Arcanum (90 page)

The Armour of Carinthia had been charmed. No sword or axe could part its skin or its plates, and no arrow could pierce the shield – so he’d been told, though that had never been tested in anger until Gerhard had worn it to Obernberg. By then it had been too late, and it had been battered and broken under the blows of the Teutons. He had his own armour. It fitted, and he knew how to move in it. The Sword of Carinthia was a fraction too big for him, a little too heavy. He’d still carry it, though, and he’d use it as well.

Sophia wasn’t going to like the idea. She kept him close. Tried to keep him safe, even. The fortress walls weren’t a prison – except for, that is, the two spies from Simbach – but it was where he returned every day, no matter what he was doing elsewhere. He’d not seen Over-Carinthia, or Styria, or stood by the banks of the Donau to view the towers of Wien.

Ullmann assured him that everything was going well. His other army, the one with pens rather than spears, had calmly and efficiently divided up the land and made records of those divisions. They’d put mayors in place to run the towns and their surrounding farms, given the foresters the right to live in and off the forests forever. No one had complained, except those earls who’d survived or had inherited after Gerhard.

Felix had unashamedly bought them off. He had gold, and that was no use sitting there in a chest. Better to hand money out generously than grasp after every last copper, and it wasn’t as if he lacked coin. The sheer amount of wealth that had poured out of the White Tower had astonished everyone. A suspicious man would have suspected the Order of keeping the palatinate just too poor to keep a standing army.

He called for his arms, and went to find Sophia.

She was on the Bell Tower, staring out over Juvavum, and specifically at the field across the river where Master Thaler was conducting his tests. Her father was there, of course, and the elf, and the growling, angry smith from Simbach.

A pall of smoke hung low over the river, drifting idly towards the quays. Felix had had complaints about the smell, not least from the Frank Vulfar, whose boatyards were on the opposite bank. The last time he’d been down to inspect the bones of the barges he made, the whole place had stunk of boiling pitch. Any alchemical odours were merely notes to its overpowering bouquet.

“He used to be so passionate about books,” she said.

Felix wasn’t sure whether she meant Thaler or her father. At least they were doing something. Making holes in the ground and creating a lot of noise, perhaps, but they were so incredibly keen in the way they went about it. He couldn’t quite see what they were currently up to, and he’d left his distance-pipe back in the solar, but they seemed to be busy arranging ribbon-decked poles at various distances from a rampart of earth.

“They still are. They just know that when war comes, pleasures are put aside for a season.”

When she looked down at him, it was with that expression of hers. “Those are Frederik’s words, not yours.”

“Yes. Well. He’s right, though.” He blushed a little at being so easily caught out. “And they have such…”

“Promise?” she finished for him. “That’s his word, too. Now is not the time for weapons that we don’t know will work. Spears and bows, cavalry and swords. If he wants to spend his time building machines, why doesn’t he make siege engines we know will work: scorpions and ballistae, mangonels even?”

“Because we don’t know how to make those things either, and it’s not like we’re besieging anything. We’d have to hire Byzantine or Italian engineers, and … Oh, let Master Thaler be, Sophia. He’s a good man trying to do his best for me.” He leant over the parapet and looked down at the town. Everyone appeared properly busy, with not an idle hand in sight. “Master Thaler reminds everyone who thinks that war is far away and may never happen, that it’s real and it’s here.”

The smoke had dispersed, and the poles had all been poked upright into the ground, ribbons fluttering. The tiny figures had retreated back to the maze of sacking screens and rough sheds, and appeared to be waiting. The only activity came from around the mound of packed earth.

Sophia turned her back on the town and looked to the mountains. “And we’re absolutely certain the dwarves don’t …?”

“So says Master Thaler. He supposes powder weapons are worse than useless underground. For the same reasons they don’t ride, and don’t use bows. We wouldn’t have Master Büber with us if they did either.” There was no point in putting it off any longer. “I want to go to Rosenheim,” he said.

“That’s a good idea,” she said, after a moment’s reflection.

“I … yes. I thought so too.”

“Did you expect an argument?” She wore a smile. “A prince should be with his army.”

