A moving siege engine was not a monster possessing supernatural life-force.
It was an unstable assemblage of space-folding timber, wooden pins, and iron strap-work held in fragile balance against terrestrial gravity.
In the north castle wall, the heavy twisting force springald sat on its bronze turntable casters, its polished oak bow-arms drawn back by braided skeins of sinew and horsehair.
Master Borin Bronze-Lung cranked the iron winding winch until the ratchet pawl gave its twenty-second sharp click.
Beside the weapon, Giles Croft knelt behind the sighting scope, his fine measuring tongs checking the height index.
Across the snow-covered plain, three hundred yards away, Siege Tower Alpha lumbered forward at two miles per hour.
Its eight massive ash wheels churned through eight inches of fresh powder snow. That left deep ruts in the frozen turf.
Forty armored cutthroats crowded the open crow’s nest thirty feet above the ground, their composite bows loosing scattered high-angle volleys toward the granite walls.
Below the tower, twenty men on long push-poles strained all at once, urged on by a screaming sub-chief with a drawn broadsword.
“Range three hundred yards,” Giles said, his voice flat and analytical. “Target Cairn Three. Sighting directly on the front-left wheel axle hub.”
Kenneth Drake stood beside the carriage, his scarred face tight with concentration.
“Why the hub, Lord Giles?” Kenneth asked. “Why not loose into the upper fighting deck and sweep the archers?”
“End-post smooth speed,” Giles replied, without looking away from the aiming cross. “Shooting into the upper crow’s nest neutralizes at most one or two enemy archers per bolt, leaving eighty-four load-bearing members intact. Destroying the front-left wheel hub removes the forward bearing pivot. The balance point does the rest.”
“Air thickness correction,” Giles continued, checking his brass heat gauge and pocket barometer. “The surrounding heat is twenty-two below zero. Cold air is fifteen percent denser than standard air at seventy degrees. That increases wind-cutting drag on the fletchings and lowers the end-post flight path.”
Borin leaned over the height side, his squinted eyes watching the engraved degree markings.
“So we give her more loft?” Borin asked, holding the fine shift wrench.
“Standard range table for three hundred yards calls for nineteen point five degrees,” Giles said. He slid his brass fine-scale index along the arc. “With cold-air drag compensation, we need exactly twenty-two point zero degrees. Set the height worm gear to twenty-two degrees flat, and lock the brass jam-nut.”
Borin turned the worm screw, the fine threads clicking smoothly against the side teeth.
Beside the carriage, Master Duncan Stone-Splitter inspected the twisted twisting force skeins.
The two upright bundles of braided horsehair, ox sinew, and boiled hemp were five inches thick. It was bound in heavy bronze collars.
“Skeins are supple,” Duncan reported, wiping neat’s-foot oil over the cords with a rag. “The animal fat keeps the sinew from freezing stiff in the frost. Three thousand two hundred pounds of stored elastic strain sitting in these frames. Ready to sing.”
Giles looked out toward the three stone survey cairns erected along the approach plain during the autumn survey.
Cairn One sat at one hundred yards, topped with a red flag. Cairn Two stood at two hundred yards with a yellow marker. Cairn Three sat at exactly three hundred yards, topped with a broad white stone.
“Wait for the front wheel to align with Cairn Three,” Giles instructed. “The marker eliminates all range estimation guesswork.”
Giles checked the crosshairs through the sighting scope.
“Front wheel crossing Cairn Three boundary,” Giles commanded. “Compass bearing compensation half a turn west. Line clear.”
Kenneth stepped to the trigger lanyard.
“Gun clear,” Kenneth called out.
He pulled the braided leather cord.
THWIP-CRACK.
The heavy twisting force bow-arms slammed forward against their padded stops with a bone-shattering snap.
The nine-pound sabot bolt flashed down the bronze trough like a streak of gray lightning.
Fifteen paces downrange, the two pine sabot halves peeled away into the freezing wind, fluttering harmlessly to the snow.
The six-foot mountain ash shaft screamed across the three hundred yards of empty air. It spun at forty turns a second as its three-degree copper fins gripped the freezing air.
To the naked eye on the castle walls, the projectile was a gray blur.
Then, three hundred yards away, sound caught up with driving force.
KABOOM.
The impact echoed across the frozen valley like a lightning strike on dry timber.
The chisel-pointed tool-steel head didn’t glance off the seasoned oak.
It struck the twelve-inch solid oak wheel hub dead center at two hundred and forty feet per second.
Nine hundred foot-pounds of packed striking force drove the hardened wedge through four inches of seasoned timber, shattering the bronze axle bushing into shrapnel and splitting the oak hub into four smoking wedges.
The front-left wheel exploded into jagged splinters.
The heavy iron axle dropped eighteen inches onto the frozen gravel with a sickening, earth-shaking crunch.
The result of an eighteen-ton moving structure losing a main forward bearing at two miles per hour was immediate and total.
The rear wheels continued rolling forward under driving force.
The front-left corner plowed deep into the snow, acting as a sudden, rigid brake.
The eighteen-ton tower lurched wildly to the left.
The balance point, perched twenty-two feet above the frozen ground, exceeded the righting lever arm of the wheel track.
For one painful heartbeat, the thirty-five-foot pine tower hung suspended at a forty-five-degree angle against the gray morning sky.
Dozens of armed raiders screamed as their bows, spears, and iron shields spilled from the upper crow’s nest like hail.
Then load-bearing gravity claimed its debt.
