Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 28: Fierce Scar

When Roland tried to convert the theory into practice, the theory held and the practice did not.

The steel production went smoothly. Anna’s fire reached above fifteen hundred degrees without straining — hot enough to melt iron without effort. Using the conventional wrought-iron method, he had her superheat pig iron in small batches, stirring continuously to oxidize the excess carbon and impurities, then letting it cool into steel bars. The process was standard; the only non-standard element was that the heat source was a seventeen-year-old girl’s hands rather than a blast furnace. The result was high-quality steel bar stock in quantities that would have taken a proper foundry a week to produce.

Then he took the steel to the steam engine and the plan fell apart.

The prototype ran loud. It shook. Under load it produced a vibration that traveled through the workbench, through the jig, through the drill, and turned any attempt at precise boring into a controlled disaster. For heavy work — pulling ore, driving a pump — the vibration was irrelevant. For boring a gun barrel to consistent tolerances, it was fatal.

To fix it he would need a centrifugal governor to regulate the engine’s output, and a gear reduction system to damp the rotation speed at the drill head, and a proper machined lathe to cut the gears. He could design all of these. He could not build all of these before the Months of the Demons arrived.

He sat in the yard for a while looking at the shaking engine and recalculated.

Without the mechanical boring, barrels had to be hand-hammered by the blacksmiths — the traditional method, slow and expert-dependent. Border Town’s smithy could produce three or four barrels a month at that rate, and only if he halted production of the second steam engine to free the shop. It was not the industrial-scale rifle program he had envisioned. It was four guns before winter.

The good news was quality. A blacksmith could produce a rough bore; Anna could seal the seams and weld the internal surface seamless. Barrel explosions, which had killed more early gunners than the enemy, would not be an issue here. The guns would be reliable.

He adjusted the plan. Four guns, four hunters. He tasked Iron Axe with selecting the best marksmen in Border Town — men who could already shoot, who would need only short transition training to use a flintlock rather than a bow. Quality over quantity. A demonstration, if it worked, of what was coming.

He made a note to fix the governor problem in the spring.

Brian had not slept well in a month.

He had watched the militia form and train and receive their leather armor and their ten-silver-royal monthly wage, and he had gone on performing his patrol duties, and every evening he had tried to locate the feeling that had once made this job feel like the right step toward something. He could not find it. The prince had apparently built his defense entirely from civilians with no fighting experience, and the town patrol — Brian and his nine men, who had fighting experience, who had spent years learning their craft — had been left to sweep streets and report to no one interesting.

He understood the reasons. He did not like them.

He was thinking about this at midnight when the door of the sleeping room opened.

“Captain.” Fierce Scar’s voice, barely above nothing. “Get up. I have something to tell you.”

The room held five men. The other three were already awake — they had not taken off their coats. Brian noted this with the particular alertness of a man whose instincts have been honed in a job where alertness kept you alive.

“What hour is this.”

“The best hour for opportunity.”

Greyhound was awake too, blinking, confused. “Something wrong?”

Fierce Scar did not look at Greyhound. He looked at Brian. “You want to be a knight. I know you do. My uncle Hill — herald of Duke Ryan, one of his inner circle — gave me information directly. The Duke is unhappy with the fourth prince. Very unhappy.” A pause for effect. “He needs the prince to understand his position. Not through violence — no one kills a prince and survives that decision. But if the prince had no food, he would have to go to Longsong Stronghold. Duke Ryan has already promised room and standing there.”

Brian sat up. “Go on.”

“The food the prince bought from Willow Town. It’s stored in the castle. If it burned—” Fierce Scar spread his hands. “The prince has no choice but to leave. Duke Ryan holds a canonization ceremony. Fiefdoms east of the stronghold. For all of us.”

Greyhound’s face had gone wrong. “You’re talking about burning the food. During the Months of the Demons.” His stutter was worse when he was frightened; he had to push the words out in sections. “Two years ago — the famine — everyone knows what—”

“What does that have to do with us,” said another man flatly. “We go to the stronghold. We’re done with this broken town.”

There were murmurs of agreement from three more. Brian counted: he and Greyhound, against six. The six who had not taken their coats off.

They planned this before tonight, he thought. We were the last to be invited.

He looked at Greyhound’s face and read in it exactly what Greyhound was about to do. He tried to think of something — any word, any redirect — and found nothing in time.

Greyhound drew breath and opened his mouth.

The man behind him moved.

The dagger went in at the kidney — one insertion, one twist, one withdrawal. Greyhound’s sentence became a sound with no words in it. He turned his head, looking at the man who had stood beside him for years, and his legs settled him to the floor without him choosing it.

The room was very quiet.

Brian did not look at Fierce Scar. He looked at Greyhound’s face.

“Decision time, Captain,” Fierce Scar said, very close. Brian could smell his breath. “The tunnel under the castle garden — the one you found as a boy. Tell us how to get in.”

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