The relief of the previous night evaporated with the first light of dawn. The reality of Blackwood pitiably reimposed itself: cold, hunger, and a stack of three barrels that was the only thing separating two hundred people from death.
I went out into the courtyard after a frugal breakfast (a combination of salted meat that tasted like sawdust and a glass of my own filtered water). The spectacle was lamentable.
A human chain of fifty people, mostly the elderly and weak women, transported buckets of poisonous water from the sealed well to the top of the filtration tower. They climbed a rickety ladder, poured the water, and climbed down. It was a slow, dangerous, and painfully inefficient process.
I pulled out my pocket watch. I timed the cycle.
Average time per 10-liter bucket: 4 minutes. Estimated caloric expenditure per worker: Excessive for their current intake. Conclusion: The current system is unsustainable. The workforce will collapse before producing sufficient water.
"Captain Kael," I called out.
Kael was supervising the line, looking exhausted. He jumped upon hearing my voice. The fear in his eyes hadn't diminished; now it was mixed with a kind of terrified reverence for the "Water Warlock."
"My Lord. The filter works, but the people are too weak to carry the buckets that high. Two have already fallen off the ladder."
"Weakness is a problem of energy input. The fall is a problem of workplace safety. Both are unacceptable." I looked at the tower of barrels. "We need to automate the elevation."
I walked toward the garrison workshop. It was almost empty, looted long ago, but I found what I was looking for in a dusty corner: thick hemp ropes and several rusted iron pulleys that were once used to lift stone blocks for the walls.
"Kael, pull ten men from the bucket chain. I want them here. We are going to build a double hoist system."
"A... what, my Lord?"
"A simple machine to multiply force." I drew a quick diagram in the snowy ground with the toe of my boot. "A man pulling this rope will be able to lift the weight that three men currently lift. We will reduce human effort by 66%."
We spent the next three hours mounting a wooden scaffold over the filtration tower and anchoring the pulleys. When the first giant bucket (a barrel cut in half) rose to the top pulled by a single soldier with barely any effort, silence fell over the square again.
It wasn't magic. It was basic physics. But to them, I was rewriting the laws of nature.
Result: Filtered water production tripled before noon.
With the water supply temporarily secured, my attention turned to the second critical problem: the state of the population.
I couldn't run a fortress with an army of living skeletons. The guards could barely hold their spears. The blacksmiths had no strength to lift the hammer.
I summoned Kael and the old woman who had shouted at me on the first day, who turned out to be the village "healer," a woman named Elara. We met in the castle's great hall, a cavernous, cold place that hadn't seen a fire in months.
"Health status report, Elara," I ordered, sitting at the head of a dusty table.
The old woman looked at me with mistrust, clutching her threadbare shawl. "They are dying, my Lord. The poison is in their bones. They cough blood. Their minds cloud over. Neither my herbs nor prayers work."
"Stop praying and start administering." I pulled out my notebook. "The filtered water will stop the new intake of arsenic. But they are already poisoned. We need chelators."
Both looked at me blankly.
I sighed. The educational gap was frustrating. "We need substances that bind to the metal in their stomachs and blood to help expel it." I thought fast about what might be available in a medieval environment. "Do we have clay? Bentonite clay or kaolin? The kind used for fine pottery?"
Elara nodded slowly. "There is a deposit of white clay near the river. We used it to make poultices for burns."
"Excellent. It is an intestinal adsorbent." I noted it in the notebook. "Captain Kael, assign a team to dig up that clay. Elara, you will dry it in the sun, grind it into a fine powder, and mix it with the filtered water. One ration of 'cloudy water' for every inhabitant, twice a day."
"You are going to feed them mud, my Lord?" asked Kael, horrified.
"I am giving them a treatment to absorb residual toxins in the digestive tract. Do you prefer they continue shitting blood?"
Kael swallowed hard and shook his head.
"Second, proteins. Arsenic binds to the sulfhydryl groups of the body's proteins. We need to replenish them. What is in the storehouses?"
"Almost nothing," admitted Kael. "Salted meat for two weeks. A bit of grain with weevils. Some hens that no longer lay eggs."
"Kill the hens. All of them. We will make broth. The critically ill need liquid proteins that are easy to digest. The rest will eat rationed grain porridge."
I stood up. "We are going to establish a Triage system."
I divided the great hall into three zones with chalk lines on the floor.
Zone 1 (Green): Fit for work. They will receive full rations of water and food. Their job is to keep the fortress running.
Zone 2 (Yellow): Sick but recoverable. They will receive clay treatment and broth. Mandatory rest.
Zone 3 (Red): Terminal. Irreversible neurological damage or multiple organ failure. Palliative care. Morphine if we had it, but we don't. Water and warmth until they expire.
