The forge district never slept.

Even in the deepest hours of the night, when the rest of Yohan lay quiet beneath skies thick with stars, the southern quarter of the city pulsed with heat and noise. Hammers rang against anvils in staggered rhythms, each smith working to a tempo dictated by the metal beneath their hands. Furnaces roared behind stone walls that glowed orange at their seams. The air smelled of hot iron, smoke, and the particular chemical sharpness of Zul’jinn’s experimental compounds …a smell that the shamans had learned to associate with either breakthrough or explosion, and which they approached with equal wariness.

Khao’khen walked the forge district at dawn, as he did every third day, because a chieftain who did not understand what his smiths were building could not understand what his warriors could achieve. He moved through the heat and noise with the easy familiarity of someone who had spent years visiting these workshops, pausing at each station to examine work in progress, asking questions that demonstrated a grasp of metallurgy unusual for a warrior of any species.

The transformation of the district in the Horde’s absence was remarkable. Where there had been open-air forges with clay-daubed walls, there were now proper stone structures with ventilation channels designed by goblins, orcs, and trolls who understood airflow with instinct bordering on genius. The chaotic arrangement of individual workshops had been reorganized into a production line …ore processing at the northern end, smelting in the center, forging and finishing at the south, with dedicated stations for each stage of weapon and armor manufacture.

This was Zul’jinn’s doing. The orcish master-craftsman had spent the campaign’s duration not idle in Yohan but obsessively studying the captured Threian equipment the Horde had accumulated over months of fighting. Every broken musket, every cracked Thunder Maker component, every fragment of enchanted armor had been disassembled, catalogued, and analyzed with meticulous attention.

Khao’khen found him in the experimental workshop at the district’s southern edge, a building the other smiths gave wide berth due to the frequency with which things inside it caught fire, exploded, or produced sounds that no metal should make. The door was reinforced with iron bands …Zul’jinn’s own addition after the third incident blew the original door off its hinges.

Inside, the orc was crouched over a workbench, his red hands moving with surgical precision as he assembled something that looked like a crossbow and a musket forced into an uncomfortable marriage. Three goblin assistants huddled at a safe distance near the back wall, their expressions carrying the particular blend of fascination and terror that characterized anyone who worked closely with Zul’jinn.

“Chief!” The orc’s head snapped up, his serious eyes gleaming with the particular intensity that meant he had not slept in at least two days. “You come at perfect time! Look, look, look …”

He snatched the device from the workbench and held it up with the pride of a parent presenting a firstborn. It was roughly three feet long, constructed from wood, iron, and what appeared to be bone. A thick barrel protruded from the front, shorter and wider than a standard musket. Beneath it, a crossbow mechanism provided the tension system. The stock was carved from Rhakaddon horn, dense enough to absorb recoil that would shatter ordinary wood.

“The boomsticks …they fail because the barrel cannot contain the explosion,” Zul’jinn explained, speaking with the rapid-fire delivery that characterized his excited state. “Too much pressure, barrel crack, boom in wrong direction. Very bad for the orc holding it. But I study the pinkskin muskets …their barrels are thicker, reinforced, with spiraling grooves inside that spin the ball. Very clever, pinkskins. Very clever.”

He tapped the device’s barrel with one long finger. “So I think …Zul’jinn, you cannot make barrel as good as pinkskins. Not yet. Their metal is better. Their craft has generations of refinement that we do not have. But you can make barrel shorter. Shorter barrel means less pressure building up inside. Less pressure means barrel holds. The ball does not fly as far …maybe half the range of pinkskin musket …but it flies, and it flies straight, and the orc holding it still has both hands when it is done.”

He paused, grinning with all of his remaining teeth. “I call it the Roarer.”

Khao’khen took the weapon, turning it in his hands with the assessing grip of a warrior evaluating a tool. It was heavy …heavier than a standard crossbow, lighter than the Threian muskets he had seen. The balance was acceptable, weighted slightly toward the front in a way that would help absorb recoil. The crossbow mechanism beneath the barrel provided a secondary firing option, allowing the wielder to loose a bolt if the powder charge failed.

“Show me,” Khao’khen said.

Zul’jinn practically vibrated with eagerness. He led Khao’khen through the workshop’s rear door to a narrow testing yard …a walled enclosure with sandbag targets at one end and a thick stone barrier at the other, designed to contain anything that went wrong. The orc loaded the Roarer with practiced efficiency, packing powder, wadding, and a lead ball into the barrel, then priming the firing mechanism.

