Secret Weapons

When Taylor's guard changed, he knew the night had gone late. The last tabla took away his final stack of boards for the night while he dis-enchanted the spirit lamps, and headed for the top of the mesa. To get there, he had to go down four flights of stairs, one arc over to where Bitter Spring and the Pasha facilities were, and climb enough stairs to reach the eighty-meter-high cap of rock that topped the mesa. It was a lot of steps, and he took them fast enough to wind himself. It was likely to be the only exercise he got that day, so he turned around at the halfway point, went down again, then came all the way up at a near run. The exertion woke him up from his lengthy funk. Now was not the time to wrestle with the past.

He didn't know how a ring of hard rock formed on top of softer stone, but it had protected the underlying ground from millions of years of erosion. In more recent millennia, the cap had been shaped and reinforced by the mesa's occupants. There was enough topsoil to support hardy trees that produced an oily sap useful to healers. There were boulders up there too, huge ones that must have been cast down from mountains in the east and been washed along the desert floor back when it was all ocean. How many hundreds of thousands of years had they been there, an isolated community of foreign rocks, while the rest of the land dropped away from them and their brethren moved on?

Taylor emerged into an endless sky of stars, with half of Crevist showing on the horizon. He moved to the outside edge of the mesa and, for a minute, he let himself feel small against the heavens above him and the desert below. All this planning and training and scrabbling for a few more years of life seemed laughably trivial against the enormity of all creation. But it was in human nature to scrabble for more life, to pry enough food and safety from the world for the next generation. Anything that lived had to fight, in any way it could, to keep on living.

The air felt cold against his skin, and he pulled his cloak closed. People from gentler climes would find the breeze bearable, a respite from the day's heat. To someone accustomed to the desert's summer months, it was chilly. Soon, the nights would turn cold enough to frost the higher mesas. Then it would be good marching weather on the slightly warmer basin floor. He followed the paths that ran around the mesa-ring, greeting sentries as he went.

The area above Saluja's arc was topped by a spire of hard rock, and that's where the Black Sanctuary had set up its shooting range and surrounded it with a rock wall and sound barriers to keep the place a secret. Once he passed the Nexus sentries and went through the barrier, Taylor was greeted by a soft whoosh of projectiles, followed by loud thunks of impact. The firing line was nearly invisible, even to enhanced eyes. The shooters lay prone on the ground, dressed in shaggy camouflage suits that broke up their outlines and blended with the ground. If it weren't for the faint glow of spirit that only a practitioner could sense, most people would walk past the shooters without noticing them. They were easier to see when they moved to reload their weapons. Taylor watched a bulwark pull back his weapon's lever with strength enhanced by prayer, place a bolt against the string, and then settle in with his shoulder pressed against the stock and one eye near the scope. A breath in, a breath out, pause, and suddenly the crossbow's string was empty. Taylor heard the impact less than a second later and raised a set of enchanted desert goggles to his eyes: the bolt had hit the center of a target the size of a man's fist, fifty meters away.

Every disciple and bulwark slated to fight against Kashmar could do the same, or they were learning how. With good equipment and solid technique, most people could do as much. A few talented ones strove for much longer distances, up to a hundred meters. Taylor made sure he was seen by the shooters. To those who were new to the weapon, he offered encouragement and exhortations to keep practicing. For the rest, he didn't have to say anything. Anisca always complained about how easy he was to read, but that also made it easy to communicate. If his people looked at him, they knew his grim satisfaction with their skill. They were going to kill a lot of people with these weapons.

But the Pasha hadn't climbed to Sand Castle's rooftop just to supervise routine practice. He came for the new stuff at the far end of the firing line, where three figures stood in discussion. Farr and his daughter Lilian were the adults. Farr was a genius with machines and precision crafting, while Lilian had most of her father's skill, plus an eye for refining designs until they were simple to manufacture. Both had taken well to the new Inscription Arts, making them the first full-time magical artificers of the age. The short one with whiskers and a head of mousy gray fur was a boy named Gonzo, and he had taken to inscriptions like they were made for him. He was holding up a paper pinwheel on a stick and letting it spin.

Together, the three of them were the heart of Black Sanctuary, the Nexus workshop for invention and inscription. It earned that name from the Sanctuary prayer that kept it secure. It used to be Taylor's private domain, but those days were long gone. Now, he needed these three engineers and a handful of skilled craftsmen to create weapons and devices for Nexus.

"It turns wind into mana!"

"You clever imp!" Farr rubbed the top of the boy's head. "What's the mechanism?"

"You know the glyphs that turn mana into rotation? I reversed the power flow and now, when you pass the motion glyphs over the impeller glyphs fast enough to exceed the … "

"Yes! I get it!" Farr snatched the toy from Gonzo's hand and reversed it to reveal the glyphs drawn on the back of the paper. He examined the simple inscriptions and the tiny spirit stone embedded in the stick to hold the generated mana.

"Father, you shouldn't take away other people's toys."

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"It's not a toy, Lilian! It's a revolution! No pun intended." All three of them laughed at the joke. "With enough sun and wind, we could power the workshop without drawing from His Holiness or any other practitioner! Anything that spins can produce mana!"

"Even waterwheels," added Taylor, surprising the three of them. "Build a damn, and the saved-up water becomes mana reserves: just let it flow over a waterwheel to convert it."

"Was that common, in your world?" Lilian asked.

"Yes. But I'm impressed anyone here thought of it so soon. My people took decades to make that leap. Well done, Gonzo. We now have the basic mechanisms to bring light and heat to everyone. But!" he had to stop Farr's momentum before it ran out of control, "That's a revolution for another day."