"This is cruel," whispered Elara, looking at the chalk lines. "Separating families..."
"What is cruel is letting the healthy get sick caring for the dead, and having the entire colony collapse from inefficiency," I replied coldly. "I am not here to be kind, Elara. I am here to ensure that the survival rate is greater than zero next winter. Execute the orders."
By nightfall on the second day, the system began to stabilize. The hoist squeaked rhythmically in the square. The smell of chicken broth, however faint, slightly replaced the stench of sickness in the great hall turned field hospital.
I returned to my study. The time had come to stop reacting and start planning.
I spread the topographic map of the region on the table. I placed one of my glasses over Blackwood's location and another over the upper course of the river.
Arsenic does not appear in these concentrations by natural erosion. The amount of trisulfide I precipitated yesterday indicates a large-scale industrial mining operation, dumping waste directly into the water without any kind of settling pond.
It wasn't negligence. It was an act of economic or territorial warfare. Someone wanted this zone depopulated.
Hypotheses: A) A foreign power preparing an invasion. B) A large-scale criminal operation (smugglers, renegade mining guild). C) Internal sabotage by another noble house to weaken the Herforsts.
I needed empirical data. I needed eyes on the ground.
I knocked on the door. Kael entered. He looked less like a corpse than yesterday; perhaps the clean water was taking effect, or perhaps it was hope.
"Sit down, Captain." I pointed to a chair facing the map. Kael sat with military stiffness.
"The immediate situation is contained. The filter gives us time. But it doesn't solve the problem." I put a finger on the map, tracing the river toward the mountains. "Someone is poisoning the river up here."
Kael looked at the map. "The Greyfang Mountains. Hostile territory, my Lord. Wyvern nests, snow goblin tribes... and worse things. No one goes there."
"Someone is there. And they are moving tons of earth and ore. That requires infrastructure. Roads, carts, camps."
I stared at the Captain. "I need to know what is up there. And I cannot go myself. I am the only one capable of keeping this place alive if something else breaks."
"You want to send a patrol?" Kael hesitated. "My men can barely hold a sword, my Lord. If they encounter anything more dangerous than a mountain goat, they will die."
"I don't need warriors. I need observers. I need rats." I stood up and walked to the window, looking at the darkness of the mountains.
"Select three men. Not the strongest, but the fastest and quietest. Poachers, if you have them. I will give them high-energy rations. Their mission is not to fight. It is to reach the source of the poison, observe, count the enemy numbers, identify their defenses, and return."
I turned to Kael. The reflection of the candles in my glasses completely hid my eyes. "If they are detected, they must flee. If they are captured, they must commit suicide before revealing our current situation. Do you have men capable of understanding that arithmetic?"
Kael swallowed saliva. He nodded slowly. "I have two brothers. Hunters by trade before joining the guard. And a veteran scout. If anyone can go up and down without being seen, it's them."
"Prepare them. They leave at dawn. I want to know who is trying to kill us."
Kael stood up to leave but stopped at the door. "My Lord..." His voice was hesitant. "What you did in the square... the water... my own daughter was in bed yesterday, and today she got up to ask for food. I don't know if you are a warlock or a saint disguised as a demon, but... thank you."
I didn't answer. I didn't know how to process gratitude. It was irrelevant data for the mission.
When the door closed, I returned to the map. Gratitude was dangerous. It generated complacency. The enemy was out there, pumping poison. And I had just saved their victims. When they realized that Blackwood wasn't dying according to plan, they would come to finish the job.
I had to prepare the defense. I looked at my thin noble hands. Useless for the sword. But my mind... my mind was a weapons foundry.
I opened the desk drawer and pulled out a fresh blank parchment. I started drawing. It wasn't a water filter this time.
It was the schematic blueprints for a lever-action repeating crossbow. If they were coming, I would welcome them with the same courtesy they had shown us: steel and chemistry at high velocity.
The third day in Blackwood dawned with a new sound; not agonized coughing, but the rhythmic creaking of the filtration tower pulleys and the murmur of people queuing orderly to receive their water ration.
I sat in the administrator's office, reviewing the reports I had demanded from Kael and Elara at dawn.
Health Data (Elara's Report):
Nocturnal deaths: 2 (Red Zone, terminal). An statistical improvement of 80% compared to the previous week.
Acute symptoms in Green and Yellow Zones: Significantly reduced. Clean hydration and clay therapy are functioning as predicted.
Morale: Confused. Oscillates between relief and theological terror.
Logistical Data (Kael's Report):
Water production: 1,500 liters/day. Sufficient for basic consumption and cooking, insufficient for hygiene or industrial processes.
Food reserves: Critical. The chicken broth will run out in two days. We will return to grain porridge with weevils.
Reconnaissance patrol status: No news. They have been out for 24 hours.
