Herald of Steel

"My lord, the strength of the sword being produced here is something I truly never thought was possible. It's magical," Faziz had a hypnotic, longing tone to his voice, looking at the sword production workshop like a lover would look at one's partner.

Alexander on the other hand was thinking something completely different.

First, he was thinking these swords, good as they were would unlikely be the wonder weapon that would win him wars.

Sure they would help, perhaps they would even be decisive in particular battles by managing to penetrate the shield or armor of the enemy commander, but overall they were still cold melee weapons used by men.

And then he lampooned over the fact that he was still having to produce chainmail.

Alexander was happy with his revolutionary armor no doubt, he also knew that this product was really not the most optimal option.

He had originally wanted to equip his soldiers with plate armor, at least their top half for the bare minimum, not only because that was simply better, but because they were also easier to manufacture, as instead of going through all the complicated procedures of drawing the wire and riveting it, the metal sheets could simply be beaten into shape.

But when Alexander went on to implement this plan, he soon ran into a huge problem.

And that was that there were not enough blacksmiths to go around who would make these curved, shaped plates.

And even those that were there did not know how to forge iron into such complicated shapes, shapes that would completely cover the body but would not obstruct movement in any way, instead flowing smoothly over the body.

This was a hard ask for these novice blacksmiths who had never worked with such steel before. And then to pile on the misery, Alexander's desire to start an experimental R&D department was also dashed for the time being, as whatever measly good experienced, blacksmiths he had under him, they all were desperately needed to facilitate the current production facilities.

Alexander's hunger for artisans seemed bottomless.

In fact, without the recent influx of refugees, among whom were quite a few good, quality smiths and armorers, expanding the weapons workshops to close to five thousand men (5,000) would not have been possible.

And hence the inception of plate armor would require some time, possibly years.

As such realization hit Alexander, he could only sulk and suck it up, telling himself the hackneyed platitude, 'All in good time.'

After he visited the huge living quarters of the men and their families, instructed Faziz to pay attention to the sanitation facilities and to make sure the men washed their hands with wood ash after doing their business, especially the number two, made sure there were adequate precautions in place at the event of a fire, and then moved on the next workshop, situated at clearance level-4.

This was the tailoring workshop set up just a few weeks ago and overseen by Gelene.

"Master, what took you so long? My poor heart has been aflutter in anticipation since morning," The woman sultrily and with tried eloquence greeted Alexander at the gates, causing Alexander to internally roll his eyes at such flirting in front of all his bodyguards.

Though these men certainly had heard Gelene's melodious moans through Alexander's bedroom door during their nightly guard duties, Alexander was still not comfortable so openly flirting with others, especially when he held ambivalent feelings toward her.

"Sorry, I got held up. The other inspections took longer than expected," He then casually gave an excuse, to which Gelene coquettishly replied, "Ohhh, master, I am sure it could never be your fault. It must have been all these naughty men that deceived you from meeting me."

The teasing look that Gelene sent Alexander's entourage caused all the men to lower their heads, not out of shame or to blush, but because of who that woman was and who she belonged to.

'So you are trying to show off how much I favor you in front of them and thus boost your social standing,' Alexander was not impressed with this trite play, but neither did he go out of his way to expose Gelene.

Instead, he chose to do one better.

He decided to turn to his bodyguards and Takfiz and said, "All of must be tired. Get some refreshments. I trust Gelene fully and believe she will never harm me."

This order caused the smile on Gelene's face to visibly dim, while Alexander birthed a cunning smirk.

What he had done was basically strip her of her audience.

'Don't play such games with me,' Seemed to be Aexander's message.

"Then my lord, we will wait outside the gate. Please call us if you need anything," It was Takfiz, who said so this, misunderstanding Alexander and thinking that he wanted some alone time with his concubine.

But Gelene certainly got the message, for even after they were left alone, she changed her tone from a more casual and familiar voice to a more professional one, as she waved her dainty arms and proposed, "Ahem, let master, please allow me to give you a tour of the premises. I'm sure you will find it to your liking."

"Yes, let's," Alexander curtly nodded, and understanding Alexander might not be in the nicest of mood, Gelene silently led him to a large wooden house.

As Alexander approached this large structure, even from the outside, he could hear the low droning of wheels being spun, of the rickety noise wooden tools make when they slide off one another, and knew exactly what this shed was used for.

"Here master," Gelene, standing on the door of the shed invited Alexander in by slightly bowing and gesturing him to enter first, which he did.

And as soon as he entered the shed, the first thing that he laid his eyes upon was the tool being operated by scores of women.

And it was this tool that gave this seemingly ordinary tailor shop its Level-4 security clearance.

And this tool was the spinning wheel, or more accurately the Ashford spinning wheel.

This Ashford spinning wheel was one of the simplest spinning wheels, once which Alexander's grandmother used to use in her early life.

And that was what Alexander had decided to copy and gift Gelene.

This simple wooden tool consisted of four main components, a spinning wheel, a bobbin that was connected to the wheel using a belt, a flyer next to the bobbin, and a pedal to spin the large wheel.

To start spinning yarn, first, a thread, called the leader would be tied in a knot to the bobbin and threaded through the flyer.

After that the spinner would slowly press their feet onto the paddle, which would be connected by a crankshaft to the drive wheel or spindle, making it spin clockwise, causing the bobbing and the leader attached to it to spin along.

Unspun fabric like wool and linen would then be slowly fed into this leader yarn, which would catch onto them, and make them spin with it, thus turning raw fabric into strings, that would be deposited onto the bobbin body.

This relatively simple action worked by manipulating how the spindle and bobbin would be attached to each other.

These two components were built such that each could be rotated using the other, but they could also rotate independently from each other.

And due to how the bobbin and flyer were each connected at a slightly different distances from the spindle, they thus spun slightly differently.

And this small difference in the speed of the bobbin and the speed of the flyer was how the spinning wheel worked.

In fact at its core, spinning was just that, spinning different ends of the fibers at different speeds to create a twist.

And when done correctly this would create the spinning wheel's most useful feature, the draw.

And it would be this draw that pulled the yarn out of the spinners' hands and wind it onto the bobbin while the spinner simultaneously would let the next fibers twist into the yarn, producing a continuous process.

Spinners would be able to control the thickness of the fiber by controlling the amount of draft feed with the leader and in this way, a ball of yarn called a 'single' would be produced.

But this would not be usually ready to be called a finished yarn, as they would be not strong enough to make into clothes.

So, the spinner would then take two or more singles, holds them together, and spin the wheel this time anticlockwise, which once combined, we called "plys."

Plyed yard was much stronger than singles because the two directions of twist make it a lot harder to unravel.

One point to caution to note here would be that when making singles, the wheel must always be spun in the same different.

Because if one were to take singles that were spun in different directions, some to the right, and some to the left, they would be incompatible and would produce a yarn that would be completely unusable.

But if done correctly, this spinning wheel would be capable of producing multiple times the amount of yarns as compared to the traditional handspun method, allowing Alexander to drastically cut costs.

And hence the Level-4 clearance.

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