Chapter 300 -293: The Canal Line
Captain Teodor Marsh had been on the parapet looking at the far end of bank with smoke over the ridge, as there had been since the last battle that happened four days ago.
He kept looking for a long time then sighed and came down and went to find the dwarf.
Bren Marlok was at the ninth cannon with the crystal housing open and his arm inside it to the elbow.
"Is that the one that misfired during battle?"
"Aye, that’s the one." Bren did not look round. "Three days back. She charged,held it, and when Hesk called the shot she put out a fistful o’ loose light that fell in the water. No detonation. Nothing at all."
"And you have had it open since?"
"I’ve had her open twice. First time I found nothing and closed her up again." He pulled his arm out. "This morning I finally caught the culprit."
He held up his hand. There was a crystal in it, about the size of a plum, and it looked entirely ordinary.
"Fourth mana crystal in the chain.This thing charged up fine but when firing releases charge slow" He turned it over."About half a beat too slow"
Marsh looked at it. "Half a beat."
"Ye,and on a canon that needs all six stones lettin’ go at the same instant. Five go together and the sixth arrives after the door’s shut. So what leaves that muzzle is five-sixths of a shot wi’ a hole through the middle of it." He shrugged. "A mana mass wi’ no shape doesnae travel and doesnae detonate. She falls in the water and makes a noise like a dropped bucket."
"Can you fix it?"
"I’ve fixed it. The spare’s in, and this one goes back to the mages." Bren dropped the crystal into a padded box. "What I cannae tell ye is why it started arrivin’ late, and I want that in whatever ye send up the line this week. Either the stone’s old, or somebody’s runework is driftin’. One o’ those is a nuisance. The other’s goin’ to happen to every cannon on this line."
"How old is that stone?"
"Nine years."
"And the others?"
"Nine years. They all came out o’ the same mine." Bren shut the box. "So aye, Captain. I’m askin’ for six new stones for nineteen cannons, and I know how that sounds."
"It sounds like a hundred and fourteen crystals and tons of approvals to me."
"It’ll be a hundred and fourteen crystals eventually. I’d rather have it happen over two years while they still work."
Marsh watched him seat the housing and latch it down.
"Hesk says his crew laid them properly."
"Hesk’s crew are the best on this stretch. That’s why it took me three days." Bren wiped his hands. "Spent two times certain it couldnae be the crew, so I went lookin’ at the machine — and I looked in the wrong part of her first. That’s my fault, not theirs. Ye can tell him I said so."
They walked alone the line after that,as Marsh had nothing else to do and bren was inspecting all canons.
He knew them all by their faults.
The fourth canon heated badly and always had. He had it opened and put Marsh’s hand on the channel casing, warm with nothing fired through it all day.
"That is not right."
"No, it isnae. Hasnae been right since I got here." Bren shrugged. "She works. Fires straight, detonates, and the crew know to give her longer between shots. If I sent her back to a hall in Karrag Vor they’d take her apart and find out why. Out here we write it in a book and let her rest."
The seventh had a crack in the frame that had not moved in two years. He looked at it every week regardless, and did it again now, on his knees with a lamp, for a full minute.
"Still the same?"
"Still the same. I’ll look again next week."
The eleventh was the one that worried him.
"This one’s finishin’." He ran a thumb along the channel at the mouth, where the cut runes had gone shallow and soft at the edges. "Feel that. Now feel it further back."
Marsh felt both. "The mark is thinner at the front."
"The mark’s wearin’. Everyone forgets runes wear. They think a rune’s a mark and a mark lasts forever, and then one day the mass comes out crooked and blows all of em into the sky." He got up off his knees. "But it will last a year. Two if we’re lucky."
"Can they be re-cut?"
"By somebody who knows runes yes. I repair cannons. Different trade." Bren closed the tally book. "I’ve asked for a second dwarf for two years."
"So have I."
"Then between us we’ve asked four years and got the one walkin’ beside ye."
