Arcanum Part 76

"It'd be more encouraging if he didn't keep on about what superb individual fighters the Germanic tribesmen were in the same breath as decrying their lack of unit cohesion." She took the book from him and found her place again. "He was Roman. The dwarves aren't going to be using Roman tactics to fight us any more than we're going to use Greek phalanx tactics to fight them."

"Does anyone know what tactics they will be using?" Felix was momentarily distracted by the upheaval in the yard as the line dissolved and reformed as a marching column.

"The last people to fight dwarves were the Gauls, during Julius Caesar's campaign. The library has copies of De Bello Gallico, but the caesar was a consummate liar and self-propagandist. How much we'll learn from him is debatable." Sophia turned her attention back to Tacitus, despite the noise. "This is a better history, written by a better historian."

The column marched the length of the courtyard, then back again. It took them a little while to replicate the spear wall, but they were better the second time than they'd been the first.

"You said something about a boar's head," said Felix.

"Wild Boar's Head. You put your elite troops in the vanguard and pile them a hundred deep, then bend the rest around either side like the limbs of a bow. Your weakest soldiers aren't even meant to fight, simply discourage flanking attacks on the main thrust."

"Except," said Felix, "we don't have any elite troops. All we have are bakers and butchers."

"Either it'll be enough, or it won't. If you won't hire anyone-"

"I will not."

"...then you're telling me and everyone else that Carinthia can defend itself. You've trained a hundred swords. They're training hundreds more. These men, even after an hour, are on their way to becoming competent." Sophia closed the book again. Clearly, she wasn't going to get any more reading done. "If you don't think we're doing enough, what else do you think we should be doing?"

"I don't know. There's Master Thaler's powder."

"Which is tying up half the smiths in Juvavum, when they could be making war hammers and maces to batter dwarvish armour. And this insistence that we all piss into barrels." She didn't say what she thought about the witch Tuomanen, and her unhealthy influence on both Felix and Frederik. "The smith from Simbach, Bastian?"

"The giant?"

"Has used enough iron in one of his pots for a hundred swords." She watched the would-be soldiers as they attempted to march forward in line, spears ready. She pulled a face. "The dwarves don't ride, and they might throw axes, but they don't use bows. We know that mixed spear and bow formations will work against them. Yes, we're fortunate to have the library, and yes, there are great benefits to be gained by reading old books, but Master Thaler isn't offering you a substitute for magic."

"I know he's not, but" he screwed his face up "I can't just ignore him. He's so enthusiastic."

"And so are your boar hounds. I worry, Felix. I worry for the fate of the palatinate: you, my father, and everyone in it. Those powder weapons are a distraction. They need a drum." She started to get out of her chair again.

"Who?"

"These," and she waved her hand at the troops in the yard. "They can't march in time. It's unnatural, and there's no reason why they should."

She stopped a pot-boy on his way to the midden with a bucket of peelings, and told him to come straight back to her. The boy dodged away through the ranks and disappeared.

"They have promise, Sophia."

"Who?"

It was Felix's turn to tut. "Master Thaler's powder weapons. And Mistress Tuomanen..."

"What about her? Has she still forsworn magic?" She frowned. "I've seen the fires in the jars that don't go out."

"It's entirely natural. Master Thaler says so." He looked petulant. "Your own father says so."

"Yes, well. He's had his head filled with all sorts of nonsense recently."

They stared at each other. He might be the prince, but sometimes, she thought he should just listen to her. They didn't need things that spurted fire and smelt like Sheol. They needed steel and enough men to wield it: HaShem would see to the rest. They were faithful, so they would be saved.

Felix slumped in his seat, looking away. "If I send to the Franks for help, will you let Master Thaler continue?"

"You're in charge, you can do whatever you like." That was just mean. Felix was in charge, and he had other advisers besides her. Thaler was like a child in a pastry-shop with his new-found knowledge, never quite knowing which sweetmeat to pick and taking a bite out of each in turn: but he did know what he was doing most of the time. "If Master Thaler thinks his investigations will produce something that works, then he can continue. Meanwhile, we'll send a messenger to your cousin the Frankish king, asking for some people who know how to drill spearmen."

The pot-boy ran up to her with his now-empty pail and presented it to her.

"Because otherwise," she said, "I'll be stuck banging on the bottom of a slops-bucket until winter."

She got to her feet again and unsheathed her sword. The men thought they were going to get more schooling from the mad Jewish woman, and they were half right. She struck the wooden pail with her sword pommel in a steady rhythm, as though she were clapping in time with a song.

Effortlessly, the soldiers fell into step. It was that simple. Once they worked out which leg was which, they stopped looking like a rabble and started behaving like a strange creature with many heads, arms and legs, but one mind.