“Yes. He should.” Was he missing something? “I thought I could go with Master Reinhardt’s reinforcements.”

“And their spades.”

“I could be there in two days, and nothing will happen to me on the way.”

“I know,” she said. “Go, with my blessing. Talk to Peter Büber and Wolfgang Reinhardt, inspect the troops, and don’t interfere. Spend a few days with them and then come back.”

Thunder rolled across the river again, and a fresh cloud of smoke was billowing into the air. Felix squinted at the field, and couldn’t make out anything different.

“I’ll go and get ready then.” He was discomforted. “Are you sure?”

“Felix. You’re thirteen now. You’re the Prince of Carinthia, and I have to stop mothering you. At least, that’s what my father says. ‘Don’t mother the boy’, he tells me, ‘or he’ll grow up farmisht.’” She tilted her face to the sun. “We can’t have you growing up farmisht, can we?”

“No,” said Felix with absolute certainty. “No, we can’t. It’ll take a day to get everyone and everything together. I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Then go. Lots to do.” She dragged him in and hugged him tight enough to leave him breathless and not a little dizzy, then released him, almost pushing him away.

With a last glance at Thaler’s proving ground, he went to ready himself. He’d need his armour and his sword, and a horse, and … what? What had his father taken with him? A tent. Servants. Food and drink. He had no idea how any of this worked. Trommler would have done: he knew everything that a prince had to do. For Felix, having to make it up as he went along was fantastically wearing.

There were a few people he could ask. The centurions, for a start, who were camped out to the west of the town wall with their men. He strapped on his sword and rode through the streets to find them.

The townsfolk stopped and stood aside as he passed. They greeted him respectfully, offering up comments like “fine day, my lord”, and “make way for the prince”. Some rulers, like the false earl of Simbach, needed to assemble a guard before they stepped from their keep. The prince of Carinthia didn’t, and that was the difference between them.

No doubt, Master Ullmann would have raised his eyebrows and insisted that he was protected by his recently formed Black Company: men he’d drawn from the library ushers and elsewhere, and formed into a guard. Instead, the townsfolk were his guard, and they were everywhere.

He rode out of the gate and across the fields to the camp, and arranged with the centurions to travel with them to Rosenheim. Nothing was, apparently, going to be too much trouble. They would make sure that he’d be provided for: a tent of his own, a groom from amongst the men, his own cook.

Felix had been grooming his own horse since he’d been first able to ride, and more often than not, he’d eat kosher with Sophia and fill up on a variety of cooked pig products when she wasn’t around. He agreed to the tent, and refused the rest. He’d eat with the men, whatever the men would be eating, and if they’d room for his kit on one of the wagons, then he’d not have to ride all the way in full armour.

He found himself winning their approval and respect, only recognising that as he rode away. Perhaps it would work out after all, small as he was. His father and the earls had ridden to war with great tents and banners and squires and servants. Felix would do it with as little fuss as he could manage.

And while he was out and day not yet over, he thought he might see what all that noise from Master Thaler had been about. He rode back along the quayside, past the first of Vulfar’s new barges tied up beside it – smaller, narrower, pointed at both ends – and across the bridge.

The White Tower glistened in the sunlight above him. The tunnels beneath it had been mostly emptied, but even the most experienced of miners quailed at the prospect of exploring the few that went deeper.

Why didn’t the stupid thing fall? The magic had gone, and still it remained. Oh, he knew the explanation, that people still believed in it. If only they didn’t, it would be gone rather than looming over the town like some scabrous finger.

Then there was the bridge itself, from which he’d thrown the torch to light his father’s funeral barge, and over which his ever-loving people had stampeded to see Eckhardt’s brilliant light. They’d killed half his guard, his stepmother, half-brothers and sisters, together with Trommler and those few earls he’d had left.

That soured him. Perhaps Ullmann was right to be suspicious: while the gold was flowing and fresh marvels were coming out of the library seemingly every day, he was “Good Prince Felix”, but he’d already seen what would happen if times turned difficult. He’d be bundled head-first into a sack and carried away for sacrifice.

He hoped those weren’t the only two options open to princes.

