The heavy rail flatcar occupied the center bay of the newly erected locomotive shed.
It wasn’t a timber wagon. The chassis was framed in twelve-inch rolled steel channel beams, bolted together with one-inch heat-treated iron rivets and seated upon four twenty-inch cone-shaped-tread cast-iron wheels.
Mounted directly in the center of the chassis was a massive, circular turntable ring of cast bronze, five feet in width, machined with internal spur gear teeth.
Resting atop that bronze turntable was the weapon that would rewrite the siege doctrines of the frontier.
The production Runic Torsion Rail-Lance didn’t look like a royal catapult or a traditional siege heavy steel crossbow.
It looked like an elongated razor-sharp instrument forged from grey steel and red copper.
The central launch guide was fourteen feet long, formed of twin cold-broached brass rails spaced exactly two inches apart, braced within a rigid three-sided truss of tubular steel struts.
At the forward end of the truss sat the throwing engine. Two huge, pre-stressed layered leaf springs, each four feet long and composed of eight graduated leaves of high-silicon dwarven spring-steel. It was bound in heavy bronze collars.
Giles Croft stood on the timber staging platform beside the weapon. He held a dial indicator clamped to the brass rail guide.
“Guide straightness is within three-thousandths of an inch across fourteen feet,” Giles said, reading the needle.
“Zero binding along the carriage travel. When the release trip fires, the sabot shoe must speed up down the track without experiencing nearby frictional galling.”
The fine-tuning of the spring pack had burned up two days of painstaking bench testing.
Master Borin Bronze-Lung had forged eight graduated leaves of silicon-hard dark metal spring steel for each arm, cooling the curved plates in warm whale oil before drawing the temper in a lead bath at six hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
“The steel must not be too hard,” Borin explained to Toby, who was holding the chalk-slate ready.
“If it’s glass-hard, the sudden release of four hundred thousand foot-pounds of stored energy will snap the arms at the root collar, sending two hundred pounds of flying steel shrapnel through the crew. It wants spring-temper—tough enough to bend double and whip back with the wrath of an iron gale.”
Giles mounted a heavy clockwork dial indicator between the spring tip and the central carriage stop.
“Wind the port arm to twenty degrees bending,” Giles commanded.
Two apprentices threw their weight onto the double-reduction winch handles. The forged bronze gears groaned with an oiled hum, winding the braided steel cable until the spring pack arched backward like a drawn bow.
“Bending is three point four inches,” Giles read off the dial. “Load cell reads ninety-eight thousand foot-pounds.
No nearby yielding at the root radius. The pre-stressed laminations are distributing the bending strain uniformly across all eight leaves. A textbook uniform-strength beam profile.”
Master Caleb Thorne-Wood stood at a carpenter’s bench beside the track, his wood slot adze resting on a block of seasoned white ash.
In his hand, he held a delicate, four-part wooden metal tube, four inches long and two inches in width.
The metal tube was hollowed out along its central axis to cradle a slender heavy dark metal needle, and divided longitudinally into four linked curved petals bound together with a hair-thin copper wire band.
“The wooden shoe,” Caleb said, holding the sabot up to the lantern light.
“Turned from mountain ash, boiled in linseed oil, and carved into four matching petals. When you look at it, Lord Giles, it looks like a seed pod waiting to burst in spring.”
“That’s exactly what it’s,” Giles replied, taking the wooden sabot. “A sabot—from the French for wooden clog.
The wooden shoe captures the clockwork impulse from the bronze crosshead carriage and seals the track guide. But the moment it clears the muzzle into open air, the frontal wind-cutting drag forces the flared lips of the petals outward.”
Giles showed with his hands, peeling the four curved petals apart.
“The wind-cutting pressure snaps the copper wire retainer,” Giles explained. “The four wooden petals peel away in four directions, tumbling harmlessly into the ditch forty paces out.
Free of its carrier, the tiny heavy dark metal needle screams on alone at Mach two point eight. No leech-like drag. No mass penalty.”
Caleb shook his head, a smile of pure carpenter’s wonder spreading across his weathered face.
“A shoe that throws a needle, then falls away like dry leaves,” Caleb whispered.
“Every weapon maker in the Empire spends his life trying to make arrows bigger, heavier, thicker. You make the arrow thinner than a rush, wrap it in firewood, and throw it faster than sound.”
“Thick arrows have terrible sectional thickness,” Giles noted dryly. “They spend eighty percent of their striking force pushing air out of the way. Slender needles ignore the air entirely.”
Master Borin Bronze-Lung stood at the rear of the rail carriage, his hands resting on the twin iron handwheels of the cocking crank winch.
The crank winch consisted of a double-reduction spur gear train with a forty-to-one clockwork advantage, winding two braided cables of flexible steel wire around grooved bronze drums.
“Twin steel leaf springs wound to four hundred thousand foot-pounds,” Borin grunted. He tapped the spring pack with his wrench.
“Two men on these crank handles can cock the beast in forty-five seconds without breaking a sweat. And the release sear is a hardened steel rolling-dog detent tripped by a foot treadle.”
Captain Kenneth Drake climbed up onto the rail flatcar, his ten-foot pacing rod slung casually over his back.
