The two-mile strap-iron railway along the southern dyke had ceased to be a simple heavy-duty freight line.
It had become a mobile artillery fire-trench.
Spaced at half-mile intervals along the crushed dark rock ballast stood four heavily armored rail flatcars, chosen Battery Alpha through Battery Delta.
Each flatcar carried a fully assembled Runic Torsion Rail-Lance mounted upon a five-foot bronze turntable ring.
The gun carriages were protected by sloped mantlets of two-inch seasoned white oak, clad in the newly perfected cobalt-blue heat-proof glass glassy enamel tiles that reflected the pale autumn sunlight like sheets of blue ice.
Giles Croft walked the line of Battery Alpha at Mile Marker Zero point five. His folding wooden ruler was held against the cross ring.
“Check the cross pinion mesh, Toby,” Giles instructed.
“The backlash between the bronze ring gear and the cross worm must not exceed five-thousandths of an inch. If there’s play in the ring, the projectile will suffer angular drift at five hundred yards.”
Toby Karr was crawling beneath the gun carriage with a brass feeler gauge. He wiped graphite grease from his cheek with a wool sleeve.
“Pinion mesh is four-thousandths, Lord Giles.” Toby called out from the ballast. “The cross swings sweet as oil! Two turns of the handwheel swings the rails five degrees.”
Beside the track, four apprentice runners were stacking heavy wooden ammunition cases in dry, covered timber bays recessed into the levee face.
Each box contained ten velvet-lined slots holding the dark, sixteen-inch heavy metal dart darts. Their wooden shoes were bound in copper and their chisel points gleaming in the shade.
Master Borin Bronze-Lung stood atop Battery Bravo at Mile Marker One, adjusting the height side with a heavy bronze wrench.
His copper-braided beard was tied back behind his neck. His leather apron was tucked into his belt.
“Height zeroed to eighty chains.” Borin shouted across the ditch to Kenneth Drake.
“Battery Bravo covers the central canal lock! If a swamp beast sticks a horn above the reeds, we can drive a star-needle through its eye before it smells our tobacco.”
Captain Kenneth Drake marched down the track with twenty armored spearmen, inspecting the firing sidings.
At each half-mile marker, Master Caleb’s carpenters had installed an iron turnout switch and a timber spur line. That let the flatcars bypass each other or retreat into protected stone retaining walls if an enemy reached the levee shoulder.
“The crew drills are tight, my lord,” Kenneth reported, stepping up beside Giles. “Each car has a gunner, a height layer, two crank winch crankers, and an ammunition loader.
We can cock, load, and discharge each rail-lance once every forty-five seconds. Four cars in rolling rotation give us a sustained rate of five hyper-speed rounds per minute along any point on the line.”
“A very respectable fire volume,” Giles said, checking the sight lines with his pocket transit.
“At five rounds per minute, forty tons of heavy metal darts can stop sixteen apex targets within four minutes of outer edge contact. The rate-limiting step won’t be clockwork cocking. It will be sky heat cooling of the brass launch rails.”
Giles pointed to the double-walled copper jacket surrounding the forward guide rails.
“Ensure the gravity-fed cooling water chutes from the canal are kept charged with water,” Giles directed.
“Frictional heating during sabot transit raises rail heat by eighty degrees per shot. If the rails expand unevenly, the launch clearance will tighten and seize the sabot.”
“Cooling barrels are topped, Lord Giles,” Toby reported, scrambling up from beneath the chassis. “Master Caleb installed automatic float valves on every siding.”
To ensure total fire accuracy across the waving fen, Toby Karr had spent two days surveying a fine, detailed three-point sighting grid.
Every hundred paces along the canal embankment, white-painted cedar datum stakes had been driven into the firm clay, each bearing an engraved brass number plate.
“Stake Twenty-Four is five hundred and twenty yards from Battery Alpha,” Toby explained. He held his sighting slate before the gun layers. “Stake Thirty is six hundred and eighty yards.
If an armored goliath crosses the ditch between Stake Twenty-Eight and Stake Thirty-Two, you don’t need to estimate range with your eye. You read the number on the brass plate, check the firing table bolted to the shield, and set the height screw to twelve degrees and four minutes.”
The gun layers—veteran crossbowmen recruited from Kenneth’s frontier guard post—nodded with grim, skilled appreciation.
“A chart that aims the weapon,” an old corporal remarked, tracing the engraved numbers on the brass range plate. “No guessing.
No holding high for wind. You set the screw to the number, trip the sear, and the needle strikes the post.”
“Projectiles is pure shape,” Giles said, walking past the sighting crew.
“If your map points are accurate and your muzzle speed is constant, the scattering pattern at five hundred yards should be less than six inches. Treat the fire commands as map point entries, not heroic intuition.”
Down along the river wharves, half a mile to the north, the Synod’s black river galley remained moored at the commercial quay.
