Dynamic moving impact was only terrifying. Just then, the receiving structure relied upon flexural bending to resist the load.
If a barrier redirected lateral shock directly into the crushing heavy rush of a solid mountain, the heaviest iron ram behaved like a pewter spoon striking a granite boulder.
In the enclosed stone entry hall of the outer gatehouse, forty desperate men threw their bodies against the mid-air ropes of the three-ton battering ram.
Trapped between the locked outer drop-gate behind them and the towering inner drop-gate ahead, panic had replaced discipline.
“Pull,” the scarred giant sub-chief shouted, his veins bulging like ropes against his neck. “Heave back. Put your backs into the hemp.”
The thirty-foot oak tree trunk swung backward on its heavy iron trace chains. It rose six feet into the air.
At the apex of its arc, the eight-hundred-pound iron wolf skull hung suspended beneath the curved oak roof.
“Release.”
The forty pushers lunged forward, throwing their entire driving force behind the dropping timber.
The three-ton mass sped up down its swinging weight arc, rushing forward at eighteen feet per second.
Fifteen thousand foot-pounds of dynamic striking force slammed directly into the center of the inner iron drop-gate.
BOOOOOOM.
The impact was a mountain-shattering thunderclap.
A blast wave of displaced air blew through the iron grating, extinguishing three torches on the inner raised stone road and sending a cloud of crushed rust into the hall.
The heavy iron bars groaned with a deep, ringing shaking that rang through the stone foundations.
Behind the grate, Captain Kenneth Drake and his ten guards dug their heels into the granite floor, their shields raised to deflect flying iron flakes.
Beside Kenneth, Master Caleb Thorne-Wood stood with his hand pressed firmly against the twelve-inch slanted ash timber shores bracing the rear of the gate posts.
“Check the folding wedges, Caleb,” Kenneth called out, his voice steady through the ringing noise.
Caleb tapped the oak wedges driven beneath the timber thrust shoes with a wooden mallet.
The seasoned ash timbers, twelve inches square and sixteen feet long, were bedded into lead-lined sockets blasted into the living solid mountain stone.
“Wedges haven’t budged a hairline,” Caleb reported, slapping the timber post with a grin. “The wood absorbed the first shaking, but the bedrock is taking the load. The stone doesn’t even shudder. It’s like ramming a mountain.”
Up in the overhead murder-hole gallery, Giles Croft leaned over the sighting rail, calmly holding his brass dial indicator against the upper stonework top door beam.
He read the small needle bending on the silver scale.
“Measured lateral shifted weight: forty-five thousandths of an inch,” Giles announced in his steady, cold and exact voice. “Allowable elastic bending is half an inch. Load-bearing shear strain is sitting at fourteen percent of design capacity.”
Master Duncan Stone-Splitter stood beside Giles, his palm pressed against the warm water-setting concrete arch.
“Crushing arch mechanics,” Duncan chuckled, wiping granite dust from his leather apron. “The iron bars don’t take the hit alone. When the ram strikes the gate, the load transfers through the four-inch iron side-pins directly into the curved volcanic cement thrust blocks chiseled into the bedrock. The harder they hit, the tighter the stone locks together.”
“Exactly,” Giles said, jotting the reading on his clipboard. “The striking force is converted into crushing ground stress. This is standard bridge pillar physics. Unless they can generate eighty thousand pounds of nonstop high-pressure thrust, that ram can’t breach this portal.”
Down in the entry hall below, the bandit sub-chief stared at the unmoving iron grid in horror.
The massive iron wolf skull had struck the center bars at full speed.
The drop-gate had not buckled. It hadn’t bent. It had merely rung like an anvil.
On the ram itself, two of the forged iron mid-air straps had stretched under the violent rebound. A dozen oak retaining pegs had snapped off. That left the tree trunk hanging crookedly on its chains.
“Again,” the sub-chief croaked, spitting blood where his lip had split against a shield boss. “Pull it back. Hit it again. We have to break through.”
The pushers scrambled back to the ropes, their boots slipping on the bloody slush of the floor.
They hauled the heavy oak trunk backward once more.
“Heave.”
BOOOOOOM.
The second blow struck with painful violence.
This time, the oak frame of the battering ram itself began to disintegrate under the shock of its own moving rebound.
A three-foot split cracked along the belly of the main ash carriage. A shower of bronze bolts popped from the corner gussets, clattering against the stone floor.
The inner drop-gate remained fully stationary.
Not a single stone in the arch had shifted.
The raiders stopped, panting, wheezing, and staring at the impervious iron barrier with hollow, terror-stricken eyes.
They were trapped in a stone tomb ten feet wide and thirty feet long. They were surrounded by smooth, windowless granite walls that rose twenty feet to a vaulted ceiling.
Then a cold, metal click echoed from above.
The raiders slowly looked upward.
Through the box-shaped murder holes in the ceiling vault, the flared bronze muzzles of the two Blunderbore Canister Batterers were slowly tilting downward.
Master Borin Bronze-Lung stood in the overhead gallery. His thick hands gripped the heavy bronze pivot pin levers.
Beside him, Toby Karr checked the wadding on the north gun with a wooden rammer.
