Yuchai crowded up under his arm, studying the drawing with an intensity that allowed no distractions.
"Look here—here's the hole that the fuse goes in; you light that, and when the powder explodes, the ball is propelled out."
"But Jegrai said that the ground before him exploded—like lightning had struck there. No matter how hard a metal ball hit, it wouldn't do that."
"That's the fire-throwers we have on the walls—another kind." He pulled out a second drawing. "We call this one a mortar; it doesn't send things as far, because we don't use as heavy a charge, and we let a little more of the force escape by not using wadding. What it does fire is something like a very large firecracker, but one made of cast iron; which, as I showed you, is brittle enough to shatter if struck hard enough. When you light the fuse on the mortar, you also light the fuse on the canister, which is timed so that it goes off when it hits the ground. Mortars are a lot more dangerous to the handlers than the cannon, because the act of firing them can set off the charge in the shell."
"The fire gets through the shell?"
"No. It isn't just fire that can set off the gunpowder."
Zorsha put a firecracker unobtrusively on the bench, and pulled out a hammer.
"Impact can do it too."
He brought the hammer down squarely on the firecracker—and Yuchai jumped back, wide-eyed, at the crack of the explosion.
"You see? Hard enough impact sets it off."
The boy stared at the blackened place on the bench for a moment, while Zorsha rubbed his tingling fingers. It was an effective demonstration of how dangerous gunpowder could be—but a little hard on the hand.
"Zorsha, I am probably a fool—and I am not very learned," Yuchai said, shyly, but with those intense eyes focused on Zorsha's face. "But—I have a question. Two questions?"
"Go ahead."
"In battle, even our arrows often bounce off armor. The Suno laugh at arrow-fall when they are in full armoring; not even our bows can pierce metal. But—could—could a man not make an arrowhead, hollow, with the powder inside? And when it struck the armor or the shield, would it not explode?"
"Hladyr bless," Zorsha breathed. "I never thought of that. Even if it did very little damage it would certainly frighten whoever it hit white! And if it hit a rider—"
"The horse would bolt," Yuchai said simply. "No horse would abide that without being trained to it. A few archers could scatter an entire force of heavy cavalry, could they not?"
"They could—gods above and below, they certainly could. And your other question?"
"You told me of the Sabirn-fire, the fire that water only spreads? And you told me that you could not use it very often because it was so dangerous?"
"So dangerous we've seldom even used it with catapults. All it would take would be for the jars to break open a little, and the fire would be all over the catapult and crew."
"But cast iron is tougher than pottery, and still breaks. Why do you not put it in the hollow canisters of the mortars? You could throw it far beyond the lines of your allies. You could destroy the siege engines you told me of before they were even put into play. You would not even need to hit anything exactly, only near it, because the fire would splash and spread. You could take whole groups of fighters that way. Am I not right?"
"Yuchai—" Zorsha looked aghast at the boy. "Yuchai, that is a terrible thought."
The boy hugged his arms to his chest, as if to ward off a sudden chill, and his face took on a strange, masklike appearance. "If you made these shells, you could hurl such things at the Talchai when they came—you could burn them, burn them up. They couldn't stand against you, no matter how many warriors they had."
Zorsha took the boy's thin shoulders in his hands and shook him. "Yuchai, you can't mean that—you've never seen the fire; I have—it's a terrible thing, a weapon of absolute desperation."
"The Talchai are terrible!" the boy cried, his voice spiraling up and cracking. "The Talchai are—are—"
The boy's voice abruptly went flat and dead; his eyes stared at the stone wall of Zorsha's workroom, but plainly did not see it. His young face held more pain than Zorsha had ever imagined in his life.
The young Hand stared at what he had thought was just an extraordinarily bright boy. The "boy's" face was transformed, aged, and so bleak Zorsha would not have known him. He looked a hundred years old, and sick to death. And when he began to whisper in a harsh, strained voice, Zorsha thought, aghast, No puppy is going to heal this.
"If I saw them drowning, I would call for rain! If I saw them burning, I would throw oil upon them! I hate them, I hate them, and I want to see them die, terribly, horribly, I'd set demons on them if I could!"
He started to laugh, in that same suppressed way he'd spoken—but it was hopeless, hysterical laughter. It tore at the heart, and the boy began to tremble all over, then to shake.
Zorsha couldn't bear it. He seized the boy and held him close, face against his chest. For one moment there was nothing but silence.
Then the boy made a choking sound, and seized him with all the desperation of a drowning child.
Zorsha hugged him tighter, and Yuchai clung to him and began to speak again; slowly at first, brokenly—but then the words began pouring from him in a kind of deadly monotone, a flood of appalling words.
Words that blanched Zorsha and made him tremble; words telling of atrocities committed on the Vredai that exceeded Zorsha's wildest nightmares.
This was not imagined, or something the boy had embroidered with his own fantasy; no one could have imagined a massacre like the one Yuchai was describing, a hellish kind of festival of blood and death. Zorsha could hardly begin to take it in. Every incident the boy recited was worse than the one before—and Zorsha began to realize with soul-chilling horror that the boy had witnessed all this rapine and slaughter in a single afternoon.
For Yuchai was reciting the tale of the raid by the Talchai on the Vredai camp—a raid that had been staged when most of the weapon-bearers were out of camp on hunts or guarding the herds. There had only been the sick, women with young children, the elderly, and the children themselves. Of which Yuchai had been one. One small boy who escaped the fate of his playmates only because he had been hidden in a thicket of bushes as part of a game.
Gods, what was he? Ten? Eleven? Old enough to remember everything clearly—oh, gods, what can I do? What can I say?
It was the voice that was the worst—that dull, monotonous recitation of horrors. That, and the way the boy clutched at him, seeking a shelter from his own memories.
"Yuchai . . ." Zorsha couldn't think what to do to comfort him. Could there be comfort? "Yuchai—Yuchai, stop it! Listen to me!" Zorsha's own face was wet with tears as he shook the boy's shoulders and got him to look up at him. "Listen, Yuchai, listen to me—it won't happen again! Not ever! I pledge you on my life, I won't let it happen!"
The boy stared at him blankly for a moment—then burst into tears.
Zorsha just held him, rocking back and forth a little, weeping with him. It was all he could do.
Gods, gods—who made him hold all this inside? Who left this to fester? Or—gods, are they all like this? Every survivor down in that camp?