Chapter 5 - Year 659 Day 45
I walked up next to Jarum as he stood over the deer. "That was an excellent shot. I think you struck it through the heart."
"Thank you for the compliment, my lord. And thank you for allowing me out on this hunt. So often, I am stuck going to parties and formal events, trying to persuade the upper echelons of society to make a deal. Being in North Cove has been very relaxing. It almost makes me want to pretend the negotiations took longer than expected."
"So do I, but more for the purpose that I think you got way too good a deal," I said with a smile.
"Forgive me, my lord, but I have to disagree. I think the agreement that Edward and I came to is favorable to both sides."
"Time will tell," I said.
I really did think he was asking for a lot. The price was ok, but the number of books he was demanding seemed a little high. We were going to have to churn out more scribes. Either that or get the printing press up and running.
"Let us return to Plimgus so that the cooks can start preparing this. We will have a feast tonight, and then I must return to Cove Town. There is much to do and governing to be done."
"My lord, it has been a pleasure. I will be returning home with more goods than I anticipated, and I feel this will be a more lucrative partnership than I thought." He said with a slight bow of respect.
"You pretty much grabbed everything that wasn't nailed down."
We both laughed at this. It was the truth. Any item that wasn't hidden away, he wanted. He purchased a dresser, an armoire, a rocking chair, an abacus, and another set of measuring tools, including a protractor, compass, and my more modern calipers. Some of these things had already made their way to Westcove, but he bought new ones. The additional measuring tools that I had created, I sold to him for the same reason. I spent a day going over our mathematical system. I needed to bypass Vaspar, so Peter looked like a fool for rejecting it.
The funniest thing he took was my t-shirt. He almost took it right off my back.
The day after we arrived, we headed back to Plimgus. I wanted to keep his prying eyes out of Bicman and Cove town. Two nights ago, I needed to use the toilet, and I hated the chamber pots. It always made the room smell. Instead, I left to use the latrine. On my way down the stairs, I ran into Fredrick and Jarum. Their reaction to me wearing my nice cotton t-shirt and boxers with the North Cove crest on it was priceless. Fortunately there were no hearts on my boxers.
I had to explain to the two of them what it was and when I wore it. I told some lies about where the tightly woven cotton fabric came from and had to promise I would get Jarum some if the strange merchant ship ever came to North Cove again.
Most of what he bought, besides the books, was on credit. He simply didn't have the money for all the stuff he wanted.
All in all, I was very satisfied with his visit. If our partnership worked out, we could easily bypass Vaspar and just start shipping to Carok and Westcove.
What I really wanted in return for the product was people, and most importantly, skilled laborers. I was going to have to deal with the fact that some would be spies. Nothing could be done about that if I wanted to grow my county. So we came to an agreement where very little of what came back to North Cove would have to be coin.
****
Three days later, I found myself in Pine Ridge. I loved the new roads and my new carriage. The bronze alloy springs that we used were much better than anything available south. I had learned that most places that implemented my leaf springs used composite wood springs since pure bronze or iron didn't hold its shape. The unknown powder my father had bought made all the difference. If I could figure out what that stuff was I would make a fortune. That or learn how to get my steel to hold its shape better under pressure. Lord Vaspar wanted to know how we got the metal leaf springs to work. I had to tell them that it was a powder and I had no idea where it came from.
Since I couldn't replicate the powdered version, I wanted my people to figure out coil springs. Maybe making them would be easier. The issue might be the same, though.
These were just some of the thoughts that kept me busy as I traveled. I was able to make it to Kerisi by the evening and then rested the horses. Then we rode through Bicman without bothering to say hello to the baron. The less contact I had with that man, the better. All I wanted to do was get rid of him. The best way to make sure he screwed up is to make him think I wasn't paying attention to him. I also decided to take action, just in case I was right about the Yarbeth family's true intentions.
I had an outpost put up in the mountain pass. I was having a wall built along the narrowest part. I would use the excuse that we had had raiders come from across the mountain and that the outpost was there to make sure that the raiders could not get to our lands. I also sent a messenger to the village of Artanes across the mountain, letting them know that we had set up an outpost for trading and unauthorized people were trying to make deals behind my back. Just another trap I had laid for Yarbeth. If the people of Mother's mountain got unauthorized visitors, they would tell us, and we could claim Weston had broken his vassal oath.
Upon arriving in Pine Ridge, the first person I ran into was Jorb on his way home from the forge. He was deep in thought. A crease had formed in the center of his forehead.
"Jorb, you look like a man deep in thought."
"My lord, it is good to see you." He greeted me in his booming voice.
"And you as well, but what is bugging you?"
"Bugging me?"
"Sorry, I meant 'bothering' you. Bugging is like a fly that won't leave you alone or something crawling up your back."
