After an evening of companionable drinking-Jaymes merely sipping, while the hill and mountain dwarves tried to outdo each other, as usual-the visiting marshal slept comfortably in his host’s guest suite. After a hearty breakfast, and some grousing from Swig Frostmead about the early hour, the three followed a stone-paved road through the heart of the Compound, toward the testing range at the far end of the valley.
As they passed the many buildings, Jaymes took note of the improvements made over the winter. There was a large charcoal factory that had been recently completed and vast yards where hardwood imported over the mountains-the oak, hickory, and maple of the coastal forests-was stored. The heavy, tough timber had proved more suitable than the local pines for the charring process. In the sulfur yards, mountainous piles of the yellow rock excavated by Swig’s miners lined both sides of the road.
An entire section of the Compound was given over to the purifying of the black power. This was the brilliant contribution of the gnome, Salty Pete. The purifying buildings were sided with planks instead of logs and roofed with actual slate shingles. The whole area looked more like a quaint mountain village than an industrial center.
“Those are the mixers, down near the creek and the pond,” Dram explained proudly, pointing to several iron casks that were each the size of a small barn. From within these came the sounds of grinding and churning. The three crucial ingredients of the secret formula were being ground into fine powder and mixed in carefully measured proportions.
Despite the early hour, activity churned across the compound. Most of the factories were staffed with hill dwarves of Meadstone, Swig Frostmead’s village, though there were a few gnomes and humans who had been drawn to the hard work here by the promise of good pay. The marshal could hear forge doors slamming, smiths pounding on iron and steel, and furnaces roaring everywhere. Passing the open doors of one foundry, he could feel the blast of heat against his skin.
Dram pointed inside. “Those foundry-feeders are the dwarves who really earn their pay,” he said. “For them, it’s like working in the deserts of Neraka without the benefit of shade.”
“Aye, they’re a hearty breed, those dwarves of Meadstone,” Swig remarked proudly.
Beyond the manufacturing area, a series of stone-walled structures, half buried in the ground, dotted a field as large as a parade ground. Wide spaces of grass separated these warehouses, and each was surrounded by moats filled with still, murky water.
“These are the storage centers-twelve of them now, with eight more to go up this summer.”
“Good. I’m glad to see you have them dispersed. So even if there’s an accident in one warehouse, we should be able to protect the rest of the powder stockpiles.”
“Yep. Don’t want to have a repeat of the yule disaster,” Dram agreed heartily. Jaymes hadn’t witnessed that calamity, but the results had been recounted in a grim letter the dwarf had scribed the previous winter: Someone had sparked a fire in the main storage house, and the entire stockpile of powder had vanished in a tremendous explosion. Some dozen workers had perished, and all the nearby buildings had suffered damage. Following that tragedy, Dram had immediately instituted safety precautions. Now some facilities were underground, others spaced apart; and tanks or trenches of water were interspersed throughout the camp. There had not been a repeat of that incident.
Finally they reached the end of the developed part of the Compound. The lord marshal spotted an intriguing device a half mile away, across the remaining field. There lay a massive tube, like a huge tree trunk that had been trimmed of all branches and bark. As they drew closer, Jaymes noticed a series of stout metal bands wrapped the tube.
“We’ve made this test barrel out of ironwood,” Dram explained. “After the oak we had been using got shattered in every previous test.”
“And the projectiles?” Jaymes asked.
“We’ve got some boulders, chiseled to fit the exact diameter of the tube. That’s one thing we learned-if the ball is too small, there’s not enough pressure to shoot it out. Too large, of course, and it gets jammed in the pipe. Then we just end up blowing up the whole thing.”
“Oh, hi, Boss. Better stand back if you don’t want to get blowed up.”
The speaker who popped up from behind the huge tree trunk was a gnome female with frizzy hair and a slightly irritated expression. She wore a pair of spectacles-new since the last time Jaymes had seen her-perched on her tiny nose. The lenses were so smudged, the marshal found it hard to imagine they could be any help with seeing.
