Grunting with effort, two workmen and an underpriest of Dralm pulled the heavy door of the pulping room shut. The noise from the pulping room faded from an ear-battering din to a distant rumble, although Kalvan could still hear the vibration of the horse-powered pulper through the stone floor. The other sounds-the thump of the horses' hooves, the squeal of un-oiled chains and green-wood bearings, and the shouts of the foremen as they drove the ex-Temple slaves of the work crew to keep things going-were no longer clearly distinguishable.
Kalvan turned to Brother Mytron. "How are the horses bearing up under this work?
"Better than men would," Mytron replied. His tone hinted of problems best not discussed here in the open hallway. Had Mytron been listening too long to Duke Skranga, who saw Styphon's spies everywhere? Or was he just been naturally cautious about speaking within the hearing of men he didn't know? Kalvan hoped it was the latter; Skranga's zeal to prove his loyalty to the Great Kingdom (and therefore his innocence of any part of Prince Gormoth's murder) was leading him to see Styphoni lurking under every bed and urge others to do likewise.
Meanwhile, Kalvan decided against mentioning his plans to make most of the paper mill equipment water-powered. Apart from the matter of security, it would involve either moving the mill or a lot of digging of millponds and building of dams and spillways. There was no guarantee the men and money would be available when spring came and the ice melted, and it would be pointless to even make the effort if the winter's work hadn't discovered how to produce usable paper. So far all the mill had produced was mush that smelled like the Altoona drunk tank on the Sunday morning after a particularly lively Saturday night.
"How goes the rag room?"
"Well enough, Sire, but no one is working there now. We've chopped all the rags as fine as necessary and no more have come in the last moon-quarter."
This was no surprise. There wasn't too much difference between the rags the mill was cutting up for paper and the clothes the poor of Hostigos were wearing this winter.
"I'll see what the quartermasters can do about providing you with something." The quartermasters would probably say they couldn't do anything, but Kalvan's experience of supply sergeants led him to expect they would be holding back more than they'd admit to anyone. A platoon sergeant was "just anyone," the Great King of Hos-Hostigos was somebody more.
Brother Mytron led the way down the hall and through a freshly-painted wooden door into another hall, with log walls and a roughly-planked roof. It was cold enough to make Kalvan wrap his cloak more tightly. Wind blew through chinks between the logs and planks, and dead leaves crunched underfoot. About all that could be said for these hastily-carpentered passageways between the buildings of the mill was that they were better than wading through knee-deep snow in a wind that made five layers of wool seem as inadequate as a stripper's G-string.
Warmth and foul-smelling steam greeted Kalvan and Mytron at the end of the passageway: also, flickering torchlight and heartfelt curses in an accent that Kalvan could only tell was from somewhere other than Hos-Hostigos. Beyond a row of shelves holding a fine collection of blackened clay pots, Kalvan saw a muscular man with a blond beard standing stripped to the waist beside a row of posts on a stone-walled bed of hot coals. The smoke from the coals mixed with the steam to make Kalvan swallow a harsh cough. The man wouldn't have heard it in any case; he was too busy thundering at a small boy who was cowering in one corner of the room.
"-and next time you let the goat fat burn, I'll try to find a coating that calls for boy's fat. Your fat, you lazy Dralm-forsaken whore's son-oh, I beg your pardon, Brother Myt-Your Majesty!" The man bowed and started to kneel, but Kalvan waved him to his feet.
"Don't stop your work for me. Just tell me what you have here. It smells like a glue works."
"Well, maybe that's not so far from what it is," said the bearded man. "You see, Sire, you said that sometimes animal fat was used to coat the-pulp-to make paper. You didn't say what kind or how much, which was a good test, by Dralm, of our wisdom."
It was really a sign that Kalvan didn't know himself; there were times when he would have given a couple of fingers for one college-level chemistry textbook. Not that anybody here would know the scientific names of the essential chemicals for treating wood pulp, but at least the book would help him to recognize them. Right now, he wouldn't have known aluminum chloride if he fell into a vat of it. So they were going to have to make do with clay and animal-fat sizings on the paper, if they ever made those work.
"You're trying to find out what kind of animal fat works best?"
"Yes. I've got all these pots lined up and I try a different mix in each one. This first one's goat and sheep, the next is sheep and horse, the third one's pure horse fat…"
The man listed the ingredients of all eight pots, with the pride of a father listing his children, but Kalvan only remembered the first three. After that he realized he was listening to a description of the experimental method: rule of thumb-crude no doubt-but a foundation by which a lot of things this world desperately needed could be built."
"Master-?"
"Ermut, Your Majesty."
"Master Ermut, I'd say you passed Dralm's test very well. Your wisdom will be rewarded."
Ermut bowed. "Thanks be to the Allfather Dralm and Your Majesty. I'll say this much, though. Being a freed man here has been a boon. Still, I'd not cry at being still a slave as long as I was free of Styphon's collar."
Ermut didn't dare turn his back on his Great King, but Kalvan got a look at it on the way out. He'd always wondered what the scars left by those iron-tipped whips they'd found at the Sask Town temple-farm looked like-now he knew.