The lip of the bronze tube was cold enough to frost the mud on Captain Arda Dorn’s knuckles.
She did not touch the metal. She kept her hands open at her sides, her feet driven three inches into the greasy clay where the gun carriage had churned the slope into porridge. The bore smelled of stale grease, cold vinegar, and the foul sulphur crust left behind by the morning’s testing rounds. At this distance—three feet from the yawning mouth of the mortar—a man did not see a weapon; he saw an empty iron bucket tipped toward his ribs, waiting for fire.
Across the breech, Deputy Parget’s fingers were white where he had clamped them around the hemp firing cord.
“Die with your rebels, then!” Parget shouted again. His boot slipped on the wet carriage cheek, throwing his weight backward, but his wrist snapped taut to pull the friction-tube.
Dorn did not close her eyes. In twenty-four years of service across the Nine Roads, she had watched thirty men take grapeshot at close range; closing the eyes changed nothing about the iron when it arrived. She held her breath, watching the brass head of the friction-tube inside the touch-hole begin to tilt under the tension of the cord.
