“Well,” Alden began, “we can’t have that. So how about this? I’ll pay you 50 gold today, which I was already going to pay if you’d accepted the first offer. You can use it as an advance on all the orders I’m going to give you in the future. You’ll use it to pay for steel and other raw materials, as well as the wages of your apprentices for the week it’ll take to make the first lathe. Then you can come to me again for another advance of a similar amount, which you’ll use to make a second lathe. The second machine will be built faster, so its wage cost should be lower too. Once both of them are ready, I’ll start giving you orders to make scorpions and crossbows at the rates we already discussed. You can adjust whatever amount I’ve paid you in advance against the price of scorpions and crossbows.”
“That… can really work,” Garrik said with a grin.
After a few hushed words with the carpenter, Coltan looked at Alden. “We accept the second offer and we’ll have two lathes ready in around 10 days, if all goes well. But what about future lathes? Do we still have to pay you for that? I'm sure we won't really need your blueprint after that.”
"Obviously, but you will have to pay anyway," Alden grinned. “It’s called protection of intellectual property rights. It means whoever thought of an idea holds the ownership of it. So yes, you will indeed have to pay. It wasn't a problem when I gave you the blueprints for weapons like crossbows and scorpions, because the manor holds a monopoly on buying them, and I will not allow anyone else to buy them in the village, with a penalty of... if not death, then something very close." The craftsmen shuddered as he continued, "However for something like a lathe which will be in demand by other craftsmen, protection of IP rights becomes very important. So that’s my condition to sell you the blueprints to make lathes."
Garrik and Coltan nodded slowly, while thinking about it.
Alden continued, "Since a lathe is only going to be helpful for the village immediately and in the future, I will put no limits on how many of them you can make. So once you both have enough lathes for your own use, you can sell them to other craftsmen in the village. The other carpenters and the blacksmiths will be interested immediately after they see its benefits, while other craftsmen like the wainwright might also like to buy them. However, you cannot show or sell the machine to anyone from outside the village at this time, or sell its design either.”
“That condition is hardly a problem,” the carpenter said. “Nearly no one comes to Sarnok from outside the village anyway, apart from some traders. But yes, that’s fine with us. Still, I don't understand what you meant by us selling the machine to others? Didn’t you say that you owned the lathes, or its uh... IP rights? Because you designed it?”
Alden nodded. “Yes, I did, to both your questions. Basically, along with selling you the blueprints, I'll be giving you an official license in writing which allows you both to make as many lathes as you want, as long as you keep paying a certain sum to me for every new machine you make. I may not be able to protect any IP rights outside my village, but in this barony, I can and I will. This rule is not just for me—it will also stand true for anyone else who lives in this village. It means if you think of a new idea for a machine or tool in the future, then you will own the rights to it for a very long time, and anyone else who wants to make them will have to license it from you for a certain fee."
He added, "Our first estimate of the cost of a single lathe is around 50 gold, but in the future it’ll come down to around 30 gold, I think, because it’ll be built faster and you won't have to pay the wages for that long. So that’s the amount you’ll owe me for every new lathe you make. At what price you sell it to other craftsmen is not my concern, as long as they are residents of Sarnok and you pay me the license fee for each new machine.”
Coltan glanced at the redheaded carpenter, then grinned. “This is a great deal, milord! If you’re right about how much it’ll increase our productivity—like if we can make 10 crossbows in three days instead of a single one—we’ll be rolling in profits.”
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Vusato frowned at him.
“I mean,” Coltan quickly backpedaled, “we’ll be making the village safer every day.”
Alden chuckled, knowing how much the blacksmith wanted to profit from everything. “Of course. Similarly, your estimate of the price of a scorpion is based on it taking two weeks. But once you have a few lathes ready, you can make it in three to four days, I believe. That’ll also bring its cost down to around 20 gold or something, I think. Same for the crossbows. The cost of raw material will remain the same, but the wage cost will come down drastically, so its prices will also be lower than the current 3 gold and 5 silver coins for each one." Seeing that the bald blacksmith was going to object, he added, "Don’t worry. We can discuss the exact prices later when the lathes are ready and you both have seen its effectiveness yourselves. You both can leave now. We’ll meet again when the first one is ready.”
