial army.”
He coughed into his sleeve again.
“No blacksmith wants their name on work like that. Find a better method.”
Damn it, this was the better method! Mass production of standardised replaceable parts. That was how materiel superiority is built—not by hammering out each head by hand. Besides, it’s not like I intended to send my army into a fight with brittle weapons. There was a solution for that, too.
"Decarbonisation."
"De-carbon-isation?" Otto struggled as he repeated after me.
"Yes. After we cast the heads, we pack them with rusted remains and crushed ore, then seal them in the hottest part of the fire for three days."
Otto blinked. "Why?"
“The carbon atoms bonded into the crystal matrix are what cause the brittleness, as they prevent plastic deformations. But at high temperatures, oxygen has a stronger chemical affinity for carbon than iron does, so it pulls the carbon out through a diffusion reaction and off-gasses it as carbon monoxide. What remains has an entirely different microstructure, one that can actually absorb—"
I stopped as I could clearly see Otto’s eyes glazing over and his face twisting in confusion.
"…it makes it less brittle.”
A long silence.
A coal popped in the hearth.
"I've never heard of anyone doing it that way," Otto said at last. His voice had shifted. He wasn’t convinced, but at least he was finally listening.
"Well… it was something recently discovered by one of my father’s blacksmiths. You know how these things are, you don’t want your enemies finding new ways to kill you better…” I smiled awkwardly. I disliked lying, but it was for his own good.
“Hurmm,” Otto rubbed his bushy beard, sending small flakes of ash drifting to the floor. “This still all seems a bit far-fetched.”
I met his eyes. "Look, you trusted me when I got rid of Ugo. That required a great deal more faith than this."
A longer silence.
"It was a different kind of trust," Otto concluded gruffly. But he picked up the parchment. “I can give it a try if you are so confident, I suppose. But I won’t let it be given to the troops before I personally try every single head and this… crossbow nut, as you call it.”
He stopped for another brief fit of coughs.
“And I want payment upfront.”
Finally!
Not wanting to lose the momentum, I pressed on. "I'll also need to modify the forge. The process needs more heat than your current setup can hold. Another bellows arm would help, and a tighter firebox to keep the heat from bleeding out the sides. We could use the bricks from—"
"No."
The word fell like a hammer.
This again…
"This forge," Otto said, with a quiet authority that sealed the subject, "was built by my late wife and me. It has been my bread for nearly two decades. You do not touch it."
I pulled back the moment I recognised the tone. It was the same one my father had used when I once suggested reworking the old tractor. As frustrating as it was, I had to pick my battles. Sigh. "Fine. We discuss the bellows only. Nothing comes apart."
Otto held his gaze for a moment, then gave a short nod.
"Oh, and there's one more thing." I glanced toward the back of the workshop, where a shadow moved behind the leather curtain separating the forge from the storage room beyond. "Your daughter helps with stock, doesn't she? Tallying ingots, tracking the charcoal supply?"
The temperature in the room changed in a way that had nothing to do with the hearth.
"She does basic counts," Otto said carefully. "Nothing more."
"I'd like to give her more responsibility. There is a serious lack of people capable of—"
"She stays out of the forge." His voice went flat again.
"I wasn't asking for her to work the forge. I meant—"
"I heard what you said." Otto set down the parchment with deliberate care, his hands resting on the workbench a moment longer than needed. "But hear what I say. I served alongside smiths for close to ten years in the Emperor's army. Good men. Better with iron than I was when I started. But I saw what it did to them. They all had the cough before fifty. Shaking hands. Some couldn't remember their grandchildren's names in the end. I can feel it in me already." He looked up. "I know what the smoke and the dust do. I won't have her breathing this air every day."
That I had not expected.
I knew about heavy metal poisoning in foundry workers, of course—I had written a paragraph on occupational hazards in a report once. But to hear a medieval blacksmith name it, in his own terms, with thirty years of quiet observation behind it, that was very impressive.
First, the poachers. Then Erika. Now Otto. They were all much sharper than history books would make one think a medieval peasant was.
"I understand," I said. "That's not what I'm asking. I need someone to manage materials and products. Someone who can count, knows what they are looking at, and can make sure the right parts reach the right hands in the right order. A desk, a ledger, and occasional visits to the armoury. She'd be wasted taking inventory in the back room."
Otto's jaw worked in silence for a moment.
Then the curtain shifted.
A stocky young woman stepped through, wiping her hands on her apron. She had short black hair and shared her father's square jaw, though none of his hesitation.
Her eyes locked onto me. “What are the conditions?”
“Lili—”
“You will get a pay of a silver a day,” I jumped at the opportunity. “A free lunch with the troops, should you wish. And should you prove capable, the protection that an official title granted by a prince carries.”
The last part was mostly for Otto’s sake, but it also felt nice handing out formal titles. It made me feel like a CEO.
Or, well, a ruling noble.
“We are thankful for the offer, but—”
"A silver a day?" She repeated it and then looked at her father. "Heh. That's more than you make, Father. It’s enough for all new tools by spring."
"I don't need my daughter to buy me tools," Otto pushed back, but the edge in his voice had dulled.
"No. You need her in the back room counting nails until some other lord's son decides she'd make a fine maid."
“How—?”
“Erika told me.” She held his gaze, though not unkindly. "This is the best offer I will get, Father. We both know it."
She glanced at her father.
He stared at the forge for a long moment, jaw tight.
Then it released.
"Fine," he sighed, defeated. "But I want it in writing. And she eats dinner at home."
I eagerly agreed.
Then, satisfied by my accomplishments for today, I bid the blacksmith goodbye and stepped out of the suffocating heat of the workshop.
Outside, Dietrich and Wulf were waiting as my escorts.
"So, lad, did you manage to work things out with that old codger?" Dietrich asked as we headed back toward the manor. "Good man, but hard-headed as a hammer."
"As much as I could, I suppose." I smiled.
"Also, Kurt told me about those weapons you're having Otto make." He continued. "Even if you manage to make the spearheads and those cross-bows work, I'm not sure how much good they'll do against the Count. We managed to trick Ugo with the smoke. But this time we'd be in an open battle. So don't let that victory put you at ease, young prince. You have not seen yet what a properly trained noble can do."
"A breeze that opens a throat," Wulf added, his voice low. " Fire that singes flesh from bone. Earthen needles that lodge in every part of your body at once."
My smile soured a bit.
They were not wrong.
If we wanted to be certain of winning, we needed more than spearheads and crossbow bolts.
We needed more firepower.
But as with most things, the answer was rather simple. We just needed better tech.
And the cure for the current conditions was—fire medicine!