“This is absurd!” Aisha declared, though no one listened to her. The moment ropes had been fastened about her wrists and a lead put to the hands of a soldier, she had ceased to be a civilian, let alone a valuable informant. She was a prisoner. Worse than that, she was a Giordanan prisoner, and Giordanans were attacking. Naturally, none of the Vassish wanted to listen to her.

I do not mean to give the impression that Lord Raymi was a dumb or careless man. We had in fact determined him to be one of the shrewdest officers Vassermark had to offer, and also conveniently dispatched when we went looking for a target. The problem was his age. A recent grandfather, some fifty years of age, he had gray in his hair, and too many decades of discipline to pivot quickly with new information. Not without first securing himself the way he knew how.

That day, securing himself meant getting to the sea bulwark and ascertaining the situation himself, and he went straight to the battery to do so. Nothing Aisha could say to him would change him from that course, so he paid her no heed save to have her brought into the network of tents that had been quietly set atop the walls. The canvas has been colored just the same as the stone, hard to make out from the sea, and housed the greatest expense of King Arandall’s coffers.

Sixteen Ley Cannons, each handmade by confidential artisans, sat between the crenelations of the bulwark. Between every pair, a barrel of lead shot. Behind every crosshairs, a fresh quiver of bolts. Here is not appropriate for the full explanation of their function, as it is enough to know that their effective range for penetrating hulls was over three hundred feet.(1)

They were the hidden spears of Rackvidd, pointed at the arrayed armada. “Seems they’re keeping their distance,” Lord Raymi said as one of his subordinates ran a small telescope over to him. “They don’t look Aillesterran.”

Aisha needed no ocular aid to identify them. “I told you,” she said, trying to get her head over the shoulder of her guard to make eye contact with the commander. “That’s my brother. He’s started an uprising. He threw the garrison out of Puerto Faro and has come here!”

Raymi frowned and stared into her eyes, judging her truthfulness, until another of his subordinates threw open the flap of the battery tent and saluted, fist to heart. “Sir, some of their ships are mingling with the fishermen.”

“Raise the chain,” he ordered, then thought better of it. He stuck his head out between the crenelations and bellowed with the might of his stigmata, “Raise the chain! Seal the harbor!”

Aisha tried to step forward, but was stopped by the mailed hand of her guard. “You have to quarantine those fishermen. They’ll have hidden themselves among them.”

Lord Raymi stepped back and curled up his white mustache into a scowl. “She makes a good point unfortunately. You there, centurion, gather your men and secure the harbor. I don’t want any of them to get into the city.”

“At once, sir,” the man said, snapping to attention with a click of his heels and a pounded fist to his chest. It was as perfect as a machine. I couldn’t help but laugh.

All the men of the tent spun, eyes searching for me as hands went to swords and to spears. I had to hold up my hands submissively and say, “My apologies, Lord Raymi. I should have introduced myself to you first.” I had taken a seat at the far side of the tent, beyond the furthest cannon and within the flickering shadows. I had been simply a step outside of their realm of perception, and wrapped up as I was in my robes, I hadn’t been particularly noticeable.

“Who is this man?” Raymi barked out, and the artillery sergeant leapt to the front. “Sir, he introduced himself as one of the King’s engineers! Engineer Al.” I liked the artillery sergeant. He wasn’t a traditional soldier, but a scholar given command of the weapons. Of course, any simpleton could eventually work out a parabolic trajectory, but he was smart enough to do it on the fly in his head. His calculations were like magic to the soldiers underneath him, and it made up for his pot belly and the cowardice that literally sweated through his palms.

The answer did not satisfy Lord Raymi, and I feared punishment would arise for the poor man, so I reached into my robe and produced my talisman, that is, I revealed my badge of office as one of King Arandall’s engineers. It was an old thing, rubbed smooth by the passage of years on the road, but the bronze casting could still be made out. As always, I had an inkling fear I had grabbed the wrong badge, it would be very bad indeed to show my identity as an Aillesterran while Aillesterran pirates were attacking, but I tossed it over to the soldier.

