The blueprint was not drawn on parchment. It was chalked directly onto the soot-blackened cast-iron floor of the deep earth-heat foundry.
Marshal Ren stood with a five-foot chunk of soft river-slate in his callused gauntlet. He swept white lines across the iron plates with the furious, violent speed of a man racing an avalanche. His heavy canvas engineer’s coat was stripped off. He showed a sleeveless undershirt of grease-stained wool and broad shoulders crisscrossed with purple shrapnel scars. Over his brow, his brass rangefinder glasses gleamed in the orange glare of the smelting vents.
“Fourteen feet in total length,” the Marshal barked, the chalk screeching against the iron. “A core of solid, cold-drawn hard dark metal steel forged from the axle-trees of the heavy ore wagons. A five-inch width solid shaft, fluted with four spiral blood-grooves to vent crushing pressure upon penetration. And the head...”
The Marshal slammed the chalk down, drawing an acute, four-faceted diamond point that ended in three reverse-angled clockwork barbs.
“The head is three hundred pounds of case-hardened tool steel, tipped with a diamond-ground penetrator and bored hollow to hold twenty pounds of potion-made exploding salts. It doesn’t shatter on armor plate. It punches through four inches of rolled river-steel, trips a heavy rush fuse inside the framing, and deploys the barbs behind the dreadnought’s main king-posts.”
