The explosion of the central granary transformed the lower bailey of Blood Wolf Castle into a swirling vortex of fire, sulfur gas, and blind living panic.
Within three minutes of the blast, the three hundred bundles of dry alpine rye grass and threshing straw had ignited into a solid wall of orange flame forty feet high. Driven by the fifteen-mile-per-hour northwest wind, the fire leaped the ten-pace gap to the wooden barracks, the split-pine shingles curling, blackening, and catching in a roaring wave of heat destruction.
Worse than the flames was the sulfur gas.
The three jars of wolf-bile powder had atomized upon blast, saturating the enclosed stone bailey in a dense, yellow-grey fog of sulfur dioxide and capsaicin vapors. The heavy gas pooled along the ground. It poured through barracks windows, stable doors, and air-flow cracks.
To the human breathing system, the gas was pure torment.
Dozens of bandits tumbled from their bunkhouses into the snowy yard, clad only in linen undergarments, their eyes swollen shut and streaming with tears, their lungs convulsing as they coughed up frothing pink sputum. The capsaicin dust clung to their sweaty skin, inducing burning chemical dermatitis that felt like scalding oil.
In the blinding smoke, men couldn’t see three paces ahead.