Marsh almost smiled.
They had held that line a long time.
The eastern quarter had changed hands eleven times and the canal had not moved at all. The demons came across in waves at the earthworks, the cannons broke them in the water meadow, the infantry finished what came through, and then there was a quiet week and it happened over and over again.
The alliance had lost a great many men doing it.
But the arithmetic underneath had never been in doubt, and every soldier on that line understood it without having it explained. The demons had more bodies and could afford to spend them. The alliance had far better weapons. A demon came at you with whatever his clan had beaten out of a fire, and you answered him with a rune-cut weapons from dwarven smithies
That was the war, and it had been the same over years.
"Anything from the goblins?" Bren asked.
"Three airships up. They say two of them want repairs I cannot give them."
"Ye could give it to me."
"You are a cannon dwarf."
"I’m the only dwarf, Captain, and I’ve noticed ye sayin’ that more often." Bren tucked the book under his arm. "Send them this afternoon. I’ll look at them, tell them exactly what’s wrong, then tell them I cannae fix it, and everybody will feel we’ve made progress."
Suddenly the horns were sounded all along the line at once.
A soldier came down the trench at a run.
"Sir. The demons are invading again."
Marsh looked at the far bank for a moment. Then he sighed, took his helmet off the parapet where he had left it an hour ago, and put it on.
"How big is the wave?"
"Bigger than the last one, sir. Iron Maw clan demons in the front of it, and something behind them we cannot see through the smoke."
"Everyone to your positions. Every cannon get ready to fire."
The line came alive around them. Men out of the dugouts, crews to their designated locations, crystal housings coming open all down the earthworks as the loaders seated fresh stones.
The smaller demons came out of the smoke first running — some waist-high and some knee-high thousands of them as a black carpet pouring down the far bank toward the water in a mass.
Then came iron maw clan regular soldiers through the middle of them. Seven feet and more, in thick black plate armor, wading forward through their own swarm following them were horned demon clab soldiers with their iconic long axes,lastly the bloodfang clan soldiers ran past all of it, screaming, faster than anything that size should move.
"Eight hundred paces," Marsh said.
The call went down the line from crew to crew. Loaders slammed the housings shut. Layers came off the sights and stood clear.
"Cannons ready!"
"Canon one ready sir"
"Canon two ready sir"
"Canon three ready sir"
.....
"Canon nineteen ready sir"
"We are ready to fire sir!"The artillery commander said
"Then what are we waiting for Fire."
Nineteen cannons let go within a breath of each other. The mana masses went out flat across the water, and came down in the middle of the swarm.
Then the shots landed.
WHUMP BOOMMMMM. WHUMP BOOOMMM-WHUMP BBOOOMMM. WHUMP BOOOOMMMM.
Each one came apart into a ball of white fire that swelled out and took everything inside it into the air. The canal lit up from end to end. Mud and water went up in sheets. Where the masses of mana landed together.
Soon the light went out. The smoke rolled back over the water toward the far bank.
Where the front of the swarm had been there was churned mud and standing water and limbs scattered all over the place.
But the demons wouldn’t be em if this could have affected em.soon the wave took over
Then the rest came on as the canon impacts didn’t do any damage.
Bren was watching where the ninth cannon’s shot fell, and thinking about half a beat.
Then Marsh spoke,while poitung at the five dark iron masses coming towards the line.
"Marlok."
"Captain."
"What is that?"
Bren looked up from the meadow.
Five iron drums with a pole and legs if you call em had come out of the smoke on the far bank.
They were not towers. They were not rams either. They were low,sloped and dark, and they came on over broken ground with nothing pulling them and nothing pushing them, and each of them made a low steady note he could hear from six hundred paces across open water.
He looked at them for a while without answering.
Then he counted them again, and looked at the second one, and the fourth, and the fifth.
Same shape. Same slope on the front. Same joins in the same places.
"Captain," he said. "I dinnae know."