A circle of beatific grins broke out as the image slowly sank into the consciousness of the onlookers.
“Shark-Toothed Sea Lord,” one said, awed. “Like it was raining boulders, eh, lord? But how do we aim it?”
“We can move the whole frame around for direction,” he said. “That won’t be easy, but we can do it if we’re careful how we build the underlying platform and if we apply plenty of manpower. For distance, we just fire ranging shots, adding or subtracting rocks from the basket on the short arm—that’s where the impetus comes from, you see. We store up . . .” He halted; the Islander he was using had no word that precisely corresponded to “force.” “We store up the ability to throw by hauling up the basket, you see. Then when it comes down, all that, ah, strength, is transferred to whatever we’re throwing all at once. By altering the weight, we alter the strength—as a man does when he’s throwing a rock by hand.”
A few seemed to grasp what he was driving at. There were blank looks from the others, and he removed his hat and sighed. Sweat ran down his forehead and stung in his eyes; it was hot, and the stone buildings everywhere around reflected the heat.
“We can do it,” he said. Center had filled his mind’s eye with images of what the trebuchet could accomplish, and precise step-by-step instructions in making it. “And when we do, it’ll ruin the Confeds’ whole day.”
Men on the wall looked down, grinning reflexively at the laughter around Adrian. It spread spontaneously along the parapet, until the wall was ringing with cheers. Morale in Preble was very good.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Adrian muttered below his breath.
Out there, the resources of the Confederacy would be moving, moving—slow at first, like an avalanche did. But very heavy in the end.
Experience had shown that the base of the causeway was safe from the weapons on Preble’s wall . . . and if you stayed low, from the ones on the galleys harassing the quarter-mile length. Justiciar Demansk stood, scowling and watching the stone stream forward, the dead and wounded trickle back. A solid line of guards was detailed to check that nobody came back without a real wound; they leaned on their shields, stolid and bored and glad they weren’t out at the sharp end right now. The smell of sweat was heavy on the air, the smell of velipad and greatbeast dung, the dusty odor of cracked rock and the salt-silt of the shore.
At least we’re getting plenty of time to drill the new recruits, he thought. That was the one good thing about siege operations, even this gods-cursed one. He ground his teeth as he watched the sails of a convoy of merchantmen appear on the horizon. Preble would be eating well; intelligence said they had six months’ supplies, and they could import grain—from the Southern continent, through the freeport at Marange. As long as they had money, and they had plenty of that, too. Melting down the Temple treasuries, from what he’d heard; when that was done, there was always the King of the Isles.
“We’re certainly not going to starve them out as long as they hold the seas,” he said. “So, how do the men feel, First Spear?”
“Pissed off and scared, sir,” he replied promptly. “They want to get stuck into those damned rebels out there, but they’re starting to think that every time it looks as if we’re getting anywhere, the fuckers come up with another trick. Sir.”
Demansk nodded sourly. I can’t think of anything else they could do, he mused.
They’d planted iron-tipped stakes in the shallow water a hundred yards out from both sides of the causeway, using conscripted local sponge divers. No more fireships, thank the gods.
The arquebuses—spies and prisoners had brought the name back from Preble—could punch through shields, but not walls or reinforced mantlets, or the iron plates on thick timber of the new siege towers. The trickle of casualties from the towers was getting worse as they got closer to Preble, and so was the continuous sniping from galleys ranging along the causeway, but the Confederation had a big army. Soon enough they’d be within effective catapult range, and a little after that of archery. The Confed army had a lot of mercenary archers, too. The new towers were an absolute bitch to move, they were so heavy they’d had to use iron-plated wheels under them, but as a side benefit they ought to be fairly immune to battering rocks from catapults, as well.