Forty tons of reptilian mass sped up through the narrow canal cut like an unguided freight carriage.
The central head of the Three-Headed Rot-Hydra came on at thirty miles per hour.
Its heavy talons tore deep furrows through the curing concrete water chute.
Before its breastplate pushed a six-foot bow wave of muddy water, gravel, and shredded reeds.
The blast wave of its stride rattled the iron spikes in the tramway ties fifty yards ahead.
Giles Croft stood on the firing bridge of Rail-Lance Flatcar Number One.
His brass slide rule was tucked into the pocket of his oilskin vest.
His hands rested lightly upon the knurled knobs of the height screw.
Beside him, Master Borin Bronze-Lung gripped the manual emergency brake wheel with white knuckles.
The dwarf’s thick beard was dusted with lime powder and ash.
“One hundred paces,” Borin shouted above the roar of the water.
“Eighty paces,” the dwarf called out, his voice straining against the thunder of the beast.
High on the northern castle wall narrow high walkway, Duchess Rowena Wintermere leaned over the stone low roof wall.
“Loose the lance, Giles,” Rowena called down through the smoke. “It will smash the flatcar to kindling.”
Giles didn’t loose the lanyard.
He watched the approaching beast through the crosshairs of the brass telescopic sight.
The central skull was crowned with four inches of stone-hard horn and dense bone plating.
A frontal impact against the angled skull crest risked deflecting the needle.
A glancing blow would expend sixteen megajoules of striking force into harmless scale.
He needed an unarmored penetration channel directly into the central nervous system.
“Hold position,” Giles commanded through the sound pipe.
His voice was level, rhythmic, and cold as river ice.
“Sixty paces,” Borin called, the gear teeth of the brake rattling beneath his palm.
At fifty-five paces, the titan lowered its massive snout to seize the brass carriage.
Its jaw hinges uncoupled with a wet, tearing crack.
The great maw opened wide, gaping ten feet across.
Rows of serrated black teeth parted. It showed the pale, unarmored soft palate at the back of the throat.
Directly behind that fleshy membrane lay the lower brain and the main spine nerve.
The body hitbox was fully exposed.
“Fifty paces,” Giles whispered.
He pulled the brass release lanyard with a single smooth snap of his wrist.
TWANG-CRACK.
The faster-than-sound blast tore the air above the tramway.
The blast wave blew the leftover oil lanterns off the levee posts.
At the muzzle of the fourteen-foot brass launch guide, the split ash sabot shoes separated instantly.
Four pieces of shaped hardwood flew outward, tumbling through the spray.
The sixteen-inch heavy dark metal needle penetrator screamed forward at Mach two point eight.
Three thousand one hundred and fifty feet per second.
The distance of fifty paces was crossed in forty split seconds.
The heavy dark metal needle entered the open maw of the titan without touching a tooth.
It struck the soft palate dead center.
The dart didn’t slow down.
Sixteen megajoules of striking force ripped through the soft tissues of the throat.
The faster-than-sound crushing pressure wave melted the lower brain into pink foam.
It crushed the first four neck bones into tiny bone dust.
The heavy dark metal penetrator punched out through the rear back-skull plate of the skull.
It exited into the night sky, trailing a pale plume of steam and bone fragments.
The nervous system of the ancient beast died instantly.
The spark impulses governing its limbs vanished in less than a split second.
The massive jaws snapped shut in a final, reflex burst.
Yet forty tons of muscle and bone traveling at thirty miles per hour couldn’t stop on a heartbeat.
The dead carcass struck the canal water chute as a limp battering ram.
It plowed through the shallow water, tearing up sixty feet of concrete floor like wet clay.
Gravel, water, and shattered shale erupted into the air in a blinding curtain of grey mud.
Borin threw his entire weight onto the brake lever, locking the steel wheels to the rails.
The massive horned snout skidded along the ballast bed.
It slowed, threw up a final wave of river silt, and ground to a dead stop.
The tip of the stone-hard horn rested exactly three paces from the front bumper of the flatcar.
Behind the sliding skull, the titan’s massive sixty-foot torso rolled hard to the left.