Raymi snatched it from the air. “What kind of heirloom relic is this?” he asked with a sneer.

“Not an heirloom,” I said, “Those kinds of badges get hunted down and melted after death. It’s mine. I just got it a very long time ago,” I said, and pulled from my hood a lock of gray hair. “I should think securing the harbor is still your priority though?”

Raymi spun on the centurion, who saluted once more and ran out of the tent.

“He can tell you,” Aisha said, though it seemed to pain her to say it. “He was there at Puerto Faro when the revolt happened.”

Raymi swung a hand through the air and marched over to me. “Revolt or pirates, it doesn’t matter. Rackvidd will not fall under my watch. I’ll be damned if even a single civilian is killed.”

I sighed. “With all due respect, if they have already made it inside the walls, then it is too late for that. That girl there is walking proof that Rackvidd has already been infiltrated. She’s right too; you’re facing a revolt that has moved nearly as quickly as news of its existence has moved. How would a city such as Rackvidd know to close its gates to the locals in that case?”

“Impossible. She said it was her brother leading this so-called revolt. I saw him die with my own eyes. I watched his mercenaries lay down their lives to protect his corpse.”

“Sir!” one of the cannoneers shouted. “The armada is encircling us. It looks like they’re trying to blockade the western passage.” That maneuver was more of an insult than a tactic. Vassermark communicated largely by carrier pigeon, and had more than a few stashed away within the fortress keep to call for aid. Cutting off sea access did nothing to silence the Vassish; but Medorosa understood the importance to morale for fighters to be doing things.

Especially things that didn’t involve getting them killed. It was the naval equivalent of capturing a hill and sitting on it.

Aisha swallowed the knot in her throat, shut her eyes, and declared, “You didn’t see him die, you saw him use his stigmata!”

Her voice, young and quavering as it was, from the lips of a young girl surrounded by old men, ripped the words from everyone else’s lips. She cast the tent into silence as they all turned to her.

Raymi spoke first. “Ridiculous. Why would he hide a stigmata from us? We were allied!”

Aisha fought with herself, feeling the next words like a bile upon her tongue. She could see the sea though, could see the fleet of Cynizia arrayed against Rackvidd. “Because it lets him control other people. Would you trust somebody like that?”

Before the commander of the Vassish could bring himself to an answer, another blast of horns echoed through the city. A complicated tune, encoding the message within. Nonsense to Aisha, crude to me, but it struck fear into Raymi.

“The harbor is under attack!” he declared. “Artillery sergeant, I leave this to you. If a single ship comes within range, sink it!”

The poor man quailled. “But sir, without a warning shot?”

Raymi spun on him, and grabbed one of the mighty sledge hammers stationed beside the ley cannon. He spun, swinging it overhead, and smashed it down upon the firing head of the nearest weapon. Stone smashed tight together within and then burst outward. The thump of the flung shot ripped the air from the wind and punched through the sky.

“There is your warning shot!” Raymi bellowed above the ringing in everyone’s ears, and he dashed the hammer upon the ground. “To the harbor, and bring her,” he ordered, with a finger jabbed at Aisha as the shot finally fell to the waves so far below.

Ley is not an explosive substance, like people traditionally believed. One can hardly blame them, when one examines how a dropped piece of ley behaves. Ley is one of the arcane materials present in this world, and its physical properties change depending upon its state of charge. When it has been allowed to rest and replenish, it swells and becomes soft. When compressed, the energy within it is thrust out into the world, and imparted upon whatever it hits. The peculiarities of elasticity, in addition to the fact that it swells like bread in water, made designing machines with it near impossible. There are however, certain geometries, a mismatched cup and ball of a sort, wherein force can be transferred linearly through a series of rods, exponentially increasing in energy until it is at last imparted to the lead shot, which is blasted forth. The limits of this technology lie in the ultimate structural strength of Ley, as well as the maximum energy density, but Vassermark was the world pioneer in this militaristic field.