pulling on his fresh shirt, 'you can look round now and it won't be high treason.'
Vaatzes nodded. 'Seems to me,' he said, 'you want to make it look like the mines have been sabotaged beyond economic repair, enough to fool the Mezentine engineers, but really you've only damaged them a little.'
'Exactly.' Valens sat down on the bed and dragged off his muddy, ruined shoes. 'Not much to ask, but presumably you're going to tell me it's not possible.'
'Oh, it's possible,' Vaatzes replied. 'Everything's possible in engineering; it's just that some things take more time and money than they're worth.'
Valens shrugged. 'Go on,' he said.
'Well.' Vaatzes hovered for a moment, then rested his back awkwardly against one of the bed pillars. Not someone, Valens decided, who thinks well standing up. 'Everybody knows how you collapse a mine. You stuff the weight-bearing gallery full of brushwood and charcoal, soak it down with gallons of lamp oil, set light to it and run like hell. You might need to set up a few big double-action bellows at the outlets of the ventilation shafts, but in most cases the fire'll draw enough air on its own to do the job. Anyhow, you light your big fire, which burns out the prop shafts, and down comes the roof. Entirely effective, but if you want to open the mine up again, it'd be easier to dig new shafts than try and clear out the old ones.'
Valens nodded. 'Everybody knows that, do they? That's encouraging. Sorry, carry on.'
Vaatzes shifted his back a little. 'My idea,' he went on, 'is to build a reinforced chamber, sort of like a cage, about a hundred yards down the main gallery. Instead of wooden props, you use iron, and you have a big, thick iron fire door to close it off. You burn out the first hundred yards in the usual way, but because the reinforced chamber's got iron props, they won't burn out, and the fire door'll stop the fire spreading past the chamber and damaging the gallery beyond. So long as the enemy don't know about it, they'll assume you caved in the gallery and the mine's useless. Once they've gone home, you'll have to excavate the first hundred yards, but the rest of the mine ought to be intact.' He paused, then went on, 'It's fairly simple and straightforward, but it'd have to be done right. The ironwork needs to be pretty massive, and it'll have to be prefabricated above ground, carried down the mine and assembled down there in the dark, so you'd need precise measurements and close, fine work.' He hesitated, though Valens was fairly sure it was mostly for effect. 'To be honest,' he went on, 'I'm not entirely sure you've got enough skilled workers available to do the job.'
Valens smiled at him. 'Except, of course,' he said, 'I've got you.'
'Me.' Vaatzes smiled. 'I'm flattered, but I don't think I'd be quite enough, somehow. I've done a few rough calculations, and I reckon you'd need a dozen good blacksmiths, plus strikers and men to work the bellows, so that's three dozen; then you'll need carpenters, masons, carters…'
'Fine.' Valens shrugged. 'I'll have them recruited. We do have skilled artisans in this country, you know.'
'Actually,' Vaatzes frowned, 'you don't. Not what I'd call skilled, anyhow. No disrespect intended, it's simply a fact. You've got men who can make horseshoes and door hinges, but that's not the same thing.'
Valens looked up at him. 'Is that right?' he said.
'I'm afraid so. I've been wandering around the city over the last few weeks,' Vaatzes went on, 'poking my nose in, that sort of thing. I've visited pretty well every smithy in town, but I haven't seen anybody I'd give a job to. It's perfectly simple,' he added. 'The Vadani are a nation of shepherds who suddenly came into money about a century ago, when the silver mines were opened. Since then, you haven't needed home-grown craftsmen; you've got the money, so it's easier to buy stuff from abroad than make it here. You go into any barn or workshop and look around, you'll find most of the tools that aren't a hundred years old were made in Mezentia. Mass-produced good- quality hardware, everything from nails to scythes and plowshares. The Republic trades with your merchants, finished goods for silver; the merchants sell the stuff to the pedlars, who go round the villages and farms and take payment for what they sell in wool, cheese, flour, whatever. It's actually a pretty advanced way of running an economy-you concentrate on doing what you do best, and leave manufacturing to specialists. The problem comes when you're cut off from your supplier-or when you suddenly need home-grown craftsmen, as you do now. Has it occurred to you that every time one of your archers shoots an arrow, you can't replace the arrowhead? All imported, from the people you're currently at war with. Same goes for armor; I've been taking a professional interest, so to speak, and all your guards' kit was made in the Republic. Best-quality munitions-grade equipment, but there's no more where that came from. I'm sorry,' he added, 'I'd have thought you'd have been aware of that.'
