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I could continue to polish this for weeks, but I have too much else I need to be working on. So here it is! This is based in a fantasy universe that I first starting developing for the WotC contest about 5 years ago. For a while I was going to produce a radio drama set in it, then later there was talk of doing a graphic novel. Over the winter break I was thinking it was a shame I hadn't done anything concrete with it, so I decided to find a nice little plot and write a story. 7000 words later, here it is. The plot wasn't quite as small as I originally planned, but oh well. Comments welcome and requested.
The Tloo mercenaries trudged through the Galdakao city gates, weary after their four day march across the peninsula. Normally a company of one hundred and twenty eight barbarians would have drawn some attention, but not today. They were almost lost in the stream of refugees and supply wagons moving into the city. The enemy was only a day away, and everyone wanted to be behind the great walls and earthworks when they arrived.
Towards the end of the column, two men paused to take in the sight before them. One was a young man whose otherwise calm expression was betrayed the frantic motion of his eyes. The other was older and watched the chaos from behind a kind smile and a thick beard. Both had the powerful build of a smith.
"Sure is something, huh, Vaino?" Kihlvako asked the younger man in their native tongue. "I've been to more than a couple southern cities in my time, and I never get over the size."
"And the noise. And the *smell*," Vaino said quietly. He could see more people in front of him now than he had met in his first sixteen years of life. Even the great potlatches his father had taken him to didn't come close. And this was only one corner of the city!
Kihlvako laughed and slapped him on the back. "You get used to it faster than you would think. Come on, let's get to the barracks and get something to eat."
###
Early the next morning Vaino secured a vantage point to watch the Lodosan army approach. The city's thaumata had started firing at first light, even thought the enemy was far enough away that the strongest blasts only made them stumble. Mostly they were aiming at buildings outside the earthworks surrounding the city, knocking down any structure that the enemy could use for shelter.
Vaino was standing under one of the city's largest thaumata, mounted above the main gate. The tread wheel which powered it clanked incessantly beneath his feet. Every five minutes his eyesight blurred and his insides twisted as the great engine fired. It was the same reaction he felt to normal sorcery, but magnified beyond anything he could have believed possible. Any human attempting to work magic on that scale would not only be killed instantly from the backlash, his head would be blasted from his shoulders. He found himself agreeing with the mutters he had heard during the march. It was deeply unnatural.
Frowning at the device, Vaino moved to find a place farther away when the thaumata fired again. The shiver that ran down his spine made his calves twitch violently. He stumbled into the man standing next to him, spilling the drink he was holding.
"Oi, watch it there!" the man yelled. His breath smelled heavily of ale.
Embarrassed, Vaino's face went still. "I am very sorry," he said in his halting Segurian.
"Are you now?" the man asked, giving Vaino a good shove. The people around them were all watching now, giving Vaino odd looks.
"It was an accident, I assure you. The thaumata device, I have problems with it."
The instant he had said this, Vaino knew it had been a mistake.
"What's wrong with Good Neighbor here?" someone shouted out from the crowd.
The man in front of Vaino pushed him again.
"Damn spying foreigner doesn't like our thaumata. Maybe he thinks we'd be better without it?"
Vaino saw nothing but hostile faces, many of them fingering their knives. He moved to draw his sword when a commanding voice interrupted.
"What's going on here?"
A bald man in expensive armor moved through the crowd. He didn't have to push; people just melted out of his way. Behind him was Kihlvako.
"Lord Imanol!" the drunk man said, lowering himself to one knee. All around, people were doing the same.
Vaino lowered his head in the sign of respect he would give any chieftain.
"Is this your man?", Lord Imanol asked Kihlvako.
"He is."
"He was fixing to curse Good Neighbor, sire! Muttering at it in that northern witch's talk!"
Lord Imanol turned to stare at Vaino. He looked more annoyed than angry. "Is this true?"
"No. No it isn't, sir. I just found my body reacting oddly. Sir."
Lord Imanol sighed and raised his hands. "Everyone move along. This incident is over," he commanded.
More quietly he said to Kihlvako, "Get him out of here, and tell him to be more careful in the future if he has to talk with a goddamned Lodosan accent."
Lord Imanol strode off before either of the Tloo could respond. Kihlvako eyed Vaino and didn't say anything for a long time. Vaino could feel his face flushing, despite his best attempt at control. Just when he didn't think he could take it any more, the older man spoke.
"There's not much to be done about how you speak Segurian. It's plain bad luck that the traders who normally come up our river are from Lodosa. But you should know better than to speak ill of thaumata, even to hint at it, not in a southern city. These people live and die by them."
"While we'll just die by them."
"Don't get smart with me. You're a good boy, and a clever hand at the forge, but you're awfully green when it comes to the world outside our fjord. I know what you think of thaumata -- and you aren't alone. But down here you'd better get used to them. Now get back to the barracks. You're going to take double tread wheel duty tonight, and count yourself lucky we didn't get here half a minute later to find you full of extra holes."
###
Later that day Vaino arrived at the tread wheel for one of the smaller thaumata mounted around the city walls. The pulses it gave off were much weaker, but it fired every other minute. The endless walking Vaino could handle well enough. It wasn't that different than climbing up to the mountain pastures at home to go hunting. But it was impossible to let his mind drift off too far, waiting for the counterweight to release and power another wave of sorcery. He supposed if you grew up around thaumata you'd be used to them, like the stink of the city, but he was glad they wouldn't be used in the north any time soon.
The other people on the wheel were all locals, and didn't seem so affected by the energy. Vaino didn't join their conversation but listened carefully. It was mostly speculation about the siege. The movements of the enemy and their fortification work was closely followed. Everyone was nervous, but the city had withstood sieges in the past. It was hard not to feel confident working the bowels of such an awesome device. The biggest question was where the enemy would install its own thaumata, the components of which had already begun to arrive.
###
Vaino quickly settled into a routine over the next few weeks. Up with the rest of the company at Matins. On the wheel until noon. Sometimes another stint on the wheel in the afternoon, otherwise he helped out in the smithy or ran errands for the older soldiers until Vespers. He usually had guard duty on the wall starting at Compline, but being one of the youngest members he was often called on at random times during the night as well.
It wasn't a bad life, generally easier than helping at his father's bloomery, but he missed the mountains and the water. Soon it would be time for the tlihl run, and all the village would be out catching and drying and smoking the endless supply of fish. Yet another reason the gods wanted us to live in the north, he thought. Down here you have to work hard to get any food at all. All the land around the city was converted to farming, field after field all across the peninsula. More unnatural southern ways, but at least they paid well for mercenary work.
He got to take part in a couple of small skirmishes outside the main gates, but never saw any action himself. The enemy didn't want to commit to battle until their own thaumata were in place. This was a slow process, because they couldn't even start building them until they had dug great earthworks to shield against the city's bombardments. Watching how and where these berms were built was the greatest clue anyone inside the city had to the capabilities of the besieging force. In the end, everything depended on who had the more powerful engines. Kihlvako took him up to the walls one evening to look at what was being done.
"Even Tloo mercs like us need to understand thaumata tactics. You need to be able to read the battlefield, to see what the enemy wants to do. What do you see here?"
"Well... Most of their earthworks are fairly close to the walls. That implies small, weak engines. Probably not strong enough to be a threat, but they could provide covering fire for an attack."
"Yes. What about the one in front of the gates?"
"It's too far away, isn't it? Good Neighbor can only rustle the grass at that distance. It has to be a bluff."
"I suspect you're right, but one learns not to underestimate new developments in thaumata. It certainly looks like they're building something behind it."
"So what do we do?"
Kihlvako grinned at him and said, "Why, we go take a look."
###
The next day the gates opened up and the city's heavy calvary charged into battle. Thaumata on both sides were firing as fast as possible. It hadn't rained in days, and the horses hooves and blasts of energy quickly churned up a chocking cloud of dust in the fields between the city and the main Lodosan camp.
Vaino was mounted with a dozen of the fastest Tloo riders. Each wore only the lightest armor and were armed with only a single spear.
Kihlvako stood in front of them, watching the carnage outside closely.
"Listen up, it's just about time to go," he said. "Remember that your goal isn't glory. That will come, but not today. They're used to heavy calvary down here, and won't be expecting your speed. Just circle the berm, get a good look at what they're hiding there, and get back. Avoid combat if you can -- the information is more important than killing a couple of Lodosans. That's why we were chosen for the job. We were hired as professionals, and that's how we're going to act. Get it done, get back for dinner."
