Fred had returned home to Poilutonne, a lot had happened since Fred left, George had taken them to the fort this side of the river, where the pontoon bridge was connected. There he could see the fortified port on the other side. It was shaping up to be a very nice-looking port.

They had also added a port this side and had plans to form a ferry between the two.

Fred could see a few ships docked on the other side, taking up all the available docking space. They seemed to be unloading crates. “Those crates are the rest of the concrete for the mountain fort. Once that’s done, we will be moving the pontoon upstream to work on the last river fort.”

___

The next day, Fred visited the Foundry, the Foreman was eager to show him the tubes. “Well, what do you think?”

“They are amazing,” here were six of them all finished and on their mounted carriages, as well, Fred could see a 7th in the process of being made. “I just need an enchanter, and a few weeks then I can show you a demonstration”

“I look forward to it kid”

As they were speaking an employee ran over to the foreman and whispered something with confusion all over his face.

“Ah, speak of the devil, Fred, George the enchanter has just arrived.” The employee didn’t realise Fred had George call him over before they arrived, and not the foreman.

“Hello, Sir George, young master Frederick.” The enchanter greeted formally.

“Good morning, Markus, thanks for coming, the young master has a request for you.”

“I would be happy to oblige.”

Fred showed him the long metal tubes that the enchanter would be working on, “Bronze, very rare I get to work on this metal,”

“Yes, it works well for this project and is not as in demand as iron.”

“Yes, yes, quite right, so what would you have me do?”

Fred brought him round the workbench next to them and the foreman handed him the blueprints.

As you can see in this side-on, cross-section, the tube is hollow up until the 3rd rim and then it is blocked off at the 4th. I need an activation rune at the top of the tube on the outside, and then it needs to create a spark in the back end of the inside.”

“I see,”

“Also, I need to be able to activate the rune through a 2-meter pole, so that I am not near it when it activates.”

“O right, that can be achieved, you can use the spark spell, allowing it to travel down the pole and straight onto the trigger rune,” the enchanter mulled over it. “That should be quite easy to do. I can knock these 6 out by this evening.”

“Thank you, Markus, also, we have 6 more in production and if all goes well, we will continue to make more.”

“Yes, I should be able to help, however, if you are going to continue needing this same one over and over again, it would be ideal to train an apprentice, this work would be ideal for practice. I would be able to help train someone up for you.”

This would be ideal, it would be a waste to have an enchanter so experienced waste his time on something so mundane, and they would be able to keep the apprentice to work on this project as an enchantment printer.

Once they left Fred asked George to organise 31 soldiers for him to go on a camping trip into the nearby forest tomorrow. “What are we doing there?”

“We, no you’re staying here, I’m going to create a new unit with them, and we are taking the tubes, and powder I acquired.”

Over the spring and summer term, Fred had sent a letter asking them to procure the ingredients for the fire powder, Johan had organised two people to mix the powders and put them in kegs for when Fred returned.

George was not sure about this proposal “You want to go without a bodyguard?”

“No, I want to go with 39 soldiers, they can double as bodyguards.”

“And how long are you planning to camp out there?”

“Two weeks.” Fred thought about it some more, “also, the locals might hear strange noises from the forest, but make sure they don’t enter, for their safety as well as secrecy.

“Is it dangerous?” Georges didn’t like the sound of this.

“Not from where I’ll be standing.”

George reluctantly agreed.

___

“No, absolutely not.” Isabella on the other hand was totally against it.

“Come on mom, I’ll show you something amazing once I’m done.”

“But, but, but… what if you fall over and scrape your knee.”

Both Fred’s and George’s faces went blank from this response. “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

“It will be fine Isabella, that forest is relatively safe, there are no predators bigger than a fox in there.”

“O, o, aright. Go, you were gone all of the first halves of the year and as soon as you come back, you’re going off again.”

“It was your idea to send me to school.”

Isabella shot him a glare, which he just looked away and whistled.

___

“Right then, are you already lads” Fred addressed the troops gathered.

It was a bit surreal for them, on short notice they were told they were going camping with the young lord, and that he would be in charge for the 2 weeks, they were there to help him with a pet project, they looked over to the shiny bronze tubes, but for some instinctual feeling, they felt a slight fear and respect for it.

