K Parker - Devices and Desires

'That would be well inside scorpion range, from the city wall.'

'Oh yes.' Falier nodded enthusiastically. 'Especially shot from the top of the wall there. Actually, it's quite a sophisticated calculation, where the point of release is higher up than the point of impact. It's all to do with the rate of decay of the bolt's trajectory, and the acceleration it builds up on its way down. The variables can make a hell of a difference, mind.'

Falier, in other words, didn't know the answer to his question; so he thanked him and got rid of him, and resolved to build his siege platform at four hundred and fifty yards. If the balls dropped short at that range, they'd just have to move up a bit closer and build another platform. Embarrassing; but with any luck, all the witnesses to his embarrassment-the hostile ones at least-would be dead quite soon, and so it wouldn't really matter terribly much. He gave the order, then left his tent and walked a little way up the road so he could watch the building detail at work.

The mercenary infantry were, of course, too well trained and high-class to dig earth and carry it back and forth in baskets; so he'd sent to Mezentia for brute labour, and they'd sent him five hundred assorted Cure Doce, Paulisper, Cranace and Lonazep dockside miscellaneous, at three groschen a day. Twenty groschen to the Mezentine foreign thaler, and it's a sad fact of life that you get what you pay for. The Cure Doce dug and spitted with a kind of steadfast indifference; the Paulisper didn't mind heavy lifting, but were generally drunk by mid-afternoon; the Cranace picked fights with the Paulisper over matters of religion and spectator sport; the Lonazeppians worked hard but complained about everything (the food, the tents, the Cranace's singing). In the event, it took them four days and nights on a three-shift rotation to build the platform. Melancton's most optimistic forecast had been six. The Eremians made no effort to interfere in any way, which he found strange and faintly disturbing. In their position he'd have launched sorties; even if capturing or wrecking the engines proved too difficult, scaririg the labour force into mass desertion would've been no trouble at all. An enemy who neglected such an obvious opportunity was either supremely confident or utterly resigned to defeat.

On the fifth morning, he went up to the platform with Syracoelus, his captain of artillery, the engineer Falier and a couple of pain-in-the-bum liaison officers from the Mezentine Guilds, who'd been sent up to find out why the war hadn't been won yet. The early mists had burned away in bright, harsh sunlight; the heavy engines had been hauled up overnight and were already dug in, aligned and crewed for action. Four hundred and fifty yards away, the enemy looked like roosting rooks behind their turrets and battlements, the noses of scorpions poking out from behind each crenellation.

Melancton and his party stood in silence for a while, looking up at the walls. Nobody seemed in any hurry to say anything, not even the usually unsilenceable Mezentines. Finally, Melancton said, 'Well, I suppose we'd better get on with it.' The engine crews hesitated, trying to figure out if that constituted a valid order to open fire. Melancton frowned, then nodded to Captain Syracoelus, who looked at the nearest engine-master and said, 'Loose.'

He was being somewhat premature, of course; first they had to span the huge windlass that dragged down the engine's throwing-arm against the tension of the nested, inch-thick leaf springs that powered it. In the silence the smooth snicks of the ratchet sounded horribly loud (it was as though the city was asleep, and Melancton was worried they'd wake it up). A louder, meatier snick told him the sear was engaged and the engine was ready to be loaded; a wheeled dolly was rolled under a derrick which lifted a three-hundredweight stone ball off a pile; the dolly ran on tracks that stopped under a short crane, which lifted the ball into the spoon on the end of the throwing-arm. Men with levers rolled it into place and jumped clear. Syracoelus repeated his order; someone pulled back a lever, and the arm reared up, sudden and violent as a punch. Melancton could hear the throbbing whistle the ball made as it spun; at first it climbed, almost straight, so far that he was sure they'd overshoot the city completely. At the top of its trajectory it hung for a split second, the sunlight choosing that moment to flare off it, like an unofficial moon. Then it began to fall, the decay of the cast seeming to draw it in as if there were chains attached to it. He lost sight of it against the backdrop of the walls; heard the dull thump as it bashed into the masonry, saw a puff of dust and steam lift into the air and drift for a moment before dispersing. 'Elevation good,' he heard someone say, 'windage two minutes left'; another lever clicked and a sear rang like a bell, and that oscillating whistle again, followed by the thump and the round white ball of dust. The clicking of ratchets all round him was as busy as crickets in meadow-grass; men were straining at their windlasses, every last scrap of strength brought to bear on the long handles; voices were calling out numbers, six up, five left, two right; the distant thumps came so close together they melted into each other, and the whistles merged into a constant hum.

Compassion wasn't one of Melancton's weaknesses, but he couldn't help wondering what it must be like on the wall, as the shots landed; if the thumps were so heavy he could feel them through the soles of his feet four and a half hundred yards away, what did they feel like close to, as they butted into the stones of the wall? Melancton had never been on the wrong end of a bombardment like this; an earthquake, maybe, he thought, or the eruption of a volcano. 'Keep it going for half an hour,' he heard himself shouting over the extraordinary blend of noises, 'and then we can see if we're doing any good.' (Half an hour, he thought as he said it; how long would half an hour seem under the onslaught of the whistling stone predators, swooping in like a falcon on a partridge? He knew the fluffy white balls of cloud were steam because someone had explained it to him long ago; when the ball lands, the energy behind it is so great that for a split second it's burning hot, and any traces of moisture in the target are instantly boiled away into vapour. How could you be on the receiving end of something like that and not drop dead at once from sheer terror?)

The barrage didn't last half an hour; ten minutes at the very most, because by then all the shot had been used up, and it'd take at least an hour to replenish the stocks from the reserve supply. Syracoelus was quick to apologise; Melancton shrugged, having to make an effort not to admit that he was overjoyed that it was over; the clicking and ringing and the air full of that terrible humming noise, and the thuds of impacting shot a quarter-mile away as constant as the drumming of rain on a roof. He realised he'd been looking away, deliberately averting his eyes from the target. He looked up; and, to his considerable surprise, Civitas Eremiae was still there.

'Shit,' someone said.

Syracoelus gave orders to his crews to stand by. 'What's happening?' bleated one of the Mezentine liaisons. 'I can't see from here.' Someone else said, 'Maybe we're just dropping them in the wrong place; how about if we concentrated the whole lot on the left-hand gatehouse tower?' Three people contradicted him simultaneously, drowning out each other's arguments as they competed for attention. 'Hardly bloody scratched it,' someone else said. 'Fuck me, those walls must be solid.'

Failure, then. Melancton felt like laughing out loud at the absurdity of it. The Mezentine heavy engines had been beaten, they weren't up to the job. Melancton caught himself on the verge of a grin; could it possibly be, he wondered, that he was beginning to want the Eremians to win?