The wind off the northern scree was not a breeze. It was a cold iron chisel driven straight between the rib bones.
Frost rime crusted the timber narrow high walkways of Rustgate Outpost four inches deep, crunching like broken glass under heavy winter boots.
Giles Croft stood on the north corner castle wall, squinting through the crosshairs of his brass surveying level.
Across the valley, the dark spruce timberline stood motionless against the gray winter sky.
The counterscarp berm and the burning lime powder water gates were ready below. But defensive depth meant nothing without direct moving crushing weight.
“Standard recurve bows won’t crack winter ice-hard shell,” Giles said. He tapped the bronze housing of his level with a graphite pencil.
Beside him, Captain Kenneth Drake leaned against the breastwork, his scarred face wrapped in greasy gray wool.
“My longbowmen can put an iron needle-point arrow through a wild boar at eighty yards, Lord Giles,” Kenneth said, his breath freezing in thick white plumes against his collar.
“At the siege of Ostrander’s Pass, we turned three companies of mountain skirmishers with ash longbows alone.”
“A wild boar has soft muscular tissue and elastic ribs,” Giles replied without looking up from his leveling bubble.
“A frostblight beast carries an outer back shell of crystal-clear rime over dense stringy bone.
An arrow striking that surface at one hundred and sixty feet per second deflects or shatters along its shaft.
I reviewed the casualty records from the frontier outposts of the third valley. Light arrows produced zero piercing trauma.
To crack composite hard shell, you need sectional thickness and raw moving foot-pounds.
You need an engine that hits like a dropped anvil.”
Giles turned toward the timber framing crew huddled near the central hoist.
Barnaby the blacksmith and Douglas the master carpenter were hauling a huge frame of layered ash onto the castle wall platform.
The timber was six inches square, bound together with hand-forged iron plates and clenched iron rivets.
At each side sat a heavy upright wooden metal tube, packed tight with thick bundles of twisted black horsehair and braided ox sinew.
“Bring the tension crank winch,” Giles instructed, stepping over the bracing timbers.
“We set the first twisting force preload to four hundred foot-pounds.”
Barnaby spat on his leather palms and gripped the long oak turning levers protruding from the skein cylinders.
“The whole valley’s horsehair is in these two barrels, Lord Giles,” Barnaby grunted, muscles bulging under his greasy apron.
“We spent three days combing every mane and tail from the baggage teams, washing the dirt out in lye water, and rubbing them down with warm animal fat.”
“Horsehair has high pulling stretch and recovers ninety-two percent of its stored clockwork energy in sub-zero cold,” Giles replied calmly.
“Steel leaf-springs become brittle below freezing and suffer total fatigue fractures.
Horsehair doesn’t degrade at negative twenty degrees. Its stretch curve remains stable.”
Bram and two High Timber exiles threw their weight against the iron hand-crank of the crank winch.
The heavy braided hemp bowstring began to draw back along the grooved ash firing channel.
The seasoned ash limbs groaned under massive strain, bending backward into the twisted skeins.
Toby Karr watched the strain gauge with wide, anxious eyes.
“Tension reaching six hundred pounds, Lord Giles,” Toby whispered, gripping his clipboard tightly.
Suddenly, a loud metal bang echoed across the castle wall deck.
A sharp iron tooth shot across the timber platform, gouging a deep furrow through Douglas’s leather boot sole.
The bowstring snapped forward with an ear-splitting crack that shook the entire narrow high walkway railing.
Barnaby jumped back, cursing wildly as he grabbed his throbbing wrists.
“The ratchet gave out!” Barnaby roared, kicking the fallen iron chunk across the deck.
“Brittle cast iron! Snapped clean off at the center pin!”
Giles crouched over the gearwork, examining the snapped pawl with his pocket magnifying glass.
The fracture face showed coarse crystal-clear grain and large voids near the central bore.
“Gray cast iron has excellent crushing strength but terrible shear pushback under dynamic impulse loading,” Giles said evenly.
“A single ratchet tooth packed eight hundred pounds of sudden torque into a tiny shear plane.
That was a building mistake.”
Kenneth wiped frost from his mustache, looking down at the broken assembly with a scowl.
“Can we shore it up with oak pins, or weld the broken iron back together?”
“Oak shears at eighty tons of pressure. That would be criminal fault,” Giles said.
“Welded gray iron would fracture under the first fifty pounds of tension.
Barnaby, take your team down to the forge right away.
We need two locking dogs arranged in tandem, forged from our oil-cooled carriage spring steel.
Each tooth must engage the ratchet gear at the same time, distributing the crushing force across forty square tiny fractions of an inch of hardened alloy.
Cool in warm animal fat, then draw the temper back to a dark straw color.”
Barnaby nodded sharply, his craftsman pride stung by the failure. Then he sprinted down the ladder toward the forge shop.
* * *
Two hours later, the bellows smoke from the lower yard was still thick. But Barnaby returned carrying two gleaming blue-black steel pawls.
The double dogs dropped into the iron housing with a precise, satisfying clockwork click.
