Chapter 28: The Carpenter

The people I've met lately are just... how to put it? Each one more pessimistic than the last.

Thinking this, Liu Chengzong walked along the village outskirts path with Little Whirlwind.

His father had sent Little Sixteen to call him and his elder brother over to meet Yang Dingrui, and also had some intention of having the two of them keep him company for a meal, but once the conversation turned to court affairs, the topic shifted and they were shooed out.

Liu Chengzu was sent off to drill the troops; Liu Chengzong was told to deliver bowstrings to the old carpenter uncle in the village's eastern outskirts, then go see the blacksmith at the northern mountain pass to check if anything else was needed.

Liu Chengzong had heard Yang Dingrui say the court was finished in Shaanxi, but hadn't gotten to hear him elaborate on exactly why it was finished.

All he knew was that this presented scholar of the Tianqi era, a vice-prefectural official of the court, had actually resigned and abandoned his post — it left him itching with curiosity, desperate to learn more news from the prefectural seat.

Little Whirlwind carried a small cloth bundle on his back, stuffed with a pile of bowstrings and crossbow strings, all made by him in his spare time these days.

The materials and methods for making bowstrings and crossbow strings are different: crossbow strings use hemp thread, bowstrings use cotton thread — first use cotton thread to form the core, then wrap it crosswise; sturdy enough, and it makes a suitable string.

These aren't the best strings — they can't compare to ones cored with silkworm silk on thornwood — but they're still more suitable and durable than animal sinew fiber strings from beyond the passes.

He brought several dozen strings, but not several dozen bows or crossbows; strings, like arrow shafts, are consumables — one bow or crossbow needs at least three strings as spares, so it can be used without mishap, striving to harm neither the archer nor the bow.

Unlike strings and arrow shafts, arrowheads are not consumables.

At least in the frontier army's order of battle, all arrowheads are forged, finely crafted, and basically indestructible.

Several years ago, he had bought twelve forged arrowheads.

In one year of military service, participating in burning off grasslands beyond the passes, experiencing two small-scale skirmishes, hunting over twenty times, and target shooting every day — the arrow shafts he ruined numbered at least eighty if not a hundred, yet the arrowheads in his possession only grew more numerous.

Now he has forty-two arrowheads; except for two shot into a river last year that couldn't be retrieved, in nearly ten years of archery, Liu Chengzong reckons the arrowheads he originally bought might have the honor of being buried with him.

The carpenter's home wasn't far from the village, set apart from the fields and nestled against the mountain forest — not for the convenience of gathering wood from the hills, since in this era lumber was all bought, with plenty of timber merchants specializing in it; it was just that their family had missed out on the clan's division of houses and land, all the good spots were taken, so they had to settle outside the village.

The old craftsman was a kinsman of Chengzong's father's generation, named Xiangliang; born into an artisan household, in his early years he had followed his father, conscripted and sent far away to Yunnan, and then followed the army, wandering for over ten years before bringing his three children and his Liaodong wife back to their hometown.

When they returned, his two sons didn't even have proper names, just called Liu San and Liu Wu.

When Liu Chengzong arrived, the sighthound Little Whirlwind was faster than him, stretching out four long legs and barging into the yard with the familiarity of an old friend, starting a barking match with the carpenter family's chained guard dog.

The master arrived leisurely only later, shouted Little Whirlwind down, and cupped his fists with a smile: "Uncle Liang, I've come to deliver bowstrings, and to see if there's anything I can help with."

The yard was bustling with activity; piles of bamboo and timber were stacked by the fence, all materials Liu Chengzu had gone to ask for from the northern paper mill some time ago.

Amid bamboo shavings and wood chips covering the ground, Liu Xiangliang's family of five was all pitching in, working in a blaze of fervor; several bow blanks were slowly taking shape under the planes in their hands, and not far away on the wall hung two crossbows and eight bows, already oiled.

Bows and crossbows are nothing more than tools; done well, with timber seasoned in the shade for a year, periodic oil soaking, sinew and horn laminated onto the bow arms, and a whole series of processes — a batch of good bows comes out in two years.

But if speed and haste are demanded, it's not impossible either; the quality will certainly be a bit worse.

