Dawn broke over Rustgate with a pewter glare through the spruce boughs. The French drain had held: the yard was no longer a quagmire of peat. Blue-gray clay and shale had dried into a firm crust. The evacuated bog-water gurgled down the ravine.
Yet, as the morning mist warmed under a thin breeze, a new horror dropped upon House Croft.
It began with a faint rot that tickled the nostrils, rapidly compounding into an oily stench of raw sewage, decomposing offal, and rotten-egg bile.
Giles Croft, inspecting the wooden wall footing with his wooden ruler, gagged. He clamped a handkerchief over his nose, eyes watering against the foul vapor in the hollow.
Ten yards away, three exiles stumbled from their lean-tos, clutching their stomachs and retching into the clay.
A sharp pane of amber text flared into Giles’s vision.
“Incredible,” Giles growled behind his handkerchief. “Who approved digging six open privy trenches five yards upwind from the residential zone? That violates elementary sanitary setback codes! The wind is blowing airborne enteric bacteria directly into the cooking pots!”
Captain Kenneth Drake marched up, bacon rind stuffed under his nose against the stench. His brow was furrowed in dark creepy.
“The Camp Fever,” Kenneth wheezed, knuckles pale around his ten-foot ash trench rod. “The marsh-spite has taken wing, Lord Baron! In the siege of Dunwall, this same foul fog crept through the tents. Within three days, men voided black blood. It’s the breath of the Bog Hag, cursing the camp!”
“It isn’t a bog hag, Kenneth,” Giles snapped, tucking his rule away. “It’s untreated human drain water undergoing anaerobic decomposition in unlined shallow pits. The bacterial bloom produces massive concentrations of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. If we don’t sterilize those pits within twenty-four hours, the dysentery vector wipes out seventy percent of our workforce. We need a chemical disinfectant right away.”
“Disinfectant?” Kenneth blinked. “There’s no temple apothecary within forty leagues, my Lord. The nearest priest who brews holy waters of warding is at Highmarch Cathedral!”
“We don’t need a priest,” Giles said flatly. “We need inorganic chemistry. Toby! Get over here!”
Toby Karr came jogging across the firm clay, brass chalk-reel clinking. His face was pale green from the stench.
“Y-yes, Lord Baron!” Toby gasped, coughing into his sleeve. “Is the ground cursed again?”
“No, the ground is fine. Toby, when we excavated the French drain yesterday, the torrent cut through the creek-wash bank. Did you notice the white, rounded stones embedded in the exposed shale layer?”
Toby’s eyes widened. “The white chalk pebbles that leave powder on your fingers?”
“Sedimentary limestone nodules,” Giles nodded. “White lime-chalk. Nature’s chemical warhead. Toby, take fifteen men and haul every piece of that white stone back to the clearing. We need eight hundred pounds of raw rock. Kenneth, take the woodcutting squad. Fetch dry spruce deadfall and seasoned oak heartwood. We’re building a field calcination kiln.”
Kenneth stared at Giles, his mind struggling to reconcile rock and wood with banishing plague. “You intend to... Burn stones, my Lord?”
“We’re calcinating white lime-chalk past nine hundred degrees,” Giles explained. “Heat decomposition drives off carbon dioxide, leaving calcium oxide—burning lime powder. Hydration produces calcium hydroxide at pH twelve-point-five, denaturing bacterial membranes and saponifying organic fats. Now move. The test model clock is ticking.”
Captain Kenneth stood rigid, jaw slack.
Calcinating the stones of the earth... Kenneth’s thoughts raced in terror and wonder. The Forbidden Crucible of the Iron Alchemists! The Lord Master builder will subject the ancient bones of the mountain to Primordial Heat, stripping the terrestrial veil until Divine Fire awakens within the white ash! He doesn’t merely pray for a cure. He forges a potion-made sun to burn up the plague-spirits!
“To the creek!” Kenneth roared at his guards. “Gather the sacred white stones! Haul the heartwood! The Lord Baron prepares the Purging Pyre!”
Within two hours, the central yard looked like an active foundry.
Under Giles’s precise instructions, the exiles built a six-foot cone-shaped clamp kiln. A foundation of split oak logs arranged in outward spokes, interlaced with dry pine kindling, topped with alternating layers of limestone nodules and hardwood coals, banked with turf to control draft.
