Preparing for war

Runestone Castle

Countess Beatrice folded a sheet and placed it in a silver box. There were bloodstains on the sheet, and she shook her head.

"Those two went and slept together before the wedding!"

Still, as someone who had been through it herself, she understood. When the feeling came, could you resist?

That was hard to say.

As her mother, all she could do was put away her daughter's virginity cloth for her. Her daughter had her own ideas.

The future mistress of Gull Manor arrived today. The maids had received word beforehand and cleaned the place inside and out as thoroughly as they could.

For Yira, however, this was not particularly good news. With the mistress here, authority over the castle's domestic affairs should rightfully be handed over to her.

But having long grown accustomed to acting as head maid, she felt a trace of fear at the mistress's arrival!

Delia's convoy stopped outside Gull Manor. After Su Qin ordered someone to help Delia down, he took her to see the rooms.

They encountered Head Maid Yira on the way. Delia looked Yira over briefly but said nothing.

Delia noticed that Yira had a lovely voice and figure. After learning that she was the head maid, she glanced at Su Qin without saying anything.

Now that I'm here, he won't need to hold back his desires anymore.

What a strange look Delia had. Was she teasing me?

Su Qin felt that Yira seemed somewhat afraid of Delia. After a little thought, he understood.

He sent Yira to the kitchens to oversee the dinner preparations for now.

Delia first went to look at Su Qin's bedroom. It had been cleaned until it was spotless.

She did indeed develop a favorable impression of the head maid.

She also looked through the clothes in the wardrobe.

The inner and outer robes were all neatly arranged, and there were even several heavy cloaks ready for cold weather. Preparing warm clothing during the Long Summer-the head maid was thoughtful!

Seeing that Su Qin was being well looked after, Delia felt reassured.

Afterward, Delia took Maester Denwen and the Golden Tailor to contact her subordinates, preparing to choose a suitable spot within the manor as a temporary base.

The manor was quite safe, but a woman wearing a golden mask was always at Delia's side. Her martial prowess was [13], enough to take on several dozen adults single-handedly. Her preferred weapons were daggers and short blades, and supposedly, she was not even the strongest.

The two strongest Golden Tailors were in Casterly Rock and were hurrying back.

Golden Tailor was both the name of the intelligence organization and a core position within it! Within the Golden Tailor, the lowest rank was Scissors! Above Scissors were Silver Tailors, followed by Golden Tailors! Above them was the Chief Tailor! Finally came Delia, the Crone!

The hierarchy was strict!

After assigning fifteen loyal personal guards to Delia, Su Qin began dealing with expanding the smithies' production capacity!

He had checked the loyalty of everyone in the manor individually. It was very safe.

War was coming! First, weapons and armor had to be fully prepared!

Although this battle had little to do with him on the front lines, he still needed to prepare for both possibilities!

If war officially broke out after the new year, he did not have much time to prepare!

The three hundred soldiers were currently well trained! They had also been incorporated into his personal guard!

The personal guard had been renamed the Qilin Guard! Its full strength was five hundred, with three commanders: a guard commander, a right guard commander, and a left guard commander!

Naturally, Aila was the guard commander. The left and right guard commanders were both his former subordinates!

The current authorized strength was five hundred, accepting recruits with martial prowess above 3, but the ranks were not yet full!

It was not that there were no recruits. Rather, the current force was sufficient for routine peacekeeping and basic manor defense.

A full complement would actually be quite expensive. A basic soldier's wage was five silver a month, so five hundred men would cost 250 gold a month!

Did Su Qin currently have a steady income? No!

Only after he began collecting commercial taxes next March would Su Qin have a relatively substantial income. Most of the original owner's income had come from Seagull Port's commercial taxes!

After necessary expenses, Su Qin currently had only seven hundred gold in available funds, and on paper, he still owed his wife's family a thousand gold!

That put him three hundred gold dragons in the red overall. How could he dare fill the ranks!

Over the seven months from April to November, these three hundred men had trained under the twenty personal guards until their martial prowess reached 3. Each could take on three men, making them all elites!

The personal guards were at this level too, but the original personal guards could all ride horses. Every one of them was precious.

Some of the three hundred men had now been selected for separate riding training, and fifty had already been equipped with horses.

Horses were very difficult to obtain. They had all been provided by his wife's family. A horse cost at least ten gold, and even then, none were available to buy!

They were all warhorses! Much better than before!

What was surprising was that, after the two had enjoyed their union a few days earlier,

Delia's individual fidelity had reached the limit of 99. Not loyalty, but fidelity!

This meant she would not be like some other noblewomen who liked to cuckold their husbands.