Douglas slotted the heavy center pin through the lubricated bronze bushing. He tightened the keeper cotter with a hammer tap.
“Try the crank winch again,” Giles commanded.
Bram and Kenneth grasped the iron crank handles and heaved together.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The dual spring-steel dogs engaged the ratchet wheel in perfect exact timing.
Each click rang out clear and solid as church bells across the frozen yard.
The twisting force skeins twisted tighter and tighter until the heavy ash bow limbs bowed into taut arcs.
The tension needle on Giles’s improvised spring scale crested twelve hundred, then fifteen hundred. He settled at eighteen hundred and fifty pounds.
Not a single shudder passed through the steel dogs.
The frame sat anchored to its circular oak base like solid bedrock.
“The cross gearwork is next,” Giles said. He gestured to the heavy iron ring bolted to the floor planks.
“A static giant crossbow leaves ninety degrees of dead space where charging hunting beasts can exploit defilade angles.
By mounting the carriage on a greased iron turntable ring with an ash pintle, two men can pivot the entire weapon across a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arc in under ten seconds.”
Douglas shoved against the rear tiller bar with his shoulder.
The two-ton oak and iron giant crossbow spun smoothly upon its greased bronze bearing race. He tracked from the northern ridge to the eastern wooden wall with easy driving force.
“Sweet as lard on a hot griddle,” Douglas whispered. He ran a calloused thumb along the smooth oak frame.
“Now we verify high-speed scattering,” Giles said.
Toby Karr hurried forward from the ammunition chest. He carried a heavy five-foot bolt crafted from split white ash.
The bolt was tipped with a four-sided chisel head of forged iron, weighed twelve pounds, and was fitted with split-leather vanes bound with boiled sinew.
Giles slid the heavy bolt into the greased oak firing track until the nock seated against the iron trigger claw.
“Select a datum target,” Giles told Kenneth.
Kenneth pointed his long iron rod toward an old hemlock stump standing isolated in the snow outside the counterscarp, one hundred and eighty yards distant.
“That ancient stump out there,” Kenneth said.
“Frost-hardened wood, four feet across. The wolves use it as a territorial scent post.”
Giles adjusted the brass height side at the side of the carriage. He set the angle to four and a half degrees.
“Distance one hundred and eighty yards. Flight path drop calculated at fourteen inches. Wind drift negligible,” Giles murmured.
Giles stepped back and handed the lanyard to Kenneth.
“Whenever you’re ready, Captain. Depress the lever smoothly.”
Kenneth wrapped the thick hemp cord around his leather gauntlet.
Every worker on the narrow high walkway held their breath.
Down in the courtyard, twenty refugees stopped shoveling snow to look up at the castle wall.
Kenneth yanked the release cord.
THWACK-CRACK!
The sound was not that of an arrow releasing. It was the crack of thunder inside a confined room.
The heavy ash limbs snapped forward against the rope stops with bone-rattling violence.
The twelve-pound iron bolt became an invisible gray streak cutting through the freezing air.
A split-second later, across the white expanse of the valley, the hemlock stump simply exploded.
Massive chunks of frozen gray wood, frost, and splintered bark erupted twenty feet into the air.
A heavy chunk of shattered root bounced back across the snow crust, skittering seventy yards before coming to rest.
Silence settled over the castle wall narrow high walkway, broken only by the whistling gale.
Kenneth stood frozen, staring out across the snow at the smoking crater where the four-foot stump had stood an instant before.
His jaw slowly dropped, his scarred cheek twitching.
“By the Throne and all its angels...” Kenneth whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
“It didn’t just pierce the wood. It tore the heartwood right out of the frozen earth.”
Down in the ditch, Kroll and his work gang stopped their mattocks. They stared at the shattered timber splinters in sheer disbelief.
“The Great Horn of Archangel Gabriel,” Sister Teresa whispered from the walkway below. She crossed herself with both hands.
“The Lord Master builder has given voice to thunder upon our castle walls!”
Giles pulled his wooden ruler from his pocket. He measured the string stop indentation on the ash limbs.
“The recoil buffers tightly packed three-eighths of an inch. That’s within acceptable elastic limits,” Giles said.
“Douglas, duplicate the matching assembly on the east castle wall right away.
We have sixty heavy bolts in storage.
I want forty more forged before nightfall.
Every bolt must have its vanes dipped in hot animal fat to prevent ice buildup in flight.”
Kenneth slowly exhaled, a grim, ferocious smile spreading across his weathered face as he patted the cold ash carriage.
“If those frost-beasts think our wooden wall is made of pine needles,” Kenneth growled, “they will find six inches of iron chisel in their teeth.”
Giles turned his face toward the northern sky.
A sudden violent gust swept over the castle walls, howling through the embrasures.
The blast was so bitterly cold that every open fire bowl along the wall flickered and died in a puff of black smoke.
Sprawling crystal-clear ferns of white ice crawled rapidly across the freshly planed narrow high walkway planks.
“Secure the covers,” Giles ordered quietly.
“The heat is dropping ten degrees an hour. The vanguard will be here before sunrise.”