"And drinks!" a distant cousin of Vaino's yelled. "And girls!" cried another.
"Whatever it takes to get you back. Now, ride!"
Kihlvako lept to the side as the riders thundered through. Vaino let out a cry and shook his spear along with the others. Free from the maze of narrow streets at last!
The group initially rode straight for the melee, so they would look like reinforcements. Once they entered the cloud of dust they turned right, heading for a cluster of burnt-out buildings. There they would find the entrance to a small gully that was hoped would help masked their approach to one side of the earthwork.
The dust was thicker than Vaino expected, and he quickly lost sight of the others. The main battle had been through here, leaving a mess of broken weapons and bodies. He slowed to a trot so the horse wouldn't break a leg. There were groans and cries for help all around, but no one tried to stop him.
He continued in what he thought was the direction of the burnt-out buildings. Soon he could see the faint outline of riders up ahead. He called out to them in the Segurian they had been using when outside the barracks. The group slowed in response. He was only a few paces away when he realized they were not from his company and were all wearing Lodosan colors.
The nearest one started to reach for his sword. Without thinking about it, Vaino kicked his horse into a gallop and charged straight at the mass. The Lodosan didn't even have time to scream before Vaino's spear was embedded in his neck, carefully threaded up under his helmet. The spear was wrenched out of Vaino's grip as he rode by. He galloped off into the dust, leaving confused cries behind him.
When he was sure he wasn't being pursued, Vaino slowed back down. Less sure than ever where he was, he set off based on a glimpse of the sun through the dust. He passed many more casualties on the ground. While messy, death by a blade seemed like a reasonably good death to him. It was clean and direct, and you could look your enemy in the eye as it happened. Worse were the twisted victims of thaumata strikes, many of them squeezed into parts too small to recognize. Others were just laying on the ground with no visible damage beyond their clouded, steaming eyes. It was a death of a criminal or traitor, not a warrior.
The dust slowly faded, and Vaino became aware of a large mass on his right. He was so turned around that he wouldn't have been surprised if it was the earthworks surrounding the city walls. Riding up it he cleared more of the dust and realized he was on the berm he was looking for -- but on the wrong end of it. The rest of the group was going to be approaching from the gully on the east side. He thought about following it around to try to meet up with them, but decided it would be too easy to become lost again. Anyway, he had no way of knowing if any of them had made it there anyway. He turned and set off directly for the back side of the berm.
As he came around the side, a large structure quickly came into view. It was a thaumata, and it was larger than any Vaino had ever seen. His heart sank. It dwarfed Good Neighbor, and looked to be nearing completion. Then he realized something odd. There was no wheel or capstan to drive the device. Nor was there a tower in which the counterweight would be raised. Instead there was a rough structure containing a large kiln, connected to the engine via a thick wooden beam. Vaino was just noticing the pile of mineral coal next to the construction when an icy spike ran through his body and the berm next to him exploded in a shower of dirt.
His horse reared beneath him and then shot off down the embankment. Dirt shot up again just in front of them. Field-thaumata, he thought, and cursed himself for letting himself be silhouetted at the top of the berm. He remembered being told that the smaller engines were easier to raise and lower than to swivel, so he turned the horse and angled down the side of the berm towards the incomplete thaumata. Shouts from ahead made him reconsider his choice, but then he saw the rest of the Tloo riding around the berm coming towards him. Apparently surrounded by mounted forced, what there was of a local defense broke and ran before them.
Vaino swung around to join the others, responding to their whoops in kind. More explosions showed they were still in the sights of a thaumata, dissuading them from slowing down as they passed the incomplete engine. Closer now, Vaino could see the kiln had a copper vessel on top, like a giant kettle. It was directly attached to the beam by means of a brass cylinder and a very thick chain.
Rounding the berm they heard a horn being sounded. The heavy calvary started an orderly retreat from the battlefield in a thunder of hooves. The Tloo riders slipped in with them and rode back to the gate with only an occasional explosion from the field-thaumata following them home.
###
Vaino was relaxing with the rest of the company that night at the inn closest to their barracks. He and the other riders, all of whom had returned safely, were temporary heroes and the focus of all the conversation. The ale was flowing, and the pig roasting on a spit in front of the large fireplace was starting to look pretty good. He was content to sit back and join the endless toasts.
Kihlvako stomped in just as the meal started. He pulled up a chair next to Vaino and speared a healthy chunk of pork on his belt knife.
"How do you always manage to show up just in time for food?"
"Heh. That's an old soldier's trick, boy."
"To being an old soldier," one of the others cried. Everyone raised their cups and cheered.
As the meal was winding down, Vaino found himself watching the remains of the pig spin round and round over the fire. It was driven by a fan rotating in the chimney, pushed around by the air moving up from the fire. It obviously had been inspired by some of the mechanical linkages originally invented for thaumata, and Vaino enjoyed watching them being used for such a peaceful, mundane task.
A particularly loud belch from Kihlvako broke his reverie. He found the conversation had returned to the state of the incomplete engine.
"It can't be anywhere near complete," one of the older troopers said. "They haven't started the drive wheel yet, and the whole thing is too low to fire on the city from behind that earthwork it's hiding behind. Once they start digging that away, that's when we'll know it's working."
Most of the table nodded in agreement.
"I'm told reinforcements will be arriving within the week," Kihlvako said. "Galdakao's allies are finally sending help, and if the Lodosan engines aren't ready by the time they arrive, chances are the siege will be broken."
After the cheers had died down, Vaino asked, "What about the other structure, the kiln thing?"
Kihlvako looked less certain. "The thaumata masters... they didn't think it was anything important."
"You mean they thought we made it up."
"No. No, but they did question if you were reporting things correctly."
A cry came up from around the table at this.
"Easy now. I believe you saw exactly what you described -- and described exactly what you saw. But the fact is, those men know all the types of thaumata there are in this world, and whatever that thing is, it just isn't part of one."
Vaino sat back, uneasy. The others seemed reassured by this, but he wasn't. It was only in his great-grandfather's day that thaumata had never been seen before. Surely the first people to see one being built outside their walls also rejected it as harmless. The Lodosans wouldn't have bothered building it if it didn't have a purpose.
Not too much later, Vaino left the inn early and stumbled back to the barracks alone. Despite his exhaustion and all the ale, he found he couldn't sleep. Eventually he gave up and went to sit in front of the fire. He hadn't bothered to stoke it when he came in, but it was still glowing faintly. Thinking back to the inn, he took a piece of charcoal and started sketching the spit-turning mechanism on the flagstones next to the fire. It really was a clever system. He wondered if he could build one at home for the village longhouse. He had always hated having to turn the spit as a boy, getting splashed with hot drippings and inhaling smoke.
Drifting off a bit, he wondered what else you could use the system for. The hotter the fire, the more power you could get out of it. The draft coming up from his father's furnaces would be much more forceful than any old cooking fire. Could you use it to power the bellows? Not that the northern mountains were lacking in sources of water power, but a system like that wouldn't have the cost of maintaining a dam to get you through the dry summers.
The more he thought about it, the odder it seemed that devices like this weren't more common. Burning things obviously released a lot of energy, but the only thing people used it for was making things hot. If you could use it to make something turn, you could use it to lift things, or move them back and forth or up and down...
He jumped up and ran back to the inn like he was chasing mountain caribou.
###
The next day, Lord Imanol was squinting at him in the bright morning sun. They were on the city walls near Good Neighbor which was thankfully quiet.
"Why did you want to meet, Kihlvako?" the lord asked. "We are not lacking in claims on my time."
Kihlvako stepped forward, looking slightly uneasy. Behind Lord Imanol were the top thaumata masters of the city. Each commanded a salary that would buy their entire village.
"One of my men, Vaino here, has an idea about the engine out there. He's the son of our greatest foundry man, and he worked at my forge as a boy. It's not for me to say, of course, but I think his idea deserves listening to."
Kihlvako stepped back. Vaino realized all of them were waiting on him now.
"Sirs, the thaumata we saw had a kiln or furnace attached to it. Mechanically linked to it. It had no power source. No tread wheel. No frame to mount one in. No water power available."
