章 21: COMPLETION

After the first inspection by the king and senior officials, we received many officials and nobles who wished to witness this new miracle road that they had heard so much praise about. This had led to sudden increase in the workers and artisans being questioned by the nobles and officials regarding the secret of the coal-tar.

Due to our previous arrangement anyone aside from me, the king and the masons were not privy to the knowledge regarding the production process of coal-tar leading the various officials, nobles and traders to a dead end.

The traders did not only include the one's from the kingdom but other wandering merchants who travelled from market to market to sell their wares. These merchants were the ones with the greediest eyes regarding this new product.

Some richer traders even managed to meet my father once they witnessed the construction through their own eyes. They all tried to present lucrative deals to him for a chance to be able to sell the product, its technology or its production process. Once my father rejected straight forwardly, they then tried bribing the left and right ministers for an underhand deal by promising riches. Sadly, for them, even the ministers were not privy to the knowledge despite being second in power only to the king.

Even if they had the knowledge, they would not disclose it to people who were not of our own kingdom and extremely loyal to them. They too understood the importance of this project. Once this is successfully implemented all over the kingdom the travelling time will effectively reduce by at least three times. Trade will increase exponentially throughout the kingdom due to easy access to the entire kingdom. Security will be easier to implement once a fix route is established.

There were only benefits in utilizing this secret for the kingdom and only harm in recklessly distributing this knowledge to others.

I had thought that I will be able to keep this a secret for at least another year or two considering that the people in this year do not recklessly travel between kingdoms. The presence of traders threw my plans of secrecy out of the window.

Once my father got the wind of this news, he sent another few masons to mingle with the existing ones in order to throw the people off who would try and investigate them. Out of the six masons who knew the process of manufacturing tar, five were replaced by new masons. The five masons were escorted secretly to the palace.

Once the weekend arrived, I made my way to the palace under the pretence that I was going to spend time with my father. Once I settled down and we had our lunch, my father took me to the place where the masons were staying.

The plan for these masons was to now use the knowledge they had acquired during the entire process and undertake their own independent projects all over the kingdom.

Our kingdom comprised of one capital, twelve large villages and twenty small villages. If we were to join everything under one road ways system, we had to begin construction on multiple fronts simultaneously.

After my father had consulted with his advisors, they finally acquired the most accurate map of the kingdom for me to finalize the route through which we will create the roadway.

The kingdom was shaped somewhat like an egg and the capital was situated in the middle, with the villages situated in a concentric circle with the capital as the centre.

After I had a close look at the map, I formulated for the kingdom wide project to be divided into five directions. There will be four long highways in each direction which will connect all the major villages and the fifth project will work on connecting all the minor villages to the major highways and everything will finally accumulate in the capital.

The direction in which the ongoing project was going will be personally headed by me until we reach the first major village. After that the project will be undertaken by Aakash till he completes the entire highway in that direction.

Among the five masons here, three will head the projects for the remaining three directions and the last two will head the projects to connect the smaller villages to the main highways.

The resources I had received for my project were the minimum the kingdom could provide, considering that my concept was purely theoretical. After seeing the results, the left and right ministers were ready to invest the power of the kingdom to fulfil this project on a larger scale.

My father informed us that the court has decided to provide ample funds, security, workers and artisans for the project.

Each mason will be given two worker camps and double the number of artisans and animals provided for the first project.

The king had already passed on the notice to every village regarding the ongoing project and to not cause disturbance for the same.

The next day I rode back to the site with the five masons staying back in the capital until the preparations are finished for them to begin their project.

The project carried on in the same way for the next six months with the occasional visit from the king, the left and right minister and the various nobles and traders. The deterrence by the king however was useful in preventing any further roadblock in the project.

Today was the day when the main road was completed. After the hard work of eight and a half months the main road was completed.

The unnecessary interference by the traders and nobles had delayed the project by a month. According to my original timeline I should have completed the concrete pathway that connected the entrances of the village and the capital to the highway. But now we had just finished the construction of the highway.

For the past month I had begun the production of cement in a secret factory completely under the protection of the king and unknown even to most loyal ministers.

Unlike coal-tar which can only be used to construct roadways, cement was bound to be a strategic resource that would determine the prosperity of the kingdom on the grassroot level. Cement will help in construction of all most all buildings in the near future and we could not afford for it be in the hands of others.