Coltan nodded after a while and looked at the carpenter. “Sure, I can do it. The iron parts are not that difficult to forge, to be fair. With sketches this good, I can provide you everything you need.” Then he stared at Alden. “I’m not sure how effective a crossbow will be without seeing it work, but it looks like a smaller type of bow—perhaps useful for killing the smallest of the monsters, like the wolf-type beasts which attacked last week. But if you don’t mind me asking, where did you even get these sketches, milord? Did you buy them from Garitus?”

  Alden smiled. “No, I drew the sketches. All of them.” Seeing the surprised looks of the others, he added, “You both may not know it, but there is a huge selection of books of all types in the duke’s castle in Garitus, where we stayed every winter. I used to study them a lot, and I saw a design of an arbalest there, which is how I got the idea of making this.”

  He continued, “And you are right—this does work like a bow with a smaller range, but with just as much piercing power. The best part is, unlike using a bow, which takes years to learn, it will just take a few hours for anyone to become an expert in using this. So if we can make enough crossbows, we can arm a lot of villagers with these and leave the guards free to take on the bigger monsters."

  “That… that sounds a little hard to believe, milord,” the carpenter said, “with all due respect. People learning to shoot as well as a trained archer in a few hours…?"

  “Don’t worry, you’ll believe it when it's ready,” Alden said. “You both just have to focus on making these parts first, before Garrik assembles it. I want just one crossbow made first, as a prototype, so we can work out if there are any problems in it. Once we are sure that it works properly, I will put an order for a few dozen of these.” He paused. “What price will work for you both?"

  “A few dozen…?” Coltan asked. He scratched his hairless head. “That is a lot. I’m not even sure how much coin to ask to make it.” He looked at the carpenter. “You've made bows before. You say something."

  Garrik ruffled his cropped red hair for a moment. “Uh… I don’t really know either. It is smaller than a bow and will need lesser materials, which would make it cheaper, but it is also more intricate and difficult to make, which will make it time-consuming and costlier."

  Alden exhaled. “Fine. Let’s do it this way. You both just tally up the cost of the raw materials, including iron ingots and good-quality wood, then add the wage of anyone who works on it, including you and whichever apprentice is chosen to help out. I know you both pay your apprentices a wage, but not to yourselves, so just give me a sensible approximation. I do ask you to take only a reasonable profit, otherwise I’ll have to talk with the other craftsmen."

  “Don’t worry, milord,” Coltan said with a grin. “Garrik and I will talk it out, and we will give you a good price for making a single crossbow.”

  “Good,” Alden said, already dreading the numbers. With the current amount of savings in the strong box, they should be able to pay the taxes for this year easily, but there was nearly nothing extra saved to pay for something like this. And it was only the start of what he wanted to make. “How long will it take you to craft the first crossbow?"

  “I think I can provide all the iron parts in a day,” Coltan said. “Two days max. I will do everything myself for the first one to make sure it matches those designs accurately. Then I can use my apprentices for this. It will also help me find out how much time it takes, so I can provide a correct price for it.”

  Garrik thought for a moment. “I can use a good apprentice I have to help me out, so I can be ready with all the wooden parts in two days too. Then assembling everything properly should take half a day, at least for the first time. So I think we can provide you with the first crossbow in three days, if there are no problems.”

  Alden sighed. Three days for a single crossbow was way too slow. They didn’t have that much time before the winter. “Fine. That is much slower than I thought, but I’m sure it will be much faster in the future once you both get a better idea of what to do. Then I expect the first crossbow ready in three days, as well as your price for making more of them. I will soon have the design ready for another bigger weapon I want to build. If your work is good, I will select you both again for that. You can leave now."

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  “We won’t disappoint you,” Garrik said as he stood up.

  Coltan nodded as well, the chair he was sitting on creaking as he pushed it back. “Same here, milord."

  Alden smiled. “I'll count on it.”

  Then with quick nods of respect, both the craftsmen left the room.

  The captain pointed at the other guard. “See them out of the manor.”

  Once the door had closed behind them, Alden looked at the captain and the majordomo. “I will keep working on the design of the scorpion so I can be done with it soon. It seems that they will be able to make the crossbow, and if it goes well enough, I am confident that we can also make scorpions here. But the problem is how to pay for it. Vusato, you said we had 700 gold saved for paying taxes. Do we have any more gold? We will need something immediately to pay the craftsmen.”

  Vusato sighed. “I wish we had, milord. I’ve told you that each of our sailboats makes two trips every month, so that one of them leaves every week and the other arrives the next week. That means we receive around 190 gold each time a boat comes here after selling the ore. The next boat is due in two to three days, so we should receive that amount then. But we'll need to use that gold to pay the wages for the iron miners for the next week. We also receive the taxes from the merchants once a month, so we will only get it at the end of this month.”

  Alden shook his head. “That’s a very small amount compared to what we get from selling ore. I wish father hadn’t continued to hire miners even though we couldn’t sell the ore. We might have saved some gold then…” Suddenly something clicked in his mind. “Wait, you said that father continued to hire every single miner we have, but we couldn’t sell all that ore. So where is it? Shouldn’t we have a lot of it stored by now?”

  Vusato snorted. “A lot is an understatement. We have small hills of iron ore stacked near the mines. We only bring enough of it to the village which we need to sell that week, otherwise there would be no place to keep that much ore here."

  “Small hills of iron ore…?” Alden muttered. That was a lot of iron. Or at least its ore. If they could somehow smelt it into pure iron, it would be invaluable for them, but there was no feasible way for it right now in the village.

  He asked, “Why don’t we smelt the ore here and sell the ingots directly to Garitus? Wouldn’t it have made us more profit?"

  Vusato nodded. “For sure, but there are many problems with that. Converting ore into ingots is a very complicated process, and nobody in Sarnok knows the right process to do that. Your father, as well as your grandfather, tried to get a few smiths who knew about the smelting process to move here, but Garitus never allowed that. They have forbidden anyone having the knowledge of smelting from leaving the city, which is why they basically have a monopoly on smelting iron and making ingots. So they just buy ore from us and that new mining village in the south, and convert it into ingots themselves."

  Alden exhaled. “Of course they do. How about selling our ore elsewhere? Do we have any other options?"

  Vusato shook his head. “We are located in a very remote region of the kingdom, and the only way to move something as heavy as ore is the Lokir River. That’s why we always sell to Garitus only, which is the biggest city in the northern part of the kingdom and is also located next to this river. The capital is bigger, but it's not located near any river, and that new iron mine is very close to them anyway, so that is not an option for us either. Other than that, this kingdom has two more major cities on the Lokir river, but both of them are smaller than Garitus, and with lower demand, since the monsters are less common in the south. Of course, being located in the south, they can buy iron ore much more cheaply from that other mining village."

  Alden nodded slowly. “What about selling through the east? Laridan village is located at the coast, right? If we could somehow take our ore there, couldn’t we ship that ore further to other kingdoms?"

  Vusato sighed. “That’s not a practical option either. The other human kingdom, the dominion of the lizardmen, the elven queendom, and the orcish duchy, all are located to the west of this kingdom. On the other hand, Laridan is located at the very east of the continent, which means shipping ore from here will take months to reach those other countries. It will also be costlier, because the monsters living in the sea often take down the ships moving cargo there, which raises the costs a lot."