Both the craftsmen stood up and rolled up the parchments to take with them.
“We’ll do our best to make it as soon as possible,” Garrik said.
The bald blacksmith nodded. “You can count on us.”
“I hope so,” Alden said with a smile.
Once the craftsmen exited the room, Alden looked at the captain. “For now, we’ll use the four crossbows we already have to train the guards in their usage. It’s easy enough to use them, like you know, but practice makes perfect. Once we start getting more of them, it will be easier for them to get used to it.”
Roderic nodded. “The guards are getting better at it every day. I’ve been giving chances for the new recruits to use it as well, while the women get a lot more time with it to practice, since they’ll be the ones using it long before we arm the men. The bolts we ordered from the fletcher have already started to come in, and we’ve started to build a stockpile of them. We are using the wooden bolts for practice, while the iron tipped and broadhead bolts are being stacked up for use against monsters.”
“Good,” Alden replied. "Make sure to let everyone practice with those as well, so they can get some experience of knowing how those bolts will fall with distance and thus, to target more accurately."
“Of course. I have to say, though…” the captain grinned. “Even though I barely understand any of those squiggles you’ve drawn, I feel a lot more confident about the survival of the village now. It really was a miracle when you woke up with those memories.”
“Even more importantly than that,” Vusato said with a smirk, “you know how to make good deals too. I never even thought we could sell the lathe back to the craftsmen even though they are the ones making it—I was only adding up the total gold we'd have to pay. That licensing deal was an excellent idea. Still, all these expenses you keep bringing up every other day are really going to be difficult to manage unless we manage to increase our revenue significantly, but if we can make scorpions and crossbows at 10 times the current rate, it’ll be more than worth it.”
“Let’s hope so,” Alden muttered. “We can’t afford any less when it concerns the survival of our home. If we make the village safe enough in the winter, and allow enough protection to the laborers to mine iron even during the snowy months, we can keep selling the ore even then in the coming years, which will certainly increase our revenue. Let's just hope it goes as we plan...”
***
It was evening now and Alden was sitting at a trestle table with Roderic and the other guards in the main hall. Vusato was busy at a nearby table near the simmering fireplace, tallying up the wages and their other expenses for this month. They had been dipping into the gold saved for paying taxes for many other things, and the majordomo had been worried about how they would manage it, so he had decided to do some calculations today.
They had gotten another two female recruits during the day, and by now they had recruited all the 27 male recruits they wanted, along with six female guards. That added up to a total of 60 men and six women. The two women who had joined today used to work at the iron mines, hauling ore to the wagons, but after iron mining had been stopped, they had become jobless, since they weren’t strong enough to cut trees and their families didn’t want them to risk going to the river every day this close to the winter because of the monster threat. Joining up as a guard had seemed like a safer option to them. He just hoped they would get six more women in a few more days to reach their initial target of 12 female guards.
Usually, all the guards were housed in the servant building on the other side of the courtyard in the manor, but it simply wasn’t possible to fit nearly double the number of residents in that place after hiring so many new guards. So Alden had decided to let the recruits keep living in their current homes in the village, as long as they reported for duty on time. He would have to consider making a dedicated barracks when they hired more guards in the future, but that was for later.
He glanced outward and saw the sun had already set. It wouldn’t be dark before long. It meant Daelus was probably not arriving today.
That’s when Alden heard a familiar screech, which immediately made all the guards near him stand up with their hands on the hilts of their swords, ready for anything.
"Speak of the devil..." Alden muttered, before he grinned and raised a hand.
“Don’t worry, that’s Thuvara, Daelus' griffin.” He looked at the captain as he stood up. “Come on, let’s go and welcome him.”
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