Behind the hill was his can opener, a machine he had found in a predark book for children. Henderson couldn’t read, but there were pictures and the device was simple to build. His troops had used it to smash several small villes along the way, and it was unstoppable. Front Royal would be his within the hour. They wouldn’t dare to use their melting machine on their own ville.
“Why the fuck haven’t they sounded the alarm yet?” Henderson complained, wiping a hand clean on his pants. Then the old man caught the faint clanging of a bell.
“Took them long enough!” he snorted angrily. “I’ll fix that laziness with a touch of the whip once I’m in charge!”
A galloping horse stopped near the old man, and the rider jumped off to salute. “My lord, the forward area is secure.”
“Any casualties?” Henderson asked with little concern.
The rider smirked. “Not on our side.”
“Good, go join the snipers in the trees near the front gate. When the brown shirts start running out, cut them down inside that fancy barbican of theirs. I want it blocked with their dead so none can escape.”
“As you command, my lord.” The man saluted and hopped on his horses to ride around the castle to the other side.
“Stop shooting,” the baron commanded. “Join the rest of the snipers in the trees. They know we’re here by now.”
Squads of men were running along the parapets, some big man in furs seeming to be directing things. There was no sign of Cawdor or his hot little wife. Henderson had special plans for that juicy blonde. Oh yes, very special plans.
The archers broke ranks and ran for the cover of the trees. Laughing, Henderson strolled over the hill to look at the can opener. A team of twenty horses struggled to haul a heavy wooden wag through the tangles of wild grass, raising clouds of gnats.
“Don’t go to the crest,” he commanded. “They can shoot at us from there. Park it just below the top, where we can shoot them, but they can’t hit us.”
“Yes, Father,” Thomas rambled, sliding off his horse and passing the reins to a sec man. “But what if they smell a trap?”
The old man grinned. “It’s already too late.”
The wooden machine was huge, a flat platform on wheels, a tall set of braced stanchions, with a cross arm longer than the base, and a lot of rope. It had taken them less than a day to build.
“It’s called a catapult,” Henderson said, as the sec man pegged the wheels in place to prevent the contraption moving. “It launches a fifty-pound rock three hundred yards. Good accuracy, too, if the wind isn’t too strong.”
The wind was still that morning, with no sign of a storm.
“We’re going to use rocks again?” Thomas asked, puzzled. “I don’t think rocks will harm those thick walls like the log palisades of those hamlets.”
“You are correct. Rocks would do nothing here,” the baron replied. “We’re going to use dynamite bombs.”
Near the catapult, more sec men were lugging tiny wooden barrels, no more than a demijohn in size, from the rear of a covered wag.
“Each of those small barrels is rilled with nails or broken glass, and has a half-stick of dynamite inside,” Henderson explained, pausing to take a pinch of snuff. His box was almost empty. There had better be jolt in that fortress, or else he’d skin the survivors alive until some was found. “Once we get the timing right, they’ll explode in the air, showering the ville with shrapnel like a shotgun blast. There won’t be a man, woman or dog alive inside those walls within a few hours. My grandson I tried it on a gang of muties once just to see and blew them into pieces.”
At the ville, sec men lined the parapets or stood in every window, the vented barrels of the M-16s sticking out like porcupine quills. They were waiting for a siege ladder to appear, or a mass attack. What fools.
“They’re in position,” Henderson said eagerly, wiping spittle off his chin. “Launch the first bomb!”