"We know all this," one of the sickly looking engine drivers said.
"Yes, very sorry. What if the furnace was the source of power? Rising air can turn the spit before a fire. Why can't it power a thaumata?"
Lord Imanol raised an eyebrow and turned to the men behind him.
"Preposterous," said the one closest to him. He had the pallor that everyone who spent too much time exposed to sorcery acquired but was wearing finer clothes than even Lord Imanol. Vaino recognized him as Unai Beleren, one of the most famous and richest thaumata masters in the southern realms.
"To begin with," he said, "You could never lift the counterweight with a draft-powered rotisserie. Maybe if you have three hundred of them working in parallel, which is certainly not the case here. Secondly, there is no counterweight! No tower, no pit, no way to store up the energy needed."
"And the moral philosophy," one of the other began.
"Yes, it's all wrong philosophically," Beleren continued. "You simply can't power a thaumata with fire, any doctor will tell you that. Thaumata are, by their nature, a destructive force. So is fire, obviously. Everyone knows creation can only happen through the union of opposites, that has been known as a philosophical truth since the times of ancient Tyaldur. That is why constructive forces have to be harnessed. Living creatures or life-giving water turning a wheel."
"That's the only way a thaumata can work," another one said. They all nodded in agreement.
Lord Imanol, who had been watching the exchange closely, nodded as well.
"I'm glad that's sorted out," he said and started to walk away with the masters. "We really must talk about replacing Little Andoni's gear train on the eastern wall. We can't afford to have it out of commission for very long."
"If it isn't a source of power, what is the kiln?" Vaino yelled out. Kihlvako put a very firm hand on his shoulder.
Beleren looked enraged. "If -- and this is a pretty big if -- there really is a kiln next to the engine, then the Lodosans obviously want to make bricks. Or maybe it's a brewery, and they're preparing for a victory celebration. But I'm telling you it has nothing to do with thaumata. You dare come into my city and question my expertise? We're to be lectured by some mountain ironmonger?"
Kihlvako's fingers dug into Vaino's shoulder like hooks.
"I'm very sorry, my lords," the older man said. "I see I haven't been assigning enough tread wheel duty. Rest assured that this will change."
Lord Imanol nodded and walked off without another word. The others followed.
"Dammit, boy, do you have any idea what that might have cost us? Our clan has been hiring itself to Galdakao very profitably for a long time now. You don't risk that for some crazy what-if you might have!"
Vaino's face went very still.
"I... I just didn't think they gave it a proper chance."
"Of course they didn't. Blowhards like that are so busy convincing themselves they're worth what they're paid that they wouldn't notice a good idea if it crawled up their pants and died. But sometimes -- often -- being a soldier means shutting up and letting things roll out as they must. Now let's go get some food. Don't think I was kidding about the extra tread wheel duty. And you have double watch tonight."
"Yes, sir."
###
The wind that night was shockingly cold when Vaino took the watch. The moon was new, and a layer of clouds blocked even the starlight. The only lights to be seen were enemy campfires in the distance.
The small fire in the guardhouse offered almost no heat, so Vaino found himself pacing along the wall in an effort to keep warm. It if hadn't been for the temperature, it would have been a fine night, with the kind of crisp stillness that he loved. Even the town was unusually quiet tonight. Everyone was curled up in bed trying to stay warm.
Voices floated across no man's land occasionally. Vaino tried to make them out but couldn't. There was also a crunching sound mixed in.
"They must be using that pile of coal. Maybe they're firing up their brewery," he thought bitterly. "Except you can't use mineral coal to heat beer. The smoke gets into it and ruins the taste. It's the same reason you can't smelt iron with it. That Beleren idiot doesn't know anything except his engines."
Trying not to brood, he turned his mind back to heat power. The thaumata masters were right about one thing -- you simply couldn't get that much power out of the draft up a chimney. But the power certainly was there, so there had to be a way to get at it. Heat made things expand, he knew that from casting metals. Maybe you could heat up a very long length of metal, then cool it off? Not very practical.
A distant hiss distracted him. The voices were sounding more excited. The hiss repeated itself, followed by clanking. Vaino was just starting to think it sounded like the gears in a thaumata moving when there was a loud thump, followed by the sound of clumps of dirt hitting the ground. From his experiences on horseback the previous day, he knew what that sound meant. It was a very powerful thaumata blasting away at a earthwork. It was coming from the mysterious engine in front of the gates.
Without really thinking about it, Vaino grabbed the rope used to haul buckets up to the top of the wall and ran for the gate. Here he was shielded by the earthworks guarding the entrance to the city, in case any of the Lodosans were watching for activity. He didn't let himself think about it, because if he was wrong he was about to commit a capital offense. Quickly tying the rope around a deprecated crenelation, he threw it over the far side and climbed down.
On the ground he gave up any pretense of stealth. He ran straight towards the earthwork. The thaumata was firing more and more rapidly. Shouts from behind him showed he wasn't the only person who had noticed. Somewhere, he hoped, Beleren was being dragged to Lord Imanol and forced to explain how a thaumata of that size could possibly be firing so regularly. It was hard to count while running, but there weren't more than six seconds between blasts now. That was fifty times faster than Good Neighbor, which was a smaller thaumata anyway. You didn't have to be an engine master to see this would change the balance of the siege.
Vaino was getting winded when he finally reached the near side of the earthwork. Pausing for breath, he heard troops marching between him and the city. The Lodosans were moving into position, either to storm the city once the gates were breached, or just to defend against an hasty assault on the engine. He was definitely on his own. Dirt showered down on him with every blast from the thaumata, as it slowly dug a hole through its own protective berm. Now he knew why they had shown no sign of digging it out by hand.
Trying to be a bit less obvious, he walked around the earthwork as quietly as possible. The shoveling of mineral coal was much more audible now. He was also starting to feel the gut-wrenching pulses of mechanized sorcery. He found the path which they had followed away from the engine and turned to parallel it. Careful to stay out of sight, he froze when he heard people approaching.
It was two men walking away from the engine. One was wearing a leather apron and smudged with coal dust. The other was dressed as finely as Beleren and walked with much the same arrogance. Vaino followed as best he could.
"The engine seems to be running well," said the later.
"No complaints yet, just keep the water barrels coming. We should be through the berm by morning."
"And the Galdakao earthworks?"
"Hard to say. Depends on how well they were made. But by tomorrow afternoon, I'd guess. The gate itself will follow quickly after that."
"The general wants it to go down all at once, not just a small hole to be a bottleneck for the troops."
"We'll blast a bigger hole in the earthworks, then, before turning on the gate itself. We can shim the columnization abaci out a bit..."
Vaino stopped. They were approaching the Lodosan camp, and he didn't dare risk getting any closed. Once the pair was safely far away, he turned and hurried back to the engine.
From the path, Vaino could clearly see the pile of mineral coal next to the kiln structure. No one was visible, but he could hear regular shoveling coming from inside. Whatever they were doing, it was eating through fuel like a blast furnace. The regular hissing sound he had originally heard was much more obvious this close. Shortly after each hiss stopped, the beam leading from the kiln to the thaumata rocked up, pivoting about the wall it rested on. This triggered another blast from the engine. He couldn't imagine how they were turning the heat energy into such powerful thrusts, but decided that wasn't very important at the moment. It just needed to be stopped, and anything that complicated should be pretty easy to damage.
Not seeing anyone standing guard, he ran up to the entrance and looked in. In the flickering light inside, two men were visible. Like the one on the road, they wore leather aprons and were filthy with coal dust. One was shoveling fuel into a roaring fire at the base of the kiln. The other was manipulating rods connected to the machine. Vaino stepped out of the shadows and used the flat of his sword to hit the man holding the shovel. He dropped and didn't move.
The other man jumped but didn't let go of the rods. His eyes flicked between Vaino's sword and the mechanisms moving above them. He pushed in a rod, triggering the loud hiss. Steam and water shot out a small tube on the side of the cylinder above the kiln with a sniffing sound. He pulled the rod back out, and then immediately twisted another one over and back. The overhead beam pulled down violently, then slowly raised back up.
"Are... are you going to kill me?" the man asked, continuing to work the rods.
"I don't want to," Vaino replied. "You're no soldier. But I can't let the thaumata keep firing."
