Champion of the Ages: Book 2
Copyright© 2026 by SummitMan
Chapter 4
Frances stayed in Aldricspire for another two weeks.
She spent most of them meeting the Voices of the baronies, one after another, over dinners and in drawing rooms and on long walks through the palace gardens, trying to get a sense of where each of them stood on the coming war. In hindsight, she did not learn a great deal that she could not have guessed. The Ringholders were anxious and proud. The Heartlanders were polite and noncommittal. The Court Barons were watching the King to see which way he leaned before they leaned anywhere themselves. She might very well have left Aldricspire the day after her private audience and lost nothing by it.
But it was pleasant, after so long in the pockets, to simply be among people for a while.
And Marguerite loved every minute of it.
Her winnings allowed her to buy the finest clothes Aldricspire had to offer, and she did, with great seriousness and considerable skill. Not that she enjoyed the fine clothes herself, of course. Certainly not. She dressed in finery only because it was her duty to represent her lady properly at court, and she made a point of saying so, every time she came back to the Crown and Anchor with a new parcel under her arm.
Frances did not believe a word of it. She was delighted for her anyway.
Partway through the first week, Frances was summoned to private court once more.
This time, the King had asked to see the new weapons with his own eyes. So Sir Ranulf and his men carried her wooden chest up to the palace, and set it down beside the long table in the ornate council chamber, where the King and his Officers of State were waiting.
Frances opened the chest, and took them out one by one.
She began with the gambeson.
“Your Majesty, our spearmen and archers have always gone to war in gambesons that give almost no protection, against arrows or against swords,” she said. “This one was designed by Aldo Fletcher, the Sergeant of the Bows at Ironwatch, and Haldor Steelhand, my Head of Military Weapons. The outer layer is hemp, treated with oil against the rain. Beneath that is a layer of oiled leaf from the iron tree, which grows in the Thornwood. And beneath that, many layers of tightly woven linen, closely stitched.” She handed it across the table. “At three hundred feet, it stops almost every arrow. At closer range, it still stops most of them. And it will turn a sword cut, if an archer finds himself in a melee.”
The King lifted it, and his eyebrows went up. “It is a good deal heavier than ordinary clothing.”
“It is,” Frances agreed. “But it is a great deal lighter than mail. And it is far better than being dead.” She let that settle. “Our archers and spearmen are already training to run in these, for hours at a time, so that they can get into position wherever they are needed.”
She set the gambeson aside, and drew out Wulfstan’s bow.
“This is a prototype war bow, Your Majesty. A self bow, made from a single stave of wood. It can loft a war arrow four hundred feet.”
The King looked at it, and frowned. “It is an ugly thing. Our bowyers make far better bows than that.”
“They do,” Frances said. “But we will need more than fifty thousand bows in the next two years. This one was made by the bowyer at Ironwatch in six days. We can make fifty thousand of these. We cannot make fifty thousand composite bows, when each one takes months to cure.”
The King was still frowning. “But is it accurate?”
“I used this bow in a contest with Lord Aylward only a few days ago, Your Majesty,” Frances said mildly.
The King looked up sharply. “This bow?”
Frances nodded.
The King looked at the plain wooden stave for a long moment. Then he made a small, noncommittal sound, which Frances suspected was as close as a king came to admitting he had been wrong, and said nothing more.
Next, Frances unwrapped the bill head from its sacking, and laid it on the table.
“This is a new spearhead, Your Majesty,” she said. “It will transform our spearmen. With this, and with the new gambeson, they become true light infantry, and they can hold their own even against our knights.”
The King picked it up and turned it over in his hands, testing the weight of it, running his thumb along the inside curve of the hook. “Truly? How does it work?”
So Frances showed him. She explained how the hook could catch the rim of a shield and drag it down, or catch a man behind the leg and pull him off his feet. She explained what Prince Corin had found in the Training Pocket: that against knights armed only with swords, the billmen won, and won again, and won easily, until the knights took up spears of their own.
“And spearmen can maneuver far faster than knights in full mail,” she said. “That will change the shape of our battle line. All of it is being tested in the Training Pocket by Prince Corin, so that we can be certain our tactics are sound before anyone has to rely on them for real.” She paused. “Our men are dying, again and again, Your Majesty, so that when the day comes, they will have the right weapons and the right tactics in their hands.”
The King set the bill head down very carefully, and was silent for a moment.
Last of all, Frances took out the helmet.
