They stood at the plaza, accepting the accolades of the throng, for nearly half an hour, until people pressed so close that the honor guard of Rose Knights from the Palanthian Legion was forced back almost to the door of the little church. Before the couple turned to reenter the chapel, Jaymes leaned over and spoke briefly to the captain of the honor guard.
“Have the legion assemble outside the city tonight, in bivouac,” he said. “We march for the plains at first light.”
“As you command, my Lord Marshal,” replied the captain, awed and overwhelmed by his new leader. He and his men had been forced to cool their heels in the city for the past two years, while their counterparts in the three armies had been waging a glorious campaign for Solamnia. Now they would see action at last!
By the time the doors closed behind Jaymes and Selinda, the captain was already gathering his lieutenants, issuing orders, and ensuring the lord marshal’s command would be immediately obeyed.
The lights winked out in the great manor on Nobles Hill, except for the pale glow that emanated from the central alcove in the wizard’s laboratory. The image in the bowl had just been displaying the plaza, with its cheering throng and the newlywed couple, and now it returned to the interior view of the chapel of Kiri-Jolith, following through the door as Jaymes and Selinda passed inside, away from the adoring crowd.
The white wizard was very still as she watched the image, her hands tightening into white-knuckled fists that gripped each side of the porcelain bowl. Coryn watched as the couple passed into a darkened hallway, toward a side door that would emerge onto a quiet street where a carriage awaited, the conveyance that would take them up the hill to the regent’s palace for their wedding night.
Before they reached the door, the white wizard saw, Selinda paused and pulled on Jaymes’s arm to stop him. She looked up at him, her eyes, her whole face, radiating a transcendent happiness. With a sly smile-a smile Coryn had seen many times, very near to her own mouth-the lord marshal leaned down and kissed his bride. He gathered her into his strong arms in an embrace. The princess pulled him even closer, her arms reaching around his neck, pulling him down as they pressed their lips together.
Coryn splashed the wine with her fist, scattering the liquid around the room. Then she put her face into her hands and cried.
The next morning Jaymes rode out before dawn. The legion camp was already astir, as Captains Weaver and Roman had anticipated their new commander’s arrival.
“Tell me your numbers,” the lord marshal said as he dismounted, accepting a cup of steaming tea hurriedly brought by a captain’s aide.
“We have a little more than a thousand Knights of the Rose,” reported Weaver, “two thousand pikes, an equal number of longbows, and better than three thousand militia swordsmen, in companies of three hundred men apiece.”
“Good,” said the lord marshal. “Weaver, I hereby promote you to general. Captain Roman, you will be second in command. The legion will now be known as the Army of Palanthas, and we will be marching over the High Clerist’s Pass to the Vingaard and beyond.”
“Yes, my lord! Thank you!” declared the two officers.
“Now, let’s get these troops on the way. We have a war to win.”
CHAPTER TWENTY — THREE
‘Do you think it has a chance of working this time?” Sulfie asked, eyeing the bombard weapon skeptically. The weapon was a massive tube, half again as long as the previous versions and somewhat thicker. It was angled slightly upward, the muzzle facing in the general direction of a small lake in the valley below. “Even with all the extra steel holding the boards together, I’m not sure it will be enough.”
“All we can do is ram a ball down the barrel and see what happens,” the mountain dwarf replied philosophically. “But if this one doesn’t work, I’m not sure we’re ever going to be able to get something we can use.”
The bombard was set up on a low ridge beside the New Compound. The target range was downstream of the town and industrial complex, a shallow body of water marked by lily pads and few floating geese who were-they hoped-about to be startled out of their reverie. The already thriving town snaked along the valley floor below them, a swath of wooden buildings, smoking foundries, and storage yards that was already larger than the original Compound in the Vingaard range.
In a matter of only three weeks, the whole place had sprung into existence, transforming a pastoral wilderness into a smoking, churning manufacturing center. Houses for the workers were still going up, a dozen of them every day, but the production facilities were going strong. Charcoal was being rendered in long fire sheds, and great mixing chambers measured and prepared the charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter in proper proportions to create the black powder.
One reason for the increased size of the installation was the enthusiastic participation of the dwarves of Kaolyn. No doubt inspired by the new market for their steel, that alloy of legendary strength and flexibility, the dwarf king himself had taken an interest in Dram’s endeavors. He had sent several master smiths and stone carvers, as well as miners and forgers, to work in the New Compound-for very good wages, of course.
Soon after the manufacturing was under way, Dram had received word from the Solamnic Armies. The lord marshal was marching overland from Palanthas, leading a large reinforcement of fresh troops, the Palanthian Legion, to join the forces in the field. The mountain dwarf knew that battle was imminent, and any help from the New Compound was urgent.
Rogard Smashfinger, the emissary of the king of Kaolyn, had climbed the ridge to join Dram and Sulfie and a host of hill dwarf laborers, for the experimental firing. Now they stood about, impatient and agitated, waiting for this crucial test. “If this doesn’t work,” Dram had confided, “we’ll be looking at next year before we can make another try.”
The tube itself was considerably modified from the barrel that had exploded in the Vingaards, regretfully claiming the life of Sulfie’s brother, Salty Pete. There were twice as many steel bands around this device, and the ironwood logs were fitted together with tongue-in-groove carvings that ensured even more of the pressure from the blast would be contained. Furthermore, Dram had assigned the Kaolyn stone carvers to carve boulders in perfect spheres, in the exact dimensions of the weapon’s bore. He had already assembled dozens of potential missiles and now only awaited the successful test of the actual weapon.
The fuses, too, had been radically improved. After much experimentation, using the usual trial-and-error method, they had learned that by soaking the twine in a salty brine before infusing it with powder, they could regulate more carefully the flammability of the long strings. No longer did they find, by accident, that an occasional fuse would burn furiously fast or refuse to ignite at all. Now the crucial igniting component of the bombard had been standardized so that every one of the fuses burned predictably.
The black powder itself still possessed the potential for unpredictability. But now all the grains of the ingredients had been ground to standard specifications, and the mixing process had become more efficient and tightly controlled. With careful inspection of the raw materials, still more inconsistencies had been weeded out of the process.
Finally all preparations were complete. The barrel was propped on a heavy wagon, the wheels braced and staked, the end of the weapon elevated to almost a forty-five degree angle.
“Isn’t Sally coming to see the demonstration?” Sulfie asked, looking down the path to the town. They could see the whole mile of the route, and there was no one visible wending their way up to the ridge. “Do you want to wait until she shows up?”