"There are others! They know how to run it. And if I stop, they'll be here in seconds!"
"Aye, I was thinking that."
Vaino looked closer at the man. Calloused hands, rough clothing, and that certain look in eyes, as if he was always judging the material strength of everything around him. He could have been any of the ironworkers Vaino had grown up around.
"What's your name?"
"Kepa."
"Well, Kepa, until I can figure out what I am to do next, will you tell me how this device works?"
"They call it an atmospheric engine. The boiler here produces steam, which fills that cylinder, or house, above. Then a jet of cold water is squirted inside, condensing the steam. That forms a vacuum. The plate at the top comes down into the house to fill the vacuum, and the beam is pulled along with it."
"Ah, yes, very clever! Using steam, I like that."
It certainly put the pit-turner to shame. Vaino watched Kepa regulate the motion of the great device, tracing the rods back to the various pipes and fittings. There was the cistern that held the cold water, high up in the rafters to provide a good forceful head. He noticed a spurt of water draining into it with every stroke of the beam.
"Does this also run a water pump?"
"Yes, to replenish the reservoir up there. New feature, that is. On the old models we had a boy running up there with buckets all the time."
As impressed as Vaino was, he was also starting to feel desperate. He needed to not just turn this device off, but damage it beyond easy repair. The building was roughly finished masonry, and he couldn't see how to get up to the beam to set it on fire. Eying the metalwork, the massive brass cylinder had to be the most expensive and irreplaceable part. He was strong, but not strong enough to crack that. The only other major component was the boiler, just a copper kettle on top of a giant fire. Everything was solidly made, on a scale he had never seen outside of thaumata. Human strength simply wasn't enough to disrupt its action permanently.
"Um, so, if you don't want people to see it stop and come running," Kepa said, "It could really use some more fuel. The pressure inside the boiler drops if the fire gets much lower, running at full speed like this."
Vaino stared at the man.
"Hey, its my life if I don't stay to keep cycling the valves. I can't run on you."
Vaino thought about it, and realized he had no better ideas for the moment. He sheathed his sword and started shoveling. It was kind of comforting, feeding a fire like this. He had spent a large part of his childhood doing it, first at his father's bloomery, then during his smithing apprenticeship. It had always been his habit back then to add more charcoal than was needed, on the theory that he then wouldn't have to for a longer time. It had eventually been beaten into him that it didn't work that way. The fire just burned faster, wasting fuel, and raised the temperature needlessly.
With a feeling of clarity like that when he went over the wall, he starting shoveling with extra vigor. When the fire was built up as far as it could go, he kicked the dampers wide open. He drew his sword and advanced on Kepa with it in one hand and the shovel in the other.
"You can leave now or die."
Kepa looked at the sword pointed straight at his neck, gulped, and ran out into the darkness. Vaino turned back to the device and re-sheathed his sword. Realizing that time was extremely short, he first used the shovel to attack the steam injection valve. It was a thin sheet of copper that moved in and out of a slot. He was able to pry up the corners to jam it in a closed position.
The cold water spray valve worked the same way, but even standing on his toes he couldn't reach it. Vaino jumped, hitting at it blindly with the shovel. He couldn't see any damage to the valve, but the lead pipe leading into it was dented. Several blows aimed directly at it left it pretty well crimped.
Vaino knew that if he ran now, he could still get away. But what if he wasn't as clever he thought? It was more important to do as much damage as possible now. He took a shovel of live coals from the fire and threw them into the pile of mineral coal. While outside, he paused to open the bungs on the water barrels and kick over the one feeding the pump for the cistern. He couldn't see anything else obvious to do, so he started flinging more coals up into the rafters with the shovel. They only hits the walls and rained down sparks that got in his eyes, but he kept at it. He was starting to get the hang of it when he felt the shiver of sorcery being used.
"But the thaumata isn't running!" was all he could think before falling to the floor unconscious.
###
First there were noises. Then vague shapes moving in front of him. His eyes were closed, he realized, and he couldn't open them. He couldn't move any part of his body, in fact. He had only experienced something like this once before, when the village healer had fixed his broken leg. It was sorcery, the kind only a human could perform. No human mind could withstand the pressures of what a thaumata did, but they could do far more nuanced, precise tasks. Like healing, or rendering an enemy helpless.
"You may open you eyes," a voice said.
Vaino opened his eyes, blinking several times. He was outside the engine structure, on the far side of the coal pile. He sitting on the ground. There were no restraints, but they wouldn't be necessary. Sitting across from him on a little stool was the well-dressed Lodosan he had seen earlier.
"So Galdakao sent us a saboteur," the man said. "Or were you just a spy, looking for the secret of our new engine, and got caught up in the moment?"
Vaino tried to respond but was unable to. Until the sorcerer released him, he could do nothing without permission.
Kepa ran up.
"How bad is the damage?" the man asked.
"Luckily none of the fires had really caught yet," Kepa replied. "The valves and pipes will take a bit of time to repair, once the boiler has cooled off some."
"No!" the man yelled, jumping up. "Keep the boiler going. We can't spare the hours it would waste to build up a new head of steam. I don't care how hot it is, get it fixed now. I'll burn out the pain center of your brain if need be!"
Kepa jumped a little and ran off. Vaino could hear some shouting from within the structure. Someone in there wasn't happy with the decision. He hoped that meant his plan had some merit.
"I think I'll leave you like this," the sorcerer said. "You can watch us repair the engine, and then you can watch it reduce your city to dust. Maybe we'll stick you up on an earthwork so you can watch Galdakao burn. Of course, you might catch a stray thaumata blast, but that's fine as well. No one who knows how our atmospheric engine works can be allowed to live anyway."
He walked into the structure, leaving Vaino helpless on the ground. The trouble with his plan, he realized now, is that he had no idea how long it would take. If it would work at all. Bound by a sorcerer's will, unable to move a single muscle without permission, he was starting to see a lot more ways things could fail. If they were able to repair his damage too quickly, if the boiler was built stronger than it appeared, if there was some outlet for the steam that he hadn't seen...
Unable to flinch, Vaino watched the building in front of him explode. First there was a loud thump, like a nearby thaumata strike. A billow of steam rushed out of every opening, blanketing the area in instant fog. There were screams from the people inside, but he was more interested in the sound of metal twisting and snapping under great strain. The giant beam shuddered and then slowly fell into the thaumata, taking the wall it rested on with it.
He was so enthralled by the chaos before him that he didn't immediately realize he could move again. The sorcerer must have been knocked unconscious or killed. Not waiting to find out, Vaino jumped up and ran off into the darkness around the earthwork. There were yells behind him as others came to see what had happened, but none followed him. He was safe.
###
It was almost dawn by the time Vaino was able to get back to the city walls. Luckily the Lodosan forces in front of the city had been keeping a poor watch, no doubt unsettled by the abrupt silence of their great engine.
He wasn't sure what would happen upon his return -- the traditional penalty for desertion was death. He certainly wasn't expecting a rope to be flung down as soon as he approached. After the last few hours it didn't seen all that unusual, though, so he climbed it. Offering a hand at the top was Kihlvako.
"Thank you sir. I, uh, have some things to report."
Kihlvako stared at him oddly.
"I bet you do. I was worried sick when I came up here to find you missing. I knew you had tried to do something idiotic. Then that thaumata stopped, and I was sure of it. Then it went and exploded, just to drive the goddamned point home."
"Yes, sir."
"Wipe that goddamned grin off your face. Just head straight back to the barracks and keep your mouth shut. You were on watch all night, and I was here with you. Nothing happened, we just watched the Lodosan thaumata explode for no reason, we know nothing about it, and you aren't a goddamned hero who saved the city. Got it?"
"Yes, sir."
Vaino walked back to the barracks, enjoying the festival atmosphere of a city that knows it came very close to being sacked. They weren't bad people, these southerners, though he never would get used to the smell. They certainly could do some interesting things with metal. Too bad they could only think of ways to kill as many people as possible. That atmospheric engine must be useful for purposes beyond driving a thaumata. It had certainly worked well for pumping water. He knew the clan had mined tin a long time ago, before the mine had flooded. With one of those engines running, maybe they could do it again.
Laying in bed, his mind was filled with plans for building his own engine once he got home. It was a very clever system, but he was already thinking of ways to improve it. The boiler was the wrong shape, and he was pretty sure he could eliminate poor Kepa's job by making the action automatic.
