Eric went to the advisors' office. Chief Adney was looking through the beast skins on his black wood desk. The room was cramped up with documents, several wooden racks filled with beast skins, wooden slips, and scrolls.
Three officials were busy arranging the documents back on racks and bringing the ones Adney required. This looked less like an office and more like some ancient archive.
Even if gave him the chance to return home by working in this ancient search engine of the kingdom, Eric would seriously decline it.
Adney raised his head and greeted him with a bow, "Why you trouble yourself? You should have sent someone to call me."
Eric greeted back and asked, "Chief, How could you work in this place." Then he told him the purpose of the visit.
"Umm, let me look," Adney shifted his gaze at the fifth shelf third rack, his assistant hurried and retrieved the record "Are you sure that you could make something useful," Adney asked, scanning through the documents.
"I am not sure but how would we know without trying. We haven't even tried to make something new for years now. Now, it's the right time to start some experimental projects as we received considerable aid from nobles. I need a place suitable for a small workshop and if it is successful then, we could scale up its size." Eric said. He was sure of success and there was no need to tell Adney or others. He had a rough design in his mind. He couldn't make and test the designs all by himself, he was neither a smith nor a bowyer.
The smaller kingdoms couldn't even think of starting any experimentation or research projects because of insufficient funds. Bigger kingdoms or Empires have more funds, and they spend it to expand their territories or armies because the returns or success rate of these projects are very low. Even by spending thousands of gold coins, they couldn't rest assured.
"You could use the old soldiers' barrack on the opposite side of the parade grounds. Soldiers had moved to new barracks near the gate. That palace would need a good cleaning though." Adney handed the document to his assistant.
"That would do, thanks, Chief. Now I should leave as clean up would take time." Eric left the room.
The Barrack was large, about the size of a soccer field, and there were three such empty barracks. It was perfect, Eric had a smile on his face. He could see how great this palace would be. Things made here would change the way people of this world live.
The cleaning of the barracks took the entire evening. Eric returned to his room, waiting for Evan's News.
___________
The next morning, a group of smiths was waiting for Eric, standing at the gates of barracks. Most of them had come in their working dress as they were told that prince had called them to make something.
Evans wasn't present since morning, he had gone to look for the bowyers in the Military Factory.
When eric came, they bowed. They followed Eric in the first barrack. The barrack was empty save for the four tables and a wooden board.
Eric had drawn the pictures of the plow and other farm implements, though it looked like a child's drawing, he had also drawn separate images for the parts and explained their uses.
This was the first thing, "IF you have any problem understanding these things you could ask me."
"Your highness, We making these plows is not that difficult but it would require more iron, you clearly wrote here that the molds should be heavy." A blacksmith replied.
"Your, highness why are you adding more furrows to the plow, the farmers couldn't even afford a single plow. The cost of this setup would be very high. Why make it, when no one would buy it." Another smith put forward his concerns.
The plow currently used by the farmers of Alvaton is wooden ard, and the number of farmers who use iron molded plow could be counted on fingers. It was also one of the reasons that production of grains was low.
A five furrowed plow could plow the five times larger area and the heavy plow could easily break the heavy soils. Thus, it could increase the sowing area.
"You just pay attention to make these kinds of plows, don't worry about business side of it." Eric replied to second and turned to reply the first questioner, "Materials would be provided by the kingdom"
"Any more questions," Eric paused and glanced at the smiths, no one said anything. He then continued, "Let me tell you, you need to work in teams of five and the team which will make the best plow would get 20 gold and others would get only 5 gold. All the plows would undergo trails before declaring the winner."
The group of people started to chatter among themselves and they started teaming. No one wanted to be a part of a weak team. All the smiths were from the capital so they knew each other.
Eric wasn't interested in meddling in their team formation and neither wanted them to form team of fair teams. This way he could have different types of designs, suitable for different soil types.