The Deepcombers

Chapter Fifty

Lon heard a heavy object drop. Whump. It was the kind of pounding thump a wooden crate filled with stones makes when it strikes hard ground. Then came an epic creak as if a huge door with rusty hinges had suddenly opened somewhere below. The young masters clung to the cliff and searched the vista as best they could.

The sea drover, being a former captive saw at once how a siege engine had been assembled, and how the machine's long arm had just flung a big stone through the air. Then he saw a dust cloud appear on the east wall and he heard the concussion a full second later. He shuddered as sound echoed over the cliff.

"They made that in one day?" Mel yelled down at Lon from higher up on the ledge.

The sea drover studied the wooden machine, as big as a house that sat perched on a knoll in the eastern fields just south of the port road. "They brought it. That's the pattern."

"How long to build more?" Val asked from just above.

"Not long." Lon answered, "they just follow the pattern."

"How do you know this?" she asked.

"That's what I did," Lon admitted, "I was a woodsfeigor all through Remolin, and that's... What I did."

Up above Saeya found a nook near the top of the escalade. She'd tucked her little body into a stone recess. Lon looked up beyond her resting spot and saw that less than ten feet remained in their climb. But Saeya was tired, he guessed, and she just wanted to rest and watch the show. She had a sack full of food and full canteen. Mel rolled up beside her and helped Valari climb in from below. There was no room for Lon. He stopped just under their perch and accepted a drink from their supply. The huntress opened the cloth sack and unpacked the cheese and biscuits the herdsfeigor had given her to eat.

The group focused their eyes on distant details as they rested on the shelf. The siege engine was a spectacle all by itself. The climbers watched as the rig was reset for the next shot. The empty weight bucket was hoisted-up by Crols in stepladders and rocks were put in the box. The long beam was lowered, and another heavy stone was rolled into a leather cone.

"Look there go the gatherers." Lon pointed to a tree that fell in the most distant fence row. "You see how they nip away the limbs and square the trunk. It'll be an upright. Now look here come more captives to draw it away. They'll start with the easy ones. They'll need bigger logs for the carriages." Lon used his hands and arms to show how the lumber was assigned. "It takes five logs just to make the base and the uprights, and seven smaller spars for the rest. Some timber needs to be ripped to make the weight box. Somewhere in the wagons yonder will be flat-axes, awls and saws, mallets, and iron spikes. Another crew will gather stone and that shouldn't be hard with all the fences."

"Did you aim and shoot the machines too?" Melcart asked.

"No. I was a captive Mel." Lon stated for the record, "a slave."

"Oh. Right."

"You ran away?" Val asked. "With the others?"

"In a manner. .. We all escaped our bonds differently." Lon changed the subject back to the siege craft. "The artilleryfeigors are always drawn from the prayer-circle."

"The prayer circles?" Saeya asked.

"You see them down there?" Lon pointed to feigors who prayed as they paced about in a slow swirl. The petitioners held copper chains in front of their bodies which snaked out from a central hub like spokes on a wheel. At the center was a copper kettle perforated with tiny holes in which Lon knew there was a white-hot lump of smilkstone. The nuncios ministered over the proceedings. They guided the coterie and walked the circle interspersed among the devotees who carried the chains. "The prayer circle is how the Crols charge the smilkstone er which they call templestone."