Herald of Steel

Alexander carefully inspected the crossbow that Faziz made, then asked, "Have you tried shooting with it?"

"No, sire, I couldn't manage the time," The man honestly replied.

"Um, then let's go outside for the test," Alexander invited as he was interested in testing out its accuracy and build quality and soon the group was outside the workshop, with Alexander carrying the weapon and Faziz carrying five freshly-made bolts just for the crossbow.

The group moved themselves to a small clearing and quickly chose their target- a cut tree stump, about a meter width and reaching up to Alexander's thigh.


Alexander quickly loaded the crossbow, took aim at a distance of around ten meters, and with trepidation in his heart let loose, the feel of the trigger making him feel like he was a combat sniper, the slight recoil of the crossbow giving Alexander a realistic feel.

Loosen by Alexander, the arrow sped in the slant direction towards the target and in a spectacular way…Thuk!, it missed, burying itself into the soil next to the tree stump.

For all of Alexander's 'feeling' he had missed the quite close target.

This drew a few shocked looks from the others while Alexander was a bit embarrassed at having missed such a large, easy target.

He had never shot a bow in his life and for the first time found shooting an arrow was really not that easy.

He had shot guns before in gun ranges for recreation and he had assumed that both should have some similarities to them.

But even if they had any similarities, Alexander could not find them.

After all, the ballistic of a bullet and an arrow was vastly different as the former spun as it traveled through the air while the latter bent and flexed as it moved.

"The lighting is not good at all. It's really hard to see in the distance," Takfiz quickly tried to save Alexander from the embarrassment, making up a lame excuse.

But this only made Alexander curse himself, 'What light problem! It's only late afternoon and everything is clear as day,'

And then to divert the blame Alexander started to diss a whole different entity, 'Fuck…in the movies they made archery look so easy,'

Then, to quickly make everyone forget this embarrassment, Alexander hurriedly reloaded, aimed by making sure he was looking at the center of the tree stump while making sure to keep his eyes parallel to the crossbow, and pressed the trigger.

Thuk!

Another miss!

Frustrated Alexander tried again,...miss.
By this point, Faziz had gone a bit pale as he feared Alexander might lash out at him for making a defective product.

But Alexander did no such thing.

Instead, he took the time to notice interesting phenomena.

He noticed that all the arrows had landed a bit right off his target.

And thus, accounting for that, he adjusted his aim a bit to the left, and *Thud*!

A hit.

And then he quickly followed up the success with another one.

"Perfect! Perfect shot master," Takfiz was more relieved than overjoyed as he did not have to think of ways to make excuses for Alexander, something that his master did not seem to particularly enjoy.

"Hemicus, you try." Alexander did not pay attention to the cheering fangirl and instead handed the weapon to his guard captain.

And then gave a short piece of advice, "The arrow seems to go a bit right to where you are aiming. So adjust according."

"Mmm," Hemicus gave a curt answer, and after the bolts were retried, by following Alexander's advice, he managed to hit all five on target.

"Lord was right. The arrows do veer to the right a bit," Hemicus confirmed Alexander's findings.

"I...I will fix it immediately," Faziz quickly jumped up to offer the promise, a bit flustered at having handed Alexander a slightly defective product.

But Alexander only gently said, "No need to need to get worked up. This is your first time making this and such minor flaws are to be expected."

This made Faziz draw a sigh of relief as he had been in the past still unsure about Alexander's true temperament.

Sure he had met Alexander before and the man seemed very polite and cordial, but Faziz had also met similar nobles even before, and some of them would show a completely different face when work got involved or when things were not to their liking.

"Bring me a hammer," Alexander out of the blue asked, and without asking questions Faziz swiftly presented him one, though a small part of him was afraid that Alexander might hit him with it.

But fortunately, he avoided that fate.

"A crossbow does not shoot straight when the two halves of the bow are not symmetrical, that is one end is a bit longer than the other." Alexander gave some know-how as he accepted the hammer from Faziz and then said, "And there is a simple way to rectify that problem."

At this point, Alexander showed them the hammer and said, "What you do is take a hammer and softly hit the bow on the side that the arrow is deviating to. So if it's going to the right you hit on the right side of the crossbow and if it's going to the left you hit on the left side of the bow."

And saying this he tapped on the right side of the bow several times and then handed it over to Hemicus, "Here, try now."

Hit! Hit! Hit! Hit! Hit!

Five perfect bullseyes.

"Pasha's knowledge is infinite and immeasurable," Faziz claimed in awe and reverence, a thought that was soon shared by many.

Alexander did not feel like responding to such claims and instead turned to ask, "So, how much does it cost to make?"

"Mmm, I don't know the exact value, but iron is five hundred ropals a kilogram and there's a bit about one and a half kilogram there. And compared to the iron, everything else is cheap. So.." Faziz did not need to spell out the rest.

"*Sigh*, around eight hundred ropals (800)" Alexander said the figure aloud himself.

The iron bow was around sixty centimeters in length, five centimeters in width, and five millimeters in thickness, so that weighed around one kilogram and then there was the stirrup that wright close to half a kilogram.

So it seemed that when Faziz said that the crossbow would cost three times the instant bow, he was grossly underestimating the price.

It was double that estimate at six times the price of the instant bow.

But there was light at the end of the tunnel for Alexander as he knew that once the blast furnace got itself up and running, the price would fall by several factors of ten, and he estimated for one kilogram of pig iron or wrought iron to go for ten to twenty (20) ropals, while proper steel iron, made using the Bessemer process might go for around fifty (50) ropals.

"You do not need to worry about the cost Faziz," Alexander reassured the man as he knew that prices were scheduled to nosedive shortly.

But to the carpenter, it only sounded like Alexander was consoling his worried worker.

'I must work harder,' The loyal man pumped himself up.

And if Alexander could hear the thoughts he would not know whether to laugh or cry, finding the man's misunderstanding and consequent zeal to work both hilarious and unnecessary.

It was at that point Alexander instructed his worker, "Faziz, since the iron is too expensive, just concentrate on making the crossbow body, that is the wooden stock. I will try to make cheaper steel somehow."

Alexander naturally did not share his blast furnace plans with someone not related to it.

"As you instruct master," Faziz had no objection.

"Mmm, and also make ten of the instant bow by November. I wish to show them to the military then." Alexander added another task that Faziz obediently received.

Making one bow every three days was in fact quite a generous time limit as Faziz knew that through practice he would be able to bring down the manufacturing time by at least a day.

But this slight happiness did not last long as Alexander dumped another task at Faziz, "Also, you are to hire and employ specialized people to make the arrows."

He reasoned, "Both the crossbow and the instant bow have specialized bolts that are not the same as regular arrows and as you also know how to make arrows, it will be your job to find, hire, and train men to produce these arrowheads."

Alexander then expressed his desired numbers, "I know that a fletcher can make ten arrows an hour and so by the new year, two months from now I want to be able to make ten thousand arrows a day, that is - one hundred men each making one hundred arrows a day. Any questions?"

'I should have stayed at Adhan,' Faziz only silently cried in his heart at the spartan demand.