The king, with considerable input from his wife, had decided to move ahead on invasion plans by dividing the powder from the Alchemist into two different weapons. One was small, a bell-shaped chalice designed to blast away the gates of Brackenrock and allow the ogre troops to gain entrance to the courtyard and the keep. There, Stariz’s spies had confirmed, the Axe of Gonnas was displayed above the great hearth, and she was determined that the hallowed artifact be retrieved.
After that, the main power of the Alchemist’s discovery would be brought to bear, enclosed in a round sphere of metal that the Alchemist had dubbed the Golden Orb. This weapon was a large sphere of pure gold, hollowed to contain the powder and a bottle of magic potion. When the orb was pitched into a target by catapult, the container would break, and the mixing of the potion with powder would detonate the full power of destruction.
The chalice intended for the initial attack was a small, trumpet-shaped cup of pure gold, currently gleaming on the smith’s anvil. The orb, in two hollow halves, sat nearby. When the two halves were fused together, it would weigh more than one hundred pounds and form a perfectly spherical shape.
Both vessels had been shaped precisely to the specifications laid down by Queen Stariz. The stem of the chalice was molded into a grooved mount upon a block of square granite, the heavy stone forming a solid anchor for the tall, flaring vessel. Right now the object sat on an anvil beside the forge, with the furnace doors open, blue-yellow flames flickering eerily from the coal. The smith, a burly human slave, applied foot pressure to the bellows, and the flames increased to white heat. His face was invisible behind a slit-eyed mask of steel, and his hands and forearms were protected by heavy leather gauntlets.
The dust, the treasure from the Alchemist, was now in both the chalice and the orb. Grimwar had watched his wife barely controlling the excited trembling of her hands as she poured the stuff into the two different vessels. She had taken care not to lose a single flake of the precious dust. The king had said nothing as she described to the smith the procedure for capping the potent powder in the chalice, but now he paid attention as the man carefully followed the queen’s instructions. The smith was preparing to seal up the cup, the first of the weapons to be completed.
The smith had a small disk of gold in his hand, a circle of metal with a slotted hole in the center. Now he pressed that plate down into the mouth of the goblet, and Stariz barked sharply. “The wick-don’t forget the wick!”
Grimwar knew that tone and bristled. The smith showed no irritation, merely nodded. “Of course, Lady Queen. I am merely checking to see the sizing is correct.”
“Very well,” she replied.
The man brought the disk out, then turned a valve and opened a small chute. Immediately a point of blue flame sprang up from the middle of the forge. This was a cutting flame, Grimwar knew. The smith held the golden disk in a small pair of tongs, masterfully rotating it so that the cutting flame sliced just a bit off the outer perimeter. Moments later, he pulled the plate aside, then took a slender bar of silver and inserted it through the slotted hole.
“The wick is installed, my queen,” the smith declared. “Pure magnesium. It will burn with a fire as hot as the sun.”
“Hotter still, when the dust takes light,” Stariz replied, with another lick of her lips. She almost smiled.
Quickly the smith pressed the disk down into the chalice, compressing the dust in the bottom. With practiced gestures the man took a small cup of molten gold and poured it carefully into the chalice, sealing the disk in place as the metal cooled. Finally he slammed the door to his furnace, immediately cooling the large chamber, and lifted his mask to regard the queen with a blank expression.
“It is finished, Lady Queen. The chalice may lay on its side or even upside down, and the dust is contained in the base. It is penetrated by the shaft of magnesium, and when that wick is ignited the fire will inevitably take its course. The granite gives it plenty of heft, of course, so that once the weapon is placed it will remain stationary.”
“To the orb, then,” the queen declared curtly. She produced a clear bottle that Grimwar saw was full of a cloudy liquid, the magic potion that would interact with the powder.
“Careful!” she snapped, as the smith took the vial, inspected the stopper-which was waxed in place-then carefully set it into the shell of half the orb.
Following Stariz’s instructions, the smith lifted the second half of the sphere into place, and used an oil torch to carefully fuse the two halves together with a bead of molten gold. When it was finished, Grimwar saw an object that looked almost innocently like a large child’s ball.
“You have done well,” Stariz said. The smith bowed and departed. He was a man with rare skills and a unique status among the slaves of Winterheim. He knew that he would collect a reward later. The queen turned to her husband.
“The weapons are prepared. We must depart for Brackenrock immediately.”
“One more day,” growled Grimwar Bane, in such a tone that his wife had to bite her tongue. “There are still preparations to be made, but the galleys will sail on the morning tide.”
“Very well,” she said, regarding him with that gaze that seemed to bore into the center of his being. “I will prepare for a departure on the morrow.”
The king nodded. He was not happy that his wife would accompany him on this campaign-she rarely journeyed onto the sea, and when she did she was invariably ill-tempered and demanding. All the same, he was glad to have her aboard the ship, for there was another reason, even more compelling, that he didn’t want to leave her behind when he embarked for war.
* * * * *
“How-how long will you be gone?”
Thraid was still pale from her spell of sickness, though she had smeared some rouge upon her round cheeks. The effect was rather garish, Grimwar thought, though he made no remark. Instead, he patted her hand and tried to answer her question.
“Maybe a month. It’s hard to say, with these things. I will return in plenty of time for the Harvest Festival.”
“That’s not terribly long, then,” said the ogress, trying bravely, albeit unsuccessfully, to control her sniffling. “Not like when you campaign over the whole summer.”
“No,” he agreed, not sure what else he could say. “How are you feeling?” he asked lamely.
“It’s passing, I think,” she said bravely. “The purgatives of the royal physician seem to have made a difference.”
“Good.” He wanted to tell her about his arrangement with Stariz, the queen’s pledge of safety, but somehow he feared even the mention of the other ogress, as if her name was a toxin that would weaken, perhaps kill, his cherished mistress.
“I wish… I wish that I was able to send you off with a proper farewell,” the ogress said, with just a hint of her old sexiness. He felt the familiar flush, and though he tried to remain silent his chest rumbled to an unconscious growl. Thraid smiled. “However, I will be waiting for you here, my king, when you return.”
“And I, my lover, will find my way back to you soonest,” he pledged.
Whatever the cost, he vowed to himself. He rose, bent over to kiss her cheek, and turned to the door. The golden orb was ready, and Brackenrock awaited.
* * * * *
Sunlight spilled through as the great harbor doors rumbled open. Hundreds of slaves labored, straining against their lines, as the huge capstans rotated and the gap between the massive slabs grew wider and wider. Open water beckoned, shimmering in the sunlight, and the two great ships moved forward, like eager creatures ready to emerge from a long winter’s hibernation.