Chương 401: 396. Testing - II

Right now, they were standing close to the northern wall, facing towards the northwestern corner of the village walls. The corner was probably a hundred meters away from where they were standing, and a few laborers were busy setting up a dummy target in the shape of a mannequin near the corner, made up of leftover pieces of wood at Darora's workshop, which was being tied up with a rope. Darora pointed at the target with a scorpion bolt in his hand.

"We had thought of using a straw mannequin first, but a single look at this huge bolt made me realize that straw wouldn't stand a chance against it." The carpenter offered the bolt to him.

"The fletcher has given us a few samples of the bolts for trial, including a couple of iron-tipped ones as well. Once we confirm that they fit well and work as we want, he'll start making them in bulk." Kivamus nodded and held up the nearly three feet long bolt in his hand—many times heavier and bigger than the bolts used in a crossbow. It was made of a handcrafted piece of wood, with a few feathers added at the end to give it some stability.

The front end tapered to a point, and looked sharp enough to pass through a human being or even an adzee like a hot knife through butter. And this didn't even have an iron tip! Hudan was examining another such bolt which was iron tipped, before he chuckled and lowered his voice.

"Milord, this bolt is something else! With the power that would be needed to launch this bolt, I have no doubt that it can easily pierce through the plate armor of a knight even at a distance. Even the iron-reinforced tower shields used by the swordsmen in the Duke's army at Fort Aragosa wouldn't stand a chance against it!" Kivamus laughed.

"Let's just hope we don't need to use it against them, eh?" Hudan snorted.

"I'd better hope so, since there are thousands of well trained men in that place. We don't have a snowball's chance in hell if we go against them." Duvas just shook his head hearing their near-treasonous talk while looking at the scorpion from up close. The other guards were talking with the carpenter's apprentices in curiosity, asking things about the scorpion. Before long, the workers making the target ran back to them, leaving the place in front of them completely empty.

Of course, the northwestern watchtower was still located there, but that was quite high up, and the people on duty there had been warned not to come down until it was clear. Kivamus looked at the captain and grinned.

"So? Ready to give it a try?"

"Hell yeah!" Hudan raised a fist. He looked at the scorpion and frowned.

"But… I don't know how to use it…" Darora laughed.

"Come on, I'll show you. This is the very first trial, so I don't know how well it'll work." The carpenter explained to the captain where to put the bolt, and how to use a small handle attached to the side of the smaller gear to rotate it. That gear was linked to a larger one, which would move slowly but with a much higher torque, and allowed the operator to pull back the powerful string attached to the torsion springs on both sides of the scorpion. This gear mechanism would allow even a woman to load it easily.

Hudan nodded and began to follow the instructions. He was way too tall to do it while standing—especially since the scorpion was designed to be fitted on top of a parapet of the watchtower, which would increase its height—so he kneeled behind it, and after putting the string over the notch, he began to rotate the first gear. The second gear started rotating as well, which started storing enormous power in the torsion springs on the sides, as the string kept getting pulled back. Soon, Darora put up a hand.

"That's enough. Now, without leaving the gear handle, push this small lever on the side here. Yes, like this. Now this scorpion is loaded. You can leave the gear handle now."

"Oh…" Hudan muttered as he left it.

"The handle feels loose now."

"It's meant to be," Darora nodded.

"Pushing that last lever switched the holding force from the gears to the nut —this catch. Now all you need to do is put the bolt in its slot and pull the trigger after pointing at the target."

"That I can do." Hudan nodded. He glanced at Kivamus.

"Do you want to do the honors?" Kivamus shook his head.

"No, this is for you as the captain. Just make sure you don't miss the target. The other guards are watching, you know?" This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Hudan gave a gruff laugh as he put the bolt in its slot and followed Darora's instructions on how to bring the target into his sight by moving the scorpion frame on the pivot it rested on. Finally, the carpenter made a few final checks and gave a nod.

"You can shoot now."

"Let's go, captain!" one of the guards cheered.