Valens was quiet for a moment. 'Apparently not,' he said. 'You know,' he went on, 'it's a bit hard. I've never had many illusions about myself, but I've always kidded myself that I'm not a complete idiot. Oh well. I guess it's better to find out now rather than later.' He sighed, and stood up. 'I don't suppose there's anything I can do about it, is there?'
Vaatzes smiled. 'As a matter of fact,' he said, 'there is.'
'Really?' Valens turned and looked at him. 'Oh, sit down, for crying out loud, instead of hopping about on one foot like a jackdaw. Go on then. Tell me.'
Vaatzes looked round, found a chair and sat on it. 'The Eremians,' he said. 'Because they've never had the advantages your people have had, they're used to making the things they need. Not to Mezentine standards, obviously, but their craftsmen know the basics, and they can be taught. I found that out when I was working for Duke Orsea. Now, thanks to the war, there's a fair number of Eremian refugees who've been forced out of their villages by the Mezentines. As I understand it, you've been cautious-understandably-about letting them cross the border. Fair enough; you've got enough problems as it is without several thousand extra hungry mouths to feed. But as I understand it, every Eremian village had its own smith, carpenter and so on. You don't need that many; a couple of hundred, that's all. They'll do your skilled work for you, and they'll train up your own artisans while they're at it. It's not going to happen overnight, particularly since we're evacuating, so everything'll have to be done in tents or off the backs of carts. Fortunately, making arrowheads isn't all that difficult, your people can learn it quickly enough.'
Valens nodded. 'All right,' he said. 'What about armor? Can you teach them to make that?'
Vaatzes shook his head. 'That takes time,' he said. 'Also, there's more to it. You don't just need armorers, you've got to have furnaces to smelt iron ore; mills, preferably, for rolling pig iron into sheet, but that's rather a big leap forward; in the meanwhile, you need a lot of strong men with big hammers. In the short term, I'd recommend killing as many Mezentines as you can and robbing their corpses.'
'Funny you should mention that.' Valens shook his head. 'All right,' he went on. 'Point taken. Congratulations on your appointment as controller of ordnance. Make a list of everything you need and I'll see you get it as a priority.' He paused. 'That's why you came to see me, I take it.'
'Yes.'
'Then I'm obliged to you,' Valens said briskly. 'My father always used to say, it doesn't matter if you're ignorant so long as you can find people to know stuff for you. Stupidity is staying ignorant when you don't have to. He said a lot of sensible things, my father; it's a shame he never acted on them.' He looked up and grinned. 'Why are you still here? Suddenly you're the busiest man in the duchy, you'd better get a move on.'
'The mine project,' Vaatzes said gently. 'My idea about using reinforced sections. Do you want me to make a start on that?'
'Yes, if you can. Can you?'
'I expect so,' Vaatzes said. 'I'll need to get accurate measurements of the shafts of the mines you want blocked off. Who should I see about that?'
'They'll come and see you,' Valens replied. 'You're too busy to go traipsing about visiting people. Oh,' he added, 'while I think about it. Presumably if you're going to be doing all this important work, you'll want paying for it.'
Vaatzes raised his eyebrows. 'That'd be nice,' he said mildly. 'I hadn't given it any thought, to be honest with you.'
Valens frowned. 'You know what,' he said, 'I believe you haven't. That's curious. Is it a burning desire to help the beleaguered Vadani people, or are you just bored with sitting around all day with nothing to do?'
'Something like that,' Vaatzes said. 'But I'm happy to leave all that up to you.'
'Really?' Valens said. 'Well, the way things are at the moment, money wouldn't be a lot of use to you; there won't be an awful lot you can buy with it, and when we're all living out of wagons and wheelbarrows, carting it around with you is likely to be a nuisance. You'll just have to trust me to make it up to you if and when life gets back to normal.'
