Free The Deep Gods by David Mason

question, too… if they’ve got an answer.
    “I thank my brother, the Chief,” Daniel said solemnly. “And I shall do all I can.”
     
    What he could do, he found in the following weeks, was limited only by the number of hours he could stay awake. The tribesmen flocked into the big village; metal workers, builders, men of a dozen crafts. Word had gone out through the country, telling of the marvelous things being done by the stranger chief, and of the wonders still to come.
    For the first time in his new life, Daniel was at last able to be an engineer again. In his other life, he had read much; but somehow, many things that dealt with other sciences had gone out of his memory. He could not recall more than a bare outline of the wars and kings of history, but he could remember descriptions of tools and weapons, from catapults to cannons. He brought back a hundred fragments, in his mind; obsolete crafts and bits of technique, half-forgotten in the twentieth century, but useful now.
    He found a material on which he could make drawings, a smooth tree-bark; and to his intense pleasure, the craftsmen could understand what he drew with surprising ease. But he worked with them, too, in every step of the things he was showing them.
    There would be iron soon; he had red earth, brought to him by a runner from a place not far up river. There would be a swarm of other things; but first there would be weapons to beat off the invaders when they came.
    He had questioned those who were most familiar with the raiders, and learned enough to make a beginning. They had come in big boats, he was told; the boats had entered the river mouths, here and at other places. The raiders had come ashore and gone from village to village, driving back the tribesmen with showers of arrows.
    Now Daniel made bows such as the locals had never seen; their own were small and weak, but his new one was a longbow. With it, he drove an arrow high and far, again and again, to the amazement of his watchers.
    But they would take time to learn the use of the bow, he knew. And more time would pass, while his other plans came to birth. Meanwhile, he completed the first weapon that would strike the invaders harder than they had ever been hit before; and he brought the High Chief himself to watch it tried.
    “It is a stone-thrower,” Daniel said as the old man walked slowly around the wooden frame. The Chief looked at the long beam and the heavy rock that rested on it; the rope and weights, taut and ready.
    “No man could throw such a stone,” the Chief said. “But if he could…”
    “A stone, like that one, could crush a boat,” Daniel told him. “With several throwers, the men of the west would not go home in their boats, this time.”
    The Chief uttered a noncommittal grunt and stepped back, waiting. Daniel went forward and looked toward the river, where he had aimed the catapult. There were no canoes in range, he saw; he picked up a sledge and swung it down.
    The trigger snapped; the arm slashed up and the stone sailed up and away in a long arc. It crashed into the river with a fountain of spray; the watchers cried out, a shout of pleasure. Warriors began to beat on the dusty ground with their spear butts, yelling with delight, and the Chief himself deigned to laugh aloud.
    The damn thing worked without a hitch this time, Daniel thought with vast relief. It had failed twice the day before. If it had failed this time, his reputation would have gone down with it.
    “There will be as many of these as we can make, Chief,” Daniel said wearily. He leaned against the frame, wiping sweat from his face; the Chief gazed at the catapult, still grinning.
    “Many, many of them,” the Chief said. “Yes.”
    “The raiders had iron swords,” Daniel said. “I was shown some of them. In a little while there will be better ones here, made of iron too, as the smiths learn. And lightning pots, such as I used, as soon as the yellow earth is found.”
    The Chief nodded.