Lilian understood. "Here's a sample of the special bolts. They still don't fly exactly the same as the regular ones, but they're close enough in the forty-to-fifty meter range that it won't make a difference." She held out a shortened arrow in both hands, for Taylor to take and examine.

The shaft was hollow aluminum tubing with three vanes in the back, canted to impart a stabilizing spin. The tip had two blades, razor-thin, made of an alloy that felt too heavy for its volume. It had to weigh the same as the bronze version, so the metal was thinner, and the blades were a little wider. Micro-etched inscriptions increased the edge's cutting power and durability, with mana supplied by a fleck of spirit stone. Taylor felt a shiver as he examined the new tip. The normal mobeen tips could pierce any armor, penetrate thin stone walls, and pass clean through thick wooden planks. The only defense was to wear tirun scale, or have a disciple's enhancements, preferably both. The new tips were designed to be considerably more dangerous.

"Let's see it," he said, and the engineers offered him a span of tirun scales sewn onto toughened monster hide. Taylor blessed it, and one of the craftsmen ran downrange to hang it up next to a plate of Darkmaw's shell. Lilian did the honors. She had to cock her crossbow with a foot stirrup and extra-long lever, optional equipment for the unenhanced shooter, but she shot as well from an off-hand position as most bulwarks did while lying prone. Taylor watched closely through the magnifying goggles as a bolt flew into the center of the armor and disappeared. The double report came back to them an eyeblink later: the clang of enchanted tirun scale breaking, followed by an impact against the rocky spire backstop. Her second bolt hit the slab of Darkmaw shell and made a different noise: the distinct sound of metal deforming at high speed.

When the line was clear and everyone had stopped firing, the knot of four went to survey the damage. The tirun scale was wrecked. Not only had the struck scale given way, but all the nearby scales were twisted and broken. Tirun was so effective because the enhanced scales shared any nearby impact. The new arrowhead had blasted through them and the underlying monster hide and still had enough force to dig deep into the rock wall beyond.

The bolt that hit Darkmaw's shell had stuck to it, just barely. The tip had wedged itself several millimeters deep, but the shaft had buckled and broken.

"Add a sigil to the engraving," he commanded, "something we can target with a tracking prayer. Keep an accurate count of how many we make. When the fighting is done, I want to recover all of them. No exceptions."

The three answered in unison, "Yes, Your Holiness."

"Tell me about the bows." The weapons were so obviously strange, a collection of backward limbs and pulleys made from unrecognizable materials, that most people would assume they were ancient devices. They were compound crossbows crafted from advanced materials refined through the Inscription Arts. Farr was a master of springs, pulleys, and gears. Once Taylor explained the theories behind the crossbow, Farr had no issues creating a prototype. This would be the last iteration: there wasn't enough time for another. Whatever they had now was what they went to war with.

"We've been adding sound-dampening inscriptions to all the limbs," said Lilian. "The strings make most of the noise, but they can't be inscribed, so we extend a narrow field from the limbs. We solved the calibration problem on the high-end optics, and the snipers are happy now. The trigger assembly's been reworked so it's more tolerant of dirt and sand, which takes care of our number-one reliability problem. We'll have all the weapons upgraded in two weeks, after the next rotation."

"How is Little Sun doing?"

"Terrifying, as always." Lilian hugged herself. "But we got the system tuned the way you wanted it. We'll have four of them finished in time. Your world has some terrifying weapons."

"Is there anything in your way that might keep you from hitting your goals?"

"The material shortage is taken care of, and we have enough people. I think we're taken care of."

Taylor sensed some hesitation in the three of them. "What's your greatest fear right now?"

The three engineers looked at each other awkwardly until Farr admitted there was something. "An accident. The refiners take up a lot of space, and they're running all the time, so we're always working around them. We'd all be safer if we could put some distance between massive chemical reactions and everything else."

"There's a lot of empty space in Sand Castle right now," offered Taylor, "let's find you some."

"Thank you, Your Holiness." Farr gave him the austere Nexus bow, but even that small gesture was more than Taylor wanted from him. It wasn't that long ago they had been more like comrades, fellow enthusiasts who pursued the laws of nature and shared their findings with the world.

"I think that's it for work today, guys. I'm done." Their postures eased a little, and Taylor stretched. It really was a beautiful night. If he didn't have to work first thing in the morning, he'd take Magnificent Ben out for a ride until dawn and watch the sunrise.

"Gonzo, if you don't have plans you're welcome to bed down with us."

"Sway!" the boy said, delighted. He looked at the two adults, who shooed him away. They could take care of cleaning up so he could spend time with his friend, who just happened to be the hierarch. Gonzo followed Taylor and his two bulwarks down the stairs at speed, holding his pinwheel aloft so it would spin and store up a little more spirit.

This was another adjustment Taylor was making for the sake of his reputation. Tenobrians universally preferred to sleep in groups. When rumors spread that Taylor slept alone most nights, he started making a show of having other people join him. Otherwise, people would think he was some kind of sociopath. Family and friendship networks could be mapped by who slept next to whom and how often. If someone asked their love interest to sleep with them, it was a bid to spend time together, not a request for sex. The only private bedrooms in this world belonged to prison cells and sad widowers.

"What do you want to talk about tonight?" Invited Taylor.

Gonzo didn't hesitate. "Space. What is it really, and how can we make more of it?"

The hierarch laughed, "Talk about greedy! There are six prerequisites to expanding space, and you only have two of them. But I suppose we have time to talk about one more before bed."