บท 113: The cannon (3
[This is strange. I have never seen something like this or ever thought that something with a weird shape like this thing would ever be built closer to me. But his Majesty has been making many strange stuff in our guild. Some stuffs looked even more useless but they turned out to be incredible stuffs. I don't know what this one could do. Or is it a component of that turbine thing?]
The knight pushed the cannon slowly by slowly until it reached to an opening. He made sure to point the muzzle of the cannon at an erected target 200 metres away from where he was. The blacksmiths were standing behind the knight so the muzzle was not pointing at them.
This cannon was expected to be operated by 5 knights at the war. These knights need to be quick to enable a succession of attacks towards the enemy. But on this day, it was only a single knight who was going to operate it since Virtya only wanted to view the cannon spitting out a single shot. They were only here to test this weapon and see if Guarin had done what was needed.
Guarin who stood beside Nataschenka was smiling but one could see his chest moving up and down because he was nervous. This was his first work after coming from college so, how do you expect him to be calm.
After all, it took Guarin through making errors and trying again until he came up with a successful cannon. It was not that easy to manufacture these cannons as unlike the farm tools, this weapon needed to be flawless to ensure efficiency and longevity.
The gun powder and the cannonball to enable the trial had already been brought thus, Virtya stopped discussing with his fellows and shifted to the cannon that was being operated on.
Quickly, the knight poured the gun powder into the bore followed by placing a layer of wadding inside the bore of the cannon. Firstly, the bore was needed to be cleaned with a wet cloth to remove the smoldering materials but the knight didn't have to do this step because no previous shot had been made. This was going to be the first shot.
As for the next step, the knight needed to be calm and collected. He took the cannonball into his hand and placed it into the bore. The windage of the bore was just wide enough to enable the cannonball to slide in and after that, it came the last step.
"Close your ears!" Virtya ordered the people around.
There were some of the blacksmiths who were late to muffle their ears and they regretted later.
The knight lit the ignition at the vent and it took a few seconds without nothing happening and even Virtya thought that it was a failure until he heard the sound.
Boom!
It was deafening and daunting in that it spooked the people nearby who thought that it was the reverberating rumble of tunder when there was no signs of the rains falling during this time of the day.
The cannonball was spitted out of the bore at a high speed followed by smoke rising into the air. The trees swayed around as if they were afraid of what was to come while some of the people went down on their knees while others sprawled on the ground. There were only a few people who remained standing like Virtya, Guarin, Tanya and Nataschenka because they had expected this outcome. Alexandre had also anticipated the same because Virtya has already told them how the cannon worked but he didn't expect that it would be this powerful which made him to quickly squat when he heard the sound. It was just a reflex action in the face of danger since he didn't expect it would go this way.
The blocks that were packed a two hundred metres away were blasted into pieces and this didn't even halt the advancing cannon ball as it struck several trees ahead until its momentum diminished but behind it, it had left destruction only.
[This!]
"Are you thinking what I am thinking? I think our kingdom is threatened. I thought this was a useless piece of metal but what we have just seen is otherworldly. Compared to a ballista and the catapult, this piece of metal is like a heavenly treasure while our ballista is a useless piece of trash. We pale in comparison to them. And you know what? What is really paining me is that this thing was made just beside us but we ignore it. How could I forget that something that they hid how it is manufactured has to be something good. We have to get our hands on one of that thing or if that is not possible, then we have to at least get some blueprints about them ." An undercover blacksmith from Litkesh said in a low voice to his fellow colleague.
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