Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 7

“Nyooooooom!”

“We’re not ‘nyooming' yet.”

“Nyooooooom.”

“Liane!”

Florine raised a hand threateningly with a scowl. Liane fell silent. She pursed her lips, fiddling with a lever on the bridge of the barge as the shipyard staff checked the hull for leaks. Florine eyed the lever as Liane shifted it around.

“If that thing breaks,” Florine said, “you’re going to be the one that cries the most.”

“It’s not gonna break,” Liane replied. “If it could break from this much, it’d definitely break when the whole thing’s running.”

Liane recentred the lever before stepping back from the front of the bridge. The Death Knight helmsman took her place. Behind them, the Elder Lich Captain was looking down at one of several binders spread across its desk. At least one of them was a manual, another was the ship’s logbook, and one was probably the notebook that every Elder Lich carried around. The others…

“All rarin’ to go, huh,” she eyed the binders between them.

Somehow, the ship’s log was already a third full, but that was probably because so much testing was being done. The operations manual was open to the helm controls. The first of the unknown binders was opened to a map of the harbour area. Another appeared to be a manifest.

“Hey,” Liane pointed to the last, unknown binder, “what’s this one for?”

“Incident reports,” the Elder Lich replied.

“Why are you already two pages in?”

“Because there have been two pages’ worth of incidents.”

She flipped the binder towards herself, frowning at the lines recorded within.

“You don’t have to note every time someone clunks into the ship with something, y’know. Everything’s runecrafted.”

The Elder Lich wordlessly flipped the binder back. Liane sighed, walking over to watch the workers move about over the ship’s deck.

According to Ludmila, who had learned a thing or two about items from the Sorcerer King, every material had a certain ‘hardness’ that acted like the damage reduction provided by the belts Liane, Florine and Clara had. Any ‘attacks’ directed upon an item had to surpass that hardness to cause damage to it. The physical condition of any single component was known as ‘durability’.

There was a vague awareness of this as presented by their common sense. Whacking a wagon axle didn’t do anything to it until one applied sufficient force, which was contingent on what tool was being used, the quality of that tool and the material it was made from. Items made from glass were easier to break than wood and wood was easier to damage than steel and so on.

Items became stronger after enchantment and those magic items could inexplicably repair themselves even when suffering physical damage that broke components or made holes or tears in them. Master artisans could demonstrably produce superior goods compared to apprentices using the same materials.

The last part had something to do about the ‘Job Class’ thing that Ludmila and Clara had become more than a bit obsessed with over the past few months. Ludmila had learned about it first from the Sorcerer King and his servants, then shared the information with them once they became Lady Shalltear’s vassals. They were also sworn to secrecy about it as the knowledge was supposed to be invaluable, addressing many mysteries of the world and reshaping what they knew. Many things were mistaken as mundane or at least normal and they were slowly qualifying and quantifying all manner of Abilities, Skills and ‘bonuses’ in every field.

One application of their new and revised knowledge was in how each component of their barges was constructed. Generally speaking, construction projects had set budgets and a manager would figure out the most cost-effective way of getting things done. Their way, however, might be said to be the most expensive way. Liane imagined that more than a few would look at the costs and decide that it was a Noble’s stereotypical extravagance.

Instead of hiring a spread of artisans ranging from apprentices to grandmasters depending on the parts ordered, they hired the most experienced and talented artisans possible for every little piece. They of course had to make it worth the time of these artisans so their budget inflated at an alarming rate. The immediate upside was that Runecrafting didn’t have the material costs of conventional enchantment. In the end, they had extraordinarily cheap enchanted ships, relatively speaking.

Single, major accidents could not sink their barges. If something tore a hole in the hull, it would repair itself as soon as the offending obstacle was clear. Losses to ‘durability’ could be repaired in port by mages with advanced Mending spells that did not incur permanent durability loss.

The only true threat to their ships – that they knew of, at least – were enemies that employed sundering attacks. Sigurd using sundering attacks with his Frostreaver could dismantle the hulls with relative ease. Not that they expected Frost Giants to come after their ships everywhere they went, but they probably weren’t the only ones out there that could present a danger to their cargo fleet.

