The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [183]
‘All ready,’ Grosh said in Deverrian. ‘Time to load up the bolts! Someone light a candle, but get well back before you strike any sparks. This stuff could blow us all to the clouds and back again.’
Kov and the commanders spontaneously moved off a few more yards. It had taken Grosh weeks of work to figure out the way to deliver this lighting material gone wrong. The flaming fuse often died, blown out as the missile soared on its way, unless the mix was allowed to take the fire before launch. Unfortunately, it often took too well. Larn had lost his beard and all of his hair to an early attempt, and Big Girl had needed repairs as well, after a day when the mixture exploded too soon. Now the long wood bolts, tipped in iron, had holes on their underside to allow air into the mix as they flew and several fuses embedded on top of the black, sticky mixture inside. In practice, at least, this had all worked splendidly. Kov refused to even consider the thought that it would fail to work now. While the engineer and the weaponmaster squabbled over the best way to aim Big Girl, Kov turned to look at the fortresses. Gleaming helmets lined the top of the wall as the men wearing them watched their enemies at work.
At last Big Girl stood ready. As Larn turned the handle on the slider box, the inner shaft turned as well, groaning and creaking. Sweat ran down Larn’s face and soaked the collar of his shirt. With all his weight he leaned back, struggling to hold the handle steady. Grosh stepped forward and laid in a loaded bolt, lit it with a thin splint, then jumped back just as Larn let the handle go.
The shaft spun, the hook leapt off the wire, the first bolt sprang from the bellybow and arched up into the air. It whistled as it flew across and smudged the blue sky with black smoke, while the Gel da’ Thae manning the walls turned their heads to watch. Larn began cranking up a second bolt as the first started its curve down, heading for tower window. Larn released the second bolt. Grosh positioned a third. In the fortress the Horsekin stayed dead-silent, as if they were puzzled rather than frightened. The first bolt struck the tower with such force that the wood structure quivered. For the briefest of moments nothing happened; then the mixture in the bolt exploded.
Little fingers of bright gold stroked the tower wall as the bitumen melted and ran, burning. First smoke curled, then flames leapt along the boards. The second bolt slammed into the flames and instantly shattered into a spew of fire. The last bolt flew and hit. With a roar the entire top third of the tower caught and burst into flames. An answering roar went up from the Deverry army as Alshandra’s enormous banner flashed into a solid sheet of fire. Howls of panic from the Horsekin rose with the black smoke.
‘Yes!’ Larn threw both hands in the air and yelled in Dwarvish. ‘It works! It works!’
‘Well done, Weaponmaster!’ Brel began to laugh for what must have been the first time in fifty years. ‘Oh, splendidly well done! We’ll avenge them all! Every last one of our dead! They’ll be avenged!’
Inside the fortress brass horns squealed and squalled. Pieces of the tower broke free and fell, scattering flame as they went. More screams, more yells—Kov could imagine the panic inside: slaves running to and fro with buckets of water, others beating at the flames with shovels, the rakzanir milling around, screeching futile orders.
‘It’ll be hard work, dousing that fire,’ Prince Voran said. ‘But they have copious wells, unfortunately.’
‘Let’s hope they try to use water, your highness,’ Kov said. ‘The stuff just floats to the top, you see, and goes on burning.’
For a while it seemed that the entire fortress might burn from this one attack. The princes and lords began shouting at their own men to arm and get ready for a fight should the Horsekin sally to escape the fire. The last chunks of the wooden