Chapter 308 -301:The Soulsilver
Alliance Headquarters, the Central Continent — the Hall of Seven
Sethrayne, the dragon, lay along the open floor on the south side with her gold-scaled head level with the stone table. Ugarr Mok the orc sat on a backless block of granite,Grokh Barran the beastman had turned his chair round and sat. Dorgan Karrek the dwarf was sitting on a raised block that put his broad shoulders level with Venn’s. Nix Threll the goblin had an iron crossbar under his chair for his feet. Ithariel Vaen the elf sat elegantly displaying the legendary beauty of elf.
Aldric Venn,the human,sat reading the message in front of him.
"Fifth sector at first light then,Eighth. Ninth. Eleventh. Twelfth by midday. Kelder shortly after." He set the parchment down. "Six on Avarran in a single day. All six gone. Kelder has been theirs since then."
Everybody kept silent waiting for venn to continue
"The ninth sent no withdrawal and left no survivors. Twenty-one hundred men all dead. The twelfth watched it from four miles out and pulled back without orders. Rache has declined to hang the officer who gave that order."
"Good," Mok said.
"The reason for such losses as you all know are the new machines behind the swarm at all six. Mana cannon did not hurt them."
"Did not hurt, or did not kill?"
"Did not hurt," Venn said. "Nineteen heavy cannon engaged across five machines. One hit landed square on a forward hull. It stopped for four seconds and kept moving."
Mok did not speak again for some time.
Karrek had the captured linkage bar in front of him and keeping his eyes on it as if lost in his own world.
"Suddenly he spoke I’ll save this council an argument," Karrek said, tapping the dark steel against the stone. "Every dimension on this machine is a whole number in a unit none of us uses. Look at this link."
"You are certain?" Vaen asked.
"I have been cuttin’ metal since before this table had seven seats at it," Karrek said. "Side plate, forty-two. Links, bolt spacin’, hull depth, ring height, barrel bore. Eleven measurements. Eleven whole numbers."
Vaen leaned forward. "Then give us the conclusion."
"Somebody wrote numbers on paper before a hammer ever touched that billet, and then a great many hands made parts to match the paper." Karrek looked round the table. "Demons dinnae measure. It’s not an insult; it’s how they work. A demon smith beats a thing till it looks right to him, then beats the next one till that looks right. The two are cousins, not twins. I have taken apart everythin’ they have fielded in this war, and I have never once found two demon parts that would swap."
"And these swap."
"I took three links off the same belt and put every one of them somewhere it didnae come from. All three sat down and pinned without a file touched to them." Karrek’s voice did not rise. "That machine came from somebody who measures."
The hall let that sit longer than was comfortable.
"Then who?" Barran said moving his eyes around the table. "Nine continents. Not one of them has anything the demons want enough to trade for."
"None o’ them cuts against that unit either," Karrek said. "I’ll write to all thirteen master halls and I already know the answer."
"Then maybe one of them lies to you," Barran grunted. "Or."
"Or what"Karrek asked
"Maybe it came from shielded continent"
Karrek looked at him over his thick beard. "Aye," he said quiet-like. "That might be right."
The silence continued for a time then threll had a folded sheet under one hand and slammed it on the table.
"The battle results are out and they don’t seem ideal,I will tell this council what my airship can do to that machine," Threll said.
"Two hundred feet, dead overhead,the airships dropped all bombs in one run. One of them hit the top armor of machine and that opened the top hull and killed it." He held up a single thin finger. "It is also the only height and the only angle that works. Higher, and the charges scatter off the slope. Lower, and you blow your own tail-rigging off. Off the vertical by any margin, and you are dropping onto angled plate and achieving nothing."
"Then it can be done," Mok said.
"It can be done once per ship," Threll said, looking Mok square in the eye. "At two hundred feet, slow, directly over the target, an airship is the largest, easiest target that has ever been in the sky. And that machine just pulls its gun straight up. One shot and the round goes through my keel, shredding the forward gas cells, and boom."
He placed his other hand flat on the folded sheet.