Once she had her fill of the bridge, Liane went down the flight of stairs leading to the space below. Two pairs of crimson eyes followed her as she descended into a dark room roughly the same size as the one above.

“Any problems down here?” Liane asked, “All comfy?”

The two Death Warriors shrugged. Liane walked into the space between them. She couldn’t imagine that a living being would find their job comfortable for long.

Their ‘seats’ faced forward, positioning them so they supported themselves by gripping a steel bar in front of them. At their feet were pedals, but unlike pedals one would see in a forge or workshop, these turned a set of gears that transferred power to the vessel’s drive shafts. Like the Soul-Eater powered drive shafts in her workshops, these turned something, and that something was a pair of fan-like contraptions in the cylinders rising beneath them.

Clara, inspired by her magic fan/cooling box combo, asked Liane whether the same principle could be applied to water. The end result of months of design and testing would now propel the barges. The fans in the cylinders would draw water from intakes at the bottom of the hull and expel it out of nozzles in the rear.

At first, their small, proof-of-concept vessels constructed in the autumn used tillers to steer the ship. After some fiddling around, they switched to nozzles that could direct the flow of water forced out of the cylinders, which allowed for superior handling. Some more fiddling around resulted in deflectors being added that could be dropped in front of the nozzles, allowing for reverse propulsion.

Grates were added to the intakes to prevent debris from entering the cylinders, and an access port was added to each one just in case the fans got gunked up. The test results from the north showed no sign of problems, but they hadn’t operated the ships at full load. The best they could do was pile them full of boulders and tree trunks or have Frost Giants sit in the hold.

“Liane,” Florine came halfway down the stairs, “they’re ready to start moving.”

She came up to join Clara and Florine on the bridge. Out on the deck, workers were standing along the edges of the hold, looking down at the water. Liane looked towards the stern, but the wall of the bridge was blocking the view.

“How do they know where they’re going?” She asked.

“The Elder Lich’s Imp familiar is outside,” Florine answered. “It can fly to any part of the ship to check the surroundings.”

“Mmh…I’m gonna go look outside, but let’s get started first.”

Behind them, the Elder Lich Captain’s dry voice rolled out, issuing orders to the Death Knight helmsman.

“Set both nozzles to reverse,” it said. “Gear one, one-quarter speed.”

The Death Knight manipulated the levers that lowered the deflectors and then adjusted a set of dials with twins displayed belowdecks. Each Death Warrior would shift gears and pedal according to what was shown. The murmur of the workers on the deck and spectators around the dock was the only sound that could be heard as the barge glided silently into the harbour.

“I kinda expected something more impressive-sounding,” Liane frowned.

“Why would it sound like anything?” Clara said, “When it’s going faster there will be the sound of the waves that it makes, but there’s not much to make sound within the ship itself.”

“Hm…oh – these things don’t have bells, do they?”

“You’re right,” Clara replied. “When things get busier, we’ll need some sort of warning system. These barges might be tough enough to crash through the E-Rantel wall, but colliding with one another is a different story.”

They walked out of the bridge, circling around it to look out over the stern of the vessel. Swirls of water flowed out from below as the barge continued making its way out from its berth, but Liane’s eye was drawn to something else.

“Say…aren’t we really, uh, high? Like maybe ten centimetres of this thing is in the water. When we start nyooming we might go flying off somewhere.”

“It’s not as if we’ll capsize manoeuvring around in the harbour,” Clara replied. “Once we take on cargo we’ll displace more water.”

Once the ship was fully out of the dock, it started pivoting in the water to align itself with the harbourfront. The barge then made its way to a cargo berth where sets of five-metre containers awaited loading. A gantry crane moved to pick up one of the containers once they stopped.

The harbour’s gantry cranes were scaled-up versions of the gantry cranes used to load trees and other heavy loads onto freight wagons. Each was made entirely from steel and operated by teams of Death Warriors. The cables cost ten times more than the frame itself: Runes did not work with them, so they had to be conventionally enchanted. Still, they would never rust, had the added resilience from the enchantment and could be repaired via magic.