She blinked up at Jaymes and went back to her work, which involved scrutinizing figures she had written down on a scroll of parchment then comparing the amounts to the black powder being poured into three different casks. Each was about the size of a small beer barrel.
“Thanks for the advice, Sulfie,” Jaymes replied. He watched as the diminutive technician, one of three siblings who were attempting to perfect the black powder for warfare, went back to work. Her brother, Salty Pete, wore a stiff leather apron as he bustled from keg to keg, double-checking the amount of powder in each. If he in any way noticed Jaymes’s arrival, he didn’t let on.
“The kegs are the same size, as you can see,” Dram continued smoothly. “But we’re putting different amounts of the powder in each. We’ll start with the smallest-just three pounds. This will repeat the measure that we tried with our last test, the one that burst the seams of the barrel. This tube we’ve made at nearly twice the strength specifications, however, so we have a greater expectation of success.”
“Test away,” said the marshal. “I’d like to see it in action.”
Jaymes, Dram, and Swig watched as two hill dwarves gently eased the first keg into the mouth of the tube. A third hill dwarf with a long plunger carefully pushed it until it was lodged in the terminus of the shaft, which was about twelve feet long.
“We run a fuse through the little hole here,” Dram indicated as Salty Pete knelt behind the barrel and fed a stiff piece of rope through a small aperture. “We’ve been working on that little problem, too. We use a weaving of string with some of the powder added, so the fire moves down the line at a controlled speed. ’Course, it’s still not too exact; sometimes the danged thing goes out, and other times it races along like you won’t believe.”
“Fuse is ready. Let’s load her up,” Pete declared brusquely.
Two burly hill dwarves hoisted a boulder that, as Dram had described, looked to be the exact diameter to fill the tube. They placed it in the mouth of the shaft then helped the dwarf with the plunger to shove the heavy sphere all the way in, until it was lodged against the keg of powder set in the deepest end of the tube.
“Now’s the time where we should all back up about a hundred paces,” the mountain dwarf said pointedly. Sulfie, Swig, Dram, Jaymes, and all of the hill dwarves withdrew to a safe distance. Only Salty Pete lingered behind. The gnome held a flint and a match up in the air, keeping his eyes on Dram.
“Ready?” asked Dram, his eyes sweeping around.
“Whenever you give the word is fine with me,” Jaymes replied.
“Fire away!” hollered Dram. “Best cover your ears,” he added for the benefit of the novices.
Salty Pete struck a flame and extended the match to the end of the snaking fuse. As soon as the rope began to fizz and crackle, the gnome turned and sprinted for the others, arriving just as the fire advanced to the terminus of the tube. Then it hissed out of sight, and there was a moment of torturous suspense, when nothing seemed to happen. Even the wind seemed to falter, waiting, hesitant and fearful.
The explosion was sudden, incredibly loud, and impressively violent. A boom of sound pulsated in the air, and a cloud of fiery smoke billowed from the mouth of the tube. The round boulder emerged from that cloud, flying lazily for about a hundred paces before it plummeted to the ground, rolled another few dozen feet, and came to a rest.
“Hmm. So far so good,” Dram declared.
“In principle,” Jaymes agreed noncommittally. “But not much use on the battlefield-a good longbowman can fire an arrow three times that distance.”
“Well, that was just for starters, just a warm-up of course,” the mountain dwarf huffed. “Now we’ll try it with some real pop and bang.”
The crew of hill dwarves scurried back to work. First they swabbed out the tube with a wet rag. “We learned the hard way not to put in a keg back in there while there are still glowing sparks inside,” explained the mountain dwarf.
Then they eased the second cask into place, one containing twelve pounds of black powder. “Four times as much blast,” the dwarf noted proudly. “More than we’ve ever used before-but the barrel is four times stronger than