"Now the part this council will not enjoy."
"We have around four thousand ships across the Alliance. Fifteen hundred on Avarran." He counted off. "Almost all of that is transport. Troops, powder, grain, wounded. Every sector on that continent eats through my tonnage. The day I stop flying freight, the front starves in four days.
"Of the fifteen hundred on Avarran, two hundred are attack ships with crews trained to use them for attack and that is the whole of what I have.
"And twenty-one machines counted," Venn noted.
"Twenty-one counted on the first day," Threll corrected. "High Smith—is that all of them?"
"Nobody sends everythin’ he has on the first run," Karrek said.
"No. He does not." Threll pushed the sheet an inch toward Venn. "So say a hundred machines. Say two hundred, because if a thing can be made once it can be made again all the same. At one ship spent per machine, I am out of attack ships in a week. After that, I am putting grain haulers over with boys at the helm.
"Kelder," Barran insisted. "Take it back today, before they settle their weight into it. While their control is weak over the area."
"He is right," Vaen said.
Everyone turned to her.
"He is entirely right," Vaen continued calmly. "I have been to that crossing four times, and I would say the same thing in his place." She turned her gaze to Venn."
"Fourth, sixth, and seventh line should be abandoned. They existed because they were cheap to hold, and now they are not. That is nine days’ march of Avarran territory, and it costs us two forward depots. But it saves four thousand men in the first month and more after." Her hands remained motionless on the table. "Second and third stay, because the ground behind them is the anchor everything else stands on. The line I am describing is a fifth shorter and holdable with what we have left."
Barran leaned across his seat. "And Kelder?"
"Kelder is not on my list because Kelder is already gone," Vaen said. "That is the difference between us this morning, Warchief, and it is not a difference of judgment."
Mok spat onto the side floor. "Ground does not write letters."
Threll looked up, met the orc’s gaze, and said nothing.
Venn turned to Karrek. "High Smith. Can you kill it?"
"Aye." Karrek did not pause. "It’ ain’t invincible. We lost becoz we use wrong weapon. Our cannon use soft-burst charges—they were built to shatter infantry, because in this whole war there has never been one hard steel box out there worth punchin’. Give me a cannon that punches solid, and it opens like anythin’ else."
"How long?"
"A season for the design, and I could shorten that. What I cannae shorten is toolin’ every hall, castin’ heavy barrels, and gettin’ trained crews across the strait to Avarran." He held up a hand. "And I’ll say the rest now, since the mornin’ is bad already. They will be buildin’ the whole time we are. That is what worries me. Not the machine itself. The place it came from."
Sethrayne had not shifted her weight since the message was read. When her voice finally filled the hall, the dome took the dragon’s deep resonance and magnified it until the stone beneath their boots hummed.
"Everything said at this table since I arrived has been correct," Sethrayne said, "and all of it is about this season."
"Then say the part that is not," Venn replied.
"Somebody worked out a machine that walks on iron belts and carries its own gun," the dragon said, her amber eyes reflecting the cold light. "Then they made four hundred identical links for it. Then they did it again for the next one, and the one after. That is not a single weapon, Council. That is a way of working. Once a people learn it, they do not unlearn it. In ten years there will be a better one. In twenty there will be a thousand, and it will not matter at all which of you was right about Kelder."
Her heavy head settled back against the floor.
"I would like the name of the place it came from."
Vaen said it softly.
"The sealed continent is the place with highest chances. The Warchief said it an hour ago, and this council walked past it."
Venn’s pen stopped over the parchment.
"There is one continent of the nine we cannot enter and cannot see into," Vaen said. "Aurethar is also in but we cannot pass any message the shield blocks it,unless. Well leave it" Then she looked at Karrek. "You say that machine is cut to a unit no hall we can reach uses. There is exactly one place we cannot reach."
"That is a long reach of its own," Barran muttered.
"You made it first, Warchief."
"I made it as a joke."
"But you made a guess," Vaen said, "and it is our only place we have a chance." She turned back to Venn. "Is there a seam we can force an entry through?"