By the time he arrived on the practice field, they were setting up again. Men and women were wrestling with the ribboned poles – paired up this time with a screen of sacking between them – taking them up the pasture towards the edge of the forest.

Sitting at a table, Aaron Morgenstern was engrossed in his calculations, clicking the beads across an abacus with practised agility and occasionally peering at a finely written table in a book. Thaler was at his side, writing down numbers, and Mistress Tuomanen was bringing a charge of powder out from behind one of the screens.

“Good afternoon, my lord,” she said, loud enough to alert Thaler, but not the deafer Morgenstern. He started to badger Thaler for the next part of the sum.

Thaler tapped Morgenstern’s arm and raised himself from his stool. “Ah, my lord. Welcome again. We are, as you can see, working for the safety and success of the palatinate as diligently as we know how.”

Felix leant onto the pommel. “I’ve talked to Sophia, Master Thaler. She may leave you alone now, at least for a while.”

“Right,” said the librarian, and looked momentarily perplexed. Felix hadn’t been the only one expecting to have an argument. “Is my lord wishing to see anything in particular?”

“No. I’m going with three centuries to Rosenheim tomorrow. I just wanted to tell you to keep up the good work, and that I’ll see how you’re doing when I get back.” Felix glanced over to the earth rampart. There was a long black cylinder embedded in the packed soil. “That’s interesting, Master Thaler. I haven’t seen that design before.”

For a moment, it looked as if Thaler was going to stand in front of it, spread his gown out and deny all knowledge of its existence. “Yes,” he finally said. “Bastian has gone off on a frolic of his own, it seems.”

Felix narrowed his eyes, and slipped from the saddle for a closer look. He kicked the iron tube and peered down its muzzle. “What happened to your pots?”

“They’re all very well, thank you, my lord.” Thaler turned to watch those down-range start setting up the poles, hammering them into the ground with mallets. “I…”

“What is it, Master Thaler?” Felix followed his gaze. “Those last few markers are a very long way away.”

“Yes, my lord. Yes they are. I just hope they’re far enough. We, er … we lost the last ball.” He looked about him with mild embarrassment.

“Lost it, Master Thaler? Where?”

“Either it disintegrated with the force of the explosion, or it travelled into the forest. We’ve adjusted the elevation down, and erected those screens to help us find it this time.”

Felix shielded his eyes and tried to judge the distance to the trees. “That’s…”

“Five stadia. And thirty-two feet.” Thaler pursed his lips and sucked in air. “I don’t quite know what to make of it. We searched, but couldn’t find it.”

“Five stadia. Gods, Master Thaler!”

Thaler shrugged. “My lord is welcome to stay and watch us lose another.”

One of Thaler’s crew had a builder’s level, and was tamping extra earth under the back of the iron tube. “It’s now horizontal,” he said, “as near as I can make it.”

“Right. Positions, everyone. Powder team advance. My lord, it would be best if your horse went elsewhere. From bitter experience, we’ve found that they don’t like the noise.” Thaler waved at one of his pole team. “Gertrude, please be so good as to take my lord’s horse to the back of hut four.”

That seen to, the powder team pushed a measured charge of powder, sewn into a cloth bag, into the muzzle, and rammed it to the back of the closed pipe with a wooden tamper. An iron ball was rolled in after it, and then a circle of felt.

They retreated and Thaler ordered his firing team into position. One man poked a slender wire into the thin hole in the top of the weapon, a second filled the hole with loose powder, and a wooden tube was screwed into place on top of that.

“Ready.”

“My lord. This might be slightly undignified, but if you care to join us in the trench, we can commence.”

“Trench?”

Thaler indicated the way, behind a set of screens. The trench was four feet deep, and wide enough to crouch in, but with all of them packed into it, it was a tight fit. The final two in removed the front screen, and jumped down, leaving only Mistress Tuomanen by the rampart.

“Why are we in a trench, Master Thaler?”

Thaler coughed. “The device might shatter, and send shards of red-hot metal in all directions. Bastian assures me that using bronze will solve that problem, but the castings aren’t yet cool. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for the deaths of any of my warband, nor of my prince: hence the trench. The pots are much thicker, and the shorter barrel confines the hot gases for much less time. No problem there. No problem at all.”