Red (8 page)

They looked at each other.

“You see?” William asked. “He wants to make our fighters look for postass . . . a name he can hardly say, and in the dark? Because he dreamed—”

“Silence!” Thomas's voice rang over the sounds of battle. “If I fail this time, William, I will give you command of the Guard!”

“Where do we find this saltpeter?” Mikil pushed.

“I don't know.”

“Then . . . what do you mean, you don't know?”

“We're looking for a translucent, milky rock that's salty.”

William crossed his arms in disapproval.

“And if we do find these ingredients, what then?” Mikil asked.

“Then we have to grind them, mix them, compress the powder, and hope they ignite with enough force to do some damage.”

Three sets of eyes locked on his. In the end they would agree because they all knew they had no viable alternative. But never had the stakes been so high.

“You do realize that if we must hold them off while we try this trick of yours, we lose the opportunity to evacuate the forest,” William said. “If we leave now, we will have a half day start on the Horde because they won't march during the night. We could gather up the village and head north as planned.”

“I realize that. But to what end? The Horde is overtaking the Southern Forest as we speak. Jamous is retreating. The Horde—”

“The Southern Forest?” William said. He hadn't heard.

“Yes. The Horde will take this forest and then move to the next.”

Mikil looked to the west where the sounds of battle continued. “Maybe it would be wiser to retreat now, make this black powder of yours, and then, when we know it works, we blast the Horde to hell.”

“If they take the Middle Forest—” He stopped. They all knew the loss of this forest was unacceptable. “When will we ever have them in a canyon like this? If this works, we could take out a third of their army in one blow. We can still order the evacuation, even if we aren't there to help.” He followed Mikil's gaze westward. His men were dying and he was toying with wild dreams. “What if this is what the prophecy spoke of?”

“‘In one incredible blow you will defeat the heart of evil,'” Suzan said, quoting from the boy's promise. “Qurong is leading this army while Martyn is attacking Jamous.” A glimmer of eagerness lit her eye. “You think it will work?”

“We will know soon enough.”

THE MOON shone high in the desert sky, surrounded by a million stars. Thomas sat on his stallion and studied the canyon floor. The Horde had settled in for the night, thousands upon thousands of Scab warriors, half sleeping in their cloaks, half milling in small groups. No fires. They'd won the battle and they'd celebrated their victory with a cry that had roared through the canyon like a mighty torrent.

Thomas had ordered his army back in a show of retreat. They'd hauled their catapults from the cliff and shown every sign of fleeing to the forest. Seven thousand of his men had joined the battle here in the canyon. Three thousand had given their lives.

It was the worst defeat they'd ever suffered.

Now their hope rested in a black powder that did not exist.

The Guard waited a mile to the west, ready to make for the forest at a moment's notice. If they could not find the saltpeter within the hour, Thomas would give the order.

They had enough charcoal already. William had led a contingent of soldiers to the caves for sulfur. They hauled nearly a ton of pyrite rock to a pit two canyons removed, where they'd built a fire and coaxed liquid sulfur from the stone. The stench had risen to the sky and Thomas couldn't remember ever being so ecstatic about such a horrible smell.

It was the odor of Scab flesh.

But the saltpeter eluded them. A thousand warriors searched in the moonlight for the white rock, licking when necessary.

“We could bring the archers back and at least give the Horde a parting surprise,” Mikil said beside him.

“If we had any arrows left, I would shoot a few myself,” Thomas said. He looked up at the moon again. “If we can't find the saltpeter in an hour, we leave.”

“That's cutting it close. Even if we do find it, we have to mine it. Then grind it into powder, mix it, and test it. Then—”

“I know what we need to do, Mikil. It's my knowledge, remember?”

“Yes. Your dream.”

He let the comment go. She'd always been a strong one, the kind of person whom he could trust to take his place at the head of this army if he were ever killed.

“If we are forced to flee, what will become of the Gathering?” she asked.

“Ciphus will insist on the Gathering. He'll hold it at one of the other lakes if he has to, but he won't neglect it.”

She sighed. “And with all this nonsense of Justin coming to a head, I'm sure it will be a Gathering to remember. There's been talk of a challenge.” Thomas had heard the rumors that Ciphus might press Justin into a debate and, if necessary, a physical contest for his defiance of the Council's prevailing doctrine. Thomas had witnessed three challenges since Ciphus had initiated them; they reminded him of the gladiator-style matches of the histories. All three usurpers had lost and been exiled to the desert.

“If there isn't, I may challenge him myself,” Mikil continued.

“Justin's treachery is the least of our concerns at the moment. He will fall in battle like all of Elyon's enemies.”

She dropped the subject and looked westward, toward the Middle Forest. “What will happen if the Horde overtakes our lakes?”

“We may lose our army, we may even lose our trees, but we'll never lose our lakes. Not before the prophecy delivers us. If we lose the lakes, then we will become Desert Dwellers against our will. Elyon would never allow it.”

“Then he'd better come through soon,” she said.

“You may not remember, but I do. He could clap his hands and end this tonight.”

“Then why doesn't he?”