His last thought before falling asleep was that he should probably add a spring-loaded valve on the boiler to release steam should the pressure build too high. Kihlvako would appreciate that, he bet.
The Tloo mercenaries trudged through the Galdakao city gates, weary after their four day march across the peninsula. Normally a company of one hundred and twenty eight barbarians would have drawn some attention, but not today. They were almost lost in the stream of refugees and supply wagons moving into the city. The enemy was only a day away, and everyone wanted to be behind the great walls and earthworks when they arrived.
Towards the end of the column, two men paused to take in the sight before them. One was a young man whose otherwise calm expression was betrayed the frantic motion of his eyes. The other was older and watched the chaos from behind a kind smile and a thick beard. Both had the powerful build of a smith.
"Sure is something, huh, Vaino?" Kihlvako asked the younger man in their native tongue. "I've been to more than a couple southern cities in my time, and I never get over the size."
"And the noise. And the *smell*," Vaino said quietly. He could see more people in front of him now than he had met in his first sixteen years of life. Even the great potlatches his father had taken him to didn't come close. And this was only one corner of the city!
Kihlvako laughed and slapped him on the back. "You get used to it faster than you would think. Come on, let's get to the barracks and get something to eat."
###
Early the next morning Vaino secured a vantage point to watch the Lodosan army approach. The city's thaumata had started firing at first light, even thought the enemy was far enough away that the strongest blasts only made them stumble. Mostly they were aiming at buildings outside the earthworks surrounding the city, knocking down any structure that the enemy could use for shelter.
Vaino was standing under one of the city's largest thaumata, mounted above the main gate. The tread wheel which powered it clanked incessantly beneath his feet. Every five minutes his eyesight blurred and his insides twisted as the great engine fired. It was the same reaction he felt to normal sorcery, but magnified beyond anything he could have believed possible. Any human attempting to work magic on that scale would not only be killed instantly from the backlash, his head would be blasted from his shoulders. He found himself agreeing with the mutters he had heard during the march. It was deeply unnatural.
Frowning at the device, Vaino moved to find a place farther away when the thaumata fired again. The shiver that ran down his spine made his calves twitch violently. He stumbled into the man standing next to him, spilling the drink he was holding.
"Oi, watch it there!" the man yelled. His breath smelled heavily of ale.
Embarrassed, Vaino's face went still. "I am very sorry," he said in his halting Segurian.
"Are you now?" the man asked, giving Vaino a good shove. The people around them were all watching now, giving Vaino odd looks.
"It was an accident, I assure you. The thaumata device, I have problems with it."
The instant he had said this, Vaino knew it had been a mistake.
"What's wrong with Good Neighbor here?" someone shouted out from the crowd.
The man in front of Vaino pushed him again.
"Damn spying foreigner doesn't like our thaumata. Maybe he thinks we'd be better without it?"
Vaino saw nothing but hostile faces, many of them fingering their knives. He moved to draw his sword when a commanding voice interrupted.
"What's going on here?"
A bald man in expensive armor moved through the crowd. He didn't have to push; people just melted out of his way. Behind him was Kihlvako.
"Lord Imanol!" the drunk man said, lowering himself to one knee. All around, people were doing the same.
Vaino lowered his head in the sign of respect he would give any chieftain.
"Is this your man?", Lord Imanol asked Kihlvako.
"He is."
"He was fixing to curse Good Neighbor, sire! Muttering at it in that northern witch's talk!"
Lord Imanol turned to stare at Vaino. He looked more annoyed than angry. "Is this true?"
"No. No it isn't, sir. I just found my body reacting oddly. Sir."
Lord Imanol sighed and raised his hands. "Everyone move along. This incident is over," he commanded.
More quietly he said to Kihlvako, "Get him out of here, and tell him to be more careful in the future if he has to talk with a goddamned Lodosan accent."
Lord Imanol strode off before either of the Tloo could respond. Kihlvako eyed Vaino and didn't say anything for a long time. Vaino could feel his face flushing, despite his best attempt at control. Just when he didn't think he could take it any more, the older man spoke.
"There's not much to be done about how you speak Segurian. It's plain bad luck that the traders who normally come up our river are from Lodosa. But you should know better than to speak ill of thaumata, even to hint at it, not in a southern city. These people live and die by them."
"While we'll just die by them."
"Don't get smart with me. You're a good boy, and a clever hand at the forge, but you're awfully green when it comes to the world outside our fjord. I know what you think of thaumata -- and you aren't alone. But down here you'd better get used to them. Now get back to the barracks. You're going to take double tread wheel duty tonight, and count yourself lucky we didn't get here half a minute later to find you full of extra holes."
###
Later that day Vaino arrived at the tread wheel for one of the smaller thaumata mounted around the city walls. The pulses it gave off were much weaker, but it fired every other minute. The endless walking Vaino could handle well enough. It wasn't that different than climbing up to the mountain pastures at home to go hunting. But it was impossible to let his mind drift off too far, waiting for the counterweight to release and power another wave of sorcery. He supposed if you grew up around thaumata you'd be used to them, like the stink of the city, but he was glad they wouldn't be used in the north any time soon.
The other people on the wheel were all locals, and didn't seem so affected by the energy. Vaino didn't join their conversation but listened carefully. It was mostly speculation about the siege. The movements of the enemy and their fortification work was closely followed. Everyone was nervous, but the city had withstood sieges in the past. It was hard not to feel confident working the bowels of such an awesome device. The biggest question was where the enemy would install its own thaumata, the components of which had already begun to arrive.
###
Vaino quickly settled into a routine over the next few weeks. Up with the rest of the company at Matins. On the wheel until noon. Sometimes another stint on the wheel in the afternoon, otherwise he helped out in the smithy or ran errands for the older soldiers until Vespers. He usually had guard duty on the wall starting at Compline, but being one of the youngest members he was often called on at random times during the night as well.
It wasn't a bad life, generally easier than helping at his father's bloomery, but he missed the mountains and the water. Soon it would be time for the tlihl run, and all the village would be out catching and drying and smoking the endless supply of fish. Yet another reason the gods wanted us to live in the north, he thought. Down here you have to work hard to get any food at all. All the land around the city was converted to farming, field after field all across the peninsula. More unnatural southern ways, but at least they paid well for mercenary work.
He got to take part in a couple of small skirmishes outside the main gates, but never saw any action himself. The enemy didn't want to commit to battle until their own thaumata were in place. This was a slow process, because they couldn't even start building them until they had dug great earthworks to shield against the city's bombardments. Watching how and where these berms were built was the greatest clue anyone inside the city had to the capabilities of the besieging force. In the end, everything depended on who had the more powerful engines. Kihlvako took him up to the walls one evening to look at what was being done.
"Even Tloo mercs like us need to understand thaumata tactics. You need to be able to read the battlefield, to see what the enemy wants to do. What do you see here?"
"Well... Most of their earthworks are fairly close to the walls. That implies small, weak engines. Probably not strong enough to be a threat, but they could provide covering fire for an attack."
"Yes. What about the one in front of the gates?"
"It's too far away, isn't it? Good Neighbor can only rustle the grass at that distance. It has to be a bluff."
"I suspect you're right, but one learns not to underestimate new developments in thaumata. It certainly looks like they're building something behind it."
"So what do we do?"
Kihlvako grinned at him and said, "Why, we go take a look."
###
The next day the gates opened up and the city's heavy calvary charged into battle. Thaumata on both sides were firing as fast as possible. It hadn't rained in days, and the horses hooves and blasts of energy quickly churned up a chocking cloud of dust in the fields between the city and the main Lodosan camp.
Vaino was mounted with a dozen of the fastest Tloo riders. Each wore only the lightest armor and were armed with only a single spear.
Kihlvako stood in front of them, watching the carnage outside closely.
"Listen up, it's just about time to go," he said. "Remember that your goal isn't glory. That will come, but not today. They're used to heavy calvary down here, and won't be expecting your speed. Just circle the berm, get a good look at what they're hiding there, and get back. Avoid combat if you can -- the information is more important than killing a couple of Lodosans. That's why we were chosen for the job. We were hired as professionals, and that's how we're going to act. Get it done, get back for dinner."
