Knight Esquire ya-2 Read online

  Why not? They tasked a Princess with meeting people at the gate, even nobodies like him, so why not have a trusted person sit in the room to help out at need?

  “That’s right,” he waived his hands in the air as he described things. “It’s fast, using cargo floats I put up a shelter that will probably last a few hundred years short of someone with an explosive weapon going after it. Think of it like large heavy stone. It has a solid foundation and everything. The process is, well, let me short hand it and if anyone wants to see it, or even try it out, for themselves I can arrange that. It takes dirt, pretty much whatever is there and separates out any wet components, bits of leaves, animals or anything else like that, then it compresses it on the primary level until it turns into a single block or sheet, depending on how you set the device. Those are two separate steps, so the excavators can be used for any digging or earth moving really. I was thinking of making a more controllable compression unit so that the soil could be used to make other things, tables, chairs, beds and the like. Even wash tubs, cisterns and pipes for water, its water proof, so it will work. I created the original process for sewers that won’t break down for a long time.”

  At least three of the people stared at him and stopped speaking; at first he figured it was because he was too young and unknown to be bothered listening too or something but then one of them started nodding.

  “Yes…” It was a long drawn out word from a large man with a halo of white hair around a bald pate who looked like he hadn’t shaved in at least two days.

  “If we can really do all that, then… It would work. We could have a training base up in weeks instead of half a year or more. How soon can we get these tools in place? How much will it cost?”

  “Um,” Tor said, feeling brilliant as he tried not to stammer in front of all these intimidating people. “Well, how many units are needed? That’s probably the real issue here. The rest can be taken care of as we go. Technically the price is set by Sorvee House for the earth movers. No one holds the compressors yet. I’m keeping those back for Sorvee, if they prove out with the other unit.”

  Several of the people shuffled papers. They weren’t all men, three women sat around the table as well, all dressed in flying clothes, so Countesses probably if it really was as hard as all that to get a hold of a flying rig. That made some sense, they probably all were Counts, Countesses, or some kind of high councilor. Tor noticed that Smythe was there too, but wearing simple black clothing, rather than his personal cream and yellow uniform. The man nodded to him, but didn’t do so much as frown, more focused on the people around him it looked like to Tor.

  Fine with him, these giants could take the attack next time while he led the retreat. He could spend some time practicing his battle cry for it, like some of the royal combat giants had done at school when they were goofing off.

  It was one of the women that spoke, which didn’t surprise Tor that much. That she was one of the younger ones did, a little. Not that he cared personally, but he thought that the Counts would. Apparently not. They all went silent for a minute while she spoke, which they hadn’t been for anyone else so far, including the Prince.

  “We have two thousand men ready to deploy for flight training as soon as possible, but the flying devices are coming in slower than projected, we only have half of those already with another two hundred coming before the end of the next month. Realistically speaking, if we have one of these units for excavating for every fifty men in the first group, which should be about eleven hundred strong, including support staff and trainers, that should be sufficient for our needs at that location. So… Twenty-two, plus an equal number of those other devices that turn dirt into rock.”

  Tor looked down at the table. They had that few flying rigs? The military was getting most of them! Shouldn’t they have at least a hundred times that? No wonder they were freaking out about him wanting to shut down the production even for a few months. Well, maybe he could help fix that then. Why hadn’t anyone mention it to him before?

  “Um, well, I can have that made up… by tomorrow afternoon, if I can get some gear brought in? I kind of came into town today to do some shopping, but then heard about all this and came here instead, I need food and some bedding, pillows, that kind of thing, it will make mass copy work a lot easier.” This next month would suck if he wasn’t very careful. Tor plunged ahead anyway. There was a war and his kingdom needed everyone to do what they could, even nobodies like him.

  “Then it will take most of the next month to get another thousand flying rigs together. I mean, that’s if I have to do the shields too? I’m guessing those haven’t been coming in any faster?” He looked at Richard who gave him a shocked look, and shook his head no.

  Of course not.

  Was Debri house just stockpiling them to keep the price up or was that really the best that they could do? If it was, no wonder field devices always cost so much. He’d kind of wondered at that before himself. It wasn’t easy work for him, especially the builds, but it didn’t seem like anything that should cost hundreds of golds per unit either. But maybe it really was? The thought was a bit scary, to tell the truth.

  The room had gone silent for some reason, except for Rolph who looked at him and smiled.

  “What all do you need to get this done?”

  It wasn’t a lot, just food, some soft things that would get him off the ground and maybe someone to make sure he had water and food and, if possible, a latrine dug. He could do it himself, he’d been planning to when he got back actually, put in a whole building for the purpose. He’d have liked to have something more proper, but he didn’t know how to put together a septic system or a sewer.

  Count Thomson stood up suddenly.