“This kettle helmet will be worn by every spearman and archer in the field,” she said. “The dome turns arrows. The wide brim protects the head and shoulders from arrows falling from above, in a volley.” She turned it over, so that they could see the underside. “And it was designed at Ironwatch by Military Weapons to be mass manufactured.”
The King looked up at her with a question in his eyes.
“Mass manufacturing means this, Your Majesty,” Frances said. “This helmet is made of eight small pieces, each one forged separately, and then joined together into a whole.” She traced the seams with her finger. “Each piece is simple enough that an apprentice can make it. Each piece can be made in a different forge, even in a different town. No master smith is needed for any of it. And when the apprentices have made the same piece a few hundred times, they will make it as fast as any master, or faster.” She set the helmet down on the table. “That is how you make things in great numbers, Your Majesty. You take one complicated thing, and you break it into a set of small, simple pieces that beginners can learn to make well. And it can be done with almost anything. Weapons. Carts. Looms.”
She could see the idea taking hold around the table. The King was leaning forward, studying the seams of the helmet. But it was the Treasurer, Lord Tancred, whose small, shrewd eyes had gone very bright indeed. Frances suspected he had already begun to work out what it would do to the cost of things.
“And that brings me to the most important thing of all,” Frances went on. “Standardization. In this war, we will need to make weapons in every barony of the interior, and every one of those weapons must work with every other. Ironwatch will make standard templates for every weapon we use, a great many of them, so that an arrow made in one barony will fly true from a bow made in another.” She paused. “But for everything else, all the civilian making and trading of the realm, I would recommend, Your Majesty, that you establish a Valdorian Institute of Standards. Here, in Aldricspire.”
The King looked up, intrigued. “And what would it do?”
“It would set the measures for the whole realm,” Frances said. “The Aldrician System of Measurement. A standard pound. A standard foot. A standard gallon. You would have reference pieces made in bronze, the master pound, the master foot and the master gallon, and keep them in a pocket, at a constant warmth, so that they never change. Then you would make copies of them, each one stamped with the King’s mark, and send them to every barony. And smaller copies again, for the towns.” She held up her hands, as though measuring something between them. “Then you divide each measure down, as finely as your craftsmen can manage. Half a foot. A quarter of a foot. An eighth. A sixteenth. And upward too: two feet, four feet, eight feet. The same for weight, and for volume.”
She looked around the table.
“Once every measurement in the realm is given in Aldrician measure, a cart wheel made in Highcrag will fit an axle made in Stonegate. A gallon of ale brewed in one barony is the same gallon when it’s sold in another. You can set all trade in Aldrician measure, so that no one can cheat on weight or length. And any tax paid in goods can be measured the same way, everywhere.”
Even the Treasurer, Frances noticed, now looked genuinely intrigued.
“And best of all, Your Majesty,” she finished, “your Institute of Standards can pay for itself, by selling its stamped reference weights and lengths and measures. You will have to enforce them, of course, and catch the forgers. But the Institute need not cost the Crown anything. And all the efficiency it brings to the whole realm will increase trade, and increase your taxes along with it.” She tapped the helmet. “Combine it with mass manufacturing, and there is nothing that will be able to stand against it.”
King Aldric was, Frances had come to understand, a very intelligent man, and he saw the whole of her point at once. He sat back in his chair, and turned the words over slowly.
“The Valdorian Institute of Standards,” he said. “Hmm.” Then he looked at her, very pointedly. “The Aldrician System of Measurement?”
Frances gave him a small, sly smile.
“Well, what else should it be called, Your Majesty,” she said, “if it’s established in the reign of King Aldric the Fifth?”
The King laughed out loud. Around the table, the Officers of State glanced at one another in some surprise, as though it was not a sound they often heard in that room.
“You have a merchant’s tongue, Commander,” he said. And laughter went up around the table.
“So, Commander. Beyond this Institute of Standards, what else do you need of me?”
“An announcement, Your Majesty,” Frances said. “To every Guard and every barony. That templates for the new weapons will be coming from Ironwatch, and that the Crown supports the work. We will train every Guard in the new weapons at Ironwatch. And making those weapons for the Guards of the Ringwall castles is something I can manage myself.” She paused. “But scaling up the whole country, to make weapons for every levy in the realm, is a different matter. That needs finance, and logistics, and a whole civilian structure behind it. That is where I need you. To put the right nobles or barons at the head of the civilian parts of the chart, people who can make it happen.”
She leaned forward.