"And drinks!" a distant cousin of Vaino's yelled. "And girls!" cried another.
"Whatever it takes to get you back. Now, ride!"
Kihlvako lept to the side as the riders thundered through. Vaino let out a cry and shook his spear along with the others. Free from the maze of narrow streets at last!
The group initially rode straight for the melee, so they would look like reinforcements. Once they entered the cloud of dust they turned right, heading for a cluster of burnt-out buildings. There they would find the entrance to a small gully that was hoped would help masked their approach to one side of the earthwork.
The dust was thicker than Vaino expected, and he quickly lost sight of the others. The main battle had been through here, leaving a mess of broken weapons and bodies. He slowed to a trot so the horse wouldn't break a leg. There were groans and cries for help all around, but no one tried to stop him.
He continued in what he thought was the direction of the burnt-out buildings. Soon he could see the faint outline of riders up ahead. He called out to them in the Segurian they had been using when outside the barracks. The group slowed in response. He was only a few paces away when he realized they were not from his company and were all wearing Lodosan colors.
The nearest one started to reach for his sword. Without thinking about it, Vaino kicked his horse into a gallop and charged straight at the mass. The Lodosan didn't even have time to scream before Vaino's spear was embedded in his neck, carefully threaded up under his helmet. The spear was wrenched out of Vaino's grip as he rode by. He galloped off into the dust, leaving confused cries behind him.
When he was sure he wasn't being pursued, Vaino slowed back down. Less sure than ever where he was, he set off based on a glimpse of the sun through the dust. He passed many more casualties on the ground. While messy, death by a blade seemed like a reasonably good death to him. It was clean and direct, and you could look your enemy in the eye as it happened. Worse were the twisted victims of thaumata strikes, many of them squeezed into parts too small to recognize. Others were just laying on the ground with no visible damage beyond their clouded, steaming eyes. It was a death of a criminal or traitor, not a warrior.
The dust slowly faded, and Vaino became aware of a large mass on his right. He was so turned around that he wouldn't have been surprised if it was the earthworks surrounding the city walls. Riding up it he cleared more of the dust and realized he was on the berm he was looking for -- but on the wrong end of it. The rest of the group was going to be approaching from the gully on the east side. He thought about following it around to try to meet up with them, but decided it would be too easy to become lost again. Anyway, he had no way of knowing if any of them had made it there anyway. He turned and set off directly for the back side of the berm.
As he came around the side, a large structure quickly came into view. It was a thaumata, and it was larger than any Vaino had ever seen. His heart sank. It dwarfed Good Neighbor, and looked to be nearing completion. Then he realized something odd. There was no wheel or capstan to drive the device. Nor was there a tower in which the counterweight would be raised. Instead there was a rough structure containing a large kiln, connected to the engine via a thick wooden beam. Vaino was just noticing the pile of mineral coal next to the construction when an icy spike ran through his body and the berm next to him exploded in a shower of dirt.
His horse reared beneath him and then shot off down the embankment. Dirt shot up again just in front of them. Field-thaumata, he thought, and cursed himself for letting himself be silhouetted at the top of the berm. He remembered being told that the smaller engines were easier to raise and lower than to swivel, so he turned the horse and angled down the side of the berm towards the incomplete thaumata. Shouts from ahead made him reconsider his choice, but then he saw the rest of the Tloo riding around the berm coming towards him. Apparently surrounded by mounted forced, what there was of a local defense broke and ran before them.
Vaino swung around to join the others, responding to their whoops in kind. More explosions showed they were still in the sights of a thaumata, dissuading them from slowing down as they passed the incomplete engine. Closer now, Vaino could see the kiln had a copper vessel on top, like a giant kettle. It was directly attached to the beam by means of a brass cylinder and a very thick chain.
Rounding the berm they heard a horn being sounded. The heavy calvary started an orderly retreat from the battlefield in a thunder of hooves. The Tloo riders slipped in with them and rode back to the gate with only an occasional explosion from the field-thaumata following them home.
###
Vaino was relaxing with the rest of the company that night at the inn closest to their barracks. He and the other riders, all of whom had returned safely, were temporary heroes and the focus of all the conversation. The ale was flowing, and the pig roasting on a spit in front of the large fireplace was starting to look pretty good. He was content to sit back and join the endless toasts.
Kihlvako stomped in just as the meal started. He pulled up a chair next to Vaino and speared a healthy chunk of pork on his belt knife.
"How do you always manage to show up just in time for food?"
"Heh. That's an old soldier's trick, boy."
"To being an old soldier," one of the others cried. Everyone raised their cups and cheered.
As the meal was winding down, Vaino found himself watching the remains of the pig spin round and round over the fire. It was driven by a fan rotating in the chimney, pushed around by the air moving up from the fire. It obviously had been inspired by some of the mechanical linkages originally invented for thaumata, and Vaino enjoyed watching them being used for such a peaceful, mundane task.
A particularly loud belch from Kihlvako broke his reverie. He found the conversation had returned to the state of the incomplete engine.
"It can't be anywhere near complete," one of the older troopers said. "They haven't started the drive wheel yet, and the whole thing is too low to fire on the city from behind that earthwork it's hiding behind. Once they start digging that away, that's when we'll know it's working."
Most of the table nodded in agreement.
"I'm told reinforcements will be arriving within the week," Kihlvako said. "Galdakao's allies are finally sending help, and if the Lodosan engines aren't ready by the time they arrive, chances are the siege will be broken."
After the cheers had died down, Vaino asked, "What about the other structure, the kiln thing?"
Kihlvako looked less certain. "The thaumata masters... they didn't think it was anything important."
"You mean they thought we made it up."
"No. No, but they did question if you were reporting things correctly."
A cry came up from around the table at this.
"Easy now. I believe you saw exactly what you described -- and described exactly what you saw. But the fact is, those men know all the types of thaumata there are in this world, and whatever that thing is, it just isn't part of one."
Vaino sat back, uneasy. The others seemed reassured by this, but he wasn't. It was only in his great-grandfather's day that thaumata had never been seen before. Surely the first people to see one being built outside their walls also rejected it as harmless. The Lodosans wouldn't have bothered building it if it didn't have a purpose.
Not too much later, Vaino left the inn early and stumbled back to the barracks alone. Despite his exhaustion and all the ale, he found he couldn't sleep. Eventually he gave up and went to sit in front of the fire. He hadn't bothered to stoke it when he came in, but it was still glowing faintly. Thinking back to the inn, he took a piece of charcoal and started sketching the spit-turning mechanism on the flagstones next to the fire. It really was a clever system. He wondered if he could build one at home for the village longhouse. He had always hated having to turn the spit as a boy, getting splashed with hot drippings and inhaling smoke.
Drifting off a bit, he wondered what else you could use the system for. The hotter the fire, the more power you could get out of it. The draft coming up from his father's furnaces would be much more forceful than any old cooking fire. Could you use it to power the bellows? Not that the northern mountains were lacking in sources of water power, but a system like that wouldn't have the cost of maintaining a dam to get you through the dry summers.
The more he thought about it, the odder it seemed that devices like this weren't more common. Burning things obviously released a lot of energy, but the only thing people used it for was making things hot. If you could use it to make something turn, you could use it to lift things, or move them back and forth or up and down...
He jumped up and ran back to the inn like he was chasing mountain caribou.
###
The next day, Lord Imanol was squinting at him in the bright morning sun. They were on the city walls near Good Neighbor which was thankfully quiet.
"Why did you want to meet, Kihlvako?" the lord asked. "We are not lacking in claims on my time."
Kihlvako stepped forward, looking slightly uneasy. Behind Lord Imanol were the top thaumata masters of the city. Each commanded a salary that would buy their entire village.
"One of my men, Vaino here, has an idea about the engine out there. He's the son of our greatest foundry man, and he worked at my forge as a boy. It's not for me to say, of course, but I think his idea deserves listening to."
Kihlvako stepped back. Vaino realized all of them were waiting on him now.
"Sirs, the thaumata we saw had a kiln or furnace attached to it. Mechanically linked to it. It had no power source. No tread wheel. No frame to mount one in. No water power available."
"We know all this," one of the sickly looking engine drivers said.
"Yes, very sorry. What if the furnace was the source of power? Rising air can turn the spit before a fire. Why can't it power a thaumata?"