When the crane’s lifting frame settled on top of the container, an Imp flew up to lock the pins on the frame to the corners of its load. The pins on the bottom of the container were unlocked from its bed and the crane slowly lifted the container from the ground.

“Your staff must have practised a lot,” Florine said.

“All day and all night since the containers started arriving from Liane’s place,” Clara replied. “Each step in loading and unloading is broken down into simple steps, so the Undead can perform them without issues. What goes inside is a bit more complex, however.”

“What do you mean?” Liane asked.

“When normal wagons are loaded,” Clara answered, “people just try to figure out how to fit as much as possible into the available space and the centre of mass is such that it won’t tip over unless the load is outsized. With these containers, we fit in as much as possible, but we need to make sure that things are balanced within acceptable ranges so stress to the container and whatever it’s sitting on doesn’t cause damage.”

Each container could weigh up to twenty thousand kilograms when fully loaded, so what Clara mentioned made sense. The logic that went into each container’s cargo was more akin to warehouse rules than wagon ones. The heavy, tough stuff was spread out across the bottom; big things were never stacked on top of little things.

As the container was lowered onto its mount and locked into place, Liane eyed the waterline of the barge.

“We barely went down any,” she said.

“We won’t sink too much according to the data from the load tests,” Clara said. “That brings me to something I wanted to talk about…the hold of this barge can house a dozen containers, but it can easily accommodate a dozen more.”

Liane eyed the containers stacked up nearby. They locked onto each other the same way that they locked onto their mounts and the lifting frame, so there was little risk of them falling apart.

“That won’t be dangerous? Liane asked, “If the draught is too deep, we’ll scrape along the bottom of the river. If the deck is too low, waves can go over it.”

“According to the test data,” Clara answered, “two dozen containers will still leave the deck over two metres above the waterline. The ship’s draught should be just over a metre at the same time. At Corelyn Harbour, the Katze River is four metres deep in the late summer. Even at Warden’s Vale, it’s over two metres deep. We had Undead scour the river bottom for protruding hazards and Lord Mare deepened any potentially problematic stretches.”

It was admittedly attractive. Each container took a single powerful Undead servitor to transport with a wagon. The barges’ holds had space for a dozen containers and each ship was operated by four powerful Undead. The Soul Eaters could only transport half-sized containers on the roads outside of the Sorcerous Kingdom, so one could say that the barges were six times as efficient as a wagon drawn by a Soul Eater for international freight so long as there was a navigable waterway and suitable port facilities.

If they doubled the number of containers each barge transported, it became that much more efficient and profitable. The advantages of ships over horse-drawn wagons had always been known to them and it appeared that many of those advantages still applied to the Undead.

“The river is calm enough to do that,” Florine said, “but I think we should be careful when transporting things through larger bodies of water. According to the Frost Giants, waves can be much higher and they become destructive when close to shore.”

“That’s fair,” Clara nodded, “We’ll probably need to keep things simple starting out anyway. It’s more a consideration for when we’re done with the Draconic Kingdom.”

“I wish I had even a tenth of your confidence,” Florine sighed. “I’m still scared to even open my eyes when we arrive there.”

“It’ll be ugly for sure,” Liane said, “but the only way we can fail is if Queen Oriculus refuses our help. Unless she’s dead-set on having her nation cease to exist, I don’t think that’ll happen.”

The final container was locked into its place in the berth. Liane glanced over the side again: the waterline was just above the half-metre mark etched on the side of the barge. A clatter filled the air as the harbour staff rolled a metal shutter over the hold. Once it was locked shut, Liane walked back towards the bridge.

“It’s nyoomin’ time!”

And then, they nyoomed. Well, not really. The barge was released from its moorings and slowly went on its way. Liane silently willed the Death Knight to nyoom harder, but it didn’t work.

“Clara, can your workers swim?”

Liane turned her gaze to the deck at Florine’s question. About two dozen workers from the drydock and the harbour were wandering about, checking the ship’s components and watching the scenery slowly go by.