“Strike the tinder,” Giles ordered.
A soldier touched an oiled torch to the base.
FWOOSH.
The dry pine roared to life. White smoke chattered from the chimney. That turned to a shimmering heat-haze as the inside climbed past seven hundred degrees. For six hours, the exiles fed the blaze until the limestone glowed cherry-red.
By late afternoon, the pyre burned down to a deep bed of glowing white ash and calcined lumps.
Using iron-shod poles, Kenneth’s men raked the roasted stones from the embers into four heavy oak vats. The stones were no longer gray. They were stark, chalky-white, dry, and strangely light.
Six hundred pounds of pure calcium oxide.
Sister Teresa arrived at the outer edge, wimple tied back, butcher’s apron stained with soot. On her back hung her signed name weapon. The Tight-packed Brass Quicklime Slurry Lance & Lye-Vessel Knapsack. A heavy, twin-tank copper-and-brass backpack rig fitted with a hand-pump lever and a long brass nozzle.
She gazed upon the glowing white stones with religious respect, breath trembling.
“The White Bones of the Martyr,” Teresa whispered. “They have passed through the furnaces of purification. Lord Master builder, are they ready to receive the baptism?”
“They’re ready to be slaked,” Giles corrected, pulling on heavy calfskin gauntlets. “Everyone step back at least fifteen paces. What you’re about to witness is a violent exothermic reaction. When water meets burning lime powder, hydration releases twenty-seven kilocalories per mole of heat. The liquid will instantly boil, reaching three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, producing scalding skin-burning steam. Don’t inhale the calcium hydroxide fine mist. The pH is twelve-point-five. It will strip your lung linings and scar your eyes. Toby, the water-bailer.”
Toby passed the iron bucket before scurrying back behind Kenneth’s shield.
The camp of fifty souls watched in breathless silence.
Giles stood over the first oak vat containing one hundred and fifty pounds of white limestone lumps. He raised the five-gallon bucket of freezing spring water and tipped it directly onto the dry stones.
For three seconds, nothing happened.
A nervous murmur rippled through the exiles.
Then, deep within the vat, a low growl began. It was like winter ice cracking on a lake, followed by a violent, ticking hiss.
CRACK. CRACKLE... KABOOM!
The white stones swelled, fractured, and blew up into boiling white slurry!
With an ear-splitting roar, towering clouds of blinding white fiery steam erupted out of the vat, mushrooming twelve feet into the autumn sky! The water within boiled with fiery violence, churning into a thick, milky cooking pot of scalding skin-burning lye that hissed and spat against the oak staves.
Heat rolled across the yard in a wave of dry, bitter-salt warmth.
Sister Teresa fell to her knees in the clay, hands raised in thrilled adoration.
“The Holy White Dragon’s Breath!” Teresa screamed, wiping stinging bitter-salt vapor from her eyes with her soot-caked sleeve. “The Lord Master builder has summoned the Dragon of the Deep Earth! The stone drinks cold water and gives birth to sky flame! See the Purifying Fog! The unseen demons of rot shriek and die!”
“It isn’t a dragon, Teresa,” Giles coughed. He waved bitter-salt steam away with his slouch hat. “It’s standard hydration of calcium oxide into calcium hydroxide. The chemical bond releases massive heat energy. Hook your slurry lance to the vat before the heat drops below effective sterilization levels!”
Teresa surged to her feet like a crusader charging an infidel city. She hoisted the salvaged brass orchard sprayer she had overhauled with oilskin seals and plunged her copper drain tube directly into the bubbling white cooking pot.
Working the side-lever with rhythmic power—CH-CHUNK, CH-CHUNK, CH-CHUNK—she high-pressure the twin copper tanks. The heavy brass pressure gauge hissed, needle trembling in the red arc.
She gripped the brass lance, locking her breathing mask over her nose.
“Lead me to the dens of pestilence!” Teresa bellowed through the brass grille of her mask. “The Holy Cistern demands payback!”
“Target the privy pits!” Giles shouted, pointing his wooden ruler. “Coat the pit walls! Saponify the fecal crust! Don’t leave a single square inch untreated!”
