that's likely to be difficult.'
Carnufex smiled. 'Not likely. By a strange coincidence, my wife's kid brother's the superintendent of the steel depot at Colla Silvestris. At least,' he added innocently, 'he is now; used to be a clerk in the procurement office, but he got a surprise promotion about two hours after I got this commission. A buffoon, but he does as he's told. With any luck, your steel should be there waiting for you when we arrive.'
Ziani was impressed. When he'd talked to the previous superintendent, he'd been told there wasn't that much steel in the whole duchy. 'That's handy,' he said.
'I always knew young Phormio'd come in useful for something eventually,' Carnufex replied. 'I could never begin to imagine what it might be, but I had the feeling. Oh, while I think of it,' he added, 'you were asking about skilled carpenters. I've found you some.'
'That's wonderful,' Ziani said. 'How did you manage that?'
The smile again. 'I had a dozen seconded from the Office of Works, thanks to the new chief clerk there. My brother-in-law, actually.'
Ziani nodded. 'Your wife has a large family.'
'Bloody enormous.'
An hour later, Ziani could see gray patches standing out against the sandy brown of the mountain; also he could hear faint tapping noises, like an army of thrushes knocking snail-shells against stones. The closer to the mountain they came, the louder the noise grew, and before long he could see them, hundreds of tiny moving dots swarming up and down the side of the slope. 'How many men work here?' he asked.
'Between eight and nine hundred, usually,' Carnufex replied. 'Just over two hundred underground, the rest breaking up, cleaning and smelting ore, maintenance, supply, that sort of thing. In fact, we're short-handed, we could do with half as many again. It's a pity nobody pointed out to Valens' father that if you want to double output, it might be a good idea to take on a few extra hands. But there,' he added, with a mildly stoical shrug, 'we have a curious idea in this country that anything can be achieved provided you shout loud enough at the man in charge.'
'I see,' Ziani said. 'Does it work?'
'Oddly enough, yes.'
The tapping was getting steadily louder. It seemed to be coming from every direction (the sound, Ziani rationalized, was echoing off the mountainside) and he wondered if it was like that all the time. 'What are those big timber frames?' he asked, pointing.
'They're the drop-hammers,' Carnufex replied. 'You see where the streams come down off the mountain? They're banked up into races, and they turn those big waterwheels you can just see there, behind those sheds. The wheel trips a cam which lifts and drops a bloody great beam with an iron shoe on the end, which smashes the ore up into bits; then it gets carried down onto the flat-you can see the big heaps of the stuff there, look-and it gets broken up even finer by a lot of men with big hammers. Then it's got to be washed, of course, so it's carted back up the hillside and shoveled into the strakes-look, do you see the lines of conduits coming down the slope? They're open-topped, made of planks, and they carry the millstreams downhill to turn the wheels and eventually join up with the river. You can see they're dammed up at various stages; the dams are called strakes, and as the ore's washed down by the stream, each one filters out different grades of rubbish, so that when it reaches the bottom it's mostly clean enough to go in the furnace. That's the trouble with this seam; there's plenty of it, but it's full of all kinds of shit that's got to be cleaned out. Biggest part of the operation, in fact, preparing the ore.' He grinned. 'I expect this all looks a bit primitive to you, after what you're used to.'
Ziani shrugged. 'We don't do anything like this where I come from,' he said. 'The materials I used to use came in rounds or square bars or flat sections, we didn't mess about breaking up rocks. This could be the state of the art for all I know.'
Carnufex looked mildly disappointed. 'Ah well,' he said. 'I was hoping you could give us a pointer or two about improving the way we go about things before you show us how to pull it all down.'