“He just might.”

“Sir!”

A runner.

“William calls you. He says to tell you he may have found it.”

“HERE! WE'LL do it all right here.” Thomas gripped the large mallet in both hands and slammed it into the glowing rock. A slab of the cliff crashed down.

It was translucent and it was salty, and of all people to find it, William had. If it wasn't saltpeter, they would know soon enough.

Thomas grabbed a handful of the fragments. “Bring it down. All of it.” He turned to William. Bring the charcoal and the sulfur. We will set up a line here for crushing the rock into powder and we'll mix it under that ledge. Put a thousand men on this if you have to. I want powder within the hour!”

He ran to his horse and swung into the saddle.

“Where are you going, sir?”

“To test this concoction of ours. Bring it down!”

They descended on the cliffs with a vengeance, swinging with bronze mallets and swords and granite boulders. Others began to crush the suspected saltpeter into a fine powder. They hauled the charcoal in and ground it further down the line. The sulfur caked the bronze bowls into which they had poured it. The cakes ground easily.

Very few knew what they were doing. Who'd ever heard of such a way to conduct a battle? But it hardly mattered—he'd ordered them to crush the rock, and the powder that was this rock would crush the enemy. He was the same man who'd shown them how to coax metals out of rocks by heating them, wasn't he? He was the man who had survived several days as a Scab and returned to wash in the lake. He was the man who had led them into battle a hundred times and emerged the victor.

If Thomas of Hunter told them to crush rocks, they would crush rocks. The fact that three thousand of their comrades had been killed by the Horde today only made their task more urgent.

Thomas knelt on the large stone slab and looked at a small pile of ground powder he had collected above the quarry.

“How do we measure it?” Mikil asked.

Despite his active participation, William's frown persisted.

“Like this.” Thomas spilled the white powder in a line the length of his arm and tidied it so that it was roughly the same width for the entire length. “Seventy-five percent,” he said. “And the charcoal . . .” He made another line of charcoal next to the white powder.

“Fifteen percent charcoal. One-fifth the length of saltpeter.” He marked the line in five equal segments and swept four of them to one side.

“Now 10 percent sulfur.” He poured the yellowed powder in a line two-thirds the length of the black powder.

“Look right to you?”

“Roughly. How exact does it have to be?”

“We're going to find out.”

He mixed all three piles until he had a gray mess of powder.

“Not exactly black, is it? Let's light it up.”

Mikil stood and backed away. “You're going to light it? Isn't it dangerous?”

“Watch.” He made a trail of it and stood. “Maybe it's too much.” He thinned the line so that it doubled in length to the height of a man.

William backed up a few steps, but he was clearly less concerned than Mikil.

“Ready?”

Thomas withdrew his flint wheel, a device that made sparks by striking flint against a rough bronze wheel. He started to roll the wheel on his palm but then opted for his thigh guard because his palm was moist with sweat. He lit a small roll of shredded bark.

Fire.

Mikil had backed up another few paces.

Thomas knelt at one end of the gray snake, lowered the fire, and touched it to the powder.

Nothing happened.

William grunted. “Huh.”

And then the powder caught and hissed with sparks. A thick smoke boiled into the night air as the thin trail of black powder raced with fire.

“Ha!”

Mikil ran over. “It works?”

William had lowered his arms. He stared at the black mark on the rocks, then knelt and touched it. “It's hot.” He stood. “I really don't see how this is going to bring down a cliff.”

“It will when it's packed into bound leather bags. It burns too fast for the bags to contain the fire, and
boom
!”

“Boom,” Mikil said.

“You've frowned enough for one evening, William. This is no small feat. Let your face relax.”

“Fire from dirt. I will admit, it's pretty impressive. You got this from your dreams?”

“From my dreams.”

Three hours later they had filled forty leather canteen bags, each the size of a man's head, with black powder, then wound these tightly in rolls of canvas. The rolls were hard, like rocks, and each had a small opening at its mouth, from which a strip of cloth that had been rolled in powder protruded.

Thomas called them bombs.

“Twenty along each cliff,” Thomas instructed. “Five at each end and ten along the stretch through the middle. We have to at least box them in. Hurry. The sun will be up in two hours.”

They crammed the bombs deep into the fault lines of each cliff for a mile on either side of the sleeping Horde. The strips of canvas rolled in powder ran up and then back, ten feet. The idea was to light them and run.

The rest was in Elyon's hands.

Placing the bombs took a full hour. Light already grayed the eastern sky above. The Horde began to stir. A hundred of the Forest Guard had been sent for more arrows. In the event that only half of the army below was crushed by rock, Thomas determined to fill the remainder with arrows. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel, he explained.

Thomas stood on the lookout, balancing the last bomb in his right hand.

“Are we ready?”

“You're keeping one out?” William asked.

Thomas studied the tightly rolled powder ball. “This, my friend, is our backup plan.”

The canyon was gray. The Horde lay in their filth. Forty of Thomas's men knelt over fuses with their flint wheels ready.

Thomas took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. Opened them.

“Fire the north cliff.”