Lord Imanol raised an eyebrow and turned to the men behind him.
"Preposterous," said the one closest to him. He had the pallor that everyone who spent too much time exposed to sorcery acquired but was wearing finer clothes than even Lord Imanol. Vaino recognized him as Unai Beleren, one of the most famous and richest thaumata masters in the southern realms.
"To begin with," he said, "You could never lift the counterweight with a draft-powered rotisserie. Maybe if you have three hundred of them working in parallel, which is certainly not the case here. Secondly, there is no counterweight! No tower, no pit, no way to store up the energy needed."
"And the moral philosophy," one of the other began.
"Yes, it's all wrong philosophically," Beleren continued. "You simply can't power a thaumata with fire, any doctor will tell you that. Thaumata are, by their nature, a destructive force. So is fire, obviously. Everyone knows creation can only happen through the union of opposites, that has been known as a philosophical truth since the times of ancient Tyaldur. That is why constructive forces have to be harnessed. Living creatures or life-giving water turning a wheel."
"That's the only way a thaumata can work," another one said. They all nodded in agreement.
Lord Imanol, who had been watching the exchange closely, nodded as well.
"I'm glad that's sorted out," he said and started to walk away with the masters. "We really must talk about replacing Little Andoni's gear train on the eastern wall. We can't afford to have it out of commission for very long."
"If it isn't a source of power, what is the kiln?" Vaino yelled out. Kihlvako put a very firm hand on his shoulder.
Beleren looked enraged. "If -- and this is a pretty big if -- there really is a kiln next to the engine, then the Lodosans obviously want to make bricks. Or maybe it's a brewery, and they're preparing for a victory celebration. But I'm telling you it has nothing to do with thaumata. You dare come into my city and question my expertise? We're to be lectured by some mountain ironmonger?"
Kihlvako's fingers dug into Vaino's shoulder like hooks.
"I'm very sorry, my lords," the older man said. "I see I haven't been assigning enough tread wheel duty. Rest assured that this will change."
Lord Imanol nodded and walked off without another word. The others followed.
"Dammit, boy, do you have any idea what that might have cost us? Our clan has been hiring itself to Galdakao very profitably for a long time now. You don't risk that for some crazy what-if you might have!"
Vaino's face went very still.
"I... I just didn't think they gave it a proper chance."
"Of course they didn't. Blowhards like that are so busy convincing themselves they're worth what they're paid that they wouldn't notice a good idea if it crawled up their pants and died. But sometimes -- often -- being a soldier means shutting up and letting things roll out as they must. Now let's go get some food. Don't think I was kidding about the extra tread wheel duty. And you have double watch tonight."
"Yes, sir."
###
The wind that night was shockingly cold when Vaino took the watch. The moon was new, and a layer of clouds blocked even the starlight. The only lights to be seen were enemy campfires in the distance.
The small fire in the guardhouse offered almost no heat, so Vaino found himself pacing along the wall in an effort to keep warm. It if hadn't been for the temperature, it would have been a fine night, with the kind of crisp stillness that he loved. Even the town was unusually quiet tonight. Everyone was curled up in bed trying to stay warm.
Voices floated across no man's land occasionally. Vaino tried to make them out but couldn't. There was also a crunching sound mixed in.
"They must be using that pile of coal. Maybe they're firing up their brewery," he thought bitterly. "Except you can't use mineral coal to heat beer. The smoke gets into it and ruins the taste. It's the same reason you can't smelt iron with it. That Beleren idiot doesn't know anything except his engines."
Trying not to brood, he turned his mind back to heat power. The thaumata masters were right about one thing -- you simply couldn't get that much power out of the draft up a chimney. But the power certainly was there, so there had to be a way to get at it. Heat made things expand, he knew that from casting metals. Maybe you could heat up a very long length of metal, then cool it off? Not very practical.
A distant hiss distracted him. The voices were sounding more excited. The hiss repeated itself, followed by clanking. Vaino was just starting to think it sounded like the gears in a thaumata moving when there was a loud thump, followed by the sound of clumps of dirt hitting the ground. From his experiences on horseback the previous day, he knew what that sound meant. It was a very powerful thaumata blasting away at a earthwork. It was coming from the mysterious engine in front of the gates.
Without really thinking about it, Vaino grabbed the rope used to haul buckets up to the top of the wall and ran for the gate. Here he was shielded by the earthworks guarding the entrance to the city, in case any of the Lodosans were watching for activity. He didn't let himself think about it, because if he was wrong he was about to commit a capital offense. Quickly tying the rope around a deprecated crenelation, he threw it over the far side and climbed down.
On the ground he gave up any pretense of stealth. He ran straight towards the earthwork. The thaumata was firing more and more rapidly. Shouts from behind him showed he wasn't the only person who had noticed. Somewhere, he hoped, Beleren was being dragged to Lord Imanol and forced to explain how a thaumata of that size could possibly be firing so regularly. It was hard to count while running, but there weren't more than six seconds between blasts now. That was fifty times faster than Good Neighbor, which was a smaller thaumata anyway. You didn't have to be an engine master to see this would change the balance of the siege.
Vaino was getting winded when he finally reached the near side of the earthwork. Pausing for breath, he heard troops marching between him and the city. The Lodosans were moving into position, either to storm the city once the gates were breached, or just to defend against an hasty assault on the engine. He was definitely on his own. Dirt showered down on him with every blast from the thaumata, as it slowly dug a hole through its own protective berm. Now he knew why they had shown no sign of digging it out by hand.
Trying to be a bit less obvious, he walked around the earthwork as quietly as possible. The shoveling of mineral coal was much more audible now. He was also starting to feel the gut-wrenching pulses of mechanized sorcery. He found the path which they had followed away from the engine and turned to parallel it. Careful to stay out of sight, he froze when he heard people approaching.
It was two men walking away from the engine. One was wearing a leather apron and smudged with coal dust. The other was dressed as finely as Beleren and walked with much the same arrogance. Vaino followed as best he could.
"The engine seems to be running well," said the later.
"No complaints yet, just keep the water barrels coming. We should be through the berm by morning."
"And the Galdakao earthworks?"
"Hard to say. Depends on how well they were made. But by tomorrow afternoon, I'd guess. The gate itself will follow quickly after that."
"The general wants it to go down all at once, not just a small hole to be a bottleneck for the troops."
"We'll blast a bigger hole in the earthworks, then, before turning on the gate itself. We can shim the columnization abaci out a bit..."
Vaino stopped. They were approaching the Lodosan camp, and he didn't dare risk getting any closed. Once the pair was safely far away, he turned and hurried back to the engine.
From the path, Vaino could clearly see the pile of mineral coal next to the kiln structure. No one was visible, but he could hear regular shoveling coming from inside. Whatever they were doing, it was eating through fuel like a blast furnace. The regular hissing sound he had originally heard was much more obvious this close. Shortly after each hiss stopped, the beam leading from the kiln to the thaumata rocked up, pivoting about the wall it rested on. This triggered another blast from the engine. He couldn't imagine how they were turning the heat energy into such powerful thrusts, but decided that wasn't very important at the moment. It just needed to be stopped, and anything that complicated should be pretty easy to damage.
Not seeing anyone standing guard, he ran up to the entrance and looked in. In the flickering light inside, two men were visible. Like the one on the road, they wore leather aprons and were filthy with coal dust. One was shoveling fuel into a roaring fire at the base of the kiln. The other was manipulating rods connected to the machine. Vaino stepped out of the shadows and used the flat of his sword to hit the man holding the shovel. He dropped and didn't move.
The other man jumped but didn't let go of the rods. His eyes flicked between Vaino's sword and the mechanisms moving above them. He pushed in a rod, triggering the loud hiss. Steam and water shot out a small tube on the side of the cylinder above the kiln with a sniffing sound. He pulled the rod back out, and then immediately twisted another one over and back. The overhead beam pulled down violently, then slowly raised back up.
"Are... are you going to kill me?" the man asked, continuing to work the rods.
"I don't want to," Vaino replied. "You're no soldier. But I can't let the thaumata keep firing."
"There are others! They know how to run it. And if I stop, they'll be here in seconds!"
"Aye, I was thinking that."
Vaino looked closer at the man. Calloused hands, rough clothing, and that certain look in eyes, as if he was always judging the material strength of everything around him. He could have been any of the ironworkers Vaino had grown up around.