  “I’ll take care of the supplies. Copper for templates too? That seems more efficient than silver. We should send out a group with him, call his new house the primary location and get the first sectioned trained to use the new devices as fast as they come out. Do we have anyone that has experience with the new excavating devices yet? Other than Tor, he’s… going to be busy.” The voice was deep, possibly deeper than it had been before if that was possible.

  For once Tor had an answer even though the question was unexpected.

  “Yes. They’re using them in Galasia to rebuild their sewer system. They should have people that have almost daily practice with them. Get with, ah, let’s see, Baron… I want to say second or third, Ferdinand Gala? He should know who to go to, at least I handed the gear I made for them directly over to him.”

  They decided to send a group of people back with him, which, oddly enough, included Rolph since he insisted and, as he pointed out, already knew the job of caring for a working Tor. It meant that Tor had to sit down and make up a batch of cargo floats without using a template first, just to move all the supplies and gear they needed. It worked, but took an extra hour at least. The fields were a bear to make at the best of times, and having to work from memory didn’t help at all. Actually, it kind of surprised him that he managed it, all that practice copying seemed to have a real pay off in this case.

  Three hours later they were all landing at the little place Tor had started the day before. It didn’t, he knew, look like much. But it was water tight and sturdy, and while the color was an almost black, the man in charge, a captain in this new flying service, said that white wash was cheap enough and painting made a decent punishment detail.

  “Or training, if people are flying while trying to paint with a brush. Hitting the roof and what not. Really it’s the same kind of coordination you need to target with a weapon while hovering.” He pantomimed the needed technique holding both hands out and pretending to paint the air.

  This got a laugh, but no one doubted that it would be interesting to try. Possibly deadly, but the flyers corps wasn’t meant to be a bunch of wimps, worried about little things like death overly.

  Tor did the first two batches of excavators before dinner, which was mildly warmed bread and cheese with some dried
fruit. No one but Tor and one other man could really cook, and even warming something over a fire was pretty much out, because there was so little fuel to be found. So they’d need to make ovens too. Well, it was doable. He’d just work that in between the flying rigs, the shields and the rivers and extra powerful excavators for Afrak. No problem.

  Sleep was a sign of weakness anyway, right?

  Chapter eleven

  The next several weeks passed in a blur of work. Most days he only even walked outside for a few minutes a day, for fun, and about an hour of slow running in a big circle around the compound that sprung up almost without him knowing about it. His little shack had been dwarfed instantly, a structure nearly ten times the size being put up the next day as a practice barracks. Then a shower and bath house, which Rolph shamelessly stole all the remaining water heaters for and some of the longer range pumps, to water could be taken directly from the stream out back.

  Tor explained what they needed for an oven, and given the ease of building and the desire to keep practicing, a structure was built that probably would make good in-roads to feeding those two thousand people at the real base. He got a wall too, after he asked, one that left him with a compound about as large inside as the palace complex was. The wall was about five feet thick and nearly twenty-five high. So an interior space bigger than the whole of Two Bends, including the Smith’s big orchards. Overdone for his personal house, but the guys needed to practice doing something.

  He made the heater for the oven one night after bed time, sacrificing sleep, so that they could set it to running the next day. It took two full days to get up to good baking temperature, because the oven was vast, easily the biggest thing like it he’d ever even heard of, but as designed, the field held the temperature exactingly steady after that.

  Tor was kind of proud of that little piece of work. It got to the right temperature and held it no matter what. No more, no less. Given the warming time needed, they just left it on day and night. Luckily it was well away from any of the other buildings, so the heat didn’t bother anyone. Summer would still suck in there if he didn’t get some other temperature controls in place, but he had a little time for that.

  After the first two weeks they ran out of new building projects to do, but had more and more people coming in for training, so Tor requested they redeem his word and send a crew down to County Ward to build the wall around Ellen’s place. He also sent the crew of ten young men, most not much older than he was, with the building dryers he’d come up with and a pump for her water tank, so that poor old Georges wouldn’t get stuck doing it by hand for all of them the whole time. He added in some lights and a freezer box plate with instructions for use with them too, just because it seemed like a nice thing to do. The man in charge of the cohort assured him he could build it without trouble.

  It became a grind after that, the highlight of his day being when he got to work on other almost new designs for things. It took three days for him to come up with the more delicate manual controls for the earth compressors, but the men that used them said had been worth it. Well, they told Rolph. Tor was too busy to chat mainly.

  They could make smaller objects then, some nice furniture and doors that sat on real hinges. Even plates and cups started showing up after that, all in a shining red-black stone looking material. Tor would have liked to try using one himself, but he had too much to do for anything that fun or interesting. Far too much.

  For every one thing he did, he got “requests” for ten more devices, some of them interesting, but being novel they’d have to wait. Most of them were downright boring and repetitive work for the military. For instance they wanted to try lights for working at night, that each man could carry. He already had the field and could make them pretty easily now, nearly a hundred and eighty per day without missing any sleep. The military asked for a thousand of them. Just for the initial testing.

