Four hundred paces above the choked cellars of the fort, Captain Arda Dorn threw her shoulder into the bronze wheel of The Boar.
Her field boots slid in the yellow trench muck, the greasy clay slopping over the tops of her leather gaiters as the four-hundred-pound gun carriage kicked against her weight. The bronze tube was still smoking from the rogue discharge, the metal hot enough to scorch the wet wool of her coat through the sleeve. Beside her, Battery-Chief Gant dropped his massive bulk across the left carriage cheek, his bare forearms corded with purple veins as he clamped the spoked wheel in a bear-hug.
“Joss!” Gant roared, his voice cracking from the fumes of the burning wadding. “Drive it! The vent is clear! Drive the cold iron home!”
Soldier Joss went in under the breech on his stomach.
He did not look at the smoke blowing back into the pit or the terrified conscripts who were still tumbling backward into the drainage ditch. In his left hand, Joss held a six-inch tapered iron wedge—a split-pin from the limber-box, forged out of cold scrap iron with a blunt head. In his right hand, he reversed his camp bread knife, gripping the willow-leaf blade in his scarred palm so the heavy, iron-riveted wooden scales of the butt could serve as a mallet.
