"David Drake - Belisarius 2 - In The Heart Of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Examining one of the cannons, he sat slightly straighter in his saddle.
"Watch," he commanded. "They're about to fire. Watch the trajectory of the
cannonball."
Menander and the other two cataphracts followed his gaze. A moment later, they
saw one of the Malwa soldiers take a long iron bar out of a small forge. The
bar was bent ninety degrees at the tip, and the protruding two inches glowed
red from heat. Gingerly, he inserted the firing bar into a small hole in the
breach of the cannon. The mouth of the cannon belched a huge cloud of smoke,
followed almost instantly by the roaring sound of the blast.
The recoil jerked the cannon back into its cradle. Menander saw the gunner
lose his grip on the firing bar. The bar was spun against another of the Malwa
soldiers, who backed up hastily, frantic to avoid the still-glowing tip.
Menander did not envy the Malwa gunners. Theirs was a risky task. Two days
earlier, he had seen a recoiling cannon shatter its cradle and crush one of
its gunners.
Menander and the other Romans followed the cannonball's trajectory all the way
to its impact against the great wall of Ranapur. Even from the distance, they
could see the wall shiver, and pieces of brickwork splinter and fall to the
ground.
Belisarius glanced at his companions. All of them were frowning -- the
veterans with simple puzzlement, but Menander with concentration.
"It didn't fly straight," announced the young cataphract. "It shot off at an
angle. It should have hit the wall fifteen or twenty feet to the east."
"Exactly," said Belisarius with satisfaction. "If you watch carefully, and
keep track, you'll eventually notice that the cannonfire is very erratic.
Occasionally they shoot straight. But more often the ball will sail off at an
angle -- and the elevation's just as haphazard."
"Why?" asked Menander.
"It's the clearance," replied the general. "What's called windage. In order
for a cannon to shoot straight, the ball has to fit snugly in the bore. That
requires two things -- an even, precise bore all the way through the cannon
barrel, and cannonballs that are sized to match."
Anastasius puffed out his cheeks. "That's a tall order, general. Even for
Greek artisans."
Belisarius nodded. "Yes, it is. But the better the fit, the better the fire.
The Malwa don't even make the attempt. Those cannonballs aren't much more than
crude stones -- they'd do better to use iron -- and the cannon barrels are
simply castings. They're not machined at all. Even the casting process, I
suspect, is pretty crude."
Valentinian scowled. "How would you machine something that big in the first
place?" he demanded. "Especially metal."
Belisarius smiled. "I wouldn't even try, Valentinian. For cannons the size of
these, sloppy accuracy isn't really that much of a problem. But let's examine
the question from a different angle. How hard would it be to machine a very
small cannon?"
"Very hard," said Anastasius instantly. His father was a blacksmith, and had
put his boy to work at an early age. "Any kind of machining is difficult, even
with wood. Almost nobody tries to do it with metal. But -- yes, if it was
small enough -- "
"Hand cannons," said Menander excitedly. "That's what you'd have. Something