On the evening of the day they returned,

Su Qin entered Smithy No. 1 with four personal guards. In fact, he had been considering dividing up the smithies' functions. There were currently five smithies, each fully staffed with twenty craftsmen.

Each group of twenty craftsmen included one blue-tier master craftsman, who led the artisans in their daily work.

The forty men in Smithies No. 1 and No. 2 were led by Gery, the crafting officer, and worked on research and weapons production.

No. 3 was the construction contracting team. They were leading the construction of the new manors for the three local nobles, Kiel, Augustus, and Aite.

The workers in No. 4 and No. 5 usually made farming tools or leather armor, assigning women to help thread the leather armor plates and perform similar tasks. Rhys, the former elderly head maid, coordinated the work. More than a hundred women now worked under her, and they were paid wages each month.

She had also found a second spring and married the owner of the largest local cloth shop.

As soon as Su Qin entered Smithy No. 1, he saw Gery directing servants to turn a large apparatus on the ground.

The apparatus was connected to a twenty-meter-high stone platform through several hundred-forged iron pulleys and gears, then to an iron cage through a set of parallel pulleys atop the platform. The cage was filled with stones.

Gery called for the men to keep turning, but unfortunately, the chain snapped, and the iron cage fell.

Gery turned, spotted Su Qin, and quickly walked over while the others cleared things away.

They were researching a manually powered lift like the one at Castle Black!

Su Qin looked at the somewhat dejected Gery. Gery smiled and said, "My lord, it seems our smithing skills aren't quite up to the task."

Su Qin shook his head. "Gery, put this aside for now. We don't have to fully master this apparatus for the arrow-tower fortress. It's not as though we can't use stairs!"

Using stairs would leave much less space inside. The most valuable part of this design was its lifting mechanism! Su Qin had come up with it from methods recorded in the books he had read over the past few months.

According to the system's appraisal, the four-hundred-square-meter arrow-tower fortress he had designed had already reached blue tier! Its interior rooms and facilities were fully equipped!

But for now, the lift mechanism was difficult to master!

Su Qin patted Gery's shoulder. "Put this aside for now, Gery. You have a new task!"

Gery set his dejection aside and asked, "My lord, what task?"

Su Qin took Gery to sit in the smithing area, in a shaded spot.

He looked at the young minister of crafting, who had already shed his boyishness. His younger sister was also studying at the Seagull Academy Su Qin had temporarily established!

Seagull Academy was intended for orphans! In a dozen or so years, those orphans would all be his loyal subordinates!

Shaking his head, Su Qin asked,

"Gery, how much do [Redwood Horn Bows] and [Hundred-Forged Arrowheads] cost to make? I need a batch of horn bows and a batch of fletched arrows."

Gery nodded.

After some more thought, he said, "My lord, how many horn bows do you need? The arrowheads won't be a problem. We can all forge them, and ordinary people can learn to plane arrow shafts with just a little instruction."

Su Qin drank a cup of cooled boiled water. He had already issued instructions to drink boiled water and wash hands frequently, and far fewer people were getting sick.

He said, "I need three hundred redwood horn bows, and nine thousand arrows by the end of the year!"

Hearing this, Gery thought it over for a while, then looked at Su Qin.

"My lord, the materials for a redwood horn bow don't cost much, about one silver, but making and properly testing one takes two weeks. Mainly, the load-bearing fittings at both ends are made of hundred-forged iron, and the parts of the bow glued with deer glue need time to set!"

"If we gather all one hundred craftsmen, we can produce two hundred horn bows a month. We should have about enough by the end of the year."

"As for hundred-forged iron arrowheads, that's delicate work. After shaping them with molds, they still need polishing. If a craftsman does nothing but make arrowheads, he can produce about fifty a day. With some apprentices and polishers assigned, and work at night, we can meet the target in a month and a half!"

Su Qin nodded. It was hard to choose! Should they make horn bows first, or fletched arrows?

Su Qin thought for a moment and said, "Then, with forty men, can you make fifty redwood longbows in half a month?"

"I'll also assign you a hundred polishers besides the apprentices. Can you make three thousand hundred-forged fletched arrows for me in one month?"

Gery looked at the craftsmen busy in the smithy. Their smithing skills were already quite practiced, so he answered,

"My lord, if we hurry a little, we can complete this task by the end of the year."

Su Qin nodded, thought for a moment, and asked, "How much will the materials cost?"

Gery drew a few marks on the ground and calculated briefly before saying, "My lord, we won't need many iron ingots. One hundred-forged iron arrowhead requires twenty grams of iron, so three thousand would take sixty kilograms. A one-jin iron ingot currently costs twenty copper. Including the cost of the bows, we'll need about fifty gold."

Su Qin nodded and handed Gery one hundred gold.

He left Gery to decide how to spend the extra!