"Make us proud, big guy," someone else joked, but a single sideways glance from Hudan was enough to make him cover his words with a cough. Hudan moved the scorpion's sights to test how it worked, before he slowly brought the target into his sight. He nodded to himself, and then gently squeezed the trigger.

The moment the lever attached to the trigger had rotated the nut—which trapped the string holding all the tension—the string was pulled ahead by the torsion springs recovering to their natural position, which made the bolt shoot forward with a twang. Before even a second had passed, there was another louder sound from the front. Duvas took a step back in surprise from the sound, while Hudan had to put a hand to the ground to maintain his balance, since he had also reflexively moved back from the scorpion.

The others were far enough away that at least no one fell down.

"Whoa…" someone exclaimed. That's when Kivamus looked ahead at where the target was. Or at least, where it was supposed to be. There was nothing left. More precisely, the human-shaped dummy had splattered into its constituent pieces of wood, which had scattered around. They were too far to see where the bolt had gone though.

"It works!" Darora bellowed. The other apprentices and the guards cheered loudly, before Kivamus gestured ahead.

"Let's see it from up close," he ordered. The whole group started jogging to the target, and soon they reached the place where the wooden pieces were scattered. Truthfully, this wasn't a particularly good target, especially with the tied-up branches they had used as a target. One of the apprentices picked up a few broken pieces of wood and showed them to Kivamus.

"Milord, the bolt broke through this wood!" The small piece of wooden branch which the man was holding had indeed been broken from the impact. Soon one of the guards pointed at the bolt which had fallen some distance away. Kivamus made a gesture, and the guard brought it for his inspection. He looked at the bolt, and saw that the tapered point at the front had splattered into many parts from the impact on the target. He handed it over to the carpenter. Darora frowned.

"Did the fletcher not make it properly, milord? He's a diligent worker, though…" Kivamus shook his head.

"No, the bolt was made just fine. I saw it before Hudan loaded it." He glanced at the pieces of wood scattered around.

"You were right that using a straw target simply wouldn't make any sense with a bolt this big, but wooden branches tied up randomly like this are also too different from a human body, or a wild beast's body for that matter. This wasn't a proper target to simulate the bolt being fired into flesh."

"Then what should we do?" Hudan asked.

"It's not like we can tie a human there! The hunters also usually kill and dress the animals they hunt right at the place. We could use one of the manor animals for this but I don't think it's a good idea. Only a cow, a horse, or a nodor would be anything close in size to bandits or other beasts, and we don't have enough of them for killing like this."

Kivamus nodded and thought what they could do about it, remembering the time when he had seen an artificial target being placed for testing bullets of different caliber, back on earth. For a couple of years in his early part of career, he had worked on a government contract given to the company he worked at, to design and make new rifles for a certain branch of the armed forces.

Once the guns were ready, their whole team had gone to an undisclosed location—which was probably a black site for field testing—its location kept secret by blindfolding all the company employees who had gone to see the results and to take notes for further improvements. At the testing site, he had seen the rifles being tested against different types of targets designed to simulate human bodies. And then the results had been compared by further testing with other guns which were already in use by those people.

Working on that project for so long was one of the main reasons he had become so interested in military aspects of mechanical engineering, which is why he had started reading up things about warfare and the development of guns, starting from the medieval times. However, the relevant point for Tiranat was that at one point during the testing, those people had stacked several parallel plates of some top-secret material, one behind the other, to simulate a proper human target.

Of course, testing of a scorpion was far, far different from testing of those advanced rifles, but that testing method was something which could be the solution here too. He didn't really have too many options to select the perfect material to make a good target, but they still had the ever-reliable fedarus wood. He looked at the carpenter.

"Darora. I need planks. More specifically, any leftover planks from the third longhouse construction. They often discard the planks which haven't come out in the proper size or have cracks in them, so we'll make a target from that. Send a few people to get them as well as a few ropes, and we'll make a new target from it. I need at least half a dozen planks. More, if they have them."

Darora immediately gave the order to his apprentices, while Hudan sent a pair of guards to help them pull a cart which would be needed to transport it.