  As badly as they wanted flying rigs, the shields were even more important in their eyes. Oddly, they requested no new weapons from him at all. Not even the force lances or lighter versions of the explosives he’d made before. He didn’t bother asking about it. If they thought they needed it, they probably wouldn’t hesitate. They hadn’t about anything else so far.

  Room temperature plates for soldiers all over the kingdom, personal temperature equalizers for the desert and cold north regions and even a hundred faster versions of the Not-flyer, that some general thought might be useful in ground combat.

  Well, Tor reflected, they were a lot easier to learn to use than the flying rigs, and were faster than running. You could very nearly just hand one to a person and explain the controls then send them out without practice it was so simple.

  The only good part about the whole thing, other than the free room and board, was that he didn’t have a lot of extra time to dwell on Trice and how much that whole thing still hurt. At the beginning of the second month Tor finally got Rolph to tell everyone that came in that he’d be out of touch for a few days, possibly longer. Sitting on the halfway comfortable pile of pillows that had grown around him on the floor over the last month to take the place of a bed, Tor started building the more powerful earth moving field. It wasn’t that hard, just a larger field to do what he already had something for. It just needed to be about a thousand times stronger. That was all. It sounded like a big deal, but either all the practice he’d gotten making the smaller ones, or just the fact that his brain found it easier to work now than not, allowed him to have the new unit ready inside four days. He kind of thought it would be longer. A lot longer.

  As had become his habit, since most of the things he made worked the first time, even if some of them needed to be improved on later, like the original shield, he made up ten of the devices instantly when he was done. As chance would have it, it was just about lunch time when he was ready to get out and test it, which meant the sun beating down, blinding him a little and making him squint painfully for about ten minutes while his eyes adjusted. Tor had lights inside, but they weren’t this bright.

  Half a dozen of them flew about two miles away from the compound for the testing, just because no one really could see the need for a giant hole or trench right there, plus, even if this worked right, it could still be a mess.

  It was.

  It worked just the same as the smaller one, except that it kicked up a cloud of dust due to the fact that it had to throw the dirt a lot farther away just for the whole thing to work. Otherwise it would have just dropped the dirt back in the hole being dug, which would have made the thing virtually useless. With a shield on it worked fine. Perfectly in fact.

  He just wouldn’t want to try it without a shield or while standing on the ground anywhere near it. He made a ditch, about the size of a middling stream and about a quarter of a mile long. It took about two minutes. That, he decided appraisingly, should serve well enough. It even had three settings to control the speed of flow. He’d been using high, but turned it down for testing, just to make sure he hadn’t messed anything up too bad on the other settings. It worked well enough on medium and on low it would probably be even safe to use like a normal one on the ground, but about ten times faster. Well, if there was ever another fire up in Ross or anywhere like it, this would be what he’d take with him. The river of brown and red dirt and rock flying through the air was impressive even. The roar it gave off kind of frightened him a little, but Tor tried to play it cool, so no one else would panic. If any of the other men felt the same way they didn’t let it show, so it was probably just him.

  It would do. It kind of had to, because the second they got back, literally standing on his doorstep was not one, but three, high ranking officials asking for more fields. Or it sounded that way from what Tor could understand. Two of them were trying to talk over each other. Both looked a bit put out by the other too. Because of course they should each be going first.

  “Um, well… It’s going to be a bit. I have to make some rivers and, you know, sleep some time soon. But I’ll
try to get right on those…” Tor had no clue what the men wanted at all. Floundering he looked around until one of them, a man that looked vaguely familiar, spoke. He’d been at the meeting about the war… Tor drew a blank as to the name though. All he could recall him as was loud map pointer guy.

  “Water transport over long distances? That would be helpful. You mentioned water before, and we relocated the base by a river, good call by the way, but the nearly three thousand people we have in training now are using a lot more water than we’d thought originally. This time of year that river is more like a fairly small stream and we have to let the men wash regularly, or else they’ll get sick.”

  That made sense. He’d seen similar things in some of the larger families back home. If even one of them was less than clean, everyone could end up ill, especially in the close and cold months of winter when bathing was a freezing hazard and tended to be sketchy even among the dedicated.

  “Wait, you added a thousand extra trainees?”

  “Well, yes. The council of counts felt that since you obviously can produce the greater numbers of devices we’ll need, it only made sense to add more candidates. Right now we’re only accepting applications from the elite forces however, so it’s felt that at best we should be able to double or triple the amount of trained personnel.”

  If he dropped these men into the pit that he’d just dug and buried them, then compacted the earth over the spot for a mile or so, no one would ever find the bodies. He stared for a while and then casually turned to Rolph and said this out loud. He was kidding, but only just. Didn’t they understand how hard, and worse, boring, all this copy work was?

  Not at all. Then why would they? They weren’t the ones doing it. Tor sighed and shook his head. Right. Well, he had to do what he could to support the war effort, but seriously, sleep on occasion would be nice. Oh so nice…