Chapter 13
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Translator: Wjin
Chapter: 013
Chapter Title: Reconstruction (2)
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The artisans of the Sternberg Territory gathered once again in my workshop.
Potter Pavel.
Blacksmith Tomasi.
Carpenter Jakub.
"You've all come."
I flashed a gentle smile at the three men standing before my workbench.
"The victory in the last battle was all thanks to you. Without you, this castle would already be a pile of ashes."
The artisans bowed their heads awkwardly at my plain but sincere praise.
"No, my lord. We merely followed your wisdom."
"Humility is a virtue, but merit must be rewarded fairly."
At my gesture, Konrad, who had been waiting by the door, handed each of the artisans a prepared scroll of parchment and a hefty leather pouch.
"My lord, what is this...?"
"Take it without refusal. It's my modest reward for your service."
The artisans accepted my gifts with overwhelming gratitude. The leather pouches felt unusually heavy in their hands.
Peeking inside one, a clear chime of silver coins rang out, accompanied by a dazzling gleam.
But the true reward wasn't those mere silver coins.
Pavel unfurled his parchment with trembling hands. There, emblazoned clearly beside his name, was the title: Sternberg Lord's Direct Meister. Tomasi and Jakub's scrolls bore the same.
"Meister...?"
I nodded and explained.
"From now on, you are no longer mere artisans. You are my direct vassals, responsible for the territory's technology. Naturally, you deserve treatment befitting that status. All technological developments in the territory will pass through your hands from here on, and all the glory that comes with them will be yours as well."
A fortune they'd never touched before and a position far beyond their station. The three men's faces flushed with emotion.
They exchanged glances, then knelt before me in unison, as if by prior agreement.
"Thank you, my lord!"
"We will never forget this grace!"
"We pledge our families' honor to serve you loyally!"
I grinned and got to the main point.
"Now, there is something for you to create."
Having received such rewards, refusal was impossible. The newly minted Meisters bowed deeply in unison.
"Command us in anything, my lord."
I nodded in satisfaction.
"We can't rely on luck forever. Our enemies aren't fools; they'll come back fully prepared next time. So we need asymmetric power that defies their common sense."
"Asymmetric power?"
"Yes. What we're about to make will be the first step."
I spoke in a resolute tone.
"We will build a blast furnace."
The Meisters looked baffled.
"...Pardon?"
"A blast furnace, you say?"
All three had never heard the term before. I gave a brief explanation.
"A massive furnace that melts iron like water."
"Melt... iron?!"
The first to cry out in shock was blacksmith Tomasi. He'd spent his life working with fire and metal, but melting iron was a concept he'd never encountered.
In this era, iron was merely heated red-hot and hammered—it wasn't something that melted like water.
I silently unrolled a new blueprint on the workbench. It was far more complex and enormous than the previous trebuchet design. Staring at the bizarre tower diagram they'd never seen before, the Meisters tilted their heads.
Finally, Tomasi spoke up, his voice carrying the certainty of an expert.
"My lord, it's impossible, no matter how I think about it. With our current technology, we can't generate a fire hot enough to melt iron. Even mobilizing the territory's largest bellows wouldn't suffice. We can heat iron, but not melt it."
Potter Pavel chimed in with a worried expression.
"He's right. Even if we miraculously achieved that heat, containing it would be the problem. I pride myself on making Bohemia’s finest kilns, but at temperatures hot enough to melt iron, they'd crack, shatter, and melt away. No clay in this world can withstand such heat."
The usually quiet carpenter Jakub added his piece.
"Building such a massive structure would require timber we don't have, and the charcoal needed to operate it—how do you plan to manage that? We'd exhaust every tree around the castle in days."
Their objections were valid. By this era's technology and common sense, they were entirely reasonable.
"You're right. It's impossible with current methods. But if you follow my instructions exactly, it can be done."
I looked each Meister in the eye and spoke with unwavering conviction.
"Pavel, go to the clay quarry. Dig deep into the clay layers, and you'll find soil as white as snow. We call it kaolin. Bake bricks from it."
"Pardon? Kaolin... Ah! You mean white clay? That's the soft stuff used for painting pottery..."
"No. It's more heat-resistant than any clay we know. Trust me."
Leaving Pavel cocking his head, I turned to carpenter Jakub.
"Jakub, you will make 'coke'."
"Co... coke? What's that?"
