Chapter 54 - Fifty-Four ... Anvil and Hammer

Chapter 54: Chapter Fifty-Four ... Anvil and Hammer

Chapter Fifty-Four ... Anvil and Hammer

The vassals who had been watching quietly each added a word. It might have sounded like excessive flattery, but it was the truth. Jan thought so too. The dense thicket of pikes, swaying slightly with every step, looked like a forest on the march.

Even the Aquilane heavy cavalry, famed for its might, would surely think twice about charging headlong into a pike unit.

’Knowing about something secondhand and seeing it with my own eyes really are worlds apart.’

If a few hundred men looked like this, how overwhelming would it be with thousands, or tens of thousands?

He could hardly imagine it.

Jan watched the soldiers’ movements with a look of awe.

"This should knock the fight right out of the feudal vassals."

"Indeed, my lord. Once they’ve passed between those pikemen and entered the inner castle, they won’t dare lift their eyes to your face."

Steward Vittorio, who had been quietly watching, spoke in a voice full of emotion. He had served this house for some thirty years now, and in all that time it had never had elite soldiers like these, so it was no wonder.

Jan smiled as he looked at Steward Vittorio.

"Are you a little more content now?"

"Of course. I’m content. It’s a little sad to be giving up the rights handed down from the lords before you, but you must have a plan for all of it, my lord. I believe in you."

"Then I’m counting on you. I want this summons of the vassals to end without any trouble."

"Don’t worry, my lord."

Steward Vittorio answered in a loud voice unlike him. He looked very dependable. Jan quietly watched the pikemen’s review until a question suddenly occurred to him, and he asked Captain Lampard.

"When do you think the pikemen will be ready to use in battle?"

"Hm, their training is more or less finished, human lord. The formation itself is adapted from the infantry squares of the old empire, so it wasn’t hard to teach. The rest is battle experience, and that’ll come as long as they keep fighting. Only..."

Captain Lampard broke off mid-sentence and frowned slightly.

"Only?"

"Well, it’s the same thing I said before! Human lord, pikemen alone can’t drive off an enemy."

It was a point he had made before.

In the end, the pikemen were only the anvil, and to crush the enemy, they needed a branch of troops to serve as the hammer. Jan agreed with Captain Lampard completely.

’It’s true that the land bordering the other domains is all open plain, so holding it with infantry alone won’t work. And with pikemen as slow-moving as these, stopping cavalry from running wild would be close to impossible.’

Of course, it was hard to imagine knights whose heads were stuffed full of muscle leaving the infantry in front of them alone and going somewhere else.

Still, there was always the chance.

If the knights went around them instead of fighting, it could be a disaster. Fortunately, he had already found a way to deal with that.

"Don’t worry. As a solution, I’ve decided to bring in steel crossbows."

"The steel crossbows those Venetti folk use, human lord?"

"That’s right. As it happens, I was planning to test the results today."

"Oho."

Captain Lampard seemed interested.

Jan beckoned to Garnoc behind him. Garnoc brought forward ten steel crossbows he had purchased in secret. Skilled soldiers formed into teams and began to load them.

Creak.

Crrreak.

The grinding of the iron cranks rang out, and soon the bows, heavy with tension, loosed their bolts at the targets.

Fwiiiish! Thunk!

With the sound of air being torn apart, the armored scarecrow set up as a target shuddered. The force had been so great that when they went over to check, there was a large hole right through the middle of its chain mail. Unbelievable as it was, the bolt had punched clean through.

"Huh. Tremendous power."

"It’s like a ballista."

"Wh-whoa!"

The vassals watching let out cries of admiration once more. That was how frightening the power was. If it could punch cleanly through a stationary target, it would surely show even greater force against charging cavalry.

"This will give us infantry that devours cavalry. Knights won’t be needed anymore."

Steward Vittorio murmured it as though the thought frightened him. Knights wore heavy armor even at the cost of their mobility because of the superior protection it gave, but with piercing power like that, there would be no reason to train heavy cavalry at all. They might as well arm themselves more lightly and gain speed instead.

For Steward Vittorio, a knight by birth, it was a truly dreadful future.

Agreeing with him, Jan asked Garnoc.

"Can you buy more steel crossbows?"

Garnoc answered with a troubled look.

"It won’t be easy, my lord. They’ll sell ordinary crossbows, but steel crossbows are under the Venetti council’s strict control."

"Hmm."

It was a pity.

"Well, then we’ll just have to copy them ourselves."

"I hear the bows take an awfully long time to make, human lord. They need steel, and most of the dwarf craftsmen who know how to make it belong to the Venetti council, so even if you copy them, mass-producing them won’t be easy."

"Hmm, steel..."

On this point, even Jan was at a loss. What he remembered was how the crossbows were made, not how steel was smelted. Steel was difficult to make, and the methods of producing it in bulk were passed down as the closely guarded secrets of each guild.

’If I searched hard enough, I might find someone who knows how to smelt steel in bulk and bring him in...’

The continent was in turmoil at present, and many craftsmen were on the move. Once the Great Famine came, that would only speed up, so he would have to watch closely for the chance.

’For now, I’ll get in touch with Klement or the Lufen Company and ask for help. As long as I pay a fair price, they’ll hand over that kind of information easily enough.’

Of course, that didn’t mean he intended to sit on his hands and wait. If he couldn’t import steel crossbows for now, he would at least form units with ordinary crossbows, even if they lacked the same destructive power.

Ordinary crossbows fell short of steel ones, but they still had more than enough force to pierce chain mail.

"I’ll set aside a generous budget for now. Buy as much steel as it allows and make crossbows. Even if we can’t mass-produce them yet, training skilled workers is what matters most. And record every step of the process in detail and experiment, so that when the time comes to mass-produce them, it goes off without a hitch."

"Understood, my lord."

With that order, Jan brought the day’s review to a close.

Now all that remained was to receive his feudal vassals.

And four days later.

An endless procession streamed into his lands.

At last, the feudal vassals who had answered the summons had arrived.