Chapter 293 -286:The Second Machine
The Blood Forge, casting floor
"You have tested the method,now lets work on what it is for"Gruzzik said
"You’ve all built it once," He continued. "You know where every part goes. I’m not walking you round a chalk outline like apprentices."
Eighty-one smiths waited in the cold morning air.
He held up the drawing.
"Here’s what’s different. Last time we had this and we couldn’t pour the metal it asks for. So we put our own in instead—and every number on this page was worked out for metal we didn’t have." He put it down on the bench. "Now we can pour it. Thirteen batches, eleven above the line, and Herrek’s book to prove it."
"So it’s the same machine," Torbek said.
"It’s the same machine. Same drawing, same shapes, same thicknesses, same everything." Gruzzik looked round the hall. "And this time it gets built exactly as the paper says. Every dimension. Every angle. Every part in the place the drawing puts it."
"And if the paper’s wrong somewhere?"
"Then it’s wrong, and we build it wrong, and we find out it on the test ground instead of in front of four Demon Lords." He tapped the drawing. "Nobody improves anything. Nobody makes anything bigger. Nobody rounds off a corner because his eye doesn’t like it. If you think a number on this page is wrong, you come to me and we write it down and we build it the drawn way anyway."
Nobody said anything.
"Say it back to me, Torbek."
"Build it how it’s drawn."
"Dolgha."
"Build it how it’s drawn."
"Good. Then we start on the plate."
The plate came off in thirteen batches nine approved,four rejected. Every single piece had been on the test rig first.
Forty-two unit of the standard length across the side. Fifty-five degrees off vertical. The last machine had carried the same thickness in emberglass over blackbone and it had cracked on a stone pillar and every man cutting plate that week remembered it.
Nobody had to be told twice about the plate.
The links were where the argument started.
Four hundred and nine, drawn identical, and eleven casters to make them.
"That’s what killed Brakh," Dolgha said. "So how do we do it?"
"One pattern," Gruzzik said. "Cut against the standard bar. Every mould box in this forge made off that one pattern. Not eleven patterns that look the same. One pattern, copied."
"Who checks them?"
"Herrek. Every link, against the pattern, before it goes near the machine."
"Four hundred and nine links."
"Four hundred and nine."
"He’ll be a month at it."
"Then let it be."
Vasska came over from the fourth furnace.
"Three of Brakh’s gripped," he said. "Four hundred and six slipped. If they’d all slipped together, the track stays on."
"Yes."
"So his weren’t bad. His were the best links anyone in this forge ever cut."
"That’s right."
"And that’s what killed him." Vasska looked down at the drawing. "Give me the pattern. I’ll cut it."
The floor went quiet.
"Somebody has to," he said. "If four hundred and nine links come off one shape, I’d rather the shape was right. Herrek checks it against the bar, and if it’s wrong I cut another."
"It’ll be wrong," Gruzzik said. "The bar’s crooked."
"Then it’s wrong the as everything else in this forge," Vasska said. "Which is apparently what we do now."
The engine went the same way, and Bruk hated every minute of it.
He’d been on repairs thirty years and he knew.
"Four stages of gearing," the scholar read out.
"Four’s too many," Bruk muttered. "I could do it in one with a proper binding—"
"Bruk." Gruzzik didn’t look up. "What was in the housing last time?"
Bruk stopped.
"A bound spirit."
"And what did it do?"
"Ran away with the machine. Nothing to hold it back."
"Four stages," Gruzzik said. "And the governor that’s drawn next to them."
"A governor’s a stupid little thing. It sits there and stops it from going faster. That’s all it does. Any fool could make one."
"Then make one, and make it the size it’s drawn."
The cooling was sized off the drawing, which meant it was smaller than anyone wanted.
The turret went in bolted sections, because the drawing said sections, and half the hall thought that was an admission of poverty. The ring underneath it was cut to the drawn number and checked against the bar, and it came out exactly the size of the turret that sat on it—which, after last time, nobody found funny.
Twice somebody started improving something. Both times another smith stopped it.
The first was Hasla, catching one of Torbek’s men filing a corner round because it looked wrong to him.
"That’s how it’s drawn."
"It’ll be weak there—"
"Then it’s weak there on every one of them, and somebody finds out and writes it down, and then we all know." She took the file off him. "Leave it."
The second was Mek, and he was so quiet about it that nobody noticed.
It took eleven weeks.
Herrek checked four hundred and nine links against Vasska’s pattern and rejected thirty-one of them, and nobody argued about a single one.
Bruk built the governor. It was a stupid little thing. It sat there and stopped the engine from going faster.
They rolled it out of the casting hall on a grey morning and stood it in the yard where the last one had stood.
It looked worse than the last one. The whole hall agreed and nobody was happy about it.
Smaller. Plainer. Bolted turret with every join showing. No name cut into anything anywhere. The tracks were four hundred and nine dull grey links with no more character than fence posts.
"It’s ugly," Torbek said.
"It’s the drawing."
"I know it’s the drawing. I’m saying it’s ugly."
Vasska walked the length of the track twice.
Then he crouched at the front of the track, put his hand flat on one link, moved along and put his hand on another, then a third further back.
He stayed down there a while.
"Well?" Dolgha said.
"They’re the same."
"You can’t tell that by hand."
"No." He stood up and wiped his palms on his apron. "That’s what I’m telling you. I’ve had my hands on all three and I can’t tell them apart. Forty years ago I could name which of my apprentices cut a link from six feet away."
He looked up at it.
"Now i cannot" he said.