He tilted his head and thought. "An interesting phrase, and yes, you are correct. Do you want the long answer or the short one?"
I chuckled. "You know I like the details."
"I thought you might say that. Before you left, we had wrapped the wrought iron around a mandrel to try and make the spring you wanted."
"I remember, and as I recall, it didn't work."
He nodded. "Yes, and so we tried to make it with the charcoal box steel. The issue was the same as we had with some of the crossbows and leaf springs. There were weak points that were either too brittle or bent. Talking with Mac, we decided to shear off the outer layer and hopefully the inside would be more consistent."
"And it worked?" I said excitedly.
"Please, let me finish. It did work better, but not enough to get consistent results; it had a forty percent failure rate compared to the sixty to seventy percent from the box steel. So it was frustrating, but I also had a bunch of steel that we had sheared away. So I heated it up and used the trip hammer to combine it." His eyes lit up at that point. "Lord Amos, this steel is much better. It does not have nearly as many brittle or soft spots."
"So you did it." I said excitedly.
His face fell. "No, my lord. The issue is that the springs don't do what you say they will. Mathew and some of the other children have been helped by stretching the weights to them, continually stretching them, and then letting them relax. A few of them will return to normal a few times but quickly bend out of shape."
"Hmmm. We have better steel, but not one that will hold its spring as well as the bronze alloy or composite wood. Well, I am sure you will figure it out. I am too exhausted right now. I will come by tomorrow and check things out. Not that I would be able to help much, but I do want to see this better steel."
"Then I shall see you tomorrow."
****
The next morning, I got up, completed my exercises, sword and spear training, and then headed to the forge. Jorb was already there working with his apprentices. They had a lot of things they were working on, so I stood there and watched. Most things he was working with were wrought iron. I saw a few wires that I assumed were for spring experiments. Cast iron was not done in this shop. That was done next to the blast furnace, and it was brought here for finishing. I watched as the three trip hammers pounded out different items. Fascinated by the process.
Something was not right, though, something that always seemed off in these ancient smith shops. I couldn't put my finger on it, though.
Soon enough, Jorb turned around after he was finished correcting something that an apprentice was doing. Looking over to me, he waved me into the shop. Walking over, he showed me the wires. He picked up a rod that was as thick as my pinky. He put enough force on the rod so that it started to bend. It was actually quite impressive. I don't know if I could have done it.
"Notice how it does not spring back like you asked. There must be something else we need to add to it, but we have tried a few different things with no success. It is going to take a long time to experiment and figure out what it is that we need. It might be the same powder that we used for the bronze or something completely different."
"It is ok. If it were easy, it would have already been done. Which… I guess it could have been done, but the idea hasn't spread yet."
Jorb just nodded as if listening to a sage. I wish those videos I had made had gone over how to make steel maintain its shape. I knew it was steel I was thinking about.
We had a water balloon catapult launching contest in my high school physics class. One kid brought a catapult that looked like something you would find in a junkyard. Actually, he probably had. It was a bowed piece of rust-covered steel welded to a heavy metal frame. Most of us were teasing him for not even trying. We were all laughing until it was time to launch. His catapult launched the balloon all the way across the parking lot.
As we sat there chatting, one of the apprentices went to the corner of the room, dipped a ladle into a barrel of water, and poured it over his head. Not being used to the heat of the forge, I decided to do that myself. As I poured the warm water over my head, something dawned on me. I began to look around and became very confused.
"Ah, Jorb. Where are the quenching buckets? I'm not drinking out of the same barrel you quench your mettle in, am I?"
"Quench, my lord?"
"Yeah, you know, like when you quench the metal after you heat it up.
My lord, I have never put it in cool water. We let it go out naturally or put it in warm ashes to cook it more slowly, making it softer."
That can't be right. Every TV show has quenching iron in water or oil. They even did it at the Renaissance fair.
"Ok, so just for curiosity's sake, heat this smaller wire and then dunk it in water. Let's see what happens."
"As you wish, my lord," Jorb said with a heavy amount of skepticism.
He took a pair of tongs and placed the thin wire in the fire. Once it was red hot he immediately took it to the barrel and dunked it in. As the steam came up, it gave me feelings of nostalgia from my past life. I had never been to a real forge, but I remember sitting on the couch with dad watching Gunsmoke and The Rifleman. This just had to work.
By that time, the three apprentices had all stopped what they were doing to watch. We waited for the wire to cool completely, and then I grabbed it and bent it confidently, knowing it would work. However, what actually happened surprised everyone. The piece bent and then snapped.
I looked over at Jorb, confused. He looked shocked. "Uh, that isn't supposed to happen, is it?" I asked.