I closed the folder. Biological stabilization was underway. It was time to initiate mechanical stabilization.
I needed weapons. The plans for the repeating crossbow were ready on my table, but a plan doesn't fire bolts. I needed steel, cured wood, and above all, competent labor.
"Captain Kael," I called. The man was on guard at the door, looking ten years younger than the day I arrived, now that he was hydrated.
"My Lord?"
"Summon all inhabitants to the square in twenty minutes. Green and Yellow Zone. Those who can walk."
"Another... another demonstration, my Lord?" Kael paled slightly, remembering the rotten egg and the acid.
"No. A masterclass. I cannot lead a revolution with a workforce that believes carbon filtration is witchcraft. Ignorance is a liability I cannot afford."
The square was full. Two hundred pale, thin faces looked up at me, standing in the snow. The tower of barrels loomed beside me like a strange totem. The fear in their eyes was palpable. They thought I was a necromancer who had made a pact with the water.
I stepped onto a supply crate to stand above them. Not to impose authority, but to improve acoustics.
"Silence," I said. My voice wasn't a shout, but a controlled projection. The murmuring ceased instantly.
"I have heard your whispers. You say I use dark magic. You say I have enslaved the demon of the well."
I paused, letting the fear settle. Then, I pulled a handful of fine sand from my pocket and held it up.
"This is sand." I let it fall between my fingers. "If I pour water with stones over a kitchen sieve, what happens?"
No one answered. They were too terrified. I pointed to a boy in the front row.
"You. Answer."
The boy trembled. "The... the stones stay on top, my lord. The water passes through."
"Correct. A basic physical separation process." I pointed to the tower of barrels. "That tower is not magical. It is simply a very large, very fine sieve."
I took a piece of activated charcoal I had kept. It was black, porous, and light.
"This charcoal is like a sponge. But instead of absorbing water, its microscopic holes trap the poison. The water passes, the poison sticks. There are no demons. There are no gods involved. Only materials and physical laws."
I saw some faces of confusion, but I also saw supernatural terror diminishing in the eyes of the more pragmatic men, the artisans. If it was just a tool, then it wasn't evil.
"I explain this to you not because I care about your spiritual peace," I continued, cutting off any sprout of warmth, "but because I need you to understand that the world is a machine. And machines can be repaired. You were broken. I am repairing you."
I stepped down from the crate and walked toward Kael.
"The phase of 'miracles' is over. The work phase begins. Captain, I want a full inventory of every piece of metal in this fortress before noon. From broken swords to old horseshoes and rusted nails."
Kael blinked, surprised by the change of subject. "Metal, my Lord? What for?"
"We are going to reopen the smithy. And this time, we won't be making plows."
While Kael organized the scrap collection, I headed to the fortress smithy.
It was a stone building annexed to the north wall. The interior was cold and dark, covered in cobwebs and soot from years of disuse. The local blacksmith had died in the first wave of the "curse," and since then, it was only used for minor repairs by incompetent apprentices.
The equipment was primitive, but functional.
A large coal forge (which we had already used to activate the charcoal).
A cast iron anvil of about 150 kg. Decent.
An assortment of hammers, tongs, and chisels, mostly rusted.
Critical lack: There was no lathe, no milling machine, no precision measuring tools.
"I will have to make the tools to make the tools," I muttered, running a gloved finger over the cold anvil.
A boy of about sixteen entered timidly. He was thin, but had the broad shoulders of someone who had tried to work metal.
"Are you the apprentice?" I asked without looking at him.
"Y-yes, my Lord. My name is Toren."
"Toren. Do you know how to temper steel?"
The boy hesitated. "I know... I know to heat it until it turns cherry red and then put it in oil, my Lord. But sometimes it breaks on me."
"That is because you do not control the tempering temperature and you create martensite that is too brittle. Basic incompetence." I turned toward him. The boy took a step back. "Starting today, you are my machine operator. Forget everything you think you know. I will teach you real metallurgy."
Kael arrived at that moment with two soldiers carrying baskets full of scrap: destroyed chainmail, door hinges, broken pots. Low-quality iron, with high carbon content and impurities.
"It is all we have, my Lord."
"It is enough to start." I took an old rusted sword and examined it. The metal was fatigued, but salvageable. "Toren, light the forge. I want white fire. We are going to melt this down and forge base ingots."
"What are we going to build, sir?" asked Toren, gaining a bit of courage seeing me dirty my hands with them.
I pulled the repeating crossbow blueprint from my coat and unrolled it on a dusty workbench. The design was complex; a lever mechanism to tension the string quickly, a top gravity-fed magazine for five bolts, and a rolling nut trigger system.
"We are going to build the end of our enemies," I said.