"What's your name?"
"Kepa."
"Well, Kepa, until I can figure out what I am to do next, will you tell me how this device works?"
"They call it an atmospheric engine. The boiler here produces steam, which fills that cylinder, or house, above. Then a jet of cold water is squirted inside, condensing the steam. That forms a vacuum. The plate at the top comes down into the house to fill the vacuum, and the beam is pulled along with it."
"Ah, yes, very clever! Using steam, I like that."
It certainly put the pit-turner to shame. Vaino watched Kepa regulate the motion of the great device, tracing the rods back to the various pipes and fittings. There was the cistern that held the cold water, high up in the rafters to provide a good forceful head. He noticed a spurt of water draining into it with every stroke of the beam.
"Does this also run a water pump?"
"Yes, to replenish the reservoir up there. New feature, that is. On the old models we had a boy running up there with buckets all the time."
As impressed as Vaino was, he was also starting to feel desperate. He needed to not just turn this device off, but damage it beyond easy repair. The building was roughly finished masonry, and he couldn't see how to get up to the beam to set it on fire. Eying the metalwork, the massive brass cylinder had to be the most expensive and irreplaceable part. He was strong, but not strong enough to crack that. The only other major component was the boiler, just a copper kettle on top of a giant fire. Everything was solidly made, on a scale he had never seen outside of thaumata. Human strength simply wasn't enough to disrupt its action permanently.
"Um, so, if you don't want people to see it stop and come running," Kepa said, "It could really use some more fuel. The pressure inside the boiler drops if the fire gets much lower, running at full speed like this."
Vaino stared at the man.
"Hey, its my life if I don't stay to keep cycling the valves. I can't run on you."
Vaino thought about it, and realized he had no better ideas for the moment. He sheathed his sword and started shoveling. It was kind of comforting, feeding a fire like this. He had spent a large part of his childhood doing it, first at his father's bloomery, then during his smithing apprenticeship. It had always been his habit back then to add more charcoal than was needed, on the theory that he then wouldn't have to for a longer time. It had eventually been beaten into him that it didn't work that way. The fire just burned faster, wasting fuel, and raised the temperature needlessly.
With a feeling of clarity like that when he went over the wall, he starting shoveling with extra vigor. When the fire was built up as far as it could go, he kicked the dampers wide open. He drew his sword and advanced on Kepa with it in one hand and the shovel in the other.
"You can leave now or die."
Kepa looked at the sword pointed straight at his neck, gulped, and ran out into the darkness. Vaino turned back to the device and re-sheathed his sword. Realizing that time was extremely short, he first used the shovel to attack the steam injection valve. It was a thin sheet of copper that moved in and out of a slot. He was able to pry up the corners to jam it in a closed position.
The cold water spray valve worked the same way, but even standing on his toes he couldn't reach it. Vaino jumped, hitting at it blindly with the shovel. He couldn't see any damage to the valve, but the lead pipe leading into it was dented. Several blows aimed directly at it left it pretty well crimped.
Vaino knew that if he ran now, he could still get away. But what if he wasn't as clever he thought? It was more important to do as much damage as possible now. He took a shovel of live coals from the fire and threw them into the pile of mineral coal. While outside, he paused to open the bungs on the water barrels and kick over the one feeding the pump for the cistern. He couldn't see anything else obvious to do, so he started flinging more coals up into the rafters with the shovel. They only hits the walls and rained down sparks that got in his eyes, but he kept at it. He was starting to get the hang of it when he felt the shiver of sorcery being used.
"But the thaumata isn't running!" was all he could think before falling to the floor unconscious.
###
First there were noises. Then vague shapes moving in front of him. His eyes were closed, he realized, and he couldn't open them. He couldn't move any part of his body, in fact. He had only experienced something like this once before, when the village healer had fixed his broken leg. It was sorcery, the kind only a human could perform. No human mind could withstand the pressures of what a thaumata did, but they could do far more nuanced, precise tasks. Like healing, or rendering an enemy helpless.
"You may open you eyes," a voice said.
Vaino opened his eyes, blinking several times. He was outside the engine structure, on the far side of the coal pile. He sitting on the ground. There were no restraints, but they wouldn't be necessary. Sitting across from him on a little stool was the well-dressed Lodosan he had seen earlier.
"So Galdakao sent us a saboteur," the man said. "Or were you just a spy, looking for the secret of our new engine, and got caught up in the moment?"
Vaino tried to respond but was unable to. Until the sorcerer released him, he could do nothing without permission.
Kepa ran up.
"How bad is the damage?" the man asked.
"Luckily none of the fires had really caught yet," Kepa replied. "The valves and pipes will take a bit of time to repair, once the boiler has cooled off some."
"No!" the man yelled, jumping up. "Keep the boiler going. We can't spare the hours it would waste to build up a new head of steam. I don't care how hot it is, get it fixed now. I'll burn out the pain center of your brain if need be!"
Kepa jumped a little and ran off. Vaino could hear some shouting from within the structure. Someone in there wasn't happy with the decision. He hoped that meant his plan had some merit.
"I think I'll leave you like this," the sorcerer said. "You can watch us repair the engine, and then you can watch it reduce your city to dust. Maybe we'll stick you up on an earthwork so you can watch Galdakao burn. Of course, you might catch a stray thaumata blast, but that's fine as well. No one who knows how our atmospheric engine works can be allowed to live anyway."
He walked into the structure, leaving Vaino helpless on the ground. The trouble with his plan, he realized now, is that he had no idea how long it would take. If it would work at all. Bound by a sorcerer's will, unable to move a single muscle without permission, he was starting to see a lot more ways things could fail. If they were able to repair his damage too quickly, if the boiler was built stronger than it appeared, if there was some outlet for the steam that he hadn't seen...
Unable to flinch, Vaino watched the building in front of him explode. First there was a loud thump, like a nearby thaumata strike. A billow of steam rushed out of every opening, blanketing the area in instant fog. There were screams from the people inside, but he was more interested in the sound of metal twisting and snapping under great strain. The giant beam shuddered and then slowly fell into the thaumata, taking the wall it rested on with it.
He was so enthralled by the chaos before him that he didn't immediately realize he could move again. The sorcerer must have been knocked unconscious or killed. Not waiting to find out, Vaino jumped up and ran off into the darkness around the earthwork. There were yells behind him as others came to see what had happened, but none followed him. He was safe.
###
It was almost dawn by the time Vaino was able to get back to the city walls. Luckily the Lodosan forces in front of the city had been keeping a poor watch, no doubt unsettled by the abrupt silence of their great engine.
He wasn't sure what would happen upon his return -- the traditional penalty for desertion was death. He certainly wasn't expecting a rope to be flung down as soon as he approached. After the last few hours it didn't seen all that unusual, though, so he climbed it. Offering a hand at the top was Kihlvako.
"Thank you sir. I, uh, have some things to report."
Kihlvako stared at him oddly.
"I bet you do. I was worried sick when I came up here to find you missing. I knew you had tried to do something idiotic. Then that thaumata stopped, and I was sure of it. Then it went and exploded, just to drive the goddamned point home."
"Yes, sir."
"Wipe that goddamned grin off your face. Just head straight back to the barracks and keep your mouth shut. You were on watch all night, and I was here with you. Nothing happened, we just watched the Lodosan thaumata explode for no reason, we know nothing about it, and you aren't a goddamned hero who saved the city. Got it?"
"Yes, sir."
Vaino walked back to the barracks, enjoying the festival atmosphere of a city that knows it came very close to being sacked. They weren't bad people, these southerners, though he never would get used to the smell. They certainly could do some interesting things with metal. Too bad they could only think of ways to kill as many people as possible. That atmospheric engine must be useful for purposes beyond driving a thaumata. It had certainly worked well for pumping water. He knew the clan had mined tin a long time ago, before the mine had flooded. With one of those engines running, maybe they could do it again.
Laying in bed, his mind was filled with plans for building his own engine once he got home. It was a very clever system, but he was already thinking of ways to improve it. The boiler was the wrong shape, and he was pretty sure he could eliminate poor Kepa's job by making the action automatic.
His last thought before falling asleep was that he should probably add a spring-loaded valve on the boiler to release steam should the pressure build too high. Kihlvako would appreciate that, he bet.