WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 14: Reconstruction (3)

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Beyond the castle's outer walls, along the banks of the Sázava River that ran through Sternberg's domain.

Ordinarily, women came here to do their washing and dispose of waste. Now, it resembled a massive construction site.

Men carried logs while women hauled earth and stones. Even the children did their part, gathering and carrying small rocks.

At the center of the worksite stood a strange structure that was still little more than a frame.

It was far larger than an ordinary furnace or kiln, with a swollen body like a great jar.

Jakub the carpenter stood at the heart of the site, shouting as he raised the frame of the enormous structure.

"That isn't level! Pull the rope tighter!"

"You've been working hard, Jakub."

"Ah, my lord!"

Jakub hurried over when he spotted me, wiping the sweat from his brow. His face was worn with exhaustion, but his eyes shone with energy.

"You've arrived. As you can see, the basic frame is nearly complete."

"Good. Faster than I expected. Are we short on materials?"

"Not yet. But... to support something this enormous, we'll need a great deal more timber and stone, thicker and stronger than what we have. What we have now won't be nearly enough."

I nodded.

The Blast furnace now rising before us stood well over half as high as the castle walls. If that massive structure was to endure while holding molten iron, its foundation mattered more than anything.

"You will have all the workers and materials you need. Don't concern yourself with anything else. Focus solely on completing the Blast furnace."

"Understood, my lord! Leave it to me!"

After patting Jakub on the back, I headed toward Pavel the potter.

Near his workshop, piles of snow-white bricks were stacked like mountains.

"Pavel, have you fired enough bricks?"

"Yes, my lord. As you instructed, I fired them at temperatures far higher than those used for ordinary clay. Yet instead of cracking, they became as hard as stone. They ring like iron when struck by hand."

Refractory bricks made from Kaolin. Without them, the Blast furnace would have melted before the iron inside ever did.

"It is truly remarkable earth. It feels less as though clay was fired and more as though a blacksmith forged steel. Where did you learn such things, my lord?"

Pavel's eyes gleamed with curiosity. I gave him a faint smile instead of an answer.

Fortunately, Pavel took the hint and did not press any further.

This unfamiliar technology was an extremely effective tool for establishing my authority, so long as I was not branded a heretic.

Then Tomáš the blacksmith approached me, his expression grim.

A shadow lay across his face.

"My lord, there is something I must tell you."

"What is it? Did the Coke work?"

"The Coke... was incredible. It burned hotter and longer than charcoal ever could. But... as expected, the bellows are the problem."

Tomáš was speaking not of the Blast furnace whose frame Jakub was constructing, but of a small experimental Blast furnace built for testing.

"To maintain the temperature you require, we must keep forcing air into it without rest. That simply cannot be done by human strength. No amount of manpower will be enough."

"Hmm..."

Even after connecting three bellows to that small furnace, six men collapsed from exhaustion before it could reach the target temperature.

'As expected. We've run into the problem I anticipated.'

What I intended to make was not quite a modern large-scale industrial Blast furnace, but it would have comparable output.

The limits of this era's hand-operated bellows were obvious. Human strength alone could not produce a steady, powerful flow of air.

"Then we'll have to build a Waterwheel."

"A Waterwheel?"

Tomáš immediately looked troubled.

"My lord, forgive me, but that will be difficult. The Sázava River crossing our domain is narrow, and its current is weak. If it were the broad Vltava River flowing through Prague, perhaps it would be possible. But a small river like this cannot turn a Waterwheel. Unless you mean a small one like those used at a mill..."

Tomáš had a point. The river before Sternberg Castle was closer to a stream.

It was enough for washing clothes and drawing drinking water, but its flow was far too weak to turn a Waterwheel.

"You're right. Relying on the river's current alone won't be enough. Everyone, come here."

I called over all the Technical Officers (Meisters), took a piece of parchment from my coat, and spread it across a flat rock by the river.

The three Technical Officers (Meisters) involuntarily held their breath and watched my fingertips. Expectation filled their eyes, as though wondering what miracle I would draw this time.

I sketched a huge wheel on the parchment. It was not submerged in the river. Instead, a long Water channel extended over the top of the wheel.

"What is this, my lord?"

"We'll build a Dam upstream, then make a Water channel connected to the Waterwheel so that water falls onto the top of it."

"On top of the Waterwheel?"

"Yes. Which do you think is stronger? Water pushing the wheel with a weak current, or the weight of dozens of buckets full of water crashing down from above and pressing on it?"

Jakub's eyes lit up at once. As a carpenter, he was the first to understand the principle behind the design.

"We'll use the weight of the water instead of its current! That's why you told us to set up by the river from the start! We thought it was only because water would be convenient to use..."

I smiled.

"It isn't over yet. The same goes for the bellows. Having air come out only when you push it wastes half the force."

Next, I drew a strange device on another part of the parchment, two boxes joined side by side.

"Look at this. If we connect the shaft at the center, one box will blow air when the board is pushed, while the other will blow air when it is pulled. I've decided to call it a Double-acting bellows."