“Breech seals seated, Lord Giles,” Toby reported. “Two-inch felt wads soaked in beef animal fat. The gas seal holds up to fifteen thousand pounds of pressure of burning pressure.”
“Sound decibel management,” Giles added, demonstrating the ear protection to Toby. “Discharging three pounds of black powder in an enclosed stone chamber generates a sound pressure wave exceeding one hundred and eighty decibels. In a confined hall, sound waves reflect repeatedly between the granite walls with zero sound attenuation.”
Toby adjusted the thick wool pads over his ears, tying the leather chinstrap tight.
“Will it burst their ears, Lord Giles?” Toby asked, his voice muffled behind the pads.
“It induces temporary bone-shaking shock and inner-ear vestibular disruption,” Giles explained. “The fluid in their half-round canals will be thrown into violent back-and-forth swing, causing acute loss of motor balance and immediate physical disorientation. They will be entirely incapable of coordinated physical combat for at least twenty minutes.”
Borin carefully inspected the flash pan of the north gun with a small copper probe.
“Inverted funnel touch-hole,” Borin showed Toby, pointing to the narrowed orifice in the bronze breech. “The powder channel widens toward the chamber. That vents the main burning pressure down the barrel rather than blowing flame up into our faces. The dwarf guilds learned that lesson after thirty smiths lost their eyebrows in the old mines.”
Borin racked the height wedges until both four-hundred-pound barrels were locked at a steep eighty-degree angle. He pointed directly into the center of the trapped crowd.
“Chambers locked and depressed, Lord Giles,” Borin called out, his voice echoing down through the grates like a death sentence. “Target spread covers every square foot of the hall floor. Six hundred and forty iron marbles sitting right above their crowns.”
The trapped raiders went berserk with animal panic.
“They’re above us,” a man screamed. He dropped his broadsword and clawing at the smooth granite wall. “The ceiling. Look at the ceiling.”
Men threw themselves beneath the timber carriage of the battering ram, wedging their bodies into the muddy slush under the wheels.
Others crouched low, raising their iron shields above their heads, forming a desperate, trembling roof of overlapping steel.
The scarred sub-chief backed against the locked outer drop-gate. His double-bitted axe fell from his numb fingers.
He looked up through the iron grating, his eyes meeting Giles Croft’s calm, impassive gaze.
“Mercy,” the sub-chief croaked, his voice cracking into a ragged whisper. “We yield... By the gods, we yield...”
From the gallery above, Giles looked down at the huddled, terror-stricken mass of one hundred and fifty men.
Giles pulled his pocket watch and checked the time.
Nine o’clock.
Beside him, Sister Teresa held a bronze pitcher of sanctified river water, her knuckles white as she leaned over the opening.
Her face was drawn tight, torn between her righteous fury at the defilers and the horrific, butcher-shop slaughter about to unfold in the stone box below.
“Lord Giles,” Teresa murmured, her voice trembling slightly. “They have dropped their weapons. They cower beneath their shields.”
Lady Millicent Croft stepped up from the spiral stair. She held her accounting ledger open against her arm.
“One hundred and fifty able-bodied male laborers,” Millicent noted quietly, adjusting her reading glasses. “If they survive this engagement, their labor value over a five-year payback sentence exceeds nine thousand gold sovereigns in quarried granite, canal ditching, and timber clearance. If they’re crushed by canister shot, their scrap value is zero.”
Giles looked at the open murder holes, then at Captain Kenneth Drake, who was watching from behind the inner drop-gate.
“If we discharge six hundred and forty chilled iron shot into an enclosed stone vault,” Giles calculated aloud in his dry, analytical tone, “rebound fragmentation thickness achieves one hundred percent target coverage. In an enclosed space twenty feet long, ricochets off the granite walls and floor will turn every living entity within that chamber into minced protein within half a second.”
Borin frowned, holding the twin firing lanyards taut. “That’s what the guns were built for, lad. To clean the hallway.”
“A weapon is built to achieve a working objective, Borin,” Giles replied calmly. “The objective is the neutralization of the enemy’s assault capacity and the preservation of our town outer edge. Annihilating one hundred and fifty captured laborers who have already dropped their weapons is an unnecessary destruction of productive economic capital.”
Borin blinked, looking down through the hole, then back at Giles. “You mean... We don’t blow them to scrap?”
“We discharge one round,” Giles decided. He pointed his wooden ruler at the solid oak roof of the battering ram carriage. “North gun only. Train the muzzle directly upon the mid-air chains of the ram. We wipe out the siege engine and shock the occupants into total submission without turning the chamber into a butcher shop.”
Borin’s eyes widened, then a slow, respectful grin spread across his bearded face. “Blow the engine to sawdust right over their heads. Break their nerve without breaking their hides.”
“Exactly,” Giles said. “Non-lethal sound and moving excess pressure.”
He turned to the upper gallery crew.
“Kenneth, ensure your men face away from the gate and shield their eyes. Ear-plugs seated.”
Giles raised his right hand above the north firing lanyard.
Below in the entry hall, one hundred and fifty men held their breath beneath their shields. They stared up into the yawning black maw of the bronze barrel.
“Clear the backblast area,” Giles commanded.
He brought his hand down with sharp, unhesitating care.
“Fire.”