twisted like a length of wire. It must have seemed a very long way from the high plains to Solamen, walking like that.
The lengths some people’ll go to just to stay alive.
Loredan left the rest of his wine and went back to his ‘island’. He was virtually sober, but that was all right. No more drinking, he told himself, as he lay down to sleep. Regular meals, exercise, practice in the Schools, perhaps even a new sword, and maybe he’d be in shape to beat Ziani Alvise. After all, it was just another fight, something he was supposed to be good at. It wasn’t as if he was being asked to do anything difficult, like walking home.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘What are you staring at?’ demanded the engineer.
Temrai stepped backwards. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just looking.’
The engineer scowled, and spat into the sawdust. ‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’
‘I finished it. I’m waiting for the next batch of blanks. So I thought I’d just look around.’
The engineer muttered something and went back to what he was doing. He was working on the frame of a small trebuchet, the kind that threw a hundredweight stone. Using a chisel and a beech mallet, he was cutting dovetails in a thick twelve-foot-long plank; earlier, he and another man had sawn it out of a massive billet of seasoned ash, using a ten-foot saw.
‘Is that for the main frame?’ Temrai asked. The engineer looked up, surprised.
‘Left-hand A-frame,’ he replied. ‘Already done the right one. How come you know so much about engines?’
‘I’m interested,’ Temrai said. ‘I’ve been watching.’
The engineer, a man of about sixty-five with shaggy white hair on his chest and arms like a bear, nodded. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re the offcomer kid, the plainsman.’ His mouth twitched into a small grin. ‘Bet you ain’t seen anything like this up on the plains.’
‘Oh, no,’ Temrai said. ‘I think it’s fascinating, seeing all the different machines.’
This time the engineer actually laughed. ‘There ain’t much to these buggers,’ he said. ‘Trebuchet’s a very basic design; you just got a bloody great big heavy weight on one end and a sling to put the stone in on the other, and it pivots around a pin supported on two A-frames. So you hoist up the weight with a winch, load your stone and let go. The weight goes crashing down again, and the stone gets slung out. Piece of cake. Compared to some of the machines we make here, there’s nothing to it.’
‘Oh,’ Temrai said. ‘I thought they were quite good.’
The engineer shrugged. ‘Oh, they work all right. We got trebuchets’ll throw a four hundredweight stone three hundred an’ fifty yards, straight as a die. This here’s just a baby; got the same range but only takes a quarter of the load.’
Temrai nodded appreciatively, and the engineer was secretly pleased to see the light of enthusiasm in his eyes. All true engineers are enthusiasts; they value admiration and respect every bit as much as painters and sculptors do, and they know they deserve it even more. All a sculpture need do is look a certain way. A machine has to work.
‘How do you know how big to make it?’ Temrai asked.
The engineer laughed again, not unkindly. ‘That, my son, is a bloody good question. Some of it you can work out by figuring; there’s what we call formulas. The rest just comes by trial and error. You make one, you see if it works; if it doesn’t you make it again a different way, and you keep on over and over till you got one that does work. That’s what we call prototypes.’
‘Ah,’ Temrai said.
‘F’rinstance,’ the engineer went on, carefully marking out the rectangle he was about to cut with light taps of the chisel, ‘the Secretary of Ordnance comes to me and he says he wants ten light trebs to cover the angle of the sea wall just along from the Chain, where they’ve just put in them five new bastions. So he tells me what he wants these trebs to do
The lengths some people’ll go to just to stay alive.
Loredan left the rest of his wine and went back to his ‘island’. He was virtually sober, but that was all right. No more drinking, he told himself, as he lay down to sleep. Regular meals, exercise, practice in the Schools, perhaps even a new sword, and maybe he’d be in shape to beat Ziani Alvise. After all, it was just another fight, something he was supposed to be good at. It wasn’t as if he was being asked to do anything difficult, like walking home.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘What are you staring at?’ demanded the engineer.
Temrai stepped backwards. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just looking.’
The engineer scowled, and spat into the sawdust. ‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’
‘I finished it. I’m waiting for the next batch of blanks. So I thought I’d just look around.’
The engineer muttered something and went back to what he was doing. He was working on the frame of a small trebuchet, the kind that threw a hundredweight stone. Using a chisel and a beech mallet, he was cutting dovetails in a thick twelve-foot-long plank; earlier, he and another man had sawn it out of a massive billet of seasoned ash, using a ten-foot saw.
‘Is that for the main frame?’ Temrai asked. The engineer looked up, surprised.
‘Left-hand A-frame,’ he replied. ‘Already done the right one. How come you know so much about engines?’
‘I’m interested,’ Temrai said. ‘I’ve been watching.’
The engineer, a man of about sixty-five with shaggy white hair on his chest and arms like a bear, nodded. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re the offcomer kid, the plainsman.’ His mouth twitched into a small grin. ‘Bet you ain’t seen anything like this up on the plains.’
‘Oh, no,’ Temrai said. ‘I think it’s fascinating, seeing all the different machines.’
This time the engineer actually laughed. ‘There ain’t much to these buggers,’ he said. ‘Trebuchet’s a very basic design; you just got a bloody great big heavy weight on one end and a sling to put the stone in on the other, and it pivots around a pin supported on two A-frames. So you hoist up the weight with a winch, load your stone and let go. The weight goes crashing down again, and the stone gets slung out. Piece of cake. Compared to some of the machines we make here, there’s nothing to it.’
‘Oh,’ Temrai said. ‘I thought they were quite good.’
The engineer shrugged. ‘Oh, they work all right. We got trebuchets’ll throw a four hundredweight stone three hundred an’ fifty yards, straight as a die. This here’s just a baby; got the same range but only takes a quarter of the load.’
Temrai nodded appreciatively, and the engineer was secretly pleased to see the light of enthusiasm in his eyes. All true engineers are enthusiasts; they value admiration and respect every bit as much as painters and sculptors do, and they know they deserve it even more. All a sculpture need do is look a certain way. A machine has to work.
‘How do you know how big to make it?’ Temrai asked.
The engineer laughed again, not unkindly. ‘That, my son, is a bloody good question. Some of it you can work out by figuring; there’s what we call formulas. The rest just comes by trial and error. You make one, you see if it works; if it doesn’t you make it again a different way, and you keep on over and over till you got one that does work. That’s what we call prototypes.’
‘Ah,’ Temrai said.
‘F’rinstance,’ the engineer went on, carefully marking out the rectangle he was about to cut with light taps of the chisel, ‘the Secretary of Ordnance comes to me and he says he wants ten light trebs to cover the angle of the sea wall just along from the Chain, where they’ve just put in them five new bastions. So he tells me what he wants these trebs to do
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