He took the broadsword he had captured on the night of his advent here-and-now to the castle blacksmith, to have it ground down into a rapier.. The blacksmith thought he was crazy. He found a pair of wooden practice swords and went outside with a cavalry lieutenant to demonstrate. Immediately, the lieutenant wanted a rapier, too. The blacksmith promised to make real ones, to his specifications, for both of them. His was finished the next evening, and by that time the blacksmith was swamped with orders for rapiers.
Almost everything these people used could be made in the workshops inside the walls of Tarr-Hostigos, or in Hostigos Town, and he seemed to have an unlimited expense-account with them. He began to wonder what, besides being the guest from the Land of the Gods, he was supposed to do to earn it. Nobody mentioned that; maybe they were waiting for him to mention it.
He brought the subject up, one evening, in Prince Ptosphes's study, where he and the Prince and Rylla and Xentos and Chartiphon were smoking over a flagon of after-dinner wine.
"You have enemies on both sides-Gormoth of Nostor and Sarrask of Sask-and that's not good. You have taken me in and made me one of you. What can I do to help against them?"
"Well, Kalvan," Ptosphes said, "perhaps you could better tell us that. We don't want to talk of what distresses you, but you must come of a very wise people. You've already taught us new things, like the thrusting-sword"-he looked admiringly at the new rapier he had laid aside and what you've told Chartiphon about mounting cannon. What else can you teach us?"
Quite a lot, he thought. There had been one professor at Princeton whose favorite pupil he had been, and who had been his favorite teacher. A history prof, and an unusual one. Most academic people at the middle of the twentieth century took the same attitude toward war that their Victorian opposite numbers had toward sex one of those deplorable facts nice people don't talk about, and maybe if you don't look at the horrid thing it'll go away. This man had been different. What happened in the cloisters and the guild-halls and the parliaments and council-chambers was important, but none of them went into effect until ratified on the battlefield. So he had emphasized the military aspect of history in a freshman from Pennsylvania named Morrison, a divinity student, of all unlikely things. So, while he should have been studying homiletics and scriptural exegesis and youth-organization methods, that freshman, and a year later that sophomore, had been reading Sir Charles Oman's Art of War.
"Well, I can't tell you how to make weapons like that six-shooter of mine, or ammunition for it," he began, and then tried, as simply as possible, to explain about mass production and machine industry. They only stared in incomprehension and wonder. "I can show you a few things you can do with the things you have. For instance, we cut spiral grooves inside the bores of our guns, to make the bullet spin. Such guns shoot harder, straighter and farther than smoothbores. I can show you how to build cannon that can be moved rapidly and loaded and fired much more rapidly than what you have. And another thing." He mentioned never having seen any practice firing. "You have very little powder-fireseed, you call it. Is that it?"
"There isn't enough fireseed in all Hostigos to load all the cannon of this castle for one shot," Chartiphon told him. "And we can get no more. The priests of Styphon have put us under the ban and will let us have none, and they send cartload after cartload to Nostor."
"You mean you get your fireseed from the priests of Styphon? Can't you make your own?"
They all looked at him as though he was a cretin. "Nobody can make fireseed but the priests of Styphon," Xentos told him. "That was what I meant when I told you that Styphon's House has great power. With Styphon's aid, they alone can make it, and so they have great power, even over the Great Kings."
"Well I'll be Dralm-damned!" He gave Styphon's House that grudging respect any good cop gives a really smart crook. Brother, what a racket! No wonder this country, here-and-now, was divided into five Great Kingdoms, and each split into a snakepit of warring Princes and petty barons. Styphon's House wanted it that way; it was good for business. A lot of things became clear. For instance, if Styphon's House did the weaponeering as well as the powder-making, it would explain why small-arms were so good; they'd see to it that nobody without fireseed stood an outside chance against anybody with it. But they'd keep the brakes on artillery development. Styphon House wouldn't want bloody or destructive wars-they'd be bad for business. Just wars that burned lots of fireseed; that would be why there were all these great powder-hogs of bombards around.
And no wonder everybody in Hostigos had monkeys on their backs. They knew they were facing the short end of a war of extermination. He set down his goblet and laughed.
"You think nobody but those priests of Styphon can make fireseed?" There was nobody here that wasn't security-cleared for the inside version of his cover-story. "Why, in my time, everybody, even the children, could do that." (Well, children who'd gotten as far as high school chemistry; he'd almost been expelled, once) "I can make fireseed right here on this table." He refilled his goblet.
"But it is a miracle; only by the power of Styphon…" Xentos began.
"Styphon's a big fake!" he declared. "A false god; his priests are lying swindlers." That shocked Xentos; good or bad, a god was a god and shouldn't be talked about like that. "You want to see me do it? Mytron has everything in his dispensary I'll need. I'll want sulfur, and saltpeter." Mytron prescribed sulfur and honey (they had no molasses here-and-now), and saltpeter was supposed to cool the blood. "And charcoal, and a brass mortar and pestle, and a flour-sieve and something to sift into, and a pair of balance-scales." He picked up an unused goblet. "This'll do to mix it in."
Now they were all staring at him as though he-had three heads, and a golden crown on each one.
"Go on, man! Hurry!" Ptosphes told Xentos. "Have everything brought here at once."
Then the Prince threw back his head and laughed-maybe a trifle hysterically, but it was the first time Morrison had heard Ptosphes laugh at all. Chartiphon banged his fist on the table.
"Ha, Gormoth!" he cried. "Now see whose head goes up over whose gate!" Xentos went out. Morrison asked for a pistol, and Ptosphes brought him one from a cabinet behind him. It was loaded; opening the pan, he spilled out the priming on a sheet of parchment and touched a lighted splinter to it. It scorched the parchment, which it shouldn't have done, and left too much black residue. Styphon wasn't a very honest powder maker; he cheapened his product with too much charcoal and not enough saltpeter. Morrison sipped from his goblet. Saltpeter was seventy-five percent, charcoal fifteen, sulfur ten.
After a while Xentos returned, accompanied by Mytron, bringing a bucket of charcoal, a couple of earthen jars, and the other things. Xentos seemed slightly dazed; Mytron was frightened and making a good game try at not showing it. He put Mytron to work grinding saltpeter in the mortar. The sulfur was already pulverized. Finally, he had about a half pint of it mixed.
"But it's just dust," Chartiphon objected. "Yes. It has to be moistened, worked into dough, pressed into cakes, dried, and ground. We can't do all that here. But this will flash." Up to about 1500, all gunpowder had been like that-meal powder, they had called it. It had been used in cannon for a long time after grain powder was being used in small arms. Why, in 1588, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia had been very happy that all the powder for the Armada was coined arquebus powder, and not meal powder. He primed the pistol with a pinch from the mixing goblet, aimed at a half-burned log in the fireplace, and squeezed. Outside somebody shouted, feet pounded up the hall, and a guard with a halberd burst into the room.
"The Lord Kalvan is showing us something about a pistol," Ptosphes told him. "There may be more shots; nobody is to be alarmed."