“Stand behind Zul’jinn,” the craftsman instructed, then raised the weapon to his shoulder …a rare sight given the choice of weapons for orcs, the Roarer nearly as long as a goblin. He braced, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

The crack was sharp, louder than a crossbow but less thunderous than a full musket. Smoke billowed from the barrel. The sandbag target, thirty paces distant, jerked as the ball punched through the outer layer and buried itself in the packed sand within.

“Penetration at thirty paces …through leather and light mail,” Zul’jinn said, already reloading. “At fifteen paces, through plate if the angle is right. At fifty paces, accuracy drops but still lethal against unarmored targets.”

“Reload time?”

Zul’jinn demonstrated. His small hands moved quickly …powder, wadding, ball, ram, prime. “Twenty heartbeats for Zul’jinn. For an orc with bigger hands and less practice, maybe thirty. Forty if nervous.”

“And the crossbow?”

The goblin shifted the weapon, engaged the secondary mechanism, and loosed a bolt at the same target. The bolt hit three inches from the ball’s impact point. “Backup weapon. If powder is wet, if mechanism jams, if the warrior has already fired and needs a shot before reload. The crossbow is always ready.”

Khao’khen nodded, a slow, decisive movement that Zul’jinn recognized as approval. “How many can you make?”

“With current smiths and materials …maybe thirty per week. The barrels are the bottleneck. Each one must be forged individually, tested for cracks, heated and cooled and tested again. One bad barrel kills the warrior who trusts it.” The manic energy drained from the orc’s voice on that last point, replaced by the sober awareness of a craftsman who understood that his work was the difference between weapon and bomb.

“Thirty per week is not enough.”

“No. But it is a start. And there is more.”

He led Khao’khen back inside to a second workbench where a collection of clay spheres sat in padded wooden boxes. Each sphere was roughly the size of an orc’s fist, sealed with wax, with a short cord protruding from the top. The three goblin assistants moved further away when Zul’jinn reached for one of the spheres.

“Bufas fruit extract, concentrated and stabilized. Light the cord, throw, three heartbeats later …boom. Not as powerful as the pinkskin’s black powder grenades, but enough to scatter a formation, start fires, create chaos. An orc can carry six on his belt and still fight. And these I can make in quantity. One hundred per day, once the Bufas harvest comes in from the southern groves.”

Khao’khen examined one of the spheres, feeling its weight and balance. He imagined the tactical applications …a volley of these thrown into a Threian formation before a charge would disrupt their shield wall, break their concentration, force their mages to waste energy on fire suppression rather than offensive magic. Combined with the Roarer’s ranged fire capability, the Horde would possess something it had never had before: the ability to seriously damage an enemy formation at distance before closing to melee range.

“What about the anti-air problem?” he asked, setting the sphere down carefully.

Zul’jinn’s enthusiasm dimmed into something closer to frustration. “The big birds are… difficult. They fly high and fast. Standard crossbow bolts lose power at the altitude where their riders operate. Heavier bolts need heavier crossbows, which need more time to reload, which means fewer shots at a target that does not hover politely while you aim.”

He scratched behind one of his oversized ears, a habit that indicated deep thought. “I have an idea, but it is not ready. Not even close. A bigger crossbow …much bigger. Mounted on a frame with wheels so it can be repositioned. Multiple strings for greater tension. Bolt the size of a spear, with fins carved into the shaft for stability in flight. One bolt, one big bird. But the mechanism …the tension required to launch a bolt high enough and fast enough is extreme. The frame must absorb recoil without shattering. The loading mechanism must be fast enough to allow more than one shot before the big birds move beyond range.”

“How long?”

“Two months. Maybe three. I need to test. Many tests. Many failures before success. That is the way of engineering …each failure teaches what the next attempt must avoid.”

Khao’khen nodded. Three months was within the timeline he had set for the rebuilding. The Horde would not march again until every problem identified in the after-action review had at least a partial solution. “You have the resources you need?”

“More iron. Always more iron. And three more goblin assistants who are smart enough to follow instructions and brave enough to stand near things that might explode.” He glanced at his current assistants, who were trying to look brave and mostly succeeding.

“Talk to Sakh’arran. He’ll arrange it.”

Zul’jinn bobbed his head rapidly, already turning back to his workbench, his mind clearly racing ahead to problems only he could see. Khao’khen left the workshop and paused outside, looking back at the building where the orc engineer was already muttering to himself about tension ratios and barrel thickness. The orc was, in his own way, as essential to the Horde’s evolution as any chieftain or war chief. Warriors won battles. Engineers won wars. And Zul’jinn, for all his eccentricity, was winning a war against the technological gap that had cost the Horde dearly at Lag’ranna.

Outside the forge district, the training grounds were already active. Warband Master Arka’garr’s voice carried across the open space like thunder rolling over the plains, his corrections delivered with the authority of a warrior who had fought in every major engagement since the Horde’s founding and who accepted nothing less than perfection.

Khao’khen paused at the edge of the grounds, watching a new drill that Sakh’arran had designed specifically to address the campaign’s lessons. Three hundred warriors moved in formations that combined shield wall defense with rapid dispersal …the ability to shift from a tight defensive block to a scattered pattern in seconds, designed to minimize the impact of area-of-effect magic like the frost storms that the Blue Countess had deployed with such devastating effect at Lag’ranna.

The drill was difficult. Warriors who had spent months learning to maintain tight formations now had to learn to abandon them on command and re-form them just as quickly. The concept was counterintuitive for an army built on the principle of disciplined cohesion, and the first attempts had been ragged …warriors scattering in confusion rather than dispersing in controlled patterns.

But they were learning. Each repetition was cleaner than the last. The horn would sound, the shield wall would dissolve into individual warriors moving to predetermined positions, the frost simulation …shamans throwing blue-painted sand to mark the affected area …would sweep through the space the formation had occupied, and the warriors would re-form the shield wall around the affected zone, ready to advance through the gap the magic had created rather than into it.

Sakh’arran himself stood near the drill master’s position, watching with the focused attention he brought to every tactical problem. When Khao’khen approached, the commander spoke without taking his eyes off the formation.

“Third cycle was cleanest yet. The veterans are teaching the newer warriors to read the horn signals …two short blasts for scatter, one long for reform. The hesitation is shrinking.”

“Fast enough to avoid the ice queen’s magic?”

“Not yet. Her frost strikes faster than our warriors can move. But the goal is not to dodge the magic …it is to minimize the number of warriors caught in each blast. A scattered formation loses ten to a frost storm that would kill fifty in a shield wall. That mathematics favors us.”

Khao’khen watched the drill complete another cycle. The formation dissolved, the blue sand swept through the empty space, the warriors re-formed. Still ragged at the edges. Still too slow by half. But discernibly, recognizably better than yesterday.

“The ice queen will not freeze what she cannot find,” Sakh’arran said, and there was something approaching satisfaction in his voice …the quiet contentment of a tactical mind watching a theory become reality on the training ground.

“Partial solutions,” Khao’khen replied.

“Layered partial solutions. Dispersal drills plus the Roarer’s ranged fire plus Zul’jinn’s fire spheres plus improved crossbow anti-air plus better intelligence. Each one shifts the balance a fraction. Together, they create an army that is harder to destroy than the one that marched to Lag’ranna.”

Khao’khen nodded and continued his morning circuit of the city. There were reports to review, chieftains to consult, resources to allocate, and the thousand small decisions that kept a civilization running. The work of building a nation was less dramatic than fighting a war, but it was no less important.

And in many ways, it was harder. War simplified choices. Build or be destroyed. Fight or die. Peacetime demanded complexity …how to feed a growing population, distribute resources fairly between warrior clans with ancient rivalries, maintain military readiness without exhausting the economy, integrate newcomers who arrived daily at Yohan’s gates drawn by the promise of something unprecedented.

An orcish nation. Not a warband. Not just a horde. A nation.

It was the most ambitious thing any orc had ever attempted. And the fact that it was working …imperfectly, noisily, with constant friction and occasional crisis …was proof that the concept itself was sound. The old ways led to scattered clans and inevitable defeat. The new way led to Yohan. To forges that produced weapons in quantity. To training grounds where warriors learned to fight as one. To fields where crops grew in rows. To children who would grow up knowing cooperation was not weakness but strength.

Khao’khen reached the city’s northern wall and looked out over the plains. The mountains were invisible in the morning haze, but he knew they were there. The pinkskins were beyond them, rebuilding their own strength, preparing for whatever came next.

Let them prepare. Every day they spent rebuilding was a day the Horde spent growing.

And when the time came, the Horde would be ready.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep