Down: Trilogy Box Set (94 page)

John and Brian peered down the barrel and dismissed it as smooth-bored.

“You’ve got rifled barrels, no?” John asked.

“Of course we have rifled barrels,” Eduardo sniffed. “You asked for the best quality, not the most accurate.”

John and Brian both agreed that Eduardo’s rifling technique was good but the musket shot he made was a smooth, lead ball.

“Here’s the problem,” John said. “It’s the same problem I saw in a forge in Brittania. With your rifles and these bullets, your effective range is only going to be about fifty yards.”

“No more than that,” Brian agreed.

“Haven’t more recent arrivals told you about modern bullet designs?” John asked.

“The modern men are idiots,” Eduardo complained. “They know nothing about how a forge works. They ask me why I do not have this and why I do not have that but they have no idea how to make these wild inventions. So I kick their asses out the door.”

John had used Caravaggio’s supplies to make some drawings the previous night and he and Brian showed Eduardo what they wanted to accomplish. The forger listened and questioned and grunted and finally nodded enthusiastically.

“These things, I can make,” the man said.

“Then let’s get cracking,” Brian said. “We’ll need thousands of these, a few dozen of these, and a few hundred of these.”

“How long do I have?” the forger asked.

“If we’re not sending these up to the city walls by tomorrow, you’ll need to learn how to speak Moorish,” Brian said.

“It is Berber,” the translator said helpfully. “These Moors speak the Berber language.”

“Then we had better start making the molds,” Eduardo said, scurrying off with John’s drawings.

Throughout the day Burgos was host to a frenzy of activity. All the city gates were sealed and panicked residents hid behind closed shutters. Pedro’s soldiers went door-to-door, commandeering bread and beer and pressing reluctant, able-bodied men into service as musket re-loaders and, should the walls be breached, cannon fodder.

Later in the day Pedro emerged from the palace surrounded by his royal protectors to be transported by carriage to the walls. He climbed to the top with Manrique running at his heels like a small dog and was irritated to see Garibaldi there, roaming the ramparts, very much the man in charge.

“Good day, Giuseppe,” Pedro said. “What do we have here?”

“We have a big battle coming. Let me show you where they’ll be launching their cannon fusillades. They’ve got our necks in a fairly tight noose.”

Pedro treated Garibaldi more like the commander of his army than a fellow monarch, but if the behavior rankled Garibaldi, he didn’t show it, although Simon was livid. Later, Garibaldi would tell him that he had been a soldier for far longer than he had been a king and he was quite comfortable to be in the role of the latter.

Completing the tour, Pedro peered down within the city, curious at the noise of hammering.

“What is that?” he asked.

Garibaldi replied, “One of the living men is an architect. He has designed a tower with a series of winches to raise our very heavy and very special cannon to the top of the wall where it will be invaluable to our efforts.”

“Very well,” Pedro said. “I will leave you to your preparations, Giuseppe. I must return to the palace for my mid-day meal.”

Garibaldi smiled. “I’ll be sure to send word if the situation changes.”

Queen Mécia summoned her man Guomez and asked to be informed of the military preparations. When Guomez seemed excessively vague on the details she asked to see Brian. Guomez returned to tell her that Brian had left the palace and had gone to work in the royal forge and she astonished her attendants by demanding to be taken there.

The furnace had been roaring for many hours and the air inside was beyond stifling. All the men, including Brian and John were shirtless, laboring side-by-side with the Hellers pouring molten lead and iron into newly minted molds.

The presence of royalty in their midst was a great rarity, and the presence of the queen was unprecedented. Forge workers were even more incredulous at the sight of Queen Mécia than they had been when John and Brian entered that morning. Most fell to the ground to take a knee. She gasped at the toxic atmosphere and called for a fan but her attendants had not thought to bring one. Guomez hastened to Brian and informed him that her majesty had come to see him. He rolled his eyes, grabbed his shirt and accompanied her into the fresh air.

“I cannot get reliable news about our preparations,” she told him, while one of her ladies mopped her brow and her décolletage. “You are a military man, Senhor Brian. Please inform me.”