“All of them can at least swim to the harbour’s edge just in case they fall off for some reason,” Clara said. “I haven’t tossed them into the river to see if they can beat the current. Come to think of it…can you two swim?”

“No.”

“Nope.”

“Hmm…you should learn before we leave for the Draconic Kingdom. It’s not hard. With our enchanted equipment, we could probably swim quite quickly.”

“Wait a minute,” Liane peered at Clara, “what about those scriptures of yours? I thought your tenets say that you shouldn’t do what you shouldn’t be doing.”

Clara tilted her head, tapping her chin in thought.

“You’re right,” she said with a sad sigh, “I suppose you’ll just have to drown.”

“That’s probably a joke,” Liane frowned.

“Probably,” Clara smiled slightly. “I don’t know what comes to mind when you think of us, but our religion is practically seamless with everyday life. If it’s something you have to do, then you have to do it. My life doesn’t grind to a halt if my maids aren’t around.”

“I dunno,” Liane said. “Ludmila always says you’re spoiled and lazy at home. We saw some of that while we stayed together in the Empire, too.”

Followers of The Six had some strange religious customs…no, to be more accurate, followers of The Six in Re-Estize, the majority of whom were now subjects of the Sorcerous Kingdom, had some strange religious customs. They had tenets that prescribed what was proper for everyday life, which covered everything from vocational activities to household chores.

On one hand, they were encouraged to pursue vocational excellence – to be the best whatever they were that they could be. To a point, this could be seen as what most people did: a Blacksmith treated their craft seriously because their livelihoods depended on their work. If they got better at it, they could negotiate more lucrative contracts.

At least this was how it worked in Liane’s head. Rationally speaking, everyone should desire improvement. In practice, however, people got lazy or decided what they were doing was good enough. This usually happened when an artisan was recognised as master by their respective guilds, Adventurers in the old system hit Gold Rank or Merchants secured comfortable profit margins and reliable business. Some vocations were dependent on factors that a person had no control over, such as the weather, availability of mineral veins or things to fight, so they just took life as it came and tried to get by.

Followers of the Six, however, were never satisfied. They all constantly strove to better themselves in their respective vocations and even went out of their way to do so. If a grandmaster Blacksmith was making iron nails, he’d try to make the most gods-damned perfect iron nails in the history of ever. Clara and Ludmila were no exception to this: inheriting their titles and making sure things were running well wasn’t enough – they had to deserve the fact that they were Nobles, more than anyone else.

This, of course, made every other Noble in the Sorcerous Kingdom scream because they set the bar so high that it was next to impossible to match them. While they could console themselves when it came to Clara and her superlative excellence, Ludmila was another story because they were supposed to be better than her at certain things. Liane suspected that the Prime Minister would show up at the House of Lords one day with a chart. That chart would show how Warden’s Vale achieved a 250000% increase in productivity over the past year and why couldn’t everyone else do at least double that?

On the opposite end of things, followers of The Six were instructed to do everything else in moderation. If possible, they were to avoid performing tasks that those in their vocation weren’t supposed to be doing. A place for everything and everything in its place.

According to her Merchant companies that traded in the Theocracy, the people there weren’t very extreme about these practices. They did do it to a degree, but nothing that approached what went on in Corelyn County. Liane could only surmise that the limited power of the Temples in Re-Estize caused them to focus their attention on the people, whereas the Temples in the Theocracy were busy running the country.

Practically speaking, the Temples in the Sorcerous Kingdom relied on their congregation for tithes and alms, so they were incentivised to encourage their tenets so they would have more productive people. The Temples in the Theocracy, on the other hand, probably received a huge portion of the nation’s budget. Since their tenets would result in greater tax revenues, they broadly promoted their doctrines but the focus wasn’t so minute.

The barge tilted slightly as it made a smooth turn before heading west up the other side of the harbour. Liane eyed the helmsman.

“Can I try driving the boat?” She asked.

“No,” Florine said.

“Hey,” Liane protested, “I own a quarter of this boat!”

