DREAMWIELDER Book 1 of The Dreamwielder Chronicles

Chapter 34: THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE

Caile rubbed the weariness from his eyes and looked over the Pyrthinian troops digging ground fortifications in the fields at the western edge of Lepig. "Can you do it or not?" he asked the guild master of the carpenters who walked at his side.

"I cannot get a tank that size fifty feet up in the air," the stout, mustachioed man replied, shaking his head. "Thirty feet is the best I can do, and even then I can't promise the tower I build will hold the weight once that tank is filled."

Caile pictured the contraption he had conceived the night before. He wasn't certain that thirty feet would provide the pressure he was after, but it would have to do. "Do it," he told the carpenter. "You have two days, and it better hold. I have every barrel of naphtha from here to Makady on its way. That tank holds near five thousand gallons and I want it full."

"Two days?" the carpenter balked.

"Work day and night," Caile told him. "Get whatever men you need, and promise them whatever pay you must. If we succeed, I'll gladly pay it. If we fail, well, it won't matter much anyway—"

The color drained from the carpenter's face, and his mouth clamped shut. All he could do was nod that he would do it. Caile sent him on his way and turned back to the city to see to the coppersmiths who were making the long, tapered pipe and nozzle he would need. He had taken his idea from the miners in the mountains north of Sol Valaróz who used creeks and streams to create water cannons to strip down the sides of hills and unearth silver. Caile's contraption wasn't meant to hose down the hillside though. It was meant to douse the Emperor's war machines in naphtha once they got stuck in the trenches the Pyrthinian soldiers were digging at the edge of the city. I just hope that the same principles apply to naphtha as well as water, and that thirty feet is high enough, Caile fretted.

"Your Highness," a soldier called out to him, disrupting his thoughts.

Caile stopped in the middle of the road to see that it was one of the men assigned to protect Taera. "Yes, soldier, what is it?"

"Your sister has sent me to tell you that she has left."

"What do you mean left? Left where?"

"She did not say, Your Highness. She said to tell you that she had a vision and that she would be back with help if she could. She took off on her horse to the south."

"Damn it all, man," Caile swore. "You're supposed to be with her at all times. Go get her and bring her back!"

The soldier coughed uncomfortably. "She said that you would say that, Your Highness. She said to remind you that she is the heir to the throne, not you, and that she's in charge."

Caile glared at the man but said nothing. By Pyrthin tradition and law, she was right. Still, Caile was angry she had gone off without at least consulting him first. Damn that girl, he swore to himself. She better hurry, whatever she's doing. We have three days at best before we're under siege.

~~~

Emperor Thedric Guderian sat hunched forward in his throne, wearing his black leather jack and trousers with plate armor at the forearms and shins. Held before him in both hands was his massive claymore, its point resting on the floor between his feet. At his side stood King Lorimer of Golier, a wiry, gaunt looking man with stringy blond hair. And filling the throne room were an assortment of dignitaries, Sargothian aristocrats, and thirty soldiers from the Imperial Guard who stood at the ready around the perimeter of the room with long pole-axes in hand and short swords at their waists.