“Well let me tell you this, Your Majesty,” he said with an unfocused grin. “First we’re going to razzle them, then we’re going to dazzle them, and finally we’re going to kick their Moorish asses out of your fine country.”

Guomez looked perplexed and asked for help with his translation. Brian apologized and admitted he was a little woozy from the heat and in a minute he emerged from the forge with a tray of manufactured items.

When he completed his show-and-tell, the queen called for one of her servants to approach and bring her a small wooden box. She opened it and removed a chunky gold ring set with a carnelian gemstone. “You are indeed a remarkable gentleman, Senhor Brian. Please accept this ring as a token of my great affection.”

Perhaps it was because he was still loopy from dehydration but after he admired the ring and slipped it onto one of his fingers he stepped forward and brazenly planted a kiss on her lips. Her entourage gasped in horror and Guomez looked like he was going to be ill, but the queen seemed delighted and she departed with a youthful spring to her step.

At the first light of the next day Jugurtha ordered the bombardment of Burgos to commence. Tariq the Libyan, under the cover of darkness, had personally ridden to the city walls and inspected them for areas of weakness and had reported back that they were of solid construction and would be unlikely to yield to cannon fire. Still, Jugurtha knew that there was much to be gained by subjecting the Iberians to a campaign of terror and if he could manage to get some pieces close enough he might be able to lob the odd ball over the wall and inflict some real damage.

John and Brian heard the shots at the forge where they had been working through the night. Garibaldi, his Italian commanders, and Trevor had slept at the palace but arrived on the ramparts with Aragon and his senior officers before dawn. They ducked at the sight of artillery flashes but the first rounds landed well short of the walls.

“Their nearest cannon are five hundred yards and yet they miss,” Aragon told Garibaldi. “They will begin to creep closer but I do not wish to return cannon fire yet. They will know we are not in range ourselves.”

“I concur,” Garibaldi said.

“When will your living men deliver the new weapons?” Aragon asked.

“I had a report last night that they were making excellent progress. Hopefully we’ll see the initial batches soon. I think we’ll have to wait longer for the singing cannon. The lifting tower is only half-erected.”

The two men walked a ways and looked down at the construction below and Garibaldi shouted a greeting.

“Good morning, gentlemen!”

Tony, Charlie, and Caravaggio craned their necks. The large singing cannon was on its carriage, hoisting ropes attached and at the ready. They assured Garibaldi that by the afternoon they would be in a position to begin the lift.

At the palace the women awoke to the sound of cannon fire. Emily and Arabel were squeezed together on the same bed out of choice. Alice and Tracy slept in separate beds in the same chamber.

“It’s starting,” Emily said.

Alice was already on her feet. “We’d better get to it then. I hope the men are safe.”

“You mean you hope that Simon’s safe,” Tracy said.

Alice splashed some water on her face from the communal basin. “Oh stop it!” she laughed.

“We’ve all seen the way the two of you look at each other,” Emily said, putting her boots on.

“For Christ’s sake,” Alice said. “Have you noticed he’s dead?”

“Good men are hard to come by, alive or dead,” Tracy said. “I hope my man is holding up.”

Arabel was out of bed now too. “Then let’s get cracking. We need to get to Germany then get home.”

There was another volley of cannon fire.

“Let’s see how our penicillin tea is getting on,” Emily said. “I think we’re going to need it.”

Trevor arrived at the forge to check on the progress. He found Brian and John, dirty, sweaty and exhausted, breaking apart molds and inspecting their handiwork.

“How’s it going?” Trevor asked.

“We’ve got quite the production line going,” Brian said.

“I think it’s going fine,” John said, “but we’re going to need another full day at least to make the quantity we need. We heard the cannon fire. How close are they?”

“About five hundred yards and falling short. They’re already repositioning.”

“They’ll be wanting to draw fire from the Iberian cannon on the walls to test their effective range,” Brian said. “Bit of cat and mouse. We shouldn’t respond yet.”

“We’re not,” Trevor said. “We’re standing pat.”

“Good,” John said. He held up a heavy iron cylinder, still warm from the mold. “Want to help us test this?”