The forty-ton carcass collapsed over the edge of the canal bank near the base of Sluice Tower One.
Directly beneath that bank lay the muddy depression where Hesketh the Rot-Weaver was crawling.
The necromancer looked up through the darkness, clutching his broken ribs.
His hollow eyes widened in sudden, total horror as forty tons of scaly deadweight dropped upon him.
There was no magical magic chant.
There was no final curse.
The flank of the dead hydra crushed the Hierophant of the Black Mildew into the river mud.
His bones, robes, and dark relics were driven five feet deep into the subsoil.
Silence fell across the canal basin.
The ear-splitting roar of battle died away into the night.
Only the steady hiss of steam rising from the hot brass rails broke the quiet.
Giles Croft stepped forward onto the steel footplate of the flatcar.
He reached into his pocket and retrieved his brass pocket rule.
He checked the distance to the beast’s snout with a practiced eye.
“Three paces,” Giles remarked to the silent levee.
He slid the rule back into his vest pocket.
“Hitbox confirmed zeroed,” Giles said, looking over at Borin.
“Target stopped.”
“Tell the sawyers to fetch the six-foot crosscut timber saws,” Giles added calmly.
“We have eighty tons of reptilian carcass to butcher and salt before decomposition sets in.”
Borin Bronze-Lung stared at the massive snout three paces away.
Then the dwarven smith threw his head back and let out a bellow of wild, roaring laughter.
The laughter echoed across the water, booming against the granite stone retaining walls.
* * *
Up on the northern castle wall low roof wall, Duchess Rowena Wintermere lowered her broadsword.
Her hands were shaking slightly against the leather wrap of the grip.
She looked down at the silent, smoking canal water chute.
Two cut necks lay tangled in the muck.
The central titan lay motionless, its horned snout resting peacefully against the tramway ballast.
Behind her, the two thousand five hundred citizens of Grey Crag stepped out onto the narrow high walkways.
Sawyers, masons, blacksmiths, weavers, and farmers stood along the dyke.
They held their torches high into the night air.
A single voice cheered from the grain mill.
Then another from the timber drying sheds.
Within ten seconds, a roar of collective triumph tore through the mountain gorge.
Two thousand five hundred voices echoed against the cliffs of the High Border.
Rowena sheathed her blade with a crisp clockwork snap.
“The boy didn’t build a castle,” Rowena murmured, a faint smile touching her lips.
“He built a slaughterhouse with water wheels.”
Down at the water gate, Captain Kenneth Drake climbed down from Battery Bravo.
He walked over to Flatcar Number One, wiping grease from his broad brow.
“Both rail-lances intact, sir,” Kenneth reported with a crisp salute.
“Twisting force springs show zero plastic warping.”
“Launch rails remain within half a tiny fraction of an inch of true posture.”
“Good,” Giles replied, nodding once.
“Repack the recoil cylinders with fresh animal fat before midnight.”
“We don’t allow high-pressure fluid to sit idle in freezing heat levels.”
From across the canal dyke came the heavy, rhythmic clatter of iron boots.
Dwarf Trade Envoy Thorgan Ironvein marched across the wooden upkeep bridge.
Behind him walked twelve dwarven smiths in full parade mail, bearing an iron-bound chest.
Thorgan stopped five paces from Giles and drove the wooden handle of his war-pick into the turf.
“By the stone hearths of Khaz-Drak,” Thorgan bellowed, his eyes bright beneath bushy brows.
“I’ve seen mountain kings fight with runic blades and blood oaths.”
“I’ve seen high wizards call down lightning from the storm clouds.”
“Never have I seen a man measure a dragon’s grave with a brass slide rule.”
Thorgan pulled an embossed roll of heavy dwarven thick parchment from his breastplate.
The document bore the deep red wax seals of the Seven Great Forges.
“The Council of Elders has ratified the pact,” Thorgan said, handing the scroll to Giles.
“Eternal brotherhood between the Kingdom of Khaz-Drak and the Riverport of Grey Crag.”
“Full transit rights through the Deep-Dike Sluice.”
“Annual delivery of four thousand tons of high-grade hard coal and magnetic iron ore.”
