Chapter 74: The Fourth Attempt
Days passed, and the secret western mountain route operated exactly as planned.
The wagons rolled out of the von Frundsberg gates in the dead of night, bypassing the greedy toll collectors of the Swabian League.
They were packed to the brim with new wheellock muskets, barrels of highly purified black powder, and the much-coveted logistical supplies.
In return, the exiled Württemberg merchants paid in pure, unadulterated Fugger silver.
Silver was practically bleeding into the land... within just a few weeks, the Swabian keeps were overflowing with it.
"They bought the soap?" Lady Isolde asked, leaning against the desk in Konrad’s study.
She was finally out of bed, looking much stronger, though she kept little Albrecht resting in a small cradle near the hearth.
"Every last crate of it," Konrad replied, his charcoal flying across a fresh ledger. "And they bought ten thousand blocks of the pocket soup. Lady Amalia’s host is eating boiled cattle bones and paying us premium silver for the privilege."
Isolde let out a dry laugh. "I suppose a clean, fed mercenary is worth his weight in gold during a winter siege."
"With this influx of silver, we no longer have to beg the Fugger bankers for loans to pay our own men. The realm is self-sustaining." Konrad said, not looking up from his tallies.
One month passed in this profitable rhythm... the bitter cold of January slowly gave way to the slightly milder, muddy thaws of late February.
However, the real revolution was not happening in the ledgers or on the snowy trade roads. It was happening deep inside the heat of the main armory.
A cloud of white steam erupted into the air, blinding half the men in the room.
Master Klemens coughed heavily, wiping greasy soot from his eyes.
He cautiously took a step back, staring at the hulking contraption sitting in the center of the forge. "By the saints... it didn’t explode this time."
Konrad stood just a few feet away from the beast, his arms crossed over his doublet.
It had taken a full month of hell to build it... they had failed three separate times.
The first prototype had shattered under the intense pressure, sending boiling water and shrapnel flying across the room.
The second model simply hissed and died, its brass valves failing to hold the crucial vacuum.
The third attempt had snapped the massive wooden rocking beam clean in half.
Even so, Konrad refused to give up... he adjusted the math, thickened the iron cylinder walls, and redesigned the cold-water injection valve.
And now, the fourth attempt was alive...
The primitive atmospheric steam engine chugged loudly in the center of the armory.
A fire boiled the water in the copper boiler, sending steam up into the iron cylinder.
The steam pushed the heavy piston up... then, a quick spray of cold water condensed the steam, creating a vacuum that sucked the piston back down.
Up and down, over and over, with absolute consistency!
The piston was connected to a wooden rocking beam, which in turn rotated a series of heavy leather belts.
"Look at the belts," Konrad commanded.
Klemens turned his gaze to the far wall.
The leather belts were directly connected to the musket-boring drills.
Previously, these drills had to be turned by hand, or by a water wheel that constantly froze in the winter and required massive amounts of maintenance.
Now, the drills were spinning rapidly, completely powered by the endless strength of boiling water!
"It’s a metal demon, My Lord," Klemens whispered, genuine awe and terror mixing in his rough voice. "It doesn’t tire... it doesn’t need grain or sleep."
Klemens quickly ran over to the workbenches. He watched the steel drill bits bore through the solid iron musket barrels with terrifying speed and precision.
He did the quick mental math, his jaw dropping open.
"Lord Konrad." Klemens yelled over the hissing steam. "This speed... the production of the wheellock barrels is sped up by a full one hundred percent. We can bore twice as many muskets in a single day."
"And that is only with this highly primitive version of the engine," Konrad said, "Once we refine the seals and build a second engine to pump water out of the copper mines, our raw material bottlenecks will vanish."
The Swabian forges had officially crossed the threshold... thus, the realm shifted gears entirely.
The massive influx of silver from the Württemberg trade route, combined with the doubled output of the armories, allowed the von Frundsberg military to expand at a staggering rate.
Later that evening, Konrad sat in his private study, thoroughly washing the soot from his hands in a basin of warm water.
The door swung open, and Marshal Eckhard stepped inside, carrying a stack of canvas ledgers.
The Marshal looked far more confident than he had a month ago... he looked like a man who finally had the tools he needed to wage a proper war.
"The final tallies for the month are in, My Lord," Eckhard reported, placing the ledgers on the desk. "The new silver allowed us to easily absorb the wandering mercenary bands looking for winter work. We also hired a massive number of starving farmers who fled the Catholic lords’ lands."
"Speak the numbers, Eckhard," Konrad ordered, drying his hands with a clean linen cloth.
Eckhard unrolled the top ledger. "We have reorganized the active marching host, leaving the older veterans to garrison the star-forts. Our main field army now stands at exactly 3,500 highly drilled men."
Konrad nodded slowly. "Break it down."
"One thousand heavy infantry," Eckhard recited clearly. "Mostly armored pikemen and halberdiers to form the defensive squares.
Two thousand drilled wheellock gunners, all equipped with the new plug bayonets and standardized powder flasks.
And five hundred elite Reiters, fully armed with the twin-barreled dags and long thrusting swords."
"Three thousand and five hundred men... Armed with our new twelve-pounder field guns, no conventional noble army could stand against them on the walls." Konrad noted.
Konrad stared intensely at the northern borders of his map... the territory of the Teutonic Knights. His brother, Friedrich, was still out there.
A month had passed since Konrad had sent Lord Ulrich and the Reiters to aggressively raid and burn the Teutonic supply lines.
By all conventional military logic, Friedrich’s crusade of heavy horsemen should have starved by now.
They should have dissolved into a routing, starving mob, forced to return to the Baltic to avoid freezing to death in the snow.
Even so, Konrad’s gut told him the math wasn’t adding up...
"Marshal," Konrad said, keeping his eyes glued to the map. "Have the border scouts reported any movement from Friedrich’s camps? If they are starving, we should be seeing mass desertions across our lines."
Eckhard frowned, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. "We haven’t seen a single deserter... In fact, our forward scouts reported this morning that the Teutonic camps are quiet. Too quiet."
After hearing such words, the door to the study was suddenly thrown open.
A young scout stumbled into the room.
He was clutching a severe wound on his left shoulder.
The two elite guards stationed in the hallway rushed in right behind him, supporting his weight before he collapsed onto the floorboards.