You get what you ask for.

"Lion's here."

Liu San and Liu Wu greeted him and kept working; the old carpenter stopped his work, wiped off sweat, and came forward: "Nothing to help with — the things you've had us make are all easy."

Ever since Liu Xiangyu and Liu Chengzu organized all the able-bodied men into three squads, they had a massive gap in weaponry, making normal drill utterly impossible; apart from running around the mountain in the morning and digging trenches, there was almost nothing else they could do each day.

So they could only trouble the blacksmith and the carpenter to make more weapons for everyone.

Weapons — keep everything as simple as possible.

Liu Chengzong responded with a smile, walking as he pointed at the finished bows hanging on the wall and casually asked: "Uncle Xiangliang, those are the finished bows, right?"

After the old craftsman nodded, Liu Chengzong smoothly picked one up, held it in his hand, and called Little Whirlwind over to string it.

The bow's structure was simple, its materials plain: two layers of bamboo strips glued together, the grip and bow tips reinforced with wood, wrapped with hemp thread — it felt decent in the hand.

After stringing it, Liu Chengzong carefully drew it to full length and nodded: "Uncle Tiliang's craftsmanship is good; the draw weight is very light, pulls very soft."

The requirement for this batch of bows in Xingping Village was to be as light as possible, ideally twenty jin, and at the heaviest not exceeding thirty jin.

The future users of these bows would all be farmhands, among whom there was no shortage of men who could draw fifty- or sixty-jin war bows.

But Liu Chengzong, skilled in archery, knew well that archery is not a skill where brute force overcomes all — quite the opposite, it is skill that overcomes all force.

No matter how great your strength, if you can't shoot accurately, it's all for nothing; but if you shoot accurately, even a twenty-jin bow can still be used to kill.

Form and technique are far more important; for a beginner learning archery, the lighter the bow, the easier it is for them to fix their form with good habits.

Besides, even after the first batch of archers is trained, these light bows could still be used by the women and children in the three squads of village militia.

Having one's hard work appreciated brings joy to anyone, and Liu Xiangliang was no exception; walking away, he laughed: "Listen to you, Lion lad — your uncle here made bows for Korea in Liaodong. Let me set up a target for you to try."

"Uncle, you've even been to Korea? When was that, the Korean Campaign?"

Liu Xiangliang beamed as he hung a wooden plaque on the old elm tree in the yard, then shook his head with a laugh: "The Korean Campaign was long over by the time I went to Yunnan. Let me think... that was the forty-first year of Wanli."

"Just when their old king died of illness, the new king was called something like Prince Gwanghae — I don't know the details, but anyway, the general had the military craftsmen make bows in Liaodong to sell to the tributary state... Go on, try the bow, see if it works."

Liu Chengzong hadn't brought his bow and arrows; out walking the dog, he only wore a saber at his waist, so he had to search the yard and find a tube of newly made wooden arrows, all processed at the ends to be very straight and even, with arrowheads sharpened from bamboo into three-edged points.

He looked at the bamboo arrowheads, then at the wooden target not far away, and cast a questioning glance at Liu Xiangliang.

The old carpenter understood perfectly and said cheerfully: "Poplar. Shoot without worry."

Liu Chengzong had been worried that shooting a wooden target would ruin the bamboo arrowheads, but hearing now that the target was poplar, he was at ease.

Poplar trees grow thick as can be in a single year, and the wood is very soft.

He didn't dare step back too far; first he loosed an arrow from ten paces away from the target, and only after seeing it hit did he retreat to fifteen paces, finally shooting from roughly twenty paces, and then stopped.

Any farther, and even if he hit, it would be hard for the arrow to stick in the target.

Just as he had imagined, the arrows shot from this bamboo bow were very slow.

So slow that he was confident if he stood at the target and let someone shoot at him, he could dodge with a single move, or draw his saber and swat the arrow aside.

But before he could tell Liu Xiangliang his impressions of shooting the bamboo bow, he heard someone not far away clapping and calling out: "Well shot! Lion lad, your archery form is excellent!"

Turning around, it was the presented scholar Yang Dingrui, who stepped forward, took the bamboo bow for a look, and said: "Why not make longbows? Tang longbows."