When I finished explaining, a restrained groan escaped Tomáš.

He was a blacksmith. He understood from experience that the strength of a fire was determined by the force of the air feeding it.

A powerful current of air that never stopped, not even for an instant. If such a thing became possible, perhaps they could truly make a fire hot enough to melt iron itself.

"If this works as designed... we may truly be able to melt iron like water, my lord!"

I placed a hand on Tomáš's shoulder.

"Not may. We will."

"Oh..."

The Technical Officers (Meisters)' faces flushed with excitement as they received the design.

"This section should be like this..."

"No, the angle of this shaft should be..."

They pressed their heads together and began arguing passionately.

The worksite, which had briefly slowed, was soon alive with renewed energy. The Blast furnace's completion no longer seemed far away.

Watching the Technical Officers (Meisters) run back to their respective sections with the design, I looked up at the Blast furnace frame once more.

'This is only the beginning. Once we have steel, then...'

The blueprint for the next step was already forming in my mind.

Not ordinary weapons or armor. This would be the beginning of a great transformation that would reshape this land's productive capacity.

Then János Hunyadi approached me cautiously.

"My lord, are you sure we should be doing this?"

"Why? What's the problem now?"

"Obviously, it's your new toy!"

János Hunyadi pointed at the sweating workers and the Blast furnace whose frame had only just begun to rise.

"The Hussites who escaped the last battle will have told their main force everything. How their comrades burned to death, and how their prized Wagenburg was reduced to ash! Can we really afford to play with dirt so leisurely?"

"Playing with dirt? This is a great advance in human technology."

"Before that great technology is finished, the Hussites will string us up first!"

There was unmistakable anxiety in his voice.

"They must be sharpening their blades for revenge... Shouldn't we make more firebombs, raise the castle walls, or at least sharpen the soldiers' spearheads again?"

"Hmm..."

It was a perfectly reasonable concern. I did not believe the Hussites would simply retreat after this, either.

An army led by an unmatched hero like Jan Žižka would never willingly accept defeat at some small frontier castle.

By now, they might already be organizing a second punitive force far larger than the first.

I lightly patted János Hunyadi's shoulder.

"You're right. The Hussites will invade again. With greater numbers, and far better prepared than before."

"No, then why are you so calm about this?"

János Hunyadi pounded his chest in frustration.

"Enough. Lower your voice. Everyone's looking, and you're making them nervous."

"..."

János Hunyadi clamped his mouth shut at my rebuke. As I said, the residents who had been working so hard were all listening closely.

'Of course they're anxious, even if they don't say it. Winning once doesn't guarantee we'll keep winning.'

I led János Hunyadi away from the noisy construction site and toward the riverbank. Looking at the slowly flowing water, I spoke quietly.

"János Hunyadi, what do you think is the greatest victory in war?"

"What? Well... winning after fighting only once, perhaps. Like we did last time."

"Wrong."

I shook my head firmly.

"Fighting a hundred times and winning a hundred times is not the best outcome. The greatest victory is to win without fighting."

"Win without fighting? What kind of nonsense is that?"

János Hunyadi snorted. I smiled at his reaction and continued calmly.

"It's not nonsense. I've already sent a letter."

"A letter? Did you ask His Majesty Sigismund for support again? He'll only throw us a few coins anyway."

"No."

I turned away from the river and looked directly at János Hunyadi.

"This time, I sent a letter to the Hussites."

"...What?"

János Hunyadi's eyes widened, as though he had just heard the most absurd thing in the world.

"You sent a letter to those bastards who ran away after that rain of fire? What could you possibly be thinking? Don't tell me you wrote something like, 'I went too far, so let's forget it and be friends from now on.'"

"Of course not."

I continued slowly, enjoying his irritated reaction.

"János Hunyadi, you seem to think the Hussites are one great army, but that isn't the truth. They're like a snake with two heads."

"What? A two-headed snake?"

"One head is the radical Taborites, who want to seize Church property and bring down the nobles as well. The other is the Moderate Prague nobles, who want to preserve the existing order while gaining independence from the king and the papacy."

The stories I had heard from Zdeněk in that old pub, along with fragments of history I had learned in the modern age, formed a clear picture in my mind.

In history, the Hussites had not been defeated by an outside enemy. What destroyed them was their own collapse through internal division.

"They are barely held together by the single cause that they are God's army, but they have one fatal weakness. They have no center to hold them together."

"There is one, isn't there? One-eyed Jan Žižka. The soldiers piss themselves just hearing that bastard's name."

"Žižka is a great commander, but he is not a leader. Being good at fighting alone cannot earn everyone's support. Put simply, it's not as though Žižka can become King of Bohemia."

I gave a small smile.

"They're nothing more than a powder keg waiting to explode. The Utraquists want a kingdom, while the radicals want paradise. They dream of different things. What do you think will happen if someone throws a spark that neither side can ignore onto the fuse? They'll explode among themselves, with no time left to turn their swords on us."

"What? That's possible? How?"

"Of course it is."

With a faint smile, I whispered,

"I made them an offer they could never refuse."

Footnotes:

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