Chapter 59 - Dawn of Iron

It’s a common misconception among people who play too many videogames that technological progression always goes copper-bronze-iron, and then some sort of made-up stuff like mithril. In reality, bronze is actually pretty tough to get a hold of. On Earth, early sources of tin came from only a few places in Europe and Asia, and when those trade routes broke down, some societies actually fell back out of the bronze age for a while. For many applications, bronze was similar or sometimes even favorable. But one thing it wasn’t, was a strictly necessary stepping stone into the iron age.

My tribe had its first iron bar. As I held the metal in place with wooden tongs, I watched the two igni cut and stack, and continue to hammer it into a proper billet. We worked until mid-day, adding more heat from a charcoal fire when necessary, at which point the hobbies woke up and another iron-gathering expedition set out into the bog.

As in any case of development, the first thing we needed to manufacture was tools to make more tools. In this case: a proper blacksmithing hammer. The over-sized wooden mallets the igni were swinging looked more like the hammers you’d use at a carnival game. Luckily, shaping and fixture of a hammer was pretty simple, as far as tools were concerned, and we had one by mid-morning and Promo took a lunch break while he waited for his new toy to temper in the kiln.

“Boss, I gotta say, it’s an honor what to receive our first iron tool,” said Promo, spinning the hammer around while another hunk of pig-iron iron heated in a boom furnace (with appropriate shielding for the impeller team, this time).

“It’s fine. I’m sure you’ll do the tribe proud with it,” I said, guzzling water from a skin. Helping the igni in close proximity to the fires, the fumes, and the red-hot metal was thirsty work, and my fur was matted with sweat. It almost didn’t bother me that it was straight bog-water in the skin. The goblin ability to filter out almost all toxins through our digestive tract made brackish water fine to drink. I’d swallowed plenty of river water on the rowing team. This wasn’t that much worse—or so I kept telling myself. I wiped my mouth of with the back of my arm. “You’ll have your work cut out for you when it’s time to hand-hammer an engine together.”

“Enn-jinn…” Proto said, slowly, sounding out the word. “Sounds fun. What’s it do?”

I thought for a moment, trying to describe it on fundamental terms for the primordial goblin. “It swallows fuel, makes heat in its belly, and creates internal pressure that translates to external force,” I finally said.

“I get like that sometimes, too,” said Proto, patting his rump.

I chuckled, shook my head, and pointed to the large jars of maybe-kerosene. “That stuff. An engine will let us use that to turn a wheel, spin a propeller, run a lathe, or charge a battery.”

“You can use fire for that, too, though, right?” asked Proto. “The balloons work off hot air, can’t you use hot air to move things?”

“Sort of,” I said. I set the water aside. “But not for the reason you’re thinking. A hot air balloon rises because the hot air inside is less dense than the cool air outside. But, expansion of gasses, or transition of liquids into gasses, is a huge source of kinetic energy and a fundamental concept of most major forms of power generation where I’m from. What you’re talking about is called steam power. And yes, we’re going to make use of it. But we don’t have large scale energy problems right now. Almost all of our problems stem from a lack of materials.”

“Like food,” said Proto.

“Like food.” I considered. “Did you just stop paying attention because I’d lost you and you got hungry?”

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Proto started to giggle. “Sorry boss, you lost me ‘round about expansion of gasses.”

The other igni started to giggle, too, and held his hands up to his mouth to make a farting noise. I rolled my eyes as the goblins nearby started to do it, too. And then of course it propagated through the base. Not all of the goblins realized the others were using their mouths, either. I set the rest of my water aside, disgusted.

When I’d said material constraints, I’d been thinking more along the lines of manufacturing materials. Not just iron, either. We needed to start thinking about cloth, paper, properly cut lumber, more metal, more fuel, and a dozen other things. But I’d also been watching the food stores tick down from a safe margin to a few dozen chooms as the tribe continued to grow. Even assigning more hunters and fishers had done limited good. We needed a larger source of calories if we were to continue growing. If I was to support a population in the hundreds or thousands, we needed kilochooms of food. And we needed working engines to secure it. That had to be the next priority.

It didn’t help that Neil’s hunters were competing against the javeline for small game in the forest. Whatever else they were, the half-pigs were very effective hunters. But they also weren’t in the forest exclusively to collect goblin trophies. If we buttoned up, they didn’t risk losing too many of their own. But they were an ever-present threat. And they were coming sooner than I’d like. We’d spotted the occasional scouts near the base of the bluff, watching and probing for weakness.

I pushed to my feet, ready to get back to work. “I will say this: you and your noblin pals are going to have a lot of work coming your way. Are you up to it?”

“Trust, boss!”

We managed to get one more hammer ready by the time the harvesters returned with several more baskets full of raw iron, and not long after that, we heard the baying of hounds that announced Chuck and his wranglers making their daily visit. They reached us a few minutes later and the wrangler swung down from his saddle with a grim expression.

I stood up. “What’s going on?” I asked.

Chuck went to his saddlebags. “Javeline look like they’re gearing up for a move on Canaveral,” he said. “Eileen spotted a warband of them east of the springs.”

I considered. “Canaveral is well-defended, but if they attack during the eclipse, the goblins might be spread too thin to hold it.” I looked to Armstrong. “Should we reinforce their numbers with an air drop?”

Armstrong considered. “Could be a porkbelly trap, king. We send boys to Canaveral, and then the main force hits Apollo.” he smashed a fist into his meaty palm. “That’s what I’d do if I was them. But they ain’t clever like me. Maybe it’s just what it looks like.”

I growled in frustration. Armstrong was probably right. There were aft of 80 or 90 javeline in the forest that we knew of, though they’d taken to hiding their numbers from our overhead scouts because the scouts had a habit of dropping poppers on the javeline camps. It was frustrating, because Canaveral had become an important source of food for the tribe thanks to the eclipse lizards having more meat than brains.

As much as I didn’t want to abandon Canaveral, even temporarily, I’d planned for this. There were gliders ready and waiting at Canaveral, enough to carry every goblin back to Apollo. But it would be a huge expenditure of sulfur to send them back. “Evacuation protocol,” I told Chuck. “Have everyone ready to pull back from Canaveral if the javeline attack during an eclipse. Let’s head to Apollo and shore it up for an attack.”

Promo stepped up, hefting his mallet. “Great, boss. Been missin’ the old homestead. Ready to smoke some more javeline ribs.”

“What about Huntsville?” asked Chuck.

The javeline hadn’t shown any interest in the bog before, and any time Neil’s hunters encountered them with overwhelming numbers, they simply withdrew—so I had to believe they acknowledged the threat Apollo goblins represented. Plus, Huntsville produced and consumed charcoal locally, and produced and consumed iron ore locally. The combination of the two was critical to smelting the iron, which was then hammered and purified into steel. All processes that benefit from close proximity to each other. It was simply too much of a logistical burden to transport the raw iron and the charcoal to fire it to Village Apollo. The main village already had heating fuel sources, and I didn’t want to strain that infrastructure, either.

Beyond that, we had our tentative trade relationship with Ringo, and we’d even spotted a tethered balloon manned by a boglin hovering above Daytona. Emissaries sent by the boglin king still staunchly refused to confirm that the king was a reincarnation case.

“We’ll leave the collection crews. Iron bar stock and oil will get sent to Village Apollo, like we always planned.” I looked around. “This camp is going to be instrumental in defeating the javeline and securing the future of Tribe Apollo.”

But until then, we might have to cinch up our belts and get cozy at Village Apollo.