Dominic smiled at the driver and moved to the second vehicle to see if there was anything that he had missed the first time through.
The controls all worked, the valves were good, and the pressure tank under the hood was holding pressure. The body was destroyed, the roof was torn away, and a chunk of the floor was bent down by half a metre, but once the pushrod was replaced, it would be able to move again.
The old pushrod had also been melted into slag by a fire spell, and had melted completely in half, which caused some concern for the rest of the undercarriage, but the flames seemed to have been contained.
"It was a flaming maul." The driver explained.
"That makes sense. Your lot had it rough up here. I only had to deal with a couple or ten dozen Hobgoblins and some ogres in the middle of the row." Dominic agreed.
"We didn’t do half bad, but it’s not all good news. We will be burying three officers and seven guardsmen. All things considered, it could have been much worse. Hell, even the Princess had a close call today."
"Can you get someone to cut me a log two metres long? That will be easier than making a new metal pushrod." Dominic asked, changing the topic.
"Yeah, that will work. I’ll have someone go right away. Do we have the metal to fix it right if we need to?" He asked.
"Yeah, I can make a new rod, but it’ll take a couple of hours to get it rolled into shape. If the old one was just bent or broken, it would be no problem to fix it, but I can’t bend a puddle back straight." Dominic laughed.
But when he looked back at the really destroyed wagon, he got a good idea. The top beam from the box was only bent, he could hammer that straight and use the log to reinforce it. That would be better than either of them separately.
While he congratulated himself on his ingenuity and used the torch to cut the desired beam from the ruined box, a log was rapidly procured, and holes drilled in it for mounting. With the piece of angle iron strapped to it with a handful of welded on metal bars, the truck was good to go again.
Now it was just the lead vehicle left, and that was going to take some work.
Princess Alexis stepped out of the woods as he approached, followed by a servant who was clearly trying to get her to sit down and rest.
"Blacksmith Dominic. How are the repairs going?" She asked.
"This should be the last one that isn’t mobile, but one of the others is going to have to be dragged back to town. There’s no fixing it, not on the road, and not at the village carriage works either. It’s done for.
I will get to your chest plate once I’m done with the truck, though, I’m told that it was dented too badly to put back on."
Alexis gave him a grim smile and nodded. "The arm plates as well, They’re nearly flattened, but the straps broke, and they came off easy."
Dominic nodded. "I will have the leather worker fix them then."
The Princess took a seat on a fallen tree near the road while Dominic worked to get the lead vehicle ready. Advisor Morgana really should be in on this one, since he was a Techno Witch that could keep the truck running with pure magic, but the woman seemed to have vanished after coming to check on the back of the convoy, so Dominic couldn’t convince her to make his job easier.
Their noon start counted for very little by the time that Dominic was finished, and the trucks were all up and running again, ready to finish their trip.
The sun was still barely up, and the guards hadn’t stopped for a proper dinner yet, which Dominic had every intention of doing the moment that he got to the forge.
The Princess’s armour was sitting on the workbench, and dozens of blades, maces and other weapons were on the floor, along with a few other armour pieces.
Mostly, those whose armour had taken enough damage to need emergency repairs didn’t need it anymore, but the weapons would need to be tended to.
The guards carried a spare, but it was day one of their trip, and they had suffered a lot of equipment damage.
There were a surprising number of bent blades and metal handles, thanks to the immense strength of the Ogres, but only a few weapons were outright broken. They were also all enlisted men’s weapons, common grade magical weapons provided by the guard armoury to the reserves.
The armour that they got wasn’t even enchanted, all it got was a sloppily painted guard emblem, and it was sent out the door. Their coats, on the other hand, were the same brass-buttoned blue long coats that the other guards wore, so at least on the outside they looked like proper guardsmen.
By the time that the mess was cleaned up and all the bodies were looted, Dominic had Princess Alexis’ armour back in proper shape and ready for replacement fasteners from the leather worker.
However, the repair of the weapons was going to take him a lot more time, with the slowly bouncing vehicle hampering his work as the convoy prepared to head out again.
The whistle to signal that they were about to move sounded right before the door of his forge popped open, revealing Wiz and Bella standing outside.
"Got room for riders? They say the convoy is headed for the village overnight." Wiz asked.
"For you two? Always. How have things been on the farm? I heard it was pretty crazy out here, and from what I’ve seen, they’re not joking." Dominic asked as the other two found their seats.
"It’s not just that there are too many monsters, though there are. There are far too many of them, but they’re deliberately avoiding the town. We can find them everywhere in the woods, but they’ve been diverting around the town to attack the city.
That makes no sense at all. We’re the easier target, and everyone is on high alert, ready to run to the walls at a moment’s notice. But they’re staying a hundred metres or more into the trees, like they don’t want trouble with us, or they’ve been ordered not to delay. But who can order around Goblins and Ogres?" Wiz asked.
Dominic shrugged. "That’s why we were sent out here with the Princess and the reserve regiments. Everyone is sure that someone is guiding them, but nobody knows what or who."
"Well, on a brighter note, we got to meet up again sooner than expected. We heard the attack alarm and joined the guards as they ran by, but we’re headed back to the farm in the morning. The caravan will probably be camping outside the city walls, they’re not opening the gates unless the Princess demands it." Bella added.
"In that case, enjoy my nice, loud forge. I’ve got a lot of work left to do."
Bella laughed while Dominic picked up the first bent blade to fix, and Wiz began to pump the bellows for him.
"It’s the least we can do for the ride. Your carriage is the best armoured because it can’t be made of any flammable materials." Wiz informed him with a wink.