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delivering the energy of the blow over a longer period of time. The thicker the
padding, the longer the time, the lower the force felt by the wearer.
And armor distributes the energy of a blow in space. If the blade can't cut the
steel, it must push it forward. The bigger the plate of armor, the wider the area,
the lower the force felt by the wearer. With chain mail, the area under each link is
small and while it's a big improvement over bare skin, it can't compare with a
solid metal plate.
Of course, there are practical limitations on how thick the padding can be and
how big you can make the plates. You have to be able to move in the stuff.
But what I was going to wear would be two hundred years more advanced than
what my opponent would have, and that just might make the difference. In
combat, high technology means higher than your opponent's.
And while all the practice and armor-making was going on, work continued at
Three Walls. In addition to the wall-apartment house, the church, the inn, the
barn, the icehouse, the smokehouse (which was to double as a sauna), and the
factory, we now needed a coke oven and a blast furnace.
The blast furnace would have to wait a bit, but I had to know if our coal could be
turned into coke. Not all types of coal can be made into coke in an old-style
beehive oven. Building a modern coke oven was well beyond our capabilities.
The boys' cave had to be enlarged and the iron ore extracted using bronze picks
and shovels that I was having made up.
And we still hadn't struck coal yet. The masons finally got sufficiently frustrated
that they built a big wood fire and threw on all the limestone rubble that they had
been generating in the course of making blocks. They kept adding wood and
limestone for a week, and when the fire was out, they had quick lime, calcium
oxide. Adding water and sand to it made mortar.
When I asked them why they hadn't told me that you could make lime with a
wood fire, they said I hadn't asked. That night at supper, I made a speech about
how it was important to keep me informed about that sort of thing, but I don't
think that it sank in very deep. One of the men said that they saw me doing so
many crazy things that if they told me about every one of them, they wouldn't
have any time left to work.
Someday, I'd make believers out of them.
Soon, foundations were being laid and people could see signs of progress. I think
they had been starting to worry about being stuck in the woods for the winter
with only our temporary shelters, because the laying of the foundations made
them all look more confident.
The Pruthenian children had mostly fit right in. Looking at them, you couldn't tell
the difference between them and the Polish children we had of the same age.
Their accents were thick as a millstone, but even there progress was being made.
At least we could understand them. To give them religious instruction, the priest
had begun staying over until Monday afternoons, and many of them were already
baptized. Most of them were starting to learn the trades of their adopted parents.
But sometimes, when they thought you weren't looking at them, you could see
written on their faces the horror of all that they had been through. That increased
my resolve; those children were not going to go back into slavery.
Then there was Anna. I'd kept my promises to her and made a big sign with all
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the letters on it so she could spell things out. She was still attending church
regularly, and the priest was growing increasingly scandalized. He finally
broached the subject.
I'd known that it was coming, and had my response ready. I said that Anna was a
full citizen of Three Walls, she was smarter than half my workers, and if she
wanted to live a moral, Christian life, I certainly wasn't going to stop her. I said it
in a straight, deadpan way. Father Stanislaw just shook his head and walked
away. And Anna continued to go to church.
Vladimir was growing increasingly depressed as winter approached. For one
thing, his brother visited him and said that their father was still violently angry
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