Seventeen cases of potions and writings were delivered to the Alchemy Hall. The older Mangana was ecstatic. He quickly hired scribes who knew the languages in which they were written to transcribe them. As they were finished, he would read them. He learned some amazing secrets from the continent of Essos. It was a level of alchemy he had never seen anywhere else before. The rarity of the collected herbs and plants that came in was stunning. He didn't even know what some of them were. Several of the texts that were collected for him were about the plants, so he devoured them over and over. He would soon be making a whole level above what he normally made in potion type. The assistants he had were soon working on all new things; they were all learning.
Gendry got a ton of new metals that had been in the vault. He, the stonekin, and Yéye were trying to figure out exactly what they were. He and Beth would spend time at the few book sellers there were in town, and at the small library in the Great Hall. They were looking for texts on the types of rare metals found in Essos. At one point, they even had Bran send them everything that he could find on the subject. Slowly but surely, they learned the properties of each new metal.
The sandkin got talismans and weapons with special properties. They also gained some armor gear they had never seen before. Hassan got Thea, and she proved to be an amazing addition to their group. She could fight better than anyone, and she was impossible to wound. She could heal everyone, too. On top of all that, she could call on the gods for boons. She did warn them that calling on the gods too often was not a good thing. She pushed Hassan to learn all the spells in his locket and what each of them could do. They drilled and trained day in and day out.
Arya had added 17 million coins to the city's and the war effort's funds. The young Amanian royal had taken 3 million coins to build the Amanian enclave and donated the rest to the war effort. He also started a school for young Amanians, but shortly after that, it became a school for all in the city. Beth and several others became teachers. Thomas spent a good deal buying steel rails from the stonekin forges. He had a plan to have carts carry everything on rails, from the stonekin caverns to the tip of the southern part of the North. He, Gendry, and the younger Mangana were working on it endlessly. They even planned a route that went down the road all the way to Winterfell.
This year, the stonekin planned to upgrade the walls of Deepwood Motte. They would help install the guns on the walls and rebuild some of the town's buildings.
Beth went looking for Gendry, but he wasn't at his forge. She found him out behind the forge building, with Thomas and the younger Mangana. They were arguing over the width of the rails on a track they were making. They had a cart built and were testing how it moved on narrow or wide rails. Gendry and Mangana opted for the narrower track because it would allow faster movement. Thomas said wider would be better because it would be more stable under loads, and they intended to move large loads quickly. The other two grudgingly agreed, and the width was set. Gendry said, "This is going to up the cost and time; forging these wider wheel bases will be more time-consuming." But Thomas was already onto propulsion; the lever system they had devised needed to grip the rails better. The younger Mangana said, "Well, we could use sand; the grit would help the wheel grip better on hills." There was room on the cart for four men to stand at the two-handled lever. The end of the lever connected to the front wheel by an ingenious rod system that allowed for forward drive on both the up and down motions of the lever. There were brakes on the two rear wheels that were foot-operated. Once they had decided on the width of the rails, the wheel angles became clear. Thomas went to tell the crews already working on the base of the rails the exact width. Gendry and Mangana went inside to cast the first real set of wheels.
Three months later, the first real test of the rail system happened. Two wagon loads of stones were on the long cart, behind the lever cart. Several wagons full of men went along in case of mishap, and a team of horses went in case the load got too hard to lever up a hill. It normally took a day's ride to get a wagonload of stone to Deepwood Motte, and they wanted to see how long the cart system would take. The track was mostly downhill going to Deepwood Motte, so they hoped the trip down would be much quicker. The front cart had six extra seats, so that teams of lever pushers could change out. Everything was loaded, and the blocks were removed from the wheels. With a few pushes, the cart started moving forward. It picked up speed, and Thomas shouted, "Let it run, don't slam the brakes yet!" Thomas, Gendry, and the younger Mangana were at the lever with Jack. They were moving so fast downhill that they just stood, feeling the wind flow past them and through their hair. They were making great time. On one curve, the rails bounced a little, and Thomas shouted to the crew riding alongside to adjust the rails there. There were some issues with the rod linkage on hard pulls, but they could solve those later. Six hours later, they stopped just outside Deepwood Motte. They had cut the time by two-thirds.
The rail system would take some tinkering to get it just right, but it was so much faster than just wagons.