Frank Tuttle - The Broken Bell

Wheels rattled up behind us, and a dozen men with them.

And then something else.

I’d seen such a thing before-a thick-walled iron cylinder taller than me, and fatter, and hollow. Fixed to a pair of wagon wheels, and the wheels were fixed to a sturdy wooden tail that kept the cylinder aimed upwards at a slight angle.

“Follow,” said the Corpsemaster. We did, barely getting out of the way of the cannon and its crew.

Rafe trotted up, wiping his hands on a rag. “Now?” he asked.

The Corpsemaster pulled out a shiny brass pocket watch. “Now,” he said, starting it with a click.

Rafe whirled. “Load,” he bellowed.

Six men snapped from stillness to action, handling tools and descending on their machine with the studied precision of a bawdy hall dance troupe. One dipped a sponge set on a pole into a water bucket and ran it down the throat of the cylinder. Another shoved a burlap parcel into the barrel as soon as the sponge was out. The sponge man whirled his pole around and pushed the burlap parcel to the back of the barrel while a man at the rear slammed something shut on the cannon’s back end.

Evis poked me in my gut and then stuck his fingers in his ears. I followed suit.

It dawned on me why Rafe seemed half-deaf despite his youth.

The contrivance was aimed quickly by a man in the rear, who sighted along the tube and adjusted the rear-facing tail with a hooked wooden rod set into the end of the tail. Two other men fussed with a massive iron sphere and hoisted it expertly into the cannon’s maw despite its apparent weight.

That was rammed home and tapped twice. All but the spongeman were behind the cannon by the second tap, and he joined them a heartbeat later. There was motion, one of the men at the rear shouted “Ready,” and then Rafe bellowed, “fire.”

The Corpsemaster clicked his stopwatch.

The cannon cried thunder, and heaved a great gout of smoke, and the blast hit me in the chest with sufficient force to knock the fool breath right out of me.

On the far wall of the Corpsemaster’s young valley, something struck and exploded, sending up a vast plume of shattered earth and leaving behind a smoking crater large enough to hide wagons.

“Twenty-six seconds,” said the Corpsemaster.

“What?”

The Corpsemaster repeated himself. Rafe heard it that time, and started bellowing at his crew, who were by then halfway ready to fire the awful thing again.

The thing-the cannon-needed only a crew of six stalwart young men. No years of sorcerous schooling. No decades of perfecting spells that themselves took years to create.

Just six men, a cannon and whatever bits of iron and powder they stuffed into the thing.

“Heaven help us.”

I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud.

“That, gentleman, was a Howler. Firing an explosive ten-pound round fused to detonate a half of a second after firing. Its effectiveness as a projectile weapon is formidable, especially considering it can be fired twice a minute until the barrel begins to soften.”

“That’s twenty-two rounds with this barrel,” shouted Rafe. “Then we have to douse it with water and wait twenty minutes. The newer ones will go twenty-seven rounds.”

“Indeed.” The Corpsemaster smiled. “I trust you gentlemen are favorably impressed. I shall never again be caught lacking appropriate firepower.”

“It’s a big chunk of Hell put on cute little wheels.” I couldn’t force a smile. “And I gather this is a small one, at that.”

“It is the smallest of the mobile units. Designed for use against infantry and enemy guns in a changing battlefield environment.”

“And just when do you foresee this battlefield being joined?”

“Fire,” bellowed Rafe, and again the cannon belched fire and raised a rain of shattered rocks on the far side of the valley.

“Thank you, Rafe. That was three seconds faster. Return the weapon to the armory.”

Rafe nodded and barked out the orders.

Within moments, Evis and the Corpsemaster and I were alone on the flat-topped hill.

I surveyed the far side of the valley. It was blasted and scarred down to the bedrock, and that too was shattered and pitted. I thought of Rannit’s old walls. Centuries to build.

Hours to be felled.

The Corpsemaster sighed. Even for a dead man, he looked suddenly tired and sad.

“What I am about to tell you is unknown, outside the High House. I trust you will keep it so. Because, gentleman, war is coming to Rannit.”

Smoke from the cannon drifted over us. In the distance, Rafe’s powder kegs burst, one after another, with the sound of infant thunder.

Evis spat a cuss word.

The Corpsemaster smiled through pale lips. “Don’t despair, gentlemen. This time, you’ll both be officers. With rather handsome pay.”

I groaned, plopped my ass down in the red sand, and narrowly avoided crying like a fresh-spanked baby.

The ride back to Rannit was mercifully brief.

Evis and I awoke at the same time. The Corpsemaster’s black carriage was just crossing the Brown, heading up to the Heights and Evis’s digs. The bridge clowns gave us wide berth. There are still stories circulating about the last bridge clown that dared caper at the Corpsemaster’s carriage.

Rannit’s sun shone bright and cheery, a sentiment neither Evis nor I shared. I judged it to be mid-day, which was plainly impossible since we’d been gone for hours and hours, but you can’t argue with the sun.

Or the Corpsemaster.

“I own a small estate in the south, by the Sea,” said Evis, softly. “I’m told it’s lovely. And peaceful. Very peaceful.”

I grunted. I didn’t own any estates, in the south or elsewhere, but heading for the Sea was looking better by the moment.

“You could change your name to Smith,” I said. “Claim to be a jeweler. Live happily ever after, untroubled by war.”

Evis repeated his curse word from earlier in the day.

The Corpsemaster would brook no such betrayal by either of us, and we both knew it.

I wished a bridge clown would dare the corpse driving the horseless carriage just so I could punch something. That’s not a nice thing to admit.

“Drafted. When I woke up, if someone had told me I’d be drafted back into the Army before the sun set again, I’d have laughed in their face.” Evis gritted his long vampire teeth. “When are you going to tell Darla?”

“Not until I absolutely have to.”

“You’re just delaying the inevitable.”

“I’m just hoping for a miracle.”

“Might as well hope for a rain of money.” Evis muttered his word again. “I am not wearing Army issue boots, I’ll tell you that much. Corpsemaster or not.”

I had no answer. The carriage rattled on.

Hell, when was I going to tell Darla?

What was I going to tell Darla?

“Sooner is better,” said Evis, his eyes hidden behind dark lenses. “She’s going to know something is wrong.” He regarded me for a long moment. “You haven’t set a date for the wedding yet either, have you?”

“What are you, Mama Hog’s apprentice? Going to read my palms next?”

“You haven’t.” He shook his head. “Dirty angels, Markhat, do you think the woman is going to wait forever on a shaggy cur like you?”

“I think that’s between Darla and I.”

“You’re right. It is. But I’ll be the one who has to listen to you mope if she gives you the boot. So at least start hinting at it. Let her know you’re serious.”

“How the Hell do you listen to someone mope?”

“It’s all in the lingering silences and long sighs,” replied Evis. “Damn, Markhat. We’re back in the Army. The damned marching yes-sirring-stand-at-attention-fall-out-give-’em-Hell-boys-damned Army. How tall is this bridge? Think we should just jump now and save ourselves a world of worry?”