They had sharpened their skills in the battles with the elves over the spring, homing in their instincts and tuition, the elven skirmishers were adept at ambushes and hit and run tactics.

The tubes were on 4 wheeled carriages for ease of transport but could disconnect the two wheels for deployment, each tube was pulled by 4 horses and then the 2 supply carts were carried by another two. And they were off, each set of 4 horses were ridden by I guy and then there were two guys manning the supply carriages, while the rest of the troops marched on foot, Fred was on one of the 4 sets of horses.

___

“You sure that was a good idea to send a kid to command 40 troops for a pet project at a time like this?” lord Philip, the commander of the mainland forces that had been sent over.

“He said it would be worth every penny to guys like us,” George answered.

“That’s a bold statement, especially from a kid.”

“I just hope it works out ok, but the kid does have a good track record.”

“So I’ve seen. His foundry has already become the talk of the logistics officers. He managed to decrease this forces costs by 10% and it only stopped here due to lack of iron, if we can get this and the Iberian mines, we should be laughing.”

___

They walked through a road in the forest until they found a wide clearing, where they set up camp for the two weeks. In the next morning Fred introduced the soldiers to what was going on. He had the tubes dismounted and in a line 15 meters away from the camp pointing towards the forest at the other end.

“These Bronze tubes are called cannons, 3 weeks from now, we will be demonstrating what they can do to the higher ranks in the army, the foremen who built them and the lady of the house.”

The soldiers perked up at this.

“You will become a new regiment called the artillery regiment; Lieutenant Henske please step forward. You will be temporarily promoted to gunnery captain for this exercise, should you perform well, this will become permanent.”

This had made Lieutenant Henske emotional, Fred maybe a kid, but he will soon be the count of these lands and therefore had the power to give promotions. Although he didn’t quite get the gunnery part.

Fred then pointed at one more, who had the highest rank hereafter the new captain, “You will be gunnery lieutenants,”

“And you will be gunnery signaller. Over the summer, I will be giving you a bunch of different coloured flags, I hope to create a flag signalling system to send short messages across the battlefields, and that would be your role.

Next, the rest of you. You will be placed into 4 teams of 7 and a team of 8, the first team will be responsible for managing the horses and supply wagons comprising of the 8 people, you will be comprised of a Sargent and 7 cavaliers, it will be your job to ride the horses for transport and repositioning, you will also be responsible for delivering messages when deployed should the signaller not have a line of sight to command, or the message is too complex.

You will all be equipped with a sabre and will also be responsible for warding off enemy skirmishers who get too close. It is not your job to hunt them down and should only do so if they continue to pose a risk to the rest of the regiment.

You will notice that there are two extra men, well you should have seen before we left that there were two more cannons.

Any questions so far?”

One person raised their hand “Yeah, what do these cannons do?”

“Patients I will demonstrate once we organise the regiment.”

No one else seemed to have any questions at the moment, it was probably best to wait for demonstrations.

“Next the 4 units of 7 will be identical in makeup, each manning a cannon, you have the right gunner, “He pointed to one of the persons, “your job is to prime the cannon, this means to put one of these packages in the cannon, this package is a parchment wrapped around a pound of fire powder. Go on then,” the one he pointed to, went and followed his instructions and came back.

“The right gunner will then throw in a cannonball,” he pointed at another person and then one of the lead balls. That person also followed orders and came back.

“Then the rammer will use this pole with a flat end to push the ball and powder to the back of the cannon,” another person went to carry this out.

“Now the ones with the best dexterity will be in charge of aiming, which one of you fits that description.”

“I do sir,” one of them stepped forward, no one else argued.

“Right come to the back of the cannon with me, you see these two notches, one at the front and one at the back. If you look from the back and line them up and carry your sight forward what’s in front will be what you are aiming at, so line it up with one of those trees.”

The soldier adjusted a bit, “Done,”

“Excellent, now back in line,” this time Fred picked up the 2-meter metal pole, “This is a firing stick,” Fred then stuck two cotton pieces in his ear, much to the amusement of the soldiers, “you touch the enchantment with one end of the pole,” he held the pole at arm’s length and touched the enchantment, he couldn’t get further away without breaking the connection, and was standing off to the side of the cannon, “and send a mana spark though the pole.”