“How do you mean test it?”

Brian said, “He means, want to help us blow something up?”

“Always up for a good explosion.”

“We’ll need a target inside the city,” John said. “Something solid and expendable to see if the percussion system works.”

“I’ll go check with the duke,” Trevor said.

“No, he’ll just have us blow up some poor sucker’s house.” John said. “I know how these guys think. See if you can find something yourself.”

Trevor left and returned an hour later. There was an abandoned and partially wrecked stone building located at the end of a long alleyway, not far from the forge. The nearest houses were far enough away that shrapnel wouldn’t be a problem. That’s where they went with Eduardo and a gaggle of other forge workers.

As Brian was setting up the test John showed Trevor how the system was supposed to work.

“It’s called a Hale rocket,” he said. “It was designed by William Hale in 1844 as an improvement over the Congreve rocket which was a primitive contraption with a long wooden guide stick, kind of like a fireworks rocket. This iron cylinder is a foot long and weighs about twelve pounds. There’s about a pound of gunpowder in the business end, here in the head, and about half a pound in the butt end for propulsion. A fuse sets it off, which is this bit of rope stuffed through the fuse hole. The thing that gives it accuracy and distance are these three exhaust ports that should give the rocket spin. If we’ve built it right, it should have a range of two thousand yards or more.”

“This was used?” Trevor asked.

“Absolutely, in the Civil War, the Mexican War, in Crimea, Africa, you name it. It was good for softening up enemy positions. It got obsoleted pretty fast by modern artillery design which is probably why we haven’t seen it here but if it works, they’ve got it now.”

“We’re teaching these tossers how to blow themselves up,” Trevor said.

John gave him a quick shrug. “I guess we’ll be out of the running for a Nobel peace prize.”

Brian said he was ready. The other component of the Hale rocket was the launcher, a long, hollow iron tube, closed on one side, resting on a bipod with a fuse hole for ignition. Rather than using a typical forty-five degree firing angle, for the test, Brian removed the tripod and set up the tube horizontally, lashed to a wooden box.

John took the rocket, gently pushed it down the launching tube and ran the fuse out the firing port of the launcher. The target was about a hundred yards down the alleyway. After adjusting the aim and making sure no hapless Iberians wandered into harm’s way, John got Eduardo to touch his torch to the fuse.

The rope burned for several seconds and the rocket ignited, sparking and flaming through the air with a high-pitched scream and an instant later it impacted the stone structure with a huge explosion.

Rocks, mortar, and iron shrapnel scattered everywhere.

“Fuck, yeah!” Brian shouted.

John pumped Trevor’s hand and said, “Now we’ve got to make a whole lot more. Come back to the forge and I’ll show you how the bullets came out.”

Iberians from the surrounding neighborhood came running to the scene.

“Is it the Moors?” they cried.

“No, no,” Eduardo said. “It is our industry. We have a wonderful new weapon to defeat them.”

At the forge John took Trevor to a barrel filled with conical forms of lead.

“Ever see something like this before?” John asked, plucking one out and tossing it to Trevor.

“Nope.”

“It’s called a Minié ball. A Frenchman, Minié, invented it mid-nineteenth century but the Americans in the Civil War called them Minnies as in Minnie Mouse. The idea was to improve accuracy and range of the old lead musket balls, the kind these guys here mostly use. They know how to rifle a gun barrel that helps but the lead ball doesn’t get a good purchase on the grooves. These hollow bullets expand from the gunpowder gasses and these grooves grip the rifling. We made them just a bit smaller than the bore of their muskets.”

“You tested them?”

“Last night. They’re good. I didn’t do any long distance firing but they’ll do the trick.”

“What’s the range?”

“Effective range, three hundred yards, maximal range, about a half a mile. About a five-fold improvement over lead balls.”

“How many have you made?”

“Not enough. Tell Giuseppe we’ll be ready tomorrow morning.”

By nightfall Jugurtha had finally inched his cannon close enough to strike the city walls but the Iberians held their return fire to encourage the Moors to come even closer. But the walls held up. Over an evening glass of tea, Jugurtha and Tariq decided to use the cover of darkