Chapter 25: Anti-Theft Device

The repeating crossbow was high technology in ancient times.

By the Ming dynasty, however, it had long ceased to be a weapon of the state and was merely a common household device for warding off thieves.

On the drawing Liu Xiangyu handed Liu Chengzong, the crossbow had a bolt magazine that held ten bolts, relying on gravity to drop one bolt into place as another was shot; the magazine had a lever arm and connecting rod that both pushed the string back and drew it, so that a simple push-pull motion enabled rapid fire.

The thing was quite large, with a hollowed-out grip at the front of the stock and a curved brace at the rear that rested directly against the chest and belly.

It took somewhat longer to make than an ordinary crossbow, and because it was easy to draw, its power was no match for a heavy waist-spanned crossbow; moreover, the magazine feed made it difficult to fletch the bolt tails, so at longer range the bolts tended to tumble and were hard to aim.

That was precisely why it used the chest-braced push-pull firing method, a motion that made precise aiming difficult.

The design was intended for use against unarmored enemies at close range — ten or twenty paces — where rough accuracy was enough.

Liu Chengzong made one small modification to the drawing, replacing the hollowed-out grip beneath the front of the stock with a more comfortable handle.

The old carpenter in Xingpingli received the drawing at noon, and before evening fell he sent his young grandson running up to Liujiamao to find Liu Chengzong, who was training crossbowmen, and tell him to get a bowstring.

Truth be told, for a skilled carpenter with the right tools, a crossbow — especially a civilian-grade repeating crossbow — was the easiest thing to make; a suitable string, however, was not so easy to come by, since that fell outside his specialty and he had none on hand.

The hunting crossbows that hunters ordinarily used were actually a bit trickier to make than the repeating crossbow, because a hunting crossbow's trigger mechanism required metal, whereas the repeating crossbow had no trigger mechanism — the stock itself bore the stress — and only needed an iron plate inlaid at the string catch.

As for the string, that was no problem for Liu Chengzong.

He knew how to make strings, and he always kept a few spare strings tucked in his clothes; he had brought quite a number with him on this trip home, and they came in handy now.

By the third day, one repeating crossbow and ten wooden bolts were delivered into the hands of Liu Laoye.

Since it was only for testing, they had not even used iron tips; the crossbow bolts were merely eight-inch sharpened wooden sticks. Up on Liujiamao, the juren laoye, dressed in his wide-sleeved Daoist robe, braced the crossbow stock against his waist, worked the connecting rod up and down, and sent wooden bolts flying one after another at the arquebus target with great speed.

The rate of fire was quite fast. After the sixth bolt was loosed, it jammed; Juren Liu held the repeating crossbow and tapped the magazine against something, then shot the remaining three bolts. Only then did he flex the hand that had been ceaselessly working the rod and say, "That's rather tiring. Let's see how the accuracy is."

Liu Chengzong stood to the side with a puzzled expression; it took him a good while to realize that his old man had read so much his eyesight was failing. He said bluntly, "Pretty poor. One hit the dirt target, three hit but didn't stick and bounced off, and six went wide."

The wild shots were certainly partly a matter of skill — the hit rate would definitely improve with practice — but the lethality was indeed low.

"Dad, this is only fourteen or fifteen paces, and the wooden bolts can't even stick into a dirt target. At this range, as long as a bandit's wearing clothes, he'd probably get nothing worse than a flesh wound."

He was very dissatisfied with the repeating crossbow's lethality. To put it bluntly, if he took a few more steps forward, he could plant a sharpened wooden bolt into the target just by throwing a throwing knife.

The force reminded him of his childhood, when he first learned the bow at twelve or thirteen — the small, light bow that Li Hongji used.

It was just the crude country handiwork of a post-station bowyer, and Li Hongji had broken it and wrapped it up with strips of torn cloth, so it looked utterly shabby.

Yet with a mere twenty-catty draw weight, it could send an arrow flying with a twang and thud-thud-thud into a thick wooden arrow butt — far more force than this repeating crossbow had.

Juren Liu, however, was thoroughly pleased with the repeating crossbow. He walked over, picked up the wooden bolts that needed picking up and pulled out the ones that needed pulling, then cradled the crossbow and laughed. "A little less force is no hindrance."

"As long as it's easy to use. This is only a single-braced crossbow — perfect for women. Xingpingli has no shortage of stout farm lads who do heavy labor; there are plenty of men with strength in both arms."

"Go home today and split all the bamboo planted in the courtyard. Use it to make double-braced and triple-braced ones. And have the blacksmith forge a batch of iron tips. Twenty paces."

Over the long centuries of crossbow use in ancient China, it had, like the bow, developed to a high degree of maturity, and with the advent of gunpowder and firearms from the Tang and Song dynasties onward, it had gradually diminished as a weapon of state and filtered down into civilian life, its construction becoming common knowledge that was not hard to acquire.

The double-bracing and triple-bracing Liu Xiangyu mentioned were a structure for increasing the power of the crossbow's prod. Generally speaking, the prod could also be called the wing; the wing was made of tough, flexible wood, and a single-wing structure of precisely the right thickness naturally delivered the greatest lethality.

But good materials were hard to find; if one sought a moderate balance between production cost and finished efficacy, a multi-braced wing structure was more suitable.

A single wing was made from a not-so-thick piece of flexible wood, and beneath it were layered successively shorter thick bamboo strips — there were triple-braced, quintuple-braced, and septuple-braced versions, though by the time it reached the thickness of a septuple brace, a single man could not draw it.

This structure was rarely fitted to repeating crossbows; it was usually suited for large camp-defending crossbows like the "Vanquish the Foe" and "Divine Arm" types that shot two or three bolts at a time.

Liu Xiangyu's triple-braced repeating crossbow was simply a makeshift measure born of necessity in hard times when materials were scarce.

"We'll also need to make a batch of triple-braced heavy crossbows. The garrison has kusnezoff monkshood poison; we'll prepare poisoned crossbows and issue them to the best marksmen. A single hit will kill instantly, and it will also serve to frighten off the enemy."

Liu Xiangyu set down the repeating crossbow, stroked his three-inch short beard, and said, "Combine that with building fortifications for defense and firing a hundred crossbows at once, and no matter how rampant the bandits, they won't be able to disturb our Xingpingli."

A hundred crossbows firing at once?

Liu Chengzong grinned like a fox that had stolen a chicken. A hundred crossbows firing at once was surely a somewhat exaggerated figure, but since the talk had reached this point, at least forty crossbows were called for, right?

Forty crossbows — whether single-braced or triple-braced, repeating or heavy — meant forty people to operate them.

Besides, it would be a waste for big, burly men to use single-braced repeating crossbows; those things ought to be left to half-grown boys and women. As for especially robust women and strong men, heavy crossbows were still more fitting.

"Dad, if we're preparing on that scale, one squad of crossbowmen definitely won't be enough — we'll need at least five squads. Train crossbowmen, training crossbowmen is good!"

He laughed as he spoke, counting on his fingers. "Universal conscription — it's imperative."

The crossbow was a fine thing. In Liu Chengzong's eyes, the crossbow was an extraordinarily fine thing, for one reason alone — it was very similar to the arquebus.

Although the crossbow and the bow are very similar — especially the Chinese crossbow, which is basically just a bow mounted on a stock — a qualified crossbowman who had never trained in archery still could not shoot accurately if handed a bow.

With an arquebus, however, it was different: a qualified crossbowman, once familiar with the operation of a firearm, could quickly become proficient with one.

And in terms of lethality, the two weapons occupied roughly similar roles on the battlefield. Liu Chengzong believed that in a comparison of arms, the arquebus was superior to the crossbow.

This superiority lay not in lethality or range — those could all be set aside — but in a single point: the crossbow relied entirely on human strength.

After shooting, a crossbowman's efficiency in drawing his blade and fighting dropped, whereas an arquebusier could join the infantry line and fight with the blade at full strength.

This point alone was remarkable.

To his surprise, Liu Xiangyu once again did not respond. He merely stood at the edge of the ridge, gazing down at the little village nestled among the hills for a long while, before saying, "Once the fortifications are built, let's first take care of Chengzu's and your marriages."