I pointed to a crucial piece of the mechanism; the flexible steel bow (the prod itself).
"Toren, your job today is to turn that scrap into a high-carbon steel bar, free of impurities. I need flexibility and elastic memory. If it fails, the crossbow will explode in the user's face. Do you understand the error tolerance?"
The boy looked at the complex blueprint, swallowed hard, and nodded vigorously.
"Good. We begin."
I spent the rest of the day in the smithy. Not directing from afar, but hammering. My noble young body complained, my muscles burned, but my mind enjoyed it. The smell of coal and hot metal was the smell of progress.
I taught Toren to identify the temperature of steel by its exact color, not by "eye." I taught him to fold the metal to homogenize the carbon. I taught him to do a slow temper in hot sand to reduce brittleness.
By the end of the day, we had three ingots of decent steel and the basic components of the firing mechanism roughly forged. My hands were black, my gray wool coat stained with soot.
I left the smithy at dusk, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my glove. The cold northern air felt good.
The fortress was alive. People no longer looked at me only with fear; there was a new variable in their eyes: technical awe. They had seen smoke coming from the smithy for the first time in years.
I was heading to my study to review the tension calculations of the bow when I heard a shout at the main gate.
"Open the gate! Quick!"
Kael ran toward the wall. I followed him, my hand instinctively going to the place where my crossbow would soon be.
The gate opened. Three figures stumbled into the snow. It was the scouts. They had returned. But not as they left.
Two of them were dragging the third. The man in the middle had a black arrow stuck in his shoulder, piercing the clavicle. He was unconscious, his blood staining the snow a bright red that contrasted with yesterday's yellow poison.
Kael ran toward them. "What happened? What have you seen?"
The lead scout, a hard man named Borin, looked up. His face was covered in frost and pure terror. He looked directly at me, ignoring Kael.
"It is not an illegal mine, my Lord," Borin gasped. "They are not bandits."
He pointed toward the dark mountains with a trembling hand. "It is an army. Black banners with a red skull. They are building a dam to divert the river completely. And..." he swallowed hard. "They have alchemists... also, we saw siege engines."
Silence fell over the courtyard, heavier than the snow. An army. Enemy alchemists. And they were cutting off the water supply completely.
I adjusted my glasses. My heart rate rose from 65 to 75 bpm. Adrenaline. Useful for rapid processing.
"Kael," I said, my voice cutting through the nascent panic of those present. "Take the wounded man to Elara. Borin, to my office for the full report. Toren, go back to the smithy."
I looked toward the invisible mountains in the night. "It seems my time estimate of 48 hours for conflict was optimistic. The war has begun. And we are behind schedule on production."
The office was in semi-darkness, lit only by an oil lamp I had refined myself to burn smokelessly. Borin, the scout, sat across from me, holding a cup of hot broth between his hands. Kael stood beside him, hand on the hilt of his sword, tense as a steel cable.
"Names, Borin," I demanded. "Description of the insignia."
"A red skull over a black gear," Borin said, his voice still trembling. "They wore heavy armor, but not full plate. Segmented plates, practical. And tools on their belts, not just weapons."
I adjusted my glasses. "The Red Skull Battalion. Siege mercenaries." Kael swore under his breath. "Do you know them, Captain?"
"They are expensive, my Lord. Very expensive. They specialize in breaking impregnable fortresses. They don't pillage villages; they demolish castles by contract. If they are here, someone paid a fortune to wipe us off the map."
"The dam," I intervened, returning to what was important. "Technical details."
Borin closed his eyes, remembering. "They are using logs and sandbags to narrow the river channel in the upper gorge. We saw men directing the placement of stones."
I did a quick mental calculation. Current river flow: Reduced by winter. Gorge width: Narrow. Estimated time for total flow cutoff: 3 to 5 days maximum.
"They are not building a permanent dam," I concluded. "They are building a temporary diversion. They want to dry us out to force us to leave or die of thirst. It is a hydraulic siege. Efficient."
I stood up and walked to the map. "We have five days before the river dries up and the charcoal filter becomes useless. If we go out to fight in the open field, their heavy soldiers will massacre us. My men are at 50% physical capacity."
"Then what do we do?" asked Kael, desperate. "Wait to die?"
"No." I turned, the lamplight reflecting coldly in my lenses. "They have numbers and brute force. We have the defensive advantage. We are going to change the rules of engagement."
By the next morning, Blackwood Fortress ceased to be a castle and became a factory.
I summoned the population of the Green Zone (those fit to work). There were forty people; men, women, and some teenagers.
"Forget your previous trades," I told them in the square. "You are no longer farmers, weavers, or cooks. You are operators."
