Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [362]
Brushing past the armourer, he faced two men at a table.
‘You men, how old are these furnaces? For how many generations has metalcraft continued in this manner?’
They could not answer for fear. They wiped their blackened faces with their blackened gloves, which effected no improvement in their appearance.
It was SlanjivalIptrekira who answered, in a subdued voice. ‘The corps was founded to perpetuate these sacred processes, Your Majesty. We but do as we are bid by our ancestors.’
‘You are answerable to me, not to your ancestors. I bid you make good guns and you failed.’ He turned to the corpsmen who had gathered silently in the fumous chamber.
‘You men, all, and apprentices. You carry out old methods. Those old methods are obsolete. Haven’t you the wits to understand? There are new weapons available, better than we can make in Borlien. We need new methods, better metals, better systems.’
They looked at him with dark faces and red-rimmed eyes, unable to understand that their world was ending.
‘These rotten furnaces will be demolished. More efficient ones will be built. They must have such furnaces in Sibornal, in the land of the Uskuti. We need furnaces like the Sibornalese. Then we shall make weapons like the Sibornalese.’
He summoned up a dozen of his brute soldiery and commanded them to destroy the furnaces. The phagors seized crowbars and commenced without question to carry out their orders. From the live furnace, when its wall was broached, molten metal burst forth. It flashed across the floor. A young apprentice fell screaming under its flood. The metal set fire to wood shavings and timber. The corpsmen shrank away aghast.
All the furnaces were broken. The phagors stood by for further orders.
‘Have them built anew, according to directions I shall send you. I will have no more useless guns!’ With these words, he marched from the building. The corpsmen came to themselves and threw buckets of water over their blazing premises. SlanjivalIptrekira was arrested and jostled off into captivity.
The following day, the Royal Armourer and Ironmaster was tried before the scritina and convicted of treason. Even the other corps-masters could not save SlanjivalIptrekira. He had ordered his men to attack the person of his king. He was executed in the public view, and his head exhibited to the crowd.
Enemies of the king in the scritina, and not his enemies only, nor only in the scritina, were nevertheless angered that he had ventured into premises by long tradition sacrosanct. This was another mad act which would never have been committed had Queen MyrdemInggala been near to keep his madness under control.
JandolAnganol, however, sent a messenger to Sayren Stund, King of Oldorando, his future father-in-law. He knew that the destruction of the city of Oldorando, when it had been overcome by phagor invasion, had resulted in the craft corps’ being reformed, and their equipment renewed. Their foundries should therefore be more advanced than Borlien’s. He remembered at the last moment to send his neighbour a gift for Simoda Tal.
King Sayren Stund sent JandolAnganol a dark hunchbacked man called Fard Fantil. Fard Fantil came with credentials showing him to be an expert in iron furnaces who understood new methods. JandolAnganol sent him to work immediately.
Immediately, a delegation from the Ironmakers Corps, ashen of face, came before the king to complain of Fard Fantil’s ruthlessness and sullen ways.
‘I like sullen men,’ roared JandolAnganol.
Fard Fantil had the premises of the guild moved to a hillside outside Matrassyl. Here the timber was available for charcoal and the supply of running water was constant. The water was necessary to power stamping mills.
No one in Borlien had ever heard of stamping mills. Fard Fantil explained in supercilious fashion that this was the only way to crush ore effectively. The corpsmen scratched their heads and grumbled. Fard Fantil cursed them.