*Bang* As soon as he did, there was a deafening boom in the air. The troops were suddenly paralysed in fear, their hearing was gone, replaced with a continuous *zing* sound. They watched a tree in the distance, thicker than a man’s hug, fall in silence. Some of them had peed their pants.

Fred’s cotton stuffed ears didn’t look so amusing now. They couldn’t tell for a while if their hearing came back until one spoke, all of the noises in the forest, whether, it be birds or crickets, gone.

“So, any questions?” Fred asked as if what just happened was normal. Although Fred had to admit, this powder was a lot more potent than black powder back in the old world.

The soldiers just continued to stare at him in a stupor.

“Right so the last thing for the cannon is the sponge to clean it out,” he waited a bit, “Anyone. Are you there.” One of them finally woke up and took the sponge on a stick and moved over to the front of the smoking cannon, ever so carefully.

“Don’t worry, it won’t bite,” as soon as the soldier got close to the entrance, “Bang!”

The soldier jumped and dropped to his knees hugging his head on the floor. Only realising a few seconds after, it was Fred who shouted it. When he looked over, he saw Fred trying to hide a grin and chuckle while the rest of the soldiers looked at him with pity.

The soldier cleaned out the tube of the cannon with the sponge and returned to his mates.

“Right, and finally the sergeant of the squad makes the 7th member.” Fred finished off, “Right we will call it here for the day, go and have some downtime, we will begin practice tomorrow.”

They all let out a breath hearing that.

During the meal in the afternoon, Fred went over to the guy he pranked to have a chat, the rest of the camp was quiet all day since, so, they could hear the conversation, “Sorry about that, man”

“Erm… it’s ok” the soldier hesitated.

“Look, there was a more practical reason for me doing it as well. The reason for your task is to first, clean out any dirt and ash, but to put out any embers, if this step wasn’t done properly that prank would become real, whether it went off when the primer was putting in the next cartridge or when the plunger pushes it to the back.

This is a dangerous role to work with these cannons, but as long as we follow protocol and the safety guides, hopefully, we can prevent accidents.” The troops had lost a bit of trust in Fred after that prank but after this chat, they realised the profundity of the prank.

Over the two weeks, the regiment went over drills time and time again, as well, Fred would explain the concepts of expanding gasses in the forces that are in play, sometimes in demonstrations, like when he got two soldiers to play tug of war only to whisper to one of them to let go on a specific word. Demonstrating what happens at the build-up of pressure when one force gives in.

“Right then lads, are you ready to return to civilisation,”

“Yeah” this got a cheer from all of them. They packed up their campsite, hooked the cannons to the limbers and connected them to the horses, all in all, they had spent 1/3rd of the ammunition.

___

George was getting a headache; he had received constant reports from locals about hearing dangerous monsters or thunder in bright daylight coming from the forest. Unfortunately, he was busy with military affairs and couldn’t go over to hear what the commotion was about, but all he could do was reassure the locals that everything was under control and would only last two weeks.

Even Lord Philip had heard the news, to think that the kid could cause such a ruckus with a new ‘toy’.

___

Finally, after two weeks, the soldiers returned with the equipment and the noise stopped.

“So, are you ready to show us what caused all that ruckus over the last two weeks?”

“Sure.” Said Fred, “Let us move down to the testing field,”

“Testing Field?”

“Yeah, gather everyone who we invited to watch,”

“What about Lord Philip, he has been curious about all this commotion you’ve caused?”

“Sure,”

So, Fred led his family and servants as well as most of the soldiers currently stationed in the town, including the higher ranks who had been called back from the front lines to watch the demonstration, as well as the foreman, the carriage designer and enchanter.

Fred took them about 1.5 miles away from the wall that was built in the spring.

There was a big object covered in a giant cloth, as well as 6 smaller objects in a row all under a cloth. “Ladies and gentlemen, you have all gathered here today, because I have caused a lot of noise, and you all want answers.” This got a chuckle from the crowd.