The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [182]
‘Might as well unload the carts,’ Larn said. ‘The walls are well within range, especially for our big girl.’
‘Think you can hit that wooden tower?’ Kov said. ‘The one with the huge banner on it. Salamander tells me that the banner commemorates some event that the Gel da’ Thae think is a holy miracle.’
‘Let’s see if we can send it up in miraculous flames, then. Good choice, Envoy! We want a single blaze, don’t we? It might take a couple of throws, but we’ll see what she can do.’
When the news went round that the Mountain Folk were at last going to unload their secret cargo, the princes and the gwerbret hurried to the baggage train to watch. A crowd of onlookers assembled, but Kov used his rank to shoo them away. Since the princes and the gwerbret, of course, were beyond shooing, Larn reluctantly agreed to let them stay. Kov did get them to stand well back, however, by stressing the dangers of this particular weapon.
‘You’ll see why I worry about your well-being, your highnesses,’ Kov said, ‘once we begin.’
A team of sappers, led by an engineer named Grosh, dragged two of the carts to a position facing the wooden tower, well over two hundred yards away. The crates came out, and the sappers began to dismantle the carts, held together by iron pins. The slab sides they laid flat to level out the ground. The long wooden tongues, made of squared-off beams, provided the frame to support a long narrow wooden box, which Grosh pinned into place with one end aiming at the wood tower.
Kov still found the machine something of a mystery, because no one had ever bothered to explain it to him. When the noble-born pestered him with questions, he could honestly say that he didn’t know the answers. What’s more, the sappers and engineers were deliberately crowding around the weapon to hide the details from their eager onlookers. From their distance, Kov and the others caught glimpses of Grosh fussing over the frame and slider box, banging in pins and pegs and tightening down twists of rope. The other sappers handed him components as he called for them.
‘Springs,’ Kov said suddenly. ‘He calls those twists of hair and suchlike torsion springs. I don’t know what that means, though.’
The sappers drew up a third cart. Grosh brought out Big Girl herself, as they called her, a horn and sinew bellybow powered by the twists of hair and sinews tightened into the corners of the frame. Grosh laid her gently onto the slider box with a soft caress, then tied her down. Normally, the curved metal belt at the end of her shaft would go around an archer’s belly to keep the weapon braced while he drew it. This belt, however, laced into the wooden frame.
‘It’s a splendid bow, your highnesses,’ Kov said. ‘Trouble is, she’s so powerful that not even a pair of Mountain Folk can draw her. So we came up with this little device. She’s strung with wire, and there’s a hook that attaches to somewhat or other, and then a handle turns to pull back the wire, and well, that’s really all I know.’
Larn hurried over to aim Big Girl at the tower. As he made his adjustments, everyone got a look at the bow itself, though not the full apparatus.
‘Ye gods,’ Ridvar whispered. ‘She’s beautiful.’
‘Isn’t she, your grace?’ Kov beamed at him.
‘The bolts she takes must be huge.’
‘They are, your grace, and most unusual as well.’ Kov considered just how much he could reveal without Grosh threatening to beat him into slime. ‘They’re hollow, and they hold a secret that I’m not at liberty to discuss. I assure you that soon you’ll understand.’
Dwarven woman had invented the secret contents in their perennial search to find something better than blue fungus in baskets to light the underground cities. This particular mixture—of bitumen, brimstone, rock oil, and tow for thickening—had proved entirely too illuminating. Experimenting with it had resulted in two deaths, in fact, before the warleaders commandeered it. So dangerous was it that they’d brought it to the war