I divided the workforce into three production cells:
Cell 1 (Carpentry): Directed by an old cooper. His only mission was to produce wooden stocks for the crossbows and shafts for the bolts. "I don't want them to be pretty," I shouted at them. "I want them to be identical. Use this template. If one doesn't fit, it is discarded. Standardization."
Cell 2 (Chemistry): Directed by me personally, with Elara as a reluctant assistant. We locked ourselves in the ventilated barn. We had saltpeter (potassium nitrate) I brought from the capital. We had charcoal powder (from the filter). And we had sulfur (scraped from rocks near the hot springs Borin indicated on the map). With the correct mixture. The product: Black powder. I didn't have steel tubes to make safe muskets, and I didn't have time to cast cannons. But I didn't need to fire bullets. I needed noise and fragmentation. We are manufacturing Hand Grenades (baked clay shells filled with gunpowder and rusty nails) and Land Mines.
Cell 3 (Metallurgy): Toren and two assistants in the smithy. Their job wasn't to make the whole crossbow. It was to make parts. "You make triggers. Only triggers. All day," I ordered one. "You make the steel prods. And you, Toren, do the final assembly and tempering."
At first, there was chaos. No one understood why they were making only a small part of something. They got bored. They complained. But by the second day, "muscle memory" appeared. Speed increased. Mass production had arrived in the Middle Ages.
Day 4. One day before the estimated deadline for the water cutoff.
I entered the smithy. The heat was suffocating. Toren was hollow-eyed, covered in soot, but his eyes shone with a technical fever.
"It is ready, my Lord. Or so I think."
Resting on the workbench was the Herforst Viper V1 (Or at least that's what I named it). It wasn't elegant. The wood was unvarnished. The steel was gray and brutal. But the top lever mechanism was well-greased with animal fat.
I picked it up. It weighed about 4 kilos. Heavy, but balanced. The top-loading magazine held five short iron bolts.
"Let's test it," I said.
We went out to the courtyard. Kael and several guards approached, curious. They had seen the pieces, but not the assembly. I placed a target at 30 meters.
I raised the crossbow. Action: I pulled the lever back. The mechanism made a satisfying metallic CLACK-CLACK, tensioning the steel bow and dropping a bolt into the slot. Shot: I pulled the trigger. THWACK. The bolt buried itself in the shield with brutal force.
I didn't stop. Lever back. Lever forward. Fire. Lever back. Lever forward. Fire.
In five seconds, I had emptied the magazine. Five bolts were stuck in the target, grouped in a circle the size of a human head.
The guards were gaping. A normal crossbowman takes 30 seconds to reload a single shot. I had fired five times before an enemy could take ten steps.
"It is... monstrous," whispered Kael.
"It is portable artillery," I corrected, handing the weapon back to Toren. "Toren, the magazine spring is a bit stiff. Adjust it. Kael, how many do we have ready for assembly?"
"Parts for twelve, my Lord."
"I want twenty by tomorrow dusk. And I want all guards practicing reloading with their eyes closed."
I was about to return to the gunpowder lab when the tower lookout rang the bell. A rapid, urgent tolling.
"Riders!" he shouted. "White flag!"
I ran to the wall, with Kael at my side. I used my spyglass to observe.
A single rider approached the gate. He wore high-quality black plate armor and a red cape. Beside him, a squire held a white parley flag. But what caught my attention wasn't the warrior, but the man on his other side.
A man in a gray robe, riding a mule, with glasses and scrolls of parchment in the saddle. An enemy alchemist.
They stopped within shouting distance. The warrior in black armor removed his helm. He had a face marked by scars and an arrogant smile.
"I speak with the Commander of Blackwood!" he shouted. His voice was powerful.
"I am Administrator Silas Herforst!" I replied from the battlement, without hiding.
The warrior laughed. "Herforst? The drunkard? I thought you had died in some tavern brawl. Listen, boy. I am Commander Valerius, of the Red Skull Battalion."
He pointed to the engineer beside him. "My colleague, Master Alchemist Draven, says you have put an interesting filter in your square. He says it is charcoal. Very ingenious for a useless noble."
I felt a chill. They have spies or long-range magical vision.
"Draven wants to see your blueprints," Valerius continued. "This is the offer; surrender. Hand over the fortress and your designs. We will let you leave alive. You have until dawn. If not, we will cut the river, wait until you are too weak to lift a sword, and enter to kill you all."
Draven, the enemy alchemist, looked at me through his own glasses. There was a moment of strange connection. He knew that I knew about the dam. It was a technical checkmate. Or so he believed.
"What is your answer, boy?" shouted Valerius.
I looked at Kael. I looked at Toren, who had come up with the prototype crossbow in his hands, trembling with rage. I looked at the black powder grenades I had stacked near the gate.
I leaned over the battlement.
"Commander Valerius," I shouted, my voice cold and calm. "My answer is a technical correction."
