Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 334: Heart Stopper

When Andrea hauled herself up over the wall’s edge, the scene below stopped her.

A line of soldiers—militia uniforms, strange stick-shaped weapons in their hands—stood watching the beast pack approach. The weapons were firearms; Ashes had spoken of them. As the leading edge of the pack came within range, the sticks erupted: bright flashes, dense smoke, a continuous crackling that pressed against Andrea’s eardrums and did not let up. The beasts at the front lurched as though struck by invisible hammers and went down in succession, one after another.

The soldiers didn’t pause to reload in the sense Andrea understood reloading. No bolt was drawn, no string was set. The rate was faster than she could draw an arrow and nock it—faster than most archers she’d ever watched work.

“This is the weapon you described?” Her mouth had gone slightly dry. “The rate of fire is fast, but the accuracy—”

“Before the First Army recruited them, these men were miners, farmers, hunters,” Ashes cut in. “Six months with the weapon. That’s all.”

Andrea understood the weight of that. To produce a useful warrior ordinarily took five years at minimum; an archer somewhat longer. A crossbowman was the fastest route to adequate—half a year of training, and adequate was the ceiling, mostly meaning they’d hold the crossbow correctly in a panic. For actual combat, God alone knew whether they’d hit anything. Crossbowmen existed primarily to pad a force’s headcount and create the impression of depth.

What she was watching was something else. These men had been recruits six months ago. They were not hitting everything—but they were hitting enough, at a pace that left no space to recover, measure, or respond. Give Roland adequate supply lines and he could field an army inside a season. Not a conscripted rabble that scattered at the first cavalry charge either—the continuous fire she was watching would pin cavalry before they reached the wall.

That had nothing to do with courage. It was what the weapon gave. The weapon gave it to everyone equally.

“Tell me more about the mechanism,” Tilly said, turning to Sylvie.

“I’ve examined several of them closely. It’s analogous to a crossbow in function—the projectile is very small, no shaft, no fletching. The propulsive force doesn’t come from a bowstring but from a fine black powder that detonates and accelerates the projectile to extraordinary velocity in an instant.”

“A black, fine powder? What is it made of?”

Sylvie shook her head. “Probably an alchemical byproduct. I don’t know the formula.”

“It must be enormously expensive,” Andrea said.

Ashes looked at the line of soldiers still firing. “It doesn’t look expensive from here.”

“Hold—” Sylvie’s voice changed. “Something large is approaching. My goodness. That’s also a demonic beast? It’s nearly as tall as the wall. Like a great turtle—carrying a massive carapace.”

Andrea’s mind shifted instantly into combat calculation. A carapace that size. The firearms would be useless against it. She was already estimating angles. Within ten feet of something like that, her magic arrows could punch through anything—city wall included. “Ashes. Cover me.”

“Fine.” Ashes slung the claymore off her back with the particular weariness of someone who had done this too many times. “Try not to embarrass Lady Tilly.”

“I would never—”

Sylvie said something—they still have—but the rest was swallowed by a sound that seemed to begin everywhere at once.

The metal pipes mounted along the wall ignited. All of them, together. The concussion hit Andrea in the chest before the sound reached her ears; she turned in time to see something streak across her vision—not a bolt, not an arrow, but a compressed flash of motion, barely visible, multiple somethings crossing the gap in the time it took to blink.

Snow erupted near the creature in columns three feet tall.

The snowflakes drifted down.

The carapaced beast continued forward at the same unhurried pace.

Missed. The range had already exceeded anything a longbow or heavy crossbow could reach, and they had missed, and Andrea still couldn’t think clearly enough to feel relieved.

“Field artillery,” Sylvie said, gently removing her hands from her ears. “His Royal Highness’s term. An enlarged firearm, with proportionally greater range and force. He used it to break Timothy’s militia fleet at the Redwater bifurcation.”

The second volley did not miss.

Two rounds struck the carapace in quick succession. Andrea watched the impacts with professional attention she couldn’t suppress: a layer of mist rising from the shell, two holes blasted open on the side nearest the creature’s head, black blood and viscera catching the winter light as they scattered across the snow.

The beast went down slowly, the way massive things tend to—as though reluctant.

Then it was over. The field ahead of the wall was a landscape of demon corpses; the warm blood steamed in the cold, white mist rising from the red-dark snow. The soldiers were already moving through the clean-up procedures. From the moment the first bell rang to the end of the engagement, Andrea had not once found an opening to act.

“I overestimated what we might offer,” Tilly said, with a slightly helpless smile. “He doesn’t need us for this.”

“The last time I came here, only the Knight Commander owned weapons of this kind,” Ashes said, something like awe edging into her voice despite herself. “Now he’s produced enough to arm the entire wall. Perhaps this is precisely why he dares to support witches openly, despite the Church.”

Andrea had no answer for that. If this were any other conversation, she would have found something to deflect it with. But she was still watching the field, and the field had left her with nothing clever to say.

When they returned to the castle, Roland had laid out lunch.

The colors on the table were the first thing. Reds, greens, golds—nothing Andrea had ever associated with a border territory’s winter table.

The upper classes of the Kingdom of Dawn held a very specific view of proper cuisine: rare ingredients, authentic preparation methods, no shortcuts. Spices and sauces were, by that standard, camouflage—a technique employed to disguise inferior ingredients. The more seasoning, the worse the underlying food. A kitchen that relied on spice was a kitchen that was embarrassed about its larder.

This was Andrea’s settled opinion, and she had held it without any particular trouble for twenty years.

The charcoal-grilled mushrooms were the first problem. She had no idea where he’d sourced mushrooms like these—plump, the skin taut and glistening, the stem still holding its shape. One bite released enough liquid to fill the mouth completely. The flavor needed nothing added. Nothing had been. It was still the best mushroom she had ever eaten.

Then the soup. Pale green, thin-looking, the kind of bowl a busy kitchen sets down without ceremony. She took one sip expecting water with ambition. The broth had hours in it—chicken, pork rib, kelp, each one surrendered into the stock until none of them could be identified individually, only the depth they’d left behind. From that bowl.

The dessert—Roland called it ice cream bread—was the decisive blow. Cold, milky, startlingly soft, wedged between two pieces of bread. Andrea had grown up with the most labored confections the Kingdom of Dawn could produce. She had opinions about confections. This thing was assembled from simple components in a cold northern town at the edge of civilization, and it was better than all of them.

She ate three.

Blast it, she thought, and reached for a fourth. Even here.

She became aware that Ashes was watching her from across the table with an expression of slow, deliberate enjoyment that had nothing to do with the food.

For the first time in her adult life, Andrea could not think of a single thing to say.

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