Judge Malric Ostrander stood upon the raised aft deck of the vessel. He was wrapped in his black glass woolen mantle. He held a long brass spyglass to his eye.
His gaunt face was pale as chalk, his lips drawn into a tight, bloodless line.
Through the glass, Ostrander watched the four gleaming blue-armored flatcars cross smoothly upon the levee. Their long brass needles tracked imaginary targets across the vast expanse of the Black Fen.
Beside him, Brother Matthew stood clutching his thick parchment registry. He shivered in the sharp autumn breeze.
“What manner of catapults are those, Father?” the clerk whispered, crossing himself with a trembling hand. “They have no balance weight boxes.
They have no ropes. They sit upon iron wheels and turn like the hands of a clock.”
“Those aren’t catapults,” Ostrander hissed. His voice shook with a terrifying blend of religious dread and deep horror.
“Those are the Catapults of the Archangels. The ancient scriptures of the Founding Age spoke of iron chariots that hurled the lightning of the stars across leagues of blood.”
He slowly lowered the brass glass, his fingers digging into the polished wood.
“He has built the weapons of the First Empire,” Ostrander whispered into the wind. “Here, upon an unhallowed bog, in the hands of common shovel-men and exiled heretics.
But where is the prayer, Brother Matthew? Where is the holy seal? Where is the blood of the altar?”
“There’s no altar, Father,” the clerk murmured. “Only the sound of iron wheels.”
“Then it’s a monster beyond reckoning,” Ostrander said. He turned back toward the dark cabin of his galley. “Write to the High Council in Dunwall.
Tell them the Northern Marches have fallen into the hands of a builder who doesn’t fear the dark... Because he has forged a sun of his own.”
* * *
Back on the levee, the four battery crews were conducting their final timed together posture tests.
Toby Karr stood atop the central watching platform with two signal flags. He shouted map points across the wire comms line:
“Battery Alpha, lock Sector Four! Bearing one-four-zero! Range six hundred paces.”
Down at Marker Zero point five, the two-man cross crew spun their brass handwheel.
The five-foot turntable ring swung smoothly upon its lubricated bronze bearings. That turned the fourteen-foot weapon forty-five degrees to the south in less than four seconds.
“Battery Bravo, lock Sector Five! Linked zone established at Sighting Stake Twelve.”
Borin’s crew swung their gun carriage into line with a crisp metal click.
The four long brass launch tracks now came together upon a single three-sided funnel in the deep marsh. The very hall where the great drainage canal emptied into the sunken peat flats.
Chieftain Torvald Dune-Strider rode his lean desert gelding along the crushed dark rock ballast beside Battery Charlie, his copper-wrapped dowsing wands resting in a leather holster on his saddle.
Thirty of his clan scouts rode behind him, their longbows strung, their eyes scanning the marsh with restless desert vigilance.
“In the southern wastes,” Torvald said, pulling his horse alongside Giles’s carriage, “a clan moves with the wind. When the great sand-worms rise, we pack our tents and ride for three days to escape their path.
But you... You build iron bands across the mud and wait for the beast to come to your door.”
“Running away consumes huge body-energy,” Giles replied calmly.
“And moving four hundred tons of heavy-duty public works on horseback is physically impossible. Fixed fortifications backed by mobile rail artillery allow you to concentrate decisive firepower at the point of impact with zero retreat overhead.”
Torvald looked at the fourteen-foot brass launch guide of Battery Charlie. Its needle pointed toward the deep fen with silent, unbending menace.
“You don’t run,” Torvald murmured, a fierce, feral smile crossing his sun-blackened face. “You make the mountain stand upon wheels and wait for the monster to die.”
Giles stood on the narrow high walkway, his hands resting on the guardrail. He watched the four blue-armored batteries align their lethal needles with clean, steady care.
“Sighting lines are true,” Giles noted calmly.
“Overlapping kill-zone established across four hundred yards of canal apron. Any hostile entity attempting to force the water gate hall will be subjected to nonstop enfilade fire from two independent batteries at the same time.”
Captain Kenneth Drake looked down the long line of rails. Then he turned his gaze toward the dark, weeping fog of the southern marsh.
“The guns are ready, my lord,” Kenneth said softly. “The ammunition is stacked. The crews are steady.”
He paused, sniffing the rising wind.
“Now... Where is the swarm?”
As if in answer to his question, a dark, oily ripple broke across the stale surface of the lower drainage canal.
Deep beneath the peat banks, three leagues out in the mist, the water began to turn black as pitch, boiling with greasy yellow bubbles that smelled of cold iron and dying earth.
A single horn blast, low and mournful as a funeral dirge, echoed across the Black Fen from the hidden camp of the Rot-Cult.
Giles Croft pulled his pocket watch from his waistcoat, clicked the case open, and noted the time.
“Two hours until sundown,” Giles said, closing the watch with a decisive snap. “Caleb, sound the general muster. Kenneth, post the gun crews. The raid wave is entering the engagement hall.”