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Master Gunner Thalmoth finished winding his slow match around the eight-foot linstock, then held the lighted end up to his lips and blew on it until Kalvan was afraid the man's beard would catch on fire.
"Everyone back!" Thalmoth shouted. The other gunners and foundry workers backed away from the gun-testing pit, leaving Thalmoth standing alone with a smoldering match poised over the touch-hole of the new sixteen pounder inside. "Farther, farther!" he shouted as a few of the younger workers showed signs of wanting to stay close enough to the pit to see what happened.
The workers kept back and somehow in the process Kalvan had to join the retreat to avoid being jostled in a manner not befitting a Great King's dignity. He grinned, wondering if Thalmoth had planned this to avoid having to publicly give orders to his sovereign.
Suddenly the linstock dipped, the priming powder puffed and the sixteen pounder spewed flames and white smoke. Double-charged for the proof firing, it reared halfway out of the testing pit on its oak beam, then thumped back into place. From where Kalvan stood, it looked completely intact.
Half a dozen picked men ran forward with sponges to cool the barrel, rammers and tools to measure any deformation of barrel or bore. As a light breeze blew away the smoke and dust, they leaped down into the pit, leaving Thalmoth posing dramatically at the rim with a linstock over his shoulder.
Kalvan didn't begrudge the old man his moment of glory; he'd come out of retirement to take care of the testing program for the Royal Hostigos Arsenal and was clearly worth any two other gunners in Hostigi service, except Alkides. Although a native of Hostigos, Thalmoth had spent twenty of his younger years as a mercenary and he'd handled guns in more battles than he had fingers and toes.
Finally, Thalmoth turned to the spectators and gave the thumbs up signal for success which Kalvan had introduced. The next step would be firing a proof charge with the breech dug in to give the gun maximum elevation, then a field carriage-thank Galzar or Somebody that the gunsmiths, black smiths and carpenters had finally stopped arguing about who would be in charge of the carriage shop!-and last of all, a naming ceremony, with Uncle Wolf Tharses presiding over the gun's acceptance into the Royal Artillery. That would be about the last such ceremony for a while, though. No more brass for the Foundry, or at least not much; Kalvan doubted there was a brass chamber pot left in the entire Great Kingdom.
Hooped wrought iron would do for the four and eight pounders, but Hostigos already had about as many of those as there'd be horses to draw. What was needed was the heavies, the sixteen pounders and those thirty-two pound siege guns he'd been dreaming of since last summer. Made of brass and firing either solid shot or iron shells-he'd seen the first experimental shells last week-the heavies would pry open any tarr he'd seen here-and-now like a sardine can. Made of hooped wrought iron, those brutes would simply be too heavy to move over here-and-now roads without slaughtering draft animals like hoof-and-mouth disease.
Wait a minute! If he couldn't make siege guns with hooped wrought iron, what about siege mortars? They would be made large enough to lob a really destructive shell a few hundred yards and have a trajectory that would carry it over any walls. Solid shot, too. If castles couldn't be battered open, perhaps they could be hammered flat from above. Or, at least, made uninhabitable if the shells could be filled with some sort of incendiary compound…
Of course, the mortars would have to be very short range in order to be light enough to move easily. Four or five hundred yards would probably be the limit. However, they could easily be dug into pits like the one being used for gun testing. It would require some fancy shooting to hit them, and a few dozen riflemen in other pits close to the walls could discourage any gunners standing in the open long enough for that.
Mortars might be a poor man's weapon, but Kalvan had been at the wrong end of enough Chinese mortar barrages to have a lively respect for them. Besides, anything that impressed castle-holders that a siege was no longer something to sneer at would be an asset to the Great Kingdom.
Kalvan sent a page off to his tent for a piece of the thin-cut pine he used in place of notepads and some charcoal. For at least the fiftieth time he cursed the slowness of the paper project which had worked up only as far as a high grade of mush. For the fortieth time he realized that Brother Mytron was doing the best he could with the knowledge and tools at hand, not to mention the time he could spare for the paper project. Mytron in fact now wore three hats: he was Royal Papermaker of Hos-Hostigos, Surgeon-General to the Royal Army and Rector of the new University of Hostigos. Unofficially, he was also chief Rylla-watcher, a job in which Ptosphes and Kalvan gave him all the help their military duties allowed. That wasn't much, with the campaign season growing nearer each day. As soon as the streams and rivers shrank a bit…
Unfortunately, the warm weather had only given Rylla her own bad case of cabin fever; she felt fine and was firmly convinced that keeping her shut up like the crown jewels was good for neither her nor the baby. She argued the point with her husband, her father, with Brother Mytron and even Head Midwife Amasphalya, who as a girl of fifteen had helped her grandmother bring Ptosphes into the world.
Maybe Rylla had a point. Certainly there were plenty of "good breeders," as Amasphalya put it, among the women on both sides of her family. Maybe Princess Demia's troubles hadn't been passed on to her daughter? Maybe any baby who didn't miscarry from its mother's temper tantrums could easily survive mere cannon shot? Maybe Kalvan was being a little selfish, keeping Rylla shut up, just to save himself one more headache?
Maybe, but he wasn't going to change his mind now. If Rylla sailed through the last two months of her pregnancy as well as she did the first seven, she could have her next baby in a trench at the siege of Balph if she wanted to. But for this one, she'd stay put!
The page returned with the pine board and charcoal. Kalvan realized he was hungry and sent the boy off to the gunner's mess to scrounge some food and wine. Rylla claimed he didn't keep enough ceremony with his meals, but he'd be damned if he was going to waste time with that sort of thing now. With a twenty-nine hour day and no need for sleep, he just might get done half of the things that needed doing no more than a moon or two late.