"Put coal—not wood—in a kiln and bake it slowly with the air sealed off. Amid thick smoke, you'll get hard, black lumps. That's coke. It has firepower unmatched by ordinary charcoal."
Jakub tilted his head at the unfamiliar process and term. The idea of 'baking' coal instead of burning it was utterly alien.
But my voice carried unshakeable certainty.
"Tomasi, gather every scrap of iron in the territory. Rusty farm tools, broken armor, stray nail fragments—everything. Once the blast furnace is complete, we'll melt it all and reforge it into steel harder than any in the world."
Kaolin, coke, and steel.
The explanations made no sense, but the Meisters held their tongues.
They simply realized that the young lord's vision lay beyond their imagination.
The words of a lord who had already proven miracles carried irresistible weight and conviction.
The three bowed their heads simultaneously.
"We shall obey your command, my lord."
The heart of the Hussites and the iron fortress of southern Bohemia, Tábor.
In the cold stone chamber at its core, Jan Zizka sat at the head of the table, gazing down at a map.
Even after the overwhelming victory at Vyšehrad, his single eye never relaxed for a moment.
The room reeked only of leather, steel, and the indelible blood of the battlefield.
Then, hearing an unbelievable report, Zizka's eyebrow twitched.
"...Mikulas is dead?"
His voice rumbled low and dangerously, like boiling lava.
Before him stood Hynek Krusina of Lichtenburg, his body smeared with soot and blood, head bowed.
"...I have no face to show you, General Zizka."
"Unable to take a castle guarded by fewer than a hundred heretics, losing hundreds of our brave brothers and the Grand Commander... What nonsense is this, Krusina?"
Zizka's lone eye pierced him sharply.
Krusina couldn't meet that gaze, stammering excuses in a trembling voice.
"Our failure was great, but the enemy's resistance was beyond imagination. It... it wasn't human strength! They wield fire bestowed by the devil!"
"Devil's fire?"
Zizka's eyebrow twitched again. Krusina, recalling that day's nightmare, explained frantically.
"Yes! They threw jars, and unquenchable flames devoured our soldiers and wagons. And... and when we poured water on it, the fire exploded wildly!"
Fire that explodes when water is poured on it. That single phrase stirred memories in the veteran who had seen countless battlefields.
"Did that liquid smell sticky and foul?"
"Y-yes! Exactly!"
A glint flashed in Zizka's single eye.
"Idiot...! I saw something similar fighting the Turks at Nicopolis. It's not devil's fire—it's Greek fire!"
"Greek... fire?"
"An outdated trick used by the Eastern Roman Empire. They mix quicklime and sulfur into oil lighter than water. It exploits the property that makes it ignite and explode on contact with water."
Zizka paused in thought. Having wandered Europe as a mercenary for decades, countermeasures against Greek fire were already flooding his mind.
Smothering flames with sand and dirt, dousing with vinegar to neutralize the reaction, or obliterating from afar with artillery.
Zizka clicked his tongue and muttered.
"Tch, that fool Mikulas. Got complacent in victory. There are plenty of counters, yet he fell to this ancient ploy."
He looked back at the map. A new question arose.
'That said... Even in the Eastern Roman heartland, Greek fire hasn't been used in combat for ages. Modified recipes are top secrets in every kingdom. How did that Sternberg whelp...?'
Then, Krusina cautiously spoke up.
"...General. There's more."
"What else?"
At Zizka's curt question, Krusina swallowed hard and continued.
"At the end... their castellan threw something. A small pottery jar. But when it hit the ground... there was a flash and a roar like the world collapsing. Our siege tower... vanished without a trace."
Zizka's expression hardened instantly.
'Flash and roar...'
Gunpowder? Impossible. No one knew its power and handling better than he. It was the secret weapon that crushed Sigismund's Crusade, after all.
But gunpowder was as fickle and unstable as it was powerful. A slight mix error could make it explode prematurely, and in bad luck, take the handler with it.
Yet... a bomb that obliterated an entire siege tower? From that whelp? That's not human knowledge. Unless he made a pact with the devil...
"...Foolish thoughts."
Whatever the reason, they couldn't back down now. God's army couldn't bear the disgrace of falling to a heretic noble's tricks.
"Sternberg... I thought he was just a green boy, but he's hiding some sharp fangs."
As Zizka murmured softly, his single eye gleamed eerily in the dark chamber.
"Good. I'll pull those claws myself."
It was the gaze of a lion stalking its prey.