Chương 404: 399. Testing - V

"No, neither you nor Cedoron made any mistake." Kivamus shook his head.

"This scorpion is simply so powerful that iron isn't strong enough to withstand those forces for long. Remaking those parts from steel is the only solution here. Once that's done, there shouldn't be any problems like this anymore."

"But…" Hudan frowned.

"That'll take weeks…"

"I know, but there's no other way. If we try to load the scorpion a few more times, one of those parts will break, and because of the immense forces involved, the whole scorpion would likely break apart, injuring anyone present nearby. It's too risky to use it anymore until we've replaced those parts with steel." Darora looked at his workshop, which was some distance away in the east.

"I do have another spare for both of these components. Cedoron often makes multiple parts of the same specifications, in case one of them doesn't fit properly, because when forging anything it's not possible to make something in the exact same shape and size every time. Do you want me to replace these parts? I'll have to disassemble nearly half of the scorpion to do this, so it'll take me a couple of days to change the parts and assemble it properly again. But it's possible." Kivamus nodded.

"Do it. Right now we know for sure those two parts are going to fail very soon, but it's very much possible that some other iron component is also going to start showing cracks, or getting more elongated than it should. We need to test it a little more to find that out."

"Alright," the carpenter nodded.

"I'll start immediately after we take the scorpion back to the workshop. I'll also tell Cedoron to make more spares for those parts for more testing. We couldn't have done this easily if the scorpion had been mounted on the tower, but right now I can take it to my workshop easily." Kivamus then remembered the upcoming counter raid on Torhan's compound, and held up a hand.

"Actually, you know what, let's postpone it. It's not an immediate priority right now anyway." The captain looked at him in surprise.

"What? Why?"

"We may not know which part is going to fail next, but it's quite likely that at least a few more parts are going to fail anyway. I might not be here for the testing every time to check how close a part is to failing, and if one of the guards gets too enthusiastic and says it should be fine for one more attempt and reloads it even when the part is close to breaking, it could kill him if the scorpion breaks apart right there. It holds tremendous power when it's fully loaded.

It's way too risky if someone gets careless." Kivamus looked at the carpenter again.

"You said it'll take you at least two days—maybe even three days—to make the replacements properly and perform all the checks. Then you'll have to disassemble it again once the next part fails, and do this all over again. And once again when the next iron part inevitably breaks. This will waste too much time, and right now we would benefit from more crossbows far more than from a scorpion that doesn't work.

Once we have steel available, we'll remake every single iron part from steel anyway, just to be on the safer side. We can't afford the female guards using it on the towers getting injured by our own scorpions. So you should make more crossbows for now." Darora shrugged.

"Fine by me. I should still disassemble this, right? Just in case those parts break unexpectedly." Kivamus nodded.

"Yeah. Do that. What about the wooden parts for the next scorpion?"

"I've got, like, a third of them ready. I should be able to craft the remaining parts in 10 to 12 days, I think. There seem to be no problems in the wooden components, so I can even use the help of an apprentice to make it faster if you want. Although I can't start assembling it until we get those metal components made in steel. I think it'll take more than two weeks just for steel to get ready, from what I heard from the smith."

"Yeah," Kivamus agreed, "and it'll take him another few days to make those parts. For the next week or so, I want you to stop all work on the scorpion and build as many crossbows as you can. You should work on it yourself and also use all your apprentices for this." The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Well, sure. I'll start on it right after I've disassembled this scorpion. Although my apprentices will also finish another crossbow by the evening." Darora hesitated.

"But… What's the hurry? Is there going to be another bandit raid? The guards already killed Nokozal, and that bastard Torhan ran away with his tail between his legs after he tried to attack the village. We should be safe now, right? Or at least as safe as we can be in this place." Kivamus glanced at the captain before he looked back.

"No, there isn't going to be another raid on Tiranat any time soon, as far as we know. I can't explain more right now, but let's just say that the more crossbows you can provide us within the next four to five days or so, the more helpful it'll be for the safety of our guards. I'll let you know when to stop. And then you can return to making more scorpion parts again." Darora glanced at the captain, and then the majordomo, but none of them opened their mouths to explain.

"Alright. I'll get to it then." With a quick nod, he walked to the scorpion and started giving orders to the apprentices. Kivamus watched him work for a moment with a frown before he turned around.

"Let's return for now." Duvas glanced back at the scorpion before he began to follow him.

"Don't worry, Milord. It's only a small obstacle. We've overcome far bigger problems than this. I'm sure in a few weeks we'll have a much better scorpion. I've no doubt you did your best to design it. You couldn't have predicted it."

"Oh, but I did!" Kivamus shook his head in annoyance.

"I knew there was a strong possibility that iron wouldn't be enough. But I went ahead with it anyway..."

"It's fine, milord," the captain said.

"You still caught the problem before it injured anyone. It's only going to take a couple more weeks before we can get this working again."

"Yeah," Kivamus exhaled.

"That's true enough. I guess we started making steel at the right time, or a scorpion would never be made here. Buying steel here is so difficult that it may as well be impossible. We can't even pay its hefty prices to an Ulrigan smith to buy it from them, since they know they can sell it to an armorer who makes plate armor for the knights in Ulriga and make pretty good money.

Anyway, we're going to get a good amount of steel in two weeks, and once Cedoron has started forging the parts again, we should be able to make two scorpions immediately, since Darora will likely be done with all the parts for the second one by then." Hudan grinned.

"I can't wait to see them installed on a watchtower! It'd be far more interesting to test it from up there."

"No, we can't mount the scorpions on the watchtowers immediately," Kivamus explained.

"The secret compartment we made up there is only good for hiding crossbows. There's no possible way we can hide a scorpion once we've mounted it up there. It'll also be fixed to the parapet wall of the tower, unlike a crossbow, which is handheld. So if we just put one or two scorpions up there, any visiting merchant will spread the news in Cinran, or to anyone else who cares, and we'd become an immediate target, without us having the capacity to defend the village.

No noble ever wants to see their neighbour becoming stronger, you know? That's why I ordered Darora right from the beginning that the scorpion shouldn't leave his workshop until the day it is ready. And after this testing he'll take it back to his workshop again, so nearly nobody in the village knows about it right now."

"Hmm... I don't think it'd be a problem," Hudan said.

"The villagers know pretty well about the crossbows by now, and that hasn't caused us any problems, even though they're also illegal for us to have."

"That's because we were able to hide any evidence of them when Sir Tuilas, the knight, arrived here with the tax collector. There are all kinds of rumors in every place, but officials like the Count can't act just based on them. All Tuilas saw was that we'd built a wooden wall around the village, but that's all. He was complaining that we don't even have a good tavern here, so there was no reason for him to think that we might be hiding something like crossbows here.

But the scorpions will be in plain sight, and they're big and easily noticeable, so any visiting merchant who sees them will gossip about them—wondering what's that new contraption on the watchtowers of Tiranat." Kivamus added, "So we'll wait until we have enough scorpions to mount on all the watchtowers at the same time.

That means having built at least six of them—one for each tower—and preferably 10 of them, so that we can have two scorpions on each of the corner watchtowers, since they have to cover a wider area and a single scorpion wouldn't be able to do that. By that time we should also have enough stockpiles of these big bolts kept on the towers, so we'd be able to take on any sizable force that tries to attack us." Duvas looked at him as they walked southwards.

"Your reasons are valid enough, and I agree that it is not a good idea for us to flaunt something like that unless we are ready to defend our village from anyone. But I think you are being far too paranoid."