“And I own another quarter,” Florine replied.

Liane turned to Clara.

“No,” Clara said.

“What?!”

“There you have it,” Florine said, “Two to your one.”

“Three,” Clara corrected her, “I’m casting a vote for Ludmila’s share too.”

“This is tyranny!” Liane wailed, “Oppression by the masses! I hope we never use this system for anything big. It’s arbitrary and irrational!”

She left the bridge, walking out onto the sunlit deck. The barge was already halfway to the other side of the harbour, which meant that it was going at about ten kilometres an hour. Liane smiled to herself. It was already three times faster than a horse-drawn wagon. Assuming that it could successfully pass all of its tests on the river, it would be mere hundredths of a copper to the kilogram for transport between Corelyn Harbour and the Draconic Kingdom, which was roughly six hundred kilometres away.

“Don’t go too close to the side,” Florine warned her from behind. “This ship is insanely heavy. If you fall off and it hits you, you might be seeing what resurrection feels like firsthand.”

“Mmh…we should add railings or something,” Liane said. “We kept the deck nearly bare because we weren’t sure how much weight it would take to sink it, but it’s barely in the water after filling up. Could add some other things too.”

“Like what?”

“Stuff that makes money. No matter how you look at it, nothing’s as heavy as these containers. How about a ferry service? We can add a second level to this bridge and create accommodations.”

The sound of shoes tapping over the steel deck approached as Clara joined them.

“That sounds nice for the route between here and Warden’s Vale,” she said, “but living things that try to ride a ship through the Katze Plains are just going to get murdered by Wraiths and other things that can pass through the hull.”

“Can’t the Temples do something about that? Sanctify the ship or something.”

“The crew is Undead,” Florine frowned.

“Then how do we get our Merchants from here to there?”

Past the bow of the barge, the western harbour locks came close. The Elder Lich’s Imp Familiar flew out over the narrow space as the vessel slowly eased itself in.

“I was hoping that we could lease some buildings at a suitable harbour,” Clara said. “That way we’ll have a branch office for our people to operate out of. They don’t need to go back and forth through the Katze Plains: the Undead can ship cargo to them and they’ll work from there.”

“That assumes they have any buildings left,” Liane muttered. “I can’t wait ‘till Venomscale delivers those maps that we asked for.”

Waruren Venomscale was a Wyvern Rider chief who had volunteered to conduct an aerial survey of the Draconic Kingdom with his tribe’s best hunters. In return, he would receive a hefty sum of 500 platinum trade coins. They encouraged him to buy samples of goods from the Sorcerous Kingdom with his earnings and bring them back to his people. Hopefully, that would generate more interest in trade.

Though tribal governments were often disparaged as primitive and their people savage, the Wyvern Riders had a fairly complex society. They produced several goods that were not easily procured anywhere else, but convincing them to trade those goods involved convincing them that there was something worth trading for.

They were an insular society that generally disposed of intruders. Not that they minded intruders – they were basically free food for their Wyverns. Fortunately for Liane and Florine, beauty and charisma could open doors that spears and arrows could not. Still, their isolationist state meant that they had little interest in simply accumulating trade coins.

The lock finished draining and the front gate opened. They slipped out into the river beyond, turning into the current to head west around the base of Castle Corelyn. Liane thought that their ride had been suspiciously smooth so far, but she often had that feeling when it came to new technology. The precision that came with her new machining workshops resulted in goods that functioned with an unheard-of degree of reliability. She and her artisans were used to having at least a noticeable flaw or two in everything, so it just felt strange.

“Do you really believe that it will be that bad?” Florine asked, “You’d think they’d at least send emissaries to ask for help if it was. The Holy Kingdom did just that this winter. They were invaded by Demihumans too and they’re at least as far away from us as we are from the Draconic Kingdom.”

“We sort of have an Undead-infested wasteland between us,” Liane answered. “Besides, the Sorcerous Kingdom popped up after they were invaded by Beastmen. They had no time to set up a diplomatic mission here, nor are they probably willing to risk sending diplomats to a country ruled by an Undead sovereign. His Majesty is a great guy, but they don’t know that.”