An archive officer stepped out from the wall shadows, a bound ledger tucked under his arm.
"No seams, my lord. The barrier is thin at four points. We have monitored all four for two years."
"Thin enough to cross?" Venn asked.
"Not on its own, and the ward still rejects long-range teleportation entirely," the officer explained. "However, we hold an ancient anchor formation at Caelrith on the far side. It has stood dormant ever since before the continent closed. If we spend enough energy at the thin point, we can force a targeted crossing directly to that anchor."
"Caelrith still stands?"
"It stood when the barrier dropped," the officer said. "Whether anyone is waiting in that hall now, we cannot know. We can only target the anchor."
"And the cost?"
"Soulsilver," said the officer. "Twenty ounces per head."
"And our current reserve?" Venn asked.
"Two hundred and sixty-one ounces total. All of it, sitting in the central vault."
"And any other substitutes we can use for a forced crossing?" Barran asked.
"No sir because a forced barrier crossing tears at whatever passes through it," the officer replied. " Without a soulsilver mantle lining the conduit, the body arrives on the other side and the soul does not. There are two documented attempts from before this council existed. I would prefer not to read either."
"How many can we send ideally," Mok growled.
"Eight," the officer said. "One hundred and sixty ounces, leaving one hundred and one in reserve. Twelve is technically possible at two hundred and forty ounces, but it leaves twenty-one—which leaves us with virtually no contingency for three centuries. I strongly advise against twelve."
"All below Legendary rank," Venn stated.
"Without exception. High-tier signatures will trigger the continent’s outer wards and collapse the conduit midway."
"And what can they carry?"
"Whatever fits in their spatial rings without alerting the barrier. A year of rations, a portable forge, tools. What they cannot is anything above their level mostly weapons."
"So the true cost is people," Mok said.
"Yes sir the cost is people."
"Bringing them back?" Barran asked.
"Not until another reserve of soulsilver is gathered," the officer said.
Mok looked down the length of the table. "Then it is a burial with letters."
"Yes," Venn said quietly.
Venn wrote as he spoke, his ink-stained quill scratching sharply against the parchment.
"So let’s wrap this up"
"High Smith—mobilize every hall we can reach. I will sign whatever requisition we need. I want a armor-piercing cannon on Avarran before the first snow."
"Skymaster." Venn laid his palm flat on Threll’s document. "Granted. All eleven transfers, signed this morning. The Rattlejack gets her refit, and my personal seal goes on the work order." He looked up. "Your attack flights hold. No ship is to be spent against a machine unless that machine directly threatens an anchor position, and you will have that in writing."
Threll leaned back into his foot-rest for the first time all morning. "Then my crews will fly."
"Warden Vaen commands the retreat," Venn continued. "The line she drew is the line we hold. Fourth, sixth, and seventh sectors fall back." Venn turned to the warlords. "Warchief. Warlord. You were both right about Kelder,but it changes nothing. It stays theirs until we have a gun that opens those hulls."
"And when we have the gun?" Barran asked grimly.
"Then we take it back, and I will come out to the front and watch."
Venn turned the page of his ledger.
"Now for the last and most important matter,eight names. All below Legendary, tested by fire rather than vouched for by blood, and every one of them the best at what they do—because eight is all we get, and I will not spend soulsilver on second choices." He wrote as he listed. "One from the High Smith’s guild who can look at a foreign workshop and understand its math. One from the Skymaster’s corps in case whoever built that machine has built something that takes to the air. One archmage who can analyze unfamiliar warding without triggering it. Five vanguard soldiers for the rest—all volunteers, and every single one hears the words we cannot bring you back directly from a member of this council."
He set the pen down.
"Their orders consist of one sentence and quite simple: Find who built that machine. Take one intact if you can. If you cannot take one, find what kills it."
Venn surveyed the seven seats of the cold hall.
"Nothing else. Do not engage their armies. Do not treat with their rulers. Do not tell them a single word about us."
"Any questions?"Ven asked looking at everyone.
Everyone kept silent at this while ven closed the document and concluding council meeting as over.