When the sergeant gave the order to turn, they mostly managed it in one movement. When he ordered them to speed up, she picked up the pace along with them. After another two circuits of the courtyard, she handed the bucket over to the sergeant with the suggestion that everyone needed a rest, a drink and something to eat.

She was tired, too, and she had to go riding with Felix later, because she still wasn't very good at it and needed to get better.

"We need to recruit some drummers," said Felix.

"One for every century. Those who can keep a beat would be a good choice." She poked at the ground with her sword-point. "We're not going to be ready, are we?"

"We'll be as ready as we can be. When they come down the valley, we'll meet them with everything we have. We'll win, and all of Europe will talk about us the same way they talk about Alaric."

"The dwarves aren't ready yet, either. We should be making sure they never are, rather than wait for them." She reached out her right hand and found his left, catching his fingers in hers. "How can we harry them, when we don't have soldiers to spare?"

"Perhaps we do. That night in the library; remember those who attacked it?"

"You marked them, and then arrested them later."

"I'll free them from the mines if they'll fight for me. They can go back to their families if they want them and wear their crosses with pride rather than shame." Felix looked pleased with himself. "Two letters to write, then. One to the Franks, and one to the mines. Master Wess can make copies of the second with his press printer thing."

"Who will you send with the first?" she asked. "We can't spare Peter Buber."

"Master Ullmann? Or some of his men? There's the two he took with him to Simbach." Felix played with the ends of Sophia's fingers. "Have you seen a woman around Master Ullmann recently?"

She thought it an odd question. "No, I don't think so. Apart from the witch, on occasions."

"He needs to tell me everything: that's part of his job. I shouldn't have to find out from someone else."

"Then ask him," she said. "You can't have your spy master hiding things from you."

78.

"Aaron," said Thaler. "Be careful."

"The devil take your care. My hands are perfectly steady." Morgenstern stood at the trestle with a funnel and bored-out wooden tube. "And your chattering won't help one jot."

It didn't stop Thaler from fussing. They'd set up a system to try and stop stray sparks from igniting the mixtures, from the grinding to the mixing and the graining and the storing. For more delicate operations, trestles like Morgenstern's were surrounded by hessian screens, but were otherwise open to the sky. As a result of all their caution, they'd lost only one of their sheds, and none of their millers. It helped that they knew what they were dealing with: the books salvaged from the hexmasters made the powder's quixotic nature quite clear. But an accident was inevitable, the further they went. Everything was an experiment, every time was the first time.

They were making fuses. Paradoxically, these would make their detonations safer, but only if the fuses were reliable, and burnt at the same rate. Mistress Tuomanen could be of no further help. They'd outstripped her knowledge weeks ago: she knew what she knew. Trying something to see if it worked hadn't been a habit the Order had encouraged, and there was a lot of unlearning to do. She was mortally afraid of making mistakes.

Unlike Aaron Morgenstern, who revelled in novelty and flew the flag for danger.

"All the same," said Thaler. "Please be careful."

"Is this what being married to you would be like?" countered Morgenstern. "Let me get on with it."

Thaler knew that Morgenstern only had a few ounces of powder enough for his task. Perhaps he was worrying unnecessarily. "Call me when you're done."

The field in which they were working was across the river, under the shadow of Goat Mountain and the White Tower. It was close enough to the Witches' Bridge to make access easy, while being far enough away to ... well: if they were going to lay waste to Juvavum, they'd need a lot more powder.

The meadow was dotted with flapping hessian screens and small sheds. Every once in a while, a door would open and a man or woman would come out, carrying a small pot of something or other, and take it to a storage area. At times, someone would go and collect some ingredient, or draw another bucket of water. Otherwise, everything was quiet.

Bastian's great iron pot sat on a series of boards at one edge of the field, pointing northwards. Next to it were smaller versions in the same style, resembling not only the mortars found in every kitchen, but the mortars in which they combined the white, the yellow and the black to make the powder itself.

They may have been small, but these little ones worked; honest-to-gods worked. They could lob a ball of iron high into the air and across the width of the practice range. It took an age to load them, though, and aiming them was painfully slow. Also, the projectiles would only kill a dwarf if they hit one square on the head.

In other words, they were next to useless. Thaler wasn't in the business of producing a curiosity. He could picture in his mind what he wanted, how it would work if only they could build one not just bigger, but better. Which is where Bastian's latest pot came in, and where the next in the series would come, too; a real beast of war, he hoped.

"Mistress?" he called, and was answered by a wave, a tattooed hand that appeared over the top of a screen.

He stepped around it and inspected Tuomamen's work-bench. She wasn't working with the combined black powder, just the white nitre. She had lengths of wick hanging from a frame, and various bowls and jars set out in front of her. There were stains down the front of her grey robes, and Thaler discovered how they'd got there: her first instinct was to wipe her hands down her front.

"Master Thaler. Success, of sorts."

"Ah, that is good news. Show me."

She took one of the long wicks and opened the lantern she had on the table. "It's not what you wanted, but it's useful all the same."

She applied one end of the wick to the flame, then withdrew it, holding it out to Thaler.

He took it and held it close to his face. The very end of the wick was alight, not with a flame, but with a tiny red coal. He waved it around, then looked at it again. The glowing ember was still there.

"It won't go out," Tuomanen said. "You can pinch it off, or wet it, but it'll burn otherwise."

"Just not quickly," he noted. The wick wasn't noticeably shorter than when she'd first lit it.

"A length of your height will burn for half a day."

"Impressive." Thaler handed the cord back. "But, as you say, it's not what we want."

"It is, however, enough to light the black powder." She squeezed the lit end between her fingertips, making a rubbing motion as she did so. It must have hurt, but she showed no pain. "It won't blow out like a taper, and no one will have to carry a lantern along with the powder."

She was right. It wasn't what he'd hoped for, but it was useful all the same.

"We know that we can make a line of powder, set it alight at one end, and the flame will travel along it until it reaches the other, but" he wagged his finger "it burns too quickly; which is the point of Aaron's wooden quill fuses. Packing the powder in tightly makes them burn slower. It makes no sense at all, but we'll have to work out why later."

"I've tried soaking the wicks in a slurry of black powder. The fuse just flashes to ash no matter the length." She shrugged and turned back to her table to pack away her jars.

Thaler was left with his chin on his chest, thinking aloud.

"Wood isn't flexible, though joining quills together would allow us to change the timing quickly. We'd need half a tree-trunk for a long fuse, though." He huffed. "Sausages."

"Master Thaler, it's mid-morning."

"Sausage skins. No, too big. Like sausage skins, but thinner, like cord."

Tuomanen put down her alchemical equipment and turned to Thaler, a strange expression on her face. "If I was to take a knife, and cut you here, and here" she touched him twice, once on the inside of his arm, under his arm-pit, and again on the fold of his wrist "I could draw out one of the vessels along which your blood flows. It's the whole length of your arm, and as thin as a quill."

"I'm rather attached to my arm, Mistress," said Thaler. He clasped his hands behind his back.

"The same vessels exist in pigs and cattle." She smiled. "That was all I meant."

There were times when he forgot who she used to be, what she used to be. Then she would remind him. "I'll call on the butcher's shortly," he said, and blinked away the image of himself, prone on the floor, and her, astride him with a bloody knife, opening him up like a side of beef.

Aaron Morgenstern, clutching his fuses, came across them, and wondered why his friend had grown so pale. "Frederik?"

"Nothing, it's nothing." Thaler applied a mask of calm. "Are you done, Aaron?"

"I am. Let's light up these devils and see how they burn."

Thaler took one from him: the drill hole in the cylinder of wood was packed tight with fine powder, tamped down and pressed in. There was very little actual powder in the device, but if it worked, then they would be on their way at last.

All three of them went to another hessian-shrouded table, one supplied with black powder, and the mistress brought one of her slow-burning wicks rather than the lantern. Thaler poured a small pile of loose powder onto the table, enough to support the upright tube, and Tuomanen touched the tiny coal to the end of the fuse.

It sparked and fizzed. Smoke jetted from the open hole. And the loose powder did not immediately flash into flame.

Thaler counted, and reached five on the first attempt, before fire and smoke belched out. Morgenstern did a little jig, and looked uncommonly pleased with himself.

"Again?" he grinned.

"Oh, most certainly." Thaler swept away the residue and reset the experiment. "We need to be certain of the burn rate, or we'll be losing our lives soon enough."

Each one they tried burnt through between a count of four and six. Morgenstern skipped away to make more, his speed belying every year of his age.

"This is progress," Thaler announced. "We should try and test-fire a shell."

He hadn't dared do so before, as he'd had no reliable way of setting it off from a distance, even though the idea was one of the first things he'd thought of: to deliver a charge of exploding powder, right into the heart of the enemy. He wasn't martial, like Sophia. He wasn't cunning, like Max Ullmann. He wasn't, gods preserve him, like Peter Buber. The only contribution he could make to the war lay in this field.

At a push, he could hold a spear, and blunt an axe with his bones which seemed a waste of his life, and indeed of anyone's life. The dwarves hadn't needed to pick a fight with them; Felix had offered them a share of both land and gold, but they, greedily, wanted it all.

Chapter end