“But why didn’t we do anything? The Sorcerous Kingdom, I mean. That invasion started over fifteen months ago and we’ve been trying to create a good image for the country.”

Why indeed…

‘Normal’ reasons wouldn’t work. If a new country popped up, it would be focusing on stabilising its reign and ensuring things were going well at home. But that didn’t stop them from setting up diplomatic missions in the surrounding countries. Yet, the Sorcerous Kingdom didn’t do that – they didn’t even have a diplomatic mission in the Empire, which was their client state.

Distance was also no excuse. Lady Shalltear could be anywhere instantly as long as she had an idea of the destination. Martial strength was similarly not an issue. Dispatching a squad of Death-series servitors would probably turn things around in short order.

This left them with two possibilities. The first was that the Royal Court simply didn’t know or care. Out of sight, out of mind. There had been no Merchants from the Draconic Kingdom since shortly after the invasion began and there was no news of refugees fleeing across the sea to the Slane Theocracy.

The second possibility was that the Royal Court had ignored the Draconic Kingdom’s plight on purpose. To Liane, this was the most likely explanation. Clara had been working on her river transportation network for roughly a year. It had transformed into a monumental rescue effort at the beginning of winter and the Royal Court simply went along with it. Perhaps they had foreseen the development or perhaps it was a test. Perhaps it was both.

“They probably wanted an extra good image,” Liane said.

Clara and Florine sighed. They were all well-versed in statecraft, diplomacy, economics and trade, so they likely knew that it was an optimal course of action. But that didn’t mean that they had to like it. In this matter, however, their hands were tied and they could only make the best out of what was allowed to them. The Draconic Kingdom wouldn’t complain…at least not to their faces. This was especially the case if the alternative was obliteration by the invading Beastmen.

The barge completed its long turn around Castle Corelyn to its southern side, entering the wide expanse of the Katze River. Ahead of them, an Elder Lich floated with a red flag held up in one hand. The vessel slowed to a stop in front of it, holding its position using the stream of water deflected from the nozzles in the rear. Liane went back into the bridge, standing at the window beside the helmsman.

Roughly a hundred metres behind the Elder Lich in front of them was another Elder Lich. More of them appeared at hundred-metre intervals in a straight line out from them.

“How fast do you think we’ll nyoom?” Liane asked.

“Where did you even pick that word up?” Florine gave her a look.

“Uh, some kids watching the wagons on the test track,” Liane said. “Nyoom is nyoom.”

The Elder Lich in the front changed his red flag for a green one.

“Full speed ahead,” the Captain said.

Beside Liane, the Death Knight reached out to set the gear indicator to ‘1’ and the power dial to its highest position. Rather than lurch forward, the ship slowly accelerated as it had the other times it started moving. The gear indicator was shifted to ‘2’ after several seconds, then ‘3’ a dozen seconds after that. Out to the sides, visible waves started to ripple out from the bow of the ship.

“Maybe I should have added more gears,” Liane said.

“I don’t think it would have mattered too much,” Clara replied. “The test results from the Frost Giants indicate that how fast a ship can move through the water is dependent on the length of its hull.”

“What if Lady Shalltear is pushing it from behind?”

“Well, it might go faster if we do that, but, with our propulsion, there’s something that makes it harder and harder to accelerate when you approach a certain speed relative to the length of the ship.”

A shadow crossed over them as they passed under the bridge over the river. No one watched from overhead. It seemed that the only witnesses to this bit of history were themselves, the workers on the ship and the Undead.

Once it seemed like they weren’t getting any faster, Liane counted out the seconds between one Elder Lich to the next.

“Hmm…about eighteen seconds between Elder Liches,” she said. “Twenty kilometres per hour.”

“The month-and-a-half long journey to the Draconic Kingdom by wagon reduced to a day-and-a-half by river,” Florine crossed her arms. “This has to be cheating.”

“And only our Undead-operated ships can make the trip,” Liane grinned. “It’s super cheating. This is gonna be ridiculous.”

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