The University itself consisted of low, ancient stone buildings, veiled with climbing ivy, tile-roofed and rambling. Additions, extensions, and new construction had gone up over the centuries without any plan, dividing the grounds into a set of irregular courtyards whose grass was maintained to exacting perfection by the famously dictatorial University gardeners. Most of the windows were the old lead-lattice sort, filled with warped, bubbly glass, so as Marcus walked by he got distorted, fish-eyed views of rooms and students within.
At the back of the campus, the University grounds blended imperceptibly into the Old Woods, a tag end of ancient trees that was the last remnant of the primeval forests that had covered the valley of the Vor before the city had been founded. Between the tree line and the manicured lawns was a large field of tall grass, a kind of no-man’s-land between natural antiquity and modern perfection. It was here that the Preacher had set up his cannon, aiming it south so that any stray balls would splash into the Vor or hit the uninhabited slopes of Thieves’ Island.
Marcus paused at the edge of the grass as the company of young men by the gun, perhaps thirty in all, simultaneously ducked and put their hands over their ears. Only Captain Sevran Vahkerson remained stolidly upright, shading his eyes with one hand to observe the flight of the ball. The cannon bucked and roared, spitting a momentary gout of flame and a huge cloud of powder smoke, and a moment later a puff of dirt downrange marked where the shot had struck. There was a square of red cloth there, Marcus noticed, a dozen yards past the point where the ball impacted.
“Short,” the Preacher said, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Far too short. You sprayed a bit of dirt in their faces, but that’s all, and now they’re going to come over here and gut you with bayonets.” He turned to the young men, who were slowly straightening up. “Can anyone tell me what Ranker Quilten did wrong?”
“He must have fucked up the angle-” said one student, in the front of the crowd, only to be pinned to the spot by a furious glare from the Preacher. “Sorry. He must have gotten the angle wrong.”
“I had the angle dead-on!” said a powder-blackened young man, presumably Quilten. “And Tart checked it.”
“It did look right,” another man admitted.
“I think,” Quilten said, turning on the Preacher, “that your godda-that your darn cannon is broken.” He held up a sheet of paper. “My calculations were quite precise! At that arc the ball should have landed precisely on target.”
“And,” the Preacher said, “in the course of your calculations, did you examine the cannonball?”
“What?” Quilten looked down at where a small pyramid of cannonballs stood beside the gun. “Why?”
“Because that ball was at least a quarter inch smaller than the last one.”
“That’s not fair!” Quilten said. “You can’t hand me a dud and expect me to make the shot.”
“You think cannonballs are all the same?” the Preacher roared. “You think they get finished by master artisans in some china shop? You think, in the field, you’ve got the luxury to pick and choose?” He shook his head. “Be grateful to God if you have enough balls, let alone good ones. You’ll get shot that’s too small, too large, misshapen, scored, or worse. You’ll capture the enemy’s ammunition, and only Karis knows where he gets it. You need to be able to feel a ball, and know what to do with it. If it’s too small, you’ll get more windage, which means you need a bigger charge to get the same force! But give thanks to God if your balls are too small”-he ignored a chorus of sniggering-“because if they’re too big, and you cram them in, this gun will explode in your face!”
At the end of this monologue, he caught sight of Marcus and acknowledged him with a nod. Glaring at the young men, he said, “I want you to go through this stack of shot and tell me which ones are heavy and which are light.”
“Can we have a balance?” one of the students said, doubtfully.
“You think you’ll have a balance with you in the field?”
“We might be able to rig one up,” said another man, “with a rock and some sticks. We could use a known-good ball to calculate the mean error-”
The Preacher sighed and stalked through the long grass toward Marcus, shaking his head. Marcus suppressed a smile.
“Karis preserve me from boys who think they know what they’re doing,” the Preacher said. “I liked it better working with rankers straight from the farm. At least it was easy to put the proper fear of the Lord into them.”
“I assume this was the colonel’s idea?” Marcus said.
“Yes. And it’s not a bad one, in truth. You can teach anyone to load and fire a gun, but being able to lay a shot properly takes a bit more skill. This lot”-he waved at the young men clustered around the cannonballs, now arguing about how to make their decision in the fewest number of trials-“gives everything strange names and talks a lot of rubbish about parabolas and acceleration, but at least they know what goes up must come down. We might make a couple of decent gun sergeants out of them.”
“Will you have enough time?”
“That’s the big question, isn’t it?” The Preacher shook his head. “If I had even a week, I’d be thankful, but the colonel tells me we might not get that long. We’ll manage, I expect, with the Lord’s help.” He paused. “It’s good to see you again, Senior Captain.”
“Likewise. I hope you had a pleasant voyage.”
“I don’t know about pleasant, but we’re here, by the grace of God. And none too soon, it seems.” The Preacher scratched his nose. “Are you going to be taking over the First, then?”
“No,” Marcus said. “Fitz is doing a fine job, I think. I’ll be assisting the colonel.”
“Too bad. Fitz is a good boy, but a bit too clever for his own good. I’ll miss having your hand on the tiller.” He shook his head. “God’s will be done, of course. And the colonel’s.”
“I’m supposed to give him a report on the artillery.”
“We’ll manage something here, if we can find enough metal. I’ve got men pulling guns out of the water batteries, but those are siege pieces. If we go into the field, it’ll be a hard job getting them in place. Val is out rounding up everything he can find.”
“I’ll check up on him. Do you know where he is now?”
“On the Island, somewhere near the cathedral. Someone said there were old guns out in front of some of the big buildings there. Shouldn’t be too hard to track him down.”
“Right.” Marcus looked at the squabbling students and shook his head. “Anything else I should tell the colonel?”
“Not from here.” The Preacher hesitated. “You’d best know, about-”
“Jen? Fitz told me.”
“Ah.” The Preacher coughed. “Well. I’d better get back to it before someone drops a ball on his toes. God’s grace go with you, Senior Captain.”
“And you,” Marcus said. He turned about and went in search of Val.
The eastern end of the Island felt strangely empty. Marcus crossed over the Saint Uriah Bridge and walked through the Exchange, where the great multistory trading houses with their rooftop cranes and pulleys were all shuttered and silent, the crowd of frantic traders in hiding. Crossing one of the little shop-lined bridges that separated the Exchange from the Island proper, he could see the spires of the cathedral looming up like stone masts amid the surrounding buildings.
The square in front of the cathedral-where the deputies were entertaining Orlanko’s messengers-was nearly empty, with the crowds having moved a few blocks west to watch the recruits drilling in Farus’ Triumph. There were carriages and cabs about, though, and a few pedestrians. Marcus, conspicuous in his blue uniform, collared the nearest and asked where there was a Royal Army party looking for cannons.
A few minutes later he’d tracked down Val, who was accompanied by Lieutenant Archer of the artillery, a dozen rankers, and another dozen burly civilians waiting by an empty wagon. They were clustered around a tiny cannon, only a few feet of gleaming bronze with iron-bound wheels, standing on a small plinth outside an impressive-looking building. One of the rankers had one hand on it, looking as proud as a boy with a new puppy, but Val was shaking his head. Marcus caught the tail end of his remarks.