"What?"
"Your time calculation is erroneous. I will not wait for you to cut the river."
I signaled to Toren. "Toren. Demonstration."
The boy rested the crossbow on the battlement, aimed at the ground, a few meters from the horses, and fired. The bolt flew and stuck into the frozen snow with a dry snap. The horses reared. Valerius controlled his mount, surprised by the range.
"You have until dusk to withdraw from my territory!" I shouted. "If you are still here tomorrow, it won't be water flowing down that river!"
Valerius regained his composure and let out a cruel laugh. "Brave. Stupid, but brave. See you in hell, Herforst."
They turned around and galloped away.
I stepped down from the wall. My hands trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the tension of calculation.
"Kael," I said quietly. "We are not going to wait for the siege."
"My Lord?"
I adjusted my gloves, tightening them until the leather creaked. "Draven is an alchemist. He will think logically. He will expect us to fortify and conserve resources. He will not expect a preemptive strike with experimental weapons."
I looked at the map of the mountains. "Tonight, the Red Skull Battalion is going to learn why you should never anger a noble with access to nitrates."
"Ni... what? Forget it. Are we going to attack?" Kael seemed terrified and excited at the same time.
"We are going to blow up his damn dam. Prepare the men. We move in an hour."
Night fell over Blackwood like a frozen shroud. It was the perfect cover. No moon. Temperature -5°C. Visibility reduced to less than ten meters.
In the inner courtyard, I inspected my "special operations squad." The term was bombastic for what they really were: Kael, Borin, Toren (who insisted on coming to repair the crossbows if they jammed), and six guards who had proven they didn't shake when firing the prototype.
They wore no shiny armor. I had made them cover their breastplates with mud and ash from the smithy to eliminate any reflection.
"Equipment check," I ordered quietly.
Kael raised his sword, now darkened. Borin adjusted his hunting bow. But the centerpiece was the "Grenadiers." Three soldiers carried leather backpacks padded with hay. Inside each one, like dragon eggs, rested my creations of clay and chemistry.
I approached Toren. The boy hugged a Viper V1 as if it were a teddy bear. "Grease in the mechanism?" I asked. "Bear grease, my Lord. It doesn't freeze until it gets very cold." "Good. Remember, Toren. You are not a soldier. You are field technical support. If the mechanism fails, your job is to fix it, not play the hero."
I adjusted my own gear. I carried no sword. I wore a bandolier with vials of concentrated acid, a modified flint striker, and, on my belt, two hand grenades of my own design.
"The mission is surgical," I told the group. "We are not going to win a battle. We are going to induce a catastrophic structural failure. We go in, place the charges, blow the dam, and run. Survival is the priority."
We opened the fortress's back gate, the one facing the cliff, and slipped into the darkness of the mountains.
The climb was brutal. Borin guided us along goat paths that didn't even appear on my geological maps. My useless noble lungs burned, and my legs protested the lactic acid, but my mind forced the body to continue. One more step. Mechanical efficiency. Ignore the pain.
After two hours of silent marching, Borin raised a fist. We stopped instantly, crouching behind snow-covered rocks.
"There," whispered the scout.
We peeked out. Below, in the river gorge, the Red Skull Battalion had set up an impressive camp. There were at least two hundred tents arranged in perfect military rows. Guarded bonfires. Patrols with dogs.
But my attention focused on the river. It was a competent work. Draven, the enemy alchemist, was no amateur. They had built a coffer dam (a temporary dam) using gabions; wicker baskets filled with stones and earth, stacked and reinforced with logs. The river water accumulated behind the barrier, forming an artificial lake that pressed against the structure. They had left a small lateral diversion channel, but it was closed. The river downstream was just a trickle of mud.
"Hydrostatics," I murmured, analyzing the structure with my spyglass. "The pressure at the base of that dam must be immense. Tons of water wanting to get out."
"Is it solid?" asked Kael, worried.
"It is solid by compression. But if you break the structural integrity at the point of maximum tension..." I pointed to the central base, where the thickest logs supported the load. "...the water itself will do the rest of the work for us. Accumulated potential energy is our best weapon."
"Kael, deploy the crossbowmen on that ridge," I whispered, pointing to an elevated position flanking the dam. "You have the high ground. If they discover us, I need immediate suppression fire. Toren, stay with them."
"And you, my Lord?"
"I'm going down." I adjusted the bandolier. "The charges don't place themselves, and none of you know how to calculate the necessary fuse length."
"I'm going with you," said Borin. "You need someone to watch your back while you play with the gunpowder."
I nodded. Kael wasn't happy about letting me go, but he understood the logic.