Without taking his eyes off the two pieces. He shook his head, "No, my lord. In fact, if you do that to bronze it ruins it, and you have to reheat it. I thought that is what would happen to the iron.
"Well, something isn't right. Now it is too hard and brittle. Maybe we left it in the water for too long or too short a time. Let's reheat those halves and try again. One for longer and one for shorter."
Jorb was still looking as if his whole belief system had shattered. Two of the apprentices each grabbed a piece and started to heat it. Then both pulled the metal out, and one walked over to the bucket. Putting the piece in the water and holding it there.
"Count to one hundred before you pull it out."
I held my breath as he slowly counted to one hundred. Pulling it out, he set it down on the table. I stared at it for a moment, then took a deep breath and picked it up. Unfortunately, the results were the same.
Sighing, I turned to the other young man. When I looked, however, my jaw dropped. He was staring at the piece of metal as he slowly flexed it. When he released it, it sprang back into shape.
Soon, all of us were staring at him like he was some sort of magician.
"Young man, what exactly did you do?" I asked.
Broken from the spell by my voice, he dropped the metal on the floor.
As I walked over to pick up the piece, he began to rapidly apologize.
"I don't need your apology, kid. I need you to explain how you did this." I said as I began to gently flex the wire.
"I-I didn't do anything." The young boy stuttered.
"Then how do you explain this?" I really needed to calm down before I gave the kid a heart attack.
"Well, um, I don't know. I put the wire in the heat and pulled it out at the same time as him," he said, pointing a finger as if it were an accusation. "He was already on his way to the water, so I just set this down. Because he took so long and the wire was thin, it had cooled enough to pick it up. I was going to heat it up again so I could put it in the water quickly, but I just thought I would try and bend it and well…"
"Jorb?"
Jorb said nothing for a long moment, but when he spoke, I could tell he was excited. "My lord, if I understand this correctly, when we rapidly cooled the steel, it hardened it. I don't know why, but that is what it did. This caused it to become brittle. When we reheated it, it softened it again without losing its hardness."
"We need to do the same thing with the other wires and rods as well as any piece of steel that could possibly flex. Figure out the best heat and cooling ratio." I held up the piece of wire. "Congratulations, my friends, we have just created spring steel. Remember this moment because I guarantee you have all just changed the world. Now I am going to find a box to put this piece in. It is going in the museum with all your names on it."
"What about your name, my lord?"
"Nope, you will all keep my name out of this, and I will tell you why. I do not want people using me as a crutch. I don't want people coming to me as soon as they have trouble figuring things out. I want people to push themselves. That is how we succeed as a people. What happened here was luck. Both what I did and this young man. But sometimes luck is all you need. Luck wouldn't have happened if we hadn't decided to try something new. So let people think that this was all your work, and they will push themselves to be just as successful."
I truly believed what I said. What I didn't believe was that they would keep their mouths shut. Eventually, it would all get tied back to me.
I think it is time we did something that I have been meaning to do for a while now. It is time to create the Order of the Reality Benders.
Baron Weston Yarbeth of Bicman
The Baron of Bicman crumpled a piece of paper and threw it into the fire. Growling, he turned back to the other reports he was going over.
"It appears you have received bad news from the count. Is there, by any chance, something I can do to assist you?" The steward of the house asked. He was a short, squat man, but he was a genius when it came to numbers and was always moving. He was older than the Baron but more spry than a twenty-year-old. A fact that the baron resented.
"Not unless you can get rid of that fool without my cousin finding out about it." The baron replied.
"I would think your cousin would be happy he was gone."
"Most definitely, but as a member of the council, he has promised not to touch the count. With how new we are here, we would be the first people accused of killing him. My cousin would have to make concessions. One of those might be my head. Even if we could avoid retribution from the council, the boy has the favor of the king. Until the king is dealt with, there is no way we wouldn't be receiving a Royal Messenger. So for now we just have to tolerate the man."
"And what is it you must tolerate this time?"
"He rebuked me for telling the people they were not to take one in five days off. A single one of my fiefs in Yarbeth makes more for me than this entire barony. You can see how fat and lazy these people are," The Baron said as he put another piece of ham in his mouth. "And yet he refuses to let me work the peasants as they should be. It would do the peasants good if they needed to work a little harder for their bread."
The baron slammed his fist down. "You must find out who complained to the count. Have some of the men we brought with us start searching for the culprit. Once we find them, make sure the body is never found."
"I also recommend that you demand that all reports be sent to me and that I forward them on to the count. We must also put out men to patrol for peasants where they shouldn't be. Runaway peasants may be executed." The steward said with a hint of malice in his voice.
The baron began to laugh. "Yes, that will teach those peasants not to try to interfere with my affairs. The only true way to control a population is to use force."