1637: The Peacock Throne, стр. 29
“Wow,” John said, fingers twitching with desire to touch the magnificent-looking tools.
Bertram let out a low whistle, eyeing the odd-looking one. “The craftsmen at home would be hard-pressed to manufacture a copy, and never with this quality on the first try, and certainly not in a few months.”
“Firearms are loud, and can fail at the worst moment. I prefer the blade or the bow,” Atisheh opined.
Talawat’s grin only grew wider on hearing her. “These are something entirely better than the usual products of my establishment, warrior.”
“They sure are pretty. May I?” John asked, engrossed in the fine workmanship and the endless patterns in the steel.
“Of course.”
John picked up the first copy, surprised that it wasn’t heavier.
“Amazing,” he said, flipping the gun up and enjoying the smooth action that ended in a deep clunk as the barrels locked against the breech. John sighted along the long groove between the barrels and smiled. Lowering the weapon, he pushed the breech lever sideways, releasing the barrels and watching as the shell extractor rose smoothly from the opening breech.
“I thank you for the praise, but this weapon itself was not the most difficult part of this particular weapon.” Talawat waved at the open doors, summoning someone.
“The shells?” Bertram guessed.
“The shells,” Talawat confirmed.
A younger version of Talawat emerged from the workshop. The young man was carrying a set of belts or bandoliers. One was studded with dozens of brass-based shells while the other long brass cartridges. He lay the belts with the shells on the table in front of John and the other in front of Bertram. Talawat retrieved two of the shells and presented them to John.
Taking them, John took a closer look. Each shell had a high brass base, but the hulls appeared to be something like an odd plastic.
“Shot?”
“Yes.”
“And the”—he looked at Bertram for help translating, who supplied the word after a moment’s thought—“hulls?”
“Waxed paper,” Talawat said, pride evident in his voice even as he spoke slowly and more clearly than his excitement inclined him to in deference to John’s language skills. “Settling the process was a great challenge. It still fails to extract the empty shells too often for complete contentment, but we are still making improvements to the formula.”
“May I?” John asked again, holding the shells up and gesturing with the shotgun.
“Of course.”
John dropped the shells in, closed the break and shouldered the shotgun, admiring how smoothly the action worked. Aiming down the lane at a man-sized target that looked something like a scarecrow, he took up the front trigger with his finger and squeezed.
The resulting bang was loud, the recoil tolerable, and the target gave a satisfactory shiver before smoke obscured it. He pulled his finger from the first trigger and took up the second with similar results. Thick, cottony smoke obscured the firing lane for a few seconds, but cleared to reveal still more damage to the target.
“See, loud,” Atisheh said. John noted that, for all her disapproval, the warrior woman was paying very close attention behind that chain veil.
In answer, John pressed the lever to release the break. The shells extracted flawlessly, flying a few feet before tock-tocking on the tiles of the courtyard. John pulled another two shells from the belt with one hand and dropped them in, snapping the action closed with an almost negligent flip of the hand holding the gun.
“Just like that, I’m ready to shoot again.”
“Almost as fast as a bow,” Atisheh answered, the grudging respect coloring her tone robbing the words of any insult.
Talawat looked like he might burst with pride.
“And these?” Bertram asked, waving at the gun and cartridges in front of him.
“Well”—he touched the gun in front of Bertram with a prideful smile—“I looked at the cartridges for the handgun John showed me last year…and thought I might make something similar but that fire from the same basic principles as the shotgun.”
“Wait, the barrel is rifled?” John asked, reverently returning the shotgun to the silk-covered table and picking up the gun in question.
“It is. I used the larger caliber pistol cartridges for the .45 revolver you showed me as the model for the cartridge…” He pulled a brass cartridge from the bandolier. It wasn’t very wide, but was longer than a pistol cartridge, making it look like an absurdly long .45 round.
“So big?”
“I tried to use slugs through the shotguns, but they were not effective with the amount of powder I had to use. Nearly killed myself with one breech explosion among many,” the gunsmith said, clearly excited to explain his craftsmanship to someone who might appreciate the technical achievement for what it was.
“Our black powder can’t match the velocity of your smokeless powders, and the bullet from that gun, even when I lengthened the cartridge to add more powder behind it, was too light to do much at range, so I decided on the bigger round. The results were…more than satisfactory, I think you will find.”
John smiled and reached for the cartridge in Talawat’s hand, deeply impressed.
Talawat did not hand it over, however, shaking his head. “Not in here. This range is too short for shooting these.”
“Really?” John said, surprised. The range was about a hundred feet long.
“Well, these are accurate, when aimed, to about two hundred and fifty of your ‘yards,’ and there is only stone behind our target here. I would hate for a ricochet to kill or wound one of us.”
“Two hundred and fifty?” John said, incredulous.
“Well, a shot will likely kill a man at sixteen hundred yards, but no one could hit someone on purpose at that range.”
“Sixteen hundred?”
“Yes. What use a rifle if not to reach out and touch someone from great distance, eh?”
“But, sixteen hundred?”
Talawat’s smile was broad and happy. “You’d look like you were shooting at the moon, but yes.”
Bertram looked thoughtful. “How many can you make?”
The smile faded as the gunsmith waggled his head. “Depends upon how much time the pretenders give us. Far