Borin and I descended toward the riverbank. We moved among the shadows of the rocks, using the noise of the accumulated water to hide our steps. We reached the base of the dam. The structure of wood and earth loomed five meters above us, dripping freezing water. The creaking of wood under pressure could be heard. It groaned. It was at the limit.
I pulled out the first charge; a ceramic pot sealed with wax, containing 2 kilos of fine-grain black powder. I looked for the gap between two main gabions. "Here," I whispered.
I started digging out the mud with a trowel to insert the bomb deeply. I needed the explosion to go inward, to shear the support logs.
Suddenly, a light illuminated us.
"Who goes there?"
I froze. Above, at the top of the dam, a guard with a torch was leaning over. He had seen movement.
"Intruders!" shouted the guard. "Alert!"
Stealth Variable: Failed. Combat Protocol Initiation.
"Now, Kael!" I screamed, though he couldn't hear me.
But he saw the signal. From the darkness of the ridge, the mechanical sound that would soon be the nightmare of this world was heard. CLACK-THWACK. CLACK-THWACK.
Four Viper V1s opened fire simultaneously. The torch-bearing guard didn't receive one arrow. He received three in the chest in less than a second. He fell backward, dropping the torch, which rolled down the dam until it fell into the water.
"Light it, damn it!" shouted Borin, drawing two short knives as more guards ran toward us along the dam's walkway.
I pulled out my flint striker. My hands trembled from adrenaline, but I forced them to be precise. Spark. Spark. Flame.
I brought the flame to the slow fuse. The compound of saltpeter and cotton caught with a furious hiss. Fuse calculation: 15 seconds.
"Run!" I shouted, pushing Borin.
We ran toward the rocks. Behind us, the camp was a kicked anthill. Shouts, orders, barking dogs. Enemy arrows began to rain around us. One stuck in the snow inches from my boot.
"Take cover!" ordered Kael from the ridge.
The sound of the repeating crossbows was terrifying. It wasn't the slow rhythm of a bow. It was an industrial cadence. Twenty bolts flew toward the enemy in the time it took them to fire five. The Red Skull soldiers, accustomed to charging against slow archers, met a wall of steel. They fell or threw themselves to the ground, confused by the density of fire.
I threw myself behind a large rock next to Borin. I counted mentally. Ten... eleven... twelve...
I saw a group of enemy soldiers running over the dam to try to locate the attackers. They were right on top of the charge. Thirteen... fourteen...
"Goodbye," I whispered.
BOOM.
It wasn't a clean fire explosion like in stories. It was a shockwave of pure pressure. The black powder, confined inside the structure, expanded at 3000 meters per second. The base of the dam disintegrated. The main logs splintered like toothpicks.
And then, gravity took command.
The retaining wall gave way. Tons of released water hit the breach like a hydraulic hammer. The entire dam collapsed with a deafening roar that drowned out the soldiers' screams. The men on top disappeared, swallowed by white foam and debris.
The torrent of water, mud, and stones rushed downstream, taking tents, supplies, and palisades from the edge of the camp with it.
I peeked over the rock. It was magnificent. It was terrifying. It was applied kinetic energy.
"Retreat!" shouted Kael, his voice barely audible over the roar of the water. "It's done! Move!"
"Let's go, my Lord!" Borin grabbed my arm, pulling me.
I stayed looking a second longer. Amidst the chaos, on the other side of the river, I saw a figure on horseback, illuminated by scattered bonfires. He wore no armor, but a gray tunic. Draven. He was watching the destruction of his work. He wasn't looking at the water. He was looking toward where I was hidden. I couldn't see his face, but I knew what he was thinking.
"Yes, Draven," I thought, turning around to run. "Now you know you're not playing alone."
We ran into the darkness of the mountain, leaving the destruction behind, while the river flowed back toward Blackwood, red with earth... and with blood.
The descent was worse than the ascent. The adrenaline, which had acted as an analgesic during combat, began to metabolize, giving way to exhaustion and the sharp pain of lactic acid.
We slid down the snowy slope, almost falling, while the echo of destruction remained behind. There was no immediate pursuit. The chaos in the enemy camp was total; their horses were scattered and their chain of command interrupted.
We reached the back gate of Blackwood an hour before dawn. My lungs burned with every frozen breath. Toren had twisted an ankle, but he kept hugging his Viper crossbow as if it were his life. And in a way, it was.
Kael knocked on the door with the established code. It opened instantly. The guards dragged us inside and threw the bolts with a metallic clang that sounded like safety.
I let myself fall sitting against the cold wall of the entrance tunnel. I took off my fogged glasses and rubbed my eyes. My hands were black with gunpowder and dirt.
"Count," I gasped.
"All present, my Lord," said Kael, breathing with difficulty. "No serious casualties. A couple of sprains. Toren has a burn on his hand from touching the hot barrel... I mean, the mechanism."
I nodded. Own casualties: 0. Enemy casualties: Estimated >50 (from explosion and flood). Strategic objective: Achieved.
It was a tactically perfect victory. Impossible, according to any conventional military manual.
We went out to the main courtyard just as the first grayish ray of sun touched the towers. What we saw stopped us dead.
The people of Blackwood weren't sleeping. They were all on the east wall, looking toward the river. There was a reverential silence.
I climbed to the battlement, with Kael and Borin at my side. The riverbed, which yesterday was a dry mud path, was alive. A furious torrent rushed down from the mountains. It wasn't crystal clear water. It was a violent mix of brown foam, mud, shattered branches, and wooden remains of the dam.
And it brought "gifts."
Pieces of red tents snagged on rocks. Armored bodies with the Red Skull insignia floated face down, spinning in eddies, bashing against stones.
"The water has returned," whispered Elara, the healer, who was next to us. "And the river brings us our dead enemies."
A shout of jubilation erupted on the wall. "Victory! The Lord has drowned them! Long live Silas!"
The soldiers beat their shields. Women cried and hugged their children. They looked at me with bright, fanatical eyes. I was no longer the "dangerous warlock." Now I was the "savior warlock."
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Kael. He was smiling, a genuine and fierce smile I had never seen on him. "You did it, my Lord. You crushed them. I've never seen anything like it. That explosion... it was as if the mountain itself kicked them."
I pulled away from his touch, shaking dust off my coat. I didn't share his euphoria. My mind was simulating the next turn of the game.
"Do not celebrate yet, Captain," I said coldly, watching the floating bodies. "This was not a decisive victory. It was a provocation."
Kael stopped smiling. "Say again?"
"We destroyed their dam and killed a fraction of their men. But Valerius is still alive. Draven is still alive." I pointed to the river. "And now they know we are dangerous."
I turned to the cheering crowd. Their happy faces seemed naive, dangerous to me.
"Listen to me!" I shouted. Silence fell again. "Look at that river! It is red because it carries blood! But that blood will dry! The Red Skull Battalion are not bandits who run when you bloody their nose! They are professional mercenaries! And we just humiliated them!"
I walked along the battlement, looking them in the eyes. "They will come. Not with a dam. They will come with everything. Ladders. Catapults. Battering rams."
I pointed to the smithy, where black smoke was rising. "The party is over. Toren, I want you to bandage that hand and get back to work. I need fifty more crossbows by the end of the week. Elara, prepare bandages and herbs for severe burns. Kael, double the guards."
The crowd dispersed. The joy faded, replaced by somber determination. It was better this way. Empty hope kills. Productive fear saves.
I returned to my study. My whole body ached. I took off the stained coat and threw it on a chair. I poured myself a glass of water (filtered) and drank greedily.
I sat in front of my blueprints. The attack had revealed crucial data:
Effectiveness of Viper V1: Devastating at short range and against light infantry. Problems: Slow reload under stress if the user is untrained. Mechanism prone to jamming in extreme cold. Solution: Need to simplify the design. Fewer moving parts.
Effectiveness of Black Powder: Excellent as demolition explosive. Dubious as antipersonnel weapon in open field without directed shrapnel. Project: Develop primitive "Claymore" mines with river stones.
The Draven Factor: The enemy Alchemist saw the explosion. He will know it is a kind of "magical alchemy." He will not try magic to counter it. He will look for the source. He will try to cut my supplies of saltpeter and sulfur.
I called Borin. He entered limping slightly, but with high morale. "My Lord?"
"Borin. Your mission is not over."
"Whatever you say, boss."
He called me "boss." A notable improvement from "my Lord."
"Draven is not stupid. He knows I need sulfur. He knows the hot springs are the only source. He will send patrols there to ambush us."
"Then we cannot manufacture more of that black powder."
"Exactly. Unless we find another source. Or..." I smiled, a shark's smile. "Or unless we use his prediction against him."
I drew a circle on the map, over the hot springs. "I want you to go there and set traps. Not to kill. To make noise. Decoys. Let them think we are desperate for the sulfur. Meanwhile, we will scrape crystallized saltpeter from the walls of the old stables and latrines and look for pyrite in the eastern caves."
Borin smiled. "Playing cat and mouse. I like it."
That night, there was no celebration in the great hall. There was the noise of hammers. The smithy worked a triple shift. Women sharpened wooden stakes for the pits. Children collected river stones for sling ammunition.
I stayed at my window, looking north. The enemy bonfires were visible in the distance, on the mountain. There were many. They were regrouping. I could imagine Valerius shouting orders. I could imagine Draven drawing blueprints for siege engines designed specifically to break my walls.
I adjusted my glasses. The guerrilla phase was over. The total siege phase was about to begin.