Chương 190: 187. Priorities

They had returned to the manor hall, with Duvas sitting near the fireplace along with him. Gorsazo had just returned as well and Hudan was animatedly telling him about the evening while pointing out various parts of the crossbow in his hands, while Feroy seemed to be lost in his thoughts. Cedoron had returned to his workshop, but Kivamus had told Darora to stay back for a while. Kiva mus gestured to an empty chair near the fireplace.

"Darora, take a seat." The young carpenter hesitated for a moment before Duvas gestured again at the chair. Darora sat on the edge of the seat, and looked around the room. Kivamus took the crossbow from Hudan, and gazed at the crossbow.

"You have done very well, Darora. I had trust in your skills after seeing you make warbows for us, but seeing the real thing is another thing altogether." Darora smiled at the praise, while rubbing his short black hair in embarrassment.

"I couldn't have done it without Cedoron. I had to go to him again and again to modify the parts which did not fit or work as I expected, but he was able to forge everything I needed. But it was good that you made us settle on a single design using ideas from both of your crossbow blueprints, otherwise it would have been very difficult to make." Kivamus nodded.

"Yeah, my earlier thought was to make one big crossbow and one small one at the same time, so we could decide which of them to build again in the future depending on which version worked better." He looked at the crossbow in his hands.

"But I think the decision to settle on a design before crafting it was for the best. Well done!" Darora grinned.

"Thank you, milord! Would you need me to make more of them in the future?" Kivamus chuckled while looking at the guard captain who was giving a very enthusiastic nod in support.

"Yeah... I think it's safe to say that we want more of them - now that we have seen that it's feasible to make it here. Although I was expecting you back a day or two ago."

"We had run into some problems with the trigger mechanism," Darora explained.

"The first few times Cedoron had forged it, it was just too tight to pull easily, and that just wouldn't work if you wanted women to use it too. So I had to tweak the design a little a few days ago, and once the blacksmith had forged it by this morning, it didn't take long to assemble it."

"It's hardly a problem that it took longer than we expected," Duvas remarked with a snort.

"The fact that we can make it at all is already beyond my expectations!"

"I agree, milord," Feroy remarked.

"Although this is much smaller and less powerful than the arbalest I had seen in the past with other mercenaries, it still holds a damn good punch in it, you know? I don't know if a bolt from this crossbow can pierce the armour of a knight like an arbalest could, but an unarmored enemy? Nothing will save him if he gets hit by a bolt from this one!" Kivamus agreed, "That's why we had taken the best ideas from both designs.

An arbalest would have needed a windlass which would make it very cumbersome to load in a hurry and most likely it would be too unwieldy for women to use. But we just saw Hyola using this crossbow easily enough, and so can the other female guards with some practice." Hudan nodded enthusiastically.

"This is going to transform our defence! Once we have enough of them and have placed the women guards on watchtower with these crossbows, no enemy will be able to come close to our walls! We can't thank you enough, Darora!" The young carpenter just gave a weak smile.

"I never want to become a slave again in my life if I can help it, so I'll gladly stay in Tiranat for all my life if I can remain a free man. I am just glad I could help make this place more secure."

"You don't know how right you are," Feroy commented.

"I know how costly iron is, so I have no idea if we can ever afford to make enough crossbows to provide them to all of our guards, but if we could do it anyway..." He gazed into the distance like he was lost in memories.

"If there is enough light to target the enemy accurately, then with this crossbow, even a physically weak woman like Hyola could have taken down someone like Nokozal in a few shots and without even getting hurt! That's when that huge bastard didn't die even when fighting Hudan and Tesyb at the same time and they are our two strongest men!" The mercenary shook his head.

"Once we have the advantage of the height of a watchtower, we could even take down horse riders with this crossbow, for Goddess' sake! At least as long as they don't have a knight's armor on them." The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Hudan grinned as well at that image, and looked at Kivamus.

"Milord, we need as many crossbows as we can get for our defense. I'm sure that after seeing how effective they can be, the guards would even agree to give up half their wages for a while if it means you will have the funds to provide enough of them to us, so that everyone could have one of it for themselves." Kivamus grimaced for a moment. He knew how poor everyone in this village was, and yet Hudan was confident that the guards would give up half of their pay for this.