Teresa sprinted across the dry yard, her brass-nozzled lance leveled like a cavalry pike.
She reached the first stale privy pit, where black flies swarmed over rancid sludge.
Teresa clamped her boots into the clay and squeezed the bronze trigger.
PSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH!
A roaring, scalding jet of three-hundred-degree, milky-white skin-burning whitewash erupted from the lance with the force of a battering ram!
The white-hot lime struck the fecal mire with an explosive hiss.
SIZZZZLE!
Instantly, the foul sludge flashed into boiling foam. Maggots and bacterial colonies curled and crumbled in fractions of a second under the onslaught of pH 12.5 alkalinity and scalding heat. The cloud of flies was burned up mid-air, tumbling like black cinders into the white froth.
“Die, unseen legions of pestilence!” Teresa roared, sweeping the brass lance in wide arcs. “Holy alkalinity consumes you! The White Dragon cleanses the earth!”
CH-CHUNK, CH-CHUNK—PSSSSSSSH!
From pit to pit she marched like an angel of chemical doom. It blasted each rancid trench with torrents of scalding, foaming lime slurry. Behind her, Kenneth’s squads followed with shovels, burying the stopped pits under six inches of dense blue clay and fresh crushed shale, capping the latrines into clean, odor-free sanitary trenches.
Within forty minutes, all six privy pits were purged, sterilized, and permanently sealed.
The rotten-egg latrine foul fog that had threatened to suffocate Rustgate was fully wiped out. In its place hung the crisp, dry, stone scent of hot stone, river water, and fresh-baked lime.
A tall woman with silver-streaked hair pulled into a severe bun stepped from the administration lean-to. Lady Millicent Croft, Giles’s aunt and Dowager Comptroller of Grey Crag, adjusted her horn-rimmed glasses and sniffed the cold autumn air with sharp skepticism.
In her hands, she held a massive, pigskin-bound thick parchment tally-book, its double-entry columns ruled with careful care. She dabbed her steel pen against an ink-blotter and looked across the yard at her nephew.
“Four barrels of white powder and three cords of scrap deadfall expended,” Millicent announced, her clipped rhythm cutting through the lingering hisses of steam. “The camp smells of crushed quarry rock instead of an open tomb. For once, Giles, your bizarre exact manias have saved the household treasury. If dysentery had broken out, linen and spirit-extract claims alone would have bankrupted our winter reserves. I have credited your account with twelve silver shillings of avoided medical debt.”
“Thank you, Aunt Millicent,” Giles sighed, wiping burning lime powder dust from his duster. “Though technically it’s a preventative sanitation waste, not a surplus credit.”
Before Giles could explain the difference between capital improvement and working cost mitigation, the amber system screen exploded into golden light before his eyes.
The exiles breathed deeply, filling their lungs with clean, cool air. Cheering began to rise again—until a sharp military whistle shattered the morning calm.
FWEEEEEEET!
Captain Kenneth Drake sprang to the northern wooden wall low roof wall, his face instantly draining of color. “Riders approaching! Northern track!”
The camp fell dead silent.
Through the thinning birch mist at the forest edge, the rhythmic, heavy clatter of iron-shod warhorse hooves struck the frozen gravel with arrogant rhythm.
Six heavy cavalrymen emerged from the gloom, clad in greasy boiled-leather brigandines and iron skull-caps, armed with heavy steel crossbows and cruel flanged maces.
At their head rode a massive, bloated figure wrapped in beaver-fur mantles, sitting atop a foam-flecked black courser with spiked iron barding. The rider’s small, pig-like eyes squinted across the yard with calculating malice, a jagged scar splitting his lip into a smirk.
In his gauntlet, he held a heavy rawhide bullwhip braided with lead wire.
CRACK!
The whip lashed out, striking his saddle cantle with the ear-splitting report of a pistol shot, sending crows screeching from the spruce boughs.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” the fat man sneered, his oily voice carrying across the wooden wall. “The banished runt of House Croft has learned to dig in the dirt.”
Royal Guard Orwen Skag spat a glob of brown tobacco juice against the gatepost, his yellow teeth bared in an extortionist’s grin.
“Open the gates, Lord Baron! The Crown’s audit has arrived—and your winter tax is past due!”