“Guaranteed at fixed barter rates for ninety-nine years.”
Giles took the thick parchment and examined the runic signed names under the light of a lantern.
He retrieved his draftsman’s steel pen from his pocket.
He dipped the nib in a small horn inkwell and signed his name upon the treaty line:
Giles Croft, Land-mapper and Civil Engineer.
“The grade of the canal is zero point zero five percent,” Giles told the dwarf.
“Your ore barges will make the transit from the mountain gate to the lower lake in six hours.”
“A four-fold improvement over wagon transit across the high pass.”
“Commerce needs predictable gradients, Master Ironvein.”
“And cold steel,” Thorgan chuckled, slapping Giles on the shoulder with a force that rattled his teeth.
As the ink dried upon the thick parchment, a soft chime rang through Giles’s mind.
The semi-clear blue screen of the Great Blueprint flickered before his eyes.
Giles studied the glowing text for five seconds.
The blueprint for the Rotary Shard-Gatlin swelled into three-space-folding schematics in his mind.
It featured an eight-barrel revolving assembly driven by a water-turbine belt drive.
Each barrel was chambered for tiny iron grape-shot at eight hundred rounds per minute.
“Effective fire crushing weight for narrow mountain defiles,” Giles thought.
He dismissed the display with a single blink.
* * *
Three hours later, the celebration in the lower settlement was in full fury.
Casks of dark dwarven ale were broached along the timber boardwalks.
The scent of roasted pork and boiled river trout mingled with the smell of wet sawdust.
Militia riflemen danced with farm girls around the warmth of the blast fire melted rock waste pits.
Sister Teresa and her acolytes tended to the wounded in the clean stone clinic.
Not a single citizen had been lost to the rot-spores.
Giles stood alone on the high watching deck of Sluice Tower One.
He leaned against the peeled fir railing, looking out toward the northern horizon.
The night air had turned bitterly cold.
The first winter wind whistled through the high pine needles of the mountain pass.
A flurry of white snow danced across the black surface of the canal.
Behind him, the rapid clatter of iron horseshoes sounded on the timber ramp.
Sergeant Rook Red-Mane hurried onto the deck, with Vespera Lark.
The scout woman’s wool cloak was rimed with frost, her face pale beneath her hood.
“Giles,” Rook said, his tone dead serious.
“Vespera’s forward pickets just rode in from the high northern saddle.”
Giles turned slowly to face them.
“Report,” Giles said.
“The pass isn’t clear,” Vespera said, her voice shaking slightly with cold.
“Two miles beyond the Khaz-Drak portal, two massive forces have entered the gorge.”
“The first is a royal punitive expedition.”
“Two thousand heavy infantry and three cohorts of border crossbowmen.”
“Flying the purple and gold griffon banner of the capital.”
“Led by Royal Clerk Lord Silas Crane himself.”
Giles’s eyes narrowed behind his brass-rimmed glasses.
“Crane was sent by Emperor Castellan to seize the blast furnaces and claim the canal,” Giles noted.
“What’s the second force?”
Vespera swallowed hard, looking toward the dark mountains.
“They’re not marching together,” Vespera whispered.
“Crane’s legion is in full retreat.”
“Behind them, driving them down the pass like cattle, marches the northern horde.”
“Frost giants from the deep ice-slow valleys.”
“Three hundred behemoths clad in mammoth hide and ice-slow ice armor.”
“Led by Chieftain Ymir-Krag.”
“They will reach the High Border before tomorrow’s sunset.”
A cold gust of wind blew down the gorge, carrying the distant sound of bone war-horns.
The snow began to fall faster, dusting the dark waters of the canal with white.
Giles didn’t panic.
He unrolled a fresh sheet of heavy linen thick parchment upon the drafting table.
He took up his T-square, his compass, and a sharpened graphite pencil.
“Two thousand royal refugees and three hundred ice-slow behemoths,” Giles murmured.
He laid the steel flat ruler against the paper and drew a clean, perfect line.
“We’ll need deeper abatis trenches and forty extra rail-lance turntable spurs.”
He looked out into the gathering storm.
“Let them come.”