Closer still, and the tapping was starting to get on Ziani's nerves. He was accustomed to noise, of course; but this was different from the thumps and clangs of the ordnance factory, where the trip-hammers pecked incessantly and the strikers hammered hot iron into swages. It was sharper, more brittle, a constant shrill chipping, and he doubted whether it was something he could get used to and stop hearing after a while. The men swinging hammers stopped work to stare at the newcomers; the leather sleeves and leggings they wore to protect them from flying splinters of rock were caked with dust, their hair was gray with it and their eyes peered out from matt white masks, so that they looked like actors playing demons in a miracle play. Eventually someone yelled something and they went back to work, bashing on the chunks of rock as if they hated them. No, Ziani thought, this isn't like the factory at all. There's no grace here, no patient striving with tolerances in the quiet war against error. This is a violent place.
'The actual workings are over there a bit,' Carnufex was saying, as calm and matter-of-fact as if he was showing someone round his garden. 'I don't suppose you'll need to bother with anything above ground. I mean, no point sabotaging it; anybody who wanted to could replace the whole lot from scratch in a month or so.'
Ziani nodded. He didn't want to open his mouth here if he could help it.
'You can see where the shaft runs underground by the line of wheels,' Carnufex went on. He was pointing at a row of wooden towers, each one directly under a branch of the millrace, which gushed in a carefully directed jet to turn the blades of a tall overshot waterwheel. Each wheel's spindle turned a toothed pulley which drew a chain up out of what looked like a well. Piles of ore were heaped up beside each well-head; men were loading it into wheelbarrows and carrying it away to be smashed. As well as the clacking of the wheel and the ticking of the chain, he could hear a wheezing noise, like an overweight giant climbing stairs. 'Bellows,' Carnufex explained, 'inside the tower, they're powered by cams run off the wheel-shaft. They suck the bad air out of the galleries and blow clean air back in.'
Bellows, Ziani thought; they'll come in handy. He nodded, careful not to exhibit undue interest or enthusiasm. 'Where's the actual entrance?' he asked.
'This way. We might as well dismount and walk from here,' Carnufex added. 'It can be a bit tricksy underfoot, what with all this rubble and stuff.'
The entrance was just a hole in the hillside, five feet or so high and wide, with heavy oak trunks for pillars and lintel. There were steps down, and a lantern on either side, flickering in the draft that Ziani guessed came from the constant pumping of the bellows. Their light showed him two plank-lined walls vanishing into a dark hole. He let Carnufex lead the way.
For what seemed like a very long time, the shaft ran straight and gently downhill. Carnufex had taken down one of the lanterns, but all Ziani could see by it was his own feet and the back of Carnufex's head, his white hair positively glowing in the pale yellow light. To his surprise it was cool and airy, delightfully quiet after the hammering outside. Even the smell-wet timber and something sweet he couldn't identify-was mildly pleasant. But his neck and back ached from walking in a low crouch; he felt like a spring under tension.
'This is the main gallery.' Carnufex's voice boomed as it echoed back at him. 'Spurs run off it to the faces, where the ore's dug out. We're always having to open up new ones, of course.'
'What's holding the roof up?' Ziani asked, trying not to sound more than mildly curious.
'Props,' Carnufex answered crisply. 'Thousands and thousands of them; it's a real problem getting enough straight, uniform-thickness timber. Without them, of course, this whole lot'd be round your ears in a flash.'
'Right.' Ziani knew that already. 'So if it's the props that keep it from collapsing, how do you dig the tunnels to start off with; before you have a chance to put the props in, I mean?'
'Slowly,' Carnufex replied, 'and very, very carefully. Ah,' he added, stopping short, so that Ziani nearly trod on his heels. 'We've reached the first spur. Do you want to go and have a look?'
'No thanks,' Ziani replied quickly. 'I think I've seen enough to be going on with, thanks.'
'Really?' Carnufex sounded disappointed, like a musician who hasn't been asked for an encore. 'Suit yourself. Do you want to go back now?'
Yes, Ziani thought, very much. 'Not yet,' he said. 'I need to take measurements first.'
With Carnufex holding the end of the tape for him, he measured the height and width of the shaft at ten-inch intervals, starting at the point where the spur joined the gallery and going back about a dozen feet toward the entrance. As Carnufex called them out, he jotted down each set of figures with a nail on a wax tablet, unable to see what he was writing in the vague light from the lantern. 'All done,' he said, when they'd taken the last