With an ear-splitting, groaning roar of tearing tenons and snapping iron straps, Siege Tower Alpha collapsed sideways into the frozen gully.
CRUNCH-THUD.
The huge engine crumbled upon the granite boulders at the bottom of the ravine.
Thirty-five feet of timber shattered into thousands of jagged spars, crushed ox-hide mantlets, and splintered ladders.
A massive cloud of white snow, crushed pine, and dust billowed fifty feet into the air.
For three seconds, total silence fell over the battlefield.
Then Captain Kenneth Drake let out a roar of savage triumph that echoed from the mountain cliffs.
“THREE HUNDRED YARDS!” Kenneth roared, slamming his iron-shod pacing rod against the stone low roof wall. “DEAD ON THE AXLE! BROKE IT LIKE A DRY TWIG!”
Master Borin let out a booming laugh, slapping Kenneth so hard on the iron pauldrons that the armor rang.
“That’s how we drop timber in the mountains, lad!” Borin shouted, grinning from ear to ear. “One shot, eighteen tons of matchwood! That’ll teach the swine to build with green pine!”
On the castle walls, sixty guard post defenders cheered until their throats burned. They waved their bows in the freezing air.
Giles stood quietly at the sighting station, his brass measuring tongs resting in his hand.
He looked through the telescope at the shattered wreckage in the ravine.
Between the crushed timbers, wounded men were crawling through the snow, clutching broken limbs and dragging themselves away from the collapsed mass.
Others lay motionless beneath the fallen baulks.
Giles felt a quiet, heavy tightness in his chest.
Kenneth was celebrating the arithmetic of slaughter, but to Giles, the sight was a sober reminder of physical consequences.
Those sixty men had not vanished into a statistical math. They were broken bodies freezing on the mountain stone.
“Kenneth,” Giles said, his voice quiet but sharp enough to cut through the captain’s celebration.
Kenneth turned, his laughter fading as he saw the engineer’s serious eyes.
“Lord Giles?”
“Re-arm the north springald right away,” Giles commanded. “And instruct Sister Teresa to prepare extra splints and stretchers. When this engagement concludes, we send rescue details into that gully. Any wounded man who surrenders is brought in and treated.”
Kenneth’s jaw tightened, then he nodded with disciplined restraint. “Understood, Lord Baron. Racking bolt two.”
Master Duncan walked over from the next-door wall-walk. He held his stonemason’s rule and peeked through the smoke toward the ravine.
“Green ash timber,” Duncan observed, spitting over the coping stone. “They turned that axle out of green unseasoned ash. Strong enough to hold up thirty tons under static downward weight, but fully brittle against a dynamic point-load. That chisel head didn’t just break the wood. It induced instant outward shattering through the grain.”
“Impact fracture mechanics,” Giles agreed, noting the failure mode on his pad. “Under packed moving shock, green wood lacks internal stretch. The sideways tearing force exceeded the ultimate yield strength of the ash wooden peg by a factor of four.”
Down in the castle wall magazine, Lady Millicent Croft checked off the shot in her munitions register.
“One armor-piercing sabot bolt expended,” Millicent announced, dipping her quill into the ink-horn. “Forty-nine bolts leftover in the north magazine, fifty in the south. Commodity waste: two shillings four pence in tool steel, copper, and cured ash. Value of destroyed enemy siege asset: estimated at four hundred gold sovereigns.”
“A favorable rate of asset destruction,” Giles commented, sliding his fine-scale back into its case. “However, siege engines don’t operate autonomously. The crew running the second tower is adjusting their approach path.”
Toby Karr and two gunners slid another six-foot armor-piercing bolt into the bronze carriage, winding the crank with practiced speed.
Giles walked to the southern corner of the castle wall. He peeked through his field glasses toward the center of the plain.
The destruction of Siege Tower Alpha had halted the enemy’s flanking assault. But Warlord Bronn was not retreating.
Across the snow, Siege Tower Two was continuing its advance, protected by two dozen heavy iron-faced tall body-shield mantlets.
More critically, Bronn’s main siege weapon had deployed onto the main raised stone road.
A three-ton iron-headed battering ram, slung from a massive wheeled timber carriage clad in double-layered green ox-hides, was rolling steadily toward the outer gatehouse.
Forty armored shock troops pushed behind the ram’s timber mantlets, their boots thudding all at once on the paved approach road.
Behind them rode Warlord Bronn on his black destrier, his burning greatsword trailing smoke in the winter air.
“Ram crew advancing on the outer raised stone road,” Kenneth reported. He stepped to the center low roof wall. “They’re heading straight for the gate.”
Giles checked the posture of the outer wooden doors through the murder-hole slot.
The heavy oak leaves remained slightly ajar, swinging five inches open in the freezing wind.
“Everything proceeds according to layout,” Giles said calmly. “The outer gate is unbarred. They will bypass the frozen moat entirely and drive their three-ton ram directly into the outer gatehouse entry hall.”
Borin wiped a smudge of charcoal from his nose, his dark eyes gleaming with wicked excitement.
“Straight into the parlor,” Borin chuckled, resting his hand on the firing lanyards of the two Blunderbore Canister Batterers. “Let them bring their little iron ram inside. The Dragon’s Mouth is loaded and hungry.”
Giles looked down at the empty stone entry hall below.
“Kenneth, take your ten men and position yourselves behind the inner iron drop-gate. When the ram’s nose crosses the threshold, drop the outer gate.”