It just went to show how poorly defended this village was until now. Without having even a wooden wall around them, most of the villagers - including the new guards - must have slept in fear every night of either a bandit raid or even a wild beast attack - fearful enough that they knew their families would agree to eat half meals for a while as long as they could afford a crossbow in return, which would mean the guard would return back to his family safely every time. He looked at the guard captain.

"I'm glad to hear that the guards would be willing to do that, but I don't think it would come to that. We could have made the prod of the crossbow from iron which would have increased its power further, but I wanted to use as little iron as possible to keep our costs low, so I had them made from Fedarus wood, and it turned out just fine. So I don't think iron is going to be our limiting factor here."

With everything needing to be done by hand in this world, the time needed to craft every single crossbow was their biggest obstacle here. He looked at the young carpenter.

"How long do you think it would take you to make a new crossbow?" Darora thought for a while.

"It's not easy to craft every single wooden part myself, but now that I know what the final result is supposed to look like, it would still save the time that Cedoron and I used to try different things in the first one, just to see which one would work better - not to mention the times when a part fell just a little shorter or longer than what we needed." He continued after a moment, "Hmm... I know it took me nearly a month to make the first one, but I am quite sure that I can make another one in half that time."

Kivamus grimaced. That was going to be too slow for them to arm their guards anytime soon. He thought about it for a moment.

"Do you know about the concept of specialisation?"

"The blacksmith had mentioned it to me, I think," Darora muttered with a frown.

"That uh... specialization... It means to concentrate on becoming an expert in a single thing, isn't it?"

"You do know it!" Kivamus said with a grin.

"Yeah, that's exactly what it means. You have already taken two apprentices, right?"

"I have," Darora nodded slowly. But before Kivamus could explain how to proceed, the young carpenter spoke up again.

"I see what you mean," Darora muttered.

"You want me to tell them to craft only a single type of part... Hmm..." Then he nodded more confidently.

"I think that should work. I couldn't have done that for the first crossbow since I had to craft all the wooden parts by myself. Until now, my apprentices just helped me in bringing new tools or cutting up pieces of wood from a log in the required size." He continued, "I had never even thought about this uh... specialisation at the quarry, since I had to do all the woodworking stuff by myself, with Nokozal ordering every other slave to cut more limestone.

But I think this idea would help a lot in speeding up things in the future, once I have trained my apprentices more to trust them to make any particular part of the design without my help."

"Good, then I want you to start training them from tomorrow whenever you have some free time," Kivamus replied.

"And as for you, I need as many crossbows as you can make in the coming months. So you should start working on the second one tomorrow." The majordomo interrupted, "But milord, you had told me that you wanted him to make that water wheel first. Restarting coal mining is much more important for us." Hudan frowned.

"We still have a whole barn full of coal in the manor! Having more crossbows would help us a lot more right now in defending the village." Duvas stared at the guard captain.

"That would be useless if all of us freeze to death first!" He looked at Kivamus, "Even if you have changed your mind about making the water wheel, and want to get more crossbows crafted first, then we still have to shift some workers to start removing the water from the mines by buckets instead of clearing the forests. We should do it tomorrow itself, otherwise it might be too late, since the workers will take a few weeks to clear the mines."

Hudan was going to retort again, but Kivamus put up a hand before the argument escalated.

"I will get to that in a moment." He looked back at the carpenter.

"Cedoron already has permission to take as many iron ingots as he needs from our stores for any crafting orders for the manor, so you can freely tell him to make all the required iron parts without worrying about the costs. The manor will take care of providing the wages for you both as long as you are working on any order from us.

Of course, as for now, neither his apprentices nor yours are trained enough to get the higher wages of a specialised craftsman, so they will just get the weekly grain and coal like other labourers."

"That will be fine, milord," Darora said with a nod, while standing up.

"I will start working on it tomorrow."

"Wait for a moment," Kivamus said, and gestured to Darora to take a seat again. He continued, "I will go to visit the coal mines tomorrow to get a better idea of what kind of water wheel will be required for it. You have seen one of them before, right?"