“Wouldn’t want that,” I agreed.
Rafe turned back to Evis and resumed his cheery recounting of the wonders of an aught-eight, which could apparently be crewed by six men and fire twice a minute.
I thought back to the weapons Evis and I had seen that day, many months ago, at Werewilk. They had been small affairs, and yet a few of them had brought down the entire House within moments. The things Rafe were shouting about were, I gathered, rather more destructive.
A chill ran up and down my spine.
Thousands of soldiers. A frantic, secret weapons development program. Funding that flowed from a bottomless purse-hell, just feeding several thousand men would require tens of thousands of crowns a day. But if you also have to clothe them and house them and pay them and provide them with big Aught Eights to fire, you were getting ready for something bigger than just another Victory Day parade.
“Rafe,” I yelled, cutting him off in mid-sentence. “When’s the big day?”
“The big day? Sir?”
“When do the first of the big ones ship back to Rannit?”
I was guessing. But it was plain Rafe didn’t know how much or how little we knew.
He almost answered me. But then a ghost of caution whispered in his sunburnt ear, and he bit back the words.
“Best ask the Corpsemaster, sir. I’m just an engineer.”
I didn’t need a date anymore. I’d seen such a date existed.
And that scared me worse than any number of dead carriage drivers or mysterious booms.
Evis regarded me over his glasses and then drew Rafe back into a spirited recounting of something called a back-handled caisson stabilizer.
I put my head in my hands.
Rannit was going to war. The words ran hobnailed through my mind.
The carriage driver turned and winked. I stared at my boots for the rest of the ride.
“Mr. Prestley. Markhat. Welcome to the Battery.”
The Corpsemaster had shed its female body for a male one. His new body showed no signs of trauma or decay, save for a paleness of features and dark circles under his unblinking eyes. The body was maybe twenty-five. Its hands were smooth. He looked like a banker would look the morning after he breathed his last.
I nodded a greeting. Evis did the same. Rafe stood shifting from foot to foot, staring at the dirt.
“Prepare a Howler crew,” the Corpsemaster said to Rafe.
Rafe straightened, beaming. “Solid or explosive round?” he asked without a hint of fear or any honorific. “The new short delay shells are ready.”
The Corpsemaster chuckled. “You choose,” he said. “Make haste.”
Rafe charged away, bellowing at the gaggle of soldiers who lingered nearby.
The Corpsemaster smiled a dry little smile and began to walk. He was setting a brisk pace on the dead man’s legs.
“I trust your journey was not unacceptably unpleasant?”
We had to trot to keep up.
“Not at all,” I said. “Very restful, as a matter of fact.”
“Liar.” The Corpsemaster glanced sideways at me. “The secrecy under which the Battery operates is paramount. I can make no exceptions, even for old and trusted friends.”
Old and trusted friends. Neither Evis nor I dared comment.
“You nearly saw me bested by a pair of cannon, not so many months ago,” continued the Corpsemaster. We were climbing a small hill toward a perfectly flat top. “I will not be bested again. Behold, gentlemen. I give you the future of warfare. Angels help us all.”
Below us stretched a long, shallow valley. The other side of it was maybe three hundred yards distant, and the bare, sandy soil was blasted down to the reddish bedrock in some places.
A dozen or so flat-topped hills lay beside ours, all in a careful line. I wondered how many thousands of shovels had worked to create this.
Wheels rattled up behind us, and a dozen men with them.
And then something else.
I’d seen such a thing before-a thick-walled iron cylinder taller than me, and fatter, and hollow. Fixed to a pair of wagon wheels, and the wheels were fixed to a sturdy wooden tail that kept the cylinder aimed upwards at a slight angle.
“Follow,” said the Corpsemaster. We did, barely getting out of the way of the cannon and its crew.
Rafe trotted up, wiping his hands on a rag. “Now?” he asked.
The Corpsemaster pulled out a shiny brass pocket watch. “Now,” he said, starting it with a click.
Rafe whirled. “Load,” he bellowed.
Six men snapped from stillness to action, handling tools and descending on their machine with the studied precision of a bawdy hall dance troupe. One dipped a sponge set on a pole into a water bucket and ran it down the throat of the cylinder. Another shoved a burlap parcel into the barrel as soon as the sponge was out. The sponge man whirled his pole around and pushed the burlap parcel to the back of the barrel while a man at the rear slammed something shut on the cannon’s back end.
Evis poked me in my gut and then stuck his fingers in his ears. I followed suit.
It dawned on me why Rafe seemed half-deaf despite his youth.
The contrivance was aimed quickly by a man in the rear, who sighted along the tube and adjusted the rear- facing tail with a hooked wooden rod set into the end of the tail. Two other men fussed with a massive iron sphere and hoisted it expertly into the cannon’s maw despite its apparent weight.
That was rammed home and tapped twice. All but the spongeman were behind the cannon by the second tap, and he joined them a heartbeat later. There was motion, one of the men at the rear shouted “Ready,” and then Rafe bellowed, “fire.”
The Corpsemaster clicked his stopwatch.
The cannon cried thunder, and heaved a great gout of smoke, and the blast hit me in the chest with sufficient force to knock the fool breath right out of me.
On the far wall of the Corpsemaster’s young valley, something struck and exploded, sending up a vast plume of shattered earth and leaving behind a smoking crater large enough to hide wagons.
“Twenty-six seconds,” said the Corpsemaster.
“What?”
The Corpsemaster repeated himself. Rafe heard it that time, and started bellowing at his crew, who were by then halfway ready to fire the awful thing again.
The thing-the cannon-needed only a crew of six stalwart young men. No years of sorcerous schooling. No decades of perfecting spells that themselves took years to create.
Just six men, a cannon and whatever bits of iron and powder they stuffed into the thing.
“Heaven help us.”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud.
“That, gentleman, was a Howler. Firing an explosive ten-pound round fused to detonate a half of a second after firing. Its effectiveness as a projectile weapon is formidable, especially considering it can be fired twice a minute until the barrel begins to soften.”
“That’s twenty-two rounds with this barrel,” shouted Rafe. “Then we have to douse it with water and wait twenty minutes. The newer ones will go twenty-seven rounds.”
“Indeed.” The Corpsemaster smiled. “I trust you gentlemen are favorably impressed. I shall never again be caught lacking appropriate firepower.”
“It’s a big chunk of Hell put on cute little wheels.” I couldn’t force a smile. “And I gather this is a small one, at that.”
“It is the smallest of the mobile units. Designed for use against infantry and enemy guns in a changing battlefield environment.”
“And just when do you foresee this battlefield being joined?”