He gripped the brass height handwheel, turning the screw three revolutions.
The fourteen-foot brass launch guide tilted upward smoothly, its height angle shown on an engraved bronze side and a weighted plumb-indicator.
“Height range from minus five degrees to plus twenty-five degrees,” Kenneth observed. His tactical eye took in the wide field of fire.
“And the turntable swings three hundred and sixty degrees on its roller race. A two-man crew can swing the weapon ninety degrees in four seconds to engage a flank breakout.”
“Linked enfilade coverage,” Giles agreed.
“Mounted on the strap-iron tramway, four of these rail-lances can defend the entire two-mile southern outer edge. Wherever the swarm concentrates, we roll the batteries directly to the threatened sector at fifteen miles per hour.”
Lady Millicent Croft walked into the shed, with Toby Karr, who carried a polished wooden box lined with green baize cloth.
Toby set the box down upon the workbench and opened the brass latches.
Inside, resting in single velvet-lined slots, lay twenty completed heavy metal dart projectiles.
Each dart gleamed like dark slate. A sixteen-inch needle of high-thickness heavy dark metal hardened carbon-iron, ground with diamond laps to a mirror finish, its four tiny steel stabilizing fins pinned through the base with hardened copper rivets.
Surrounding the midsection of each needle was its four-part ash sabot shoe, held tight by its tuned copper wire band.
“Twenty rounds of sub-caliber ammunition,” Millicent announced, consulting her tally-book.
“Machined by Borin’s lapidary apprentices over sixty hours of diamond grinding. Each complete projectile represents two gold sovereigns and four silver coins in materials and labor.”
She looked at Kenneth Drake with a stern, warning glare.
“Don’t waste them on common mud-goblins, Captain. Every shot that leaves that brass track costs the price of a milk cow.”
“We’ll only shoot at targets that justify the cow, Lady Millicent,” Kenneth replied with a dry chuckle.
Lady Beatrice of Dunwall walked along the check narrow high walkway, her fur-trimmed riding cloak pulled tight against the draft of the open shed doors.
She adjusted her gold-rimmed glasses. She peeked down at the sleek, low-profile steel chassis with an expression of stunned high-born disbelief.
“In the ducal armory at Dunwall,” Beatrice said, her voice echoing in the rafters, “a great siege trebuchet stands forty feet high.
It needs eighty draft oxen to haul the timbers, twenty men to wind the balance weight box, and when it discharges, the crew must pray to the saints that the throwing sling doesn’t foul and drop a five-hundred-pound boulder on their own heads.”
She looked down at the compact, fourteen-foot rail-lance, resting low and lethal upon its four flanged wheels.
“And this machine... You claim two men and a draft mule can move it anywhere along the outer edge?”
“A single draft mule can pull this flatcar at ten miles per hour on the strap-iron rails,” Giles replied calmly. “Or four men can push it by hand.
It has an upright profile of barely six feet, presenting less than twenty square feet of frontal dark shape to enemy archers. It needs no balance weight, generates zero smoke, and can be brought into action within ninety seconds of arriving at a firing siding.”
Beatrice slowly shook her head, a cold shiver passing through her shoulders.
“The Imperial Ministry of Siegecraft will never believe this report, Lord Croft. They will call it the fevered dream of a frontier lunatic.”
“The Ministry’s belief is fully irrelevant to external projectiles,” Giles said, folding his rule.
“When the projectile punches through three feet of solid oak at five hundred yards, the hands-on tracking data will speak for itself.”
Giles took one of the darts from the case, checking the fit of the wooden sabot inside the breech opening of the brass rails.
The sabot slipped into the guide with a smooth, oiled hiss, the copper guide-shoes seating into the track grooves with less than two-thousandths of an inch of play.
“Tolerances are acceptable,” Giles said, closing the breech gate with a sharp, metal click. “The weapon is approved for live-fire high-speed proving.”
He turned toward Kenneth and Borin.
“Toby, clear the southern firing range across the dry basin. Duncan, erect three layered tiny mire-goliath back shells at five hundred yards, backed by an eight-foot solid oak baulk.”
Giles adjusted his glasses, stepping off the rail flatcar onto the gravel floor.
“Let’s see if the mathematics hold true against thirty tons of dead wood and monster bone.”
Down in the assembly yard, forty pioneers had stopped work to watch the long, brass-nosed machine roll onto the transfer turntable.
An old sergeant from the border wars touched the edge of the steel flatcar with a scarred palm. It shook his grey head in silent contemplation.
“No balance weight box,” the sergeant murmured to his squad. “No horses to pull the throwing rope. A weapon that looks like a land-mapper’s level, built to fight monsters that can crush a barn.”
“It’s not built to fight them,” Toby Karr said proudly. He walked past with a bundle of red target stakes over his shoulder. “It’s built to measure them. And the Lord Baron’s measurements don’t leave room for mistakes.”
Kenneth Drake looked across the open dry basin toward the five-hundred-yard marker, where Duncan’s masons were already hoisting the heavy monster plates into position.
“Let’s see the needle fly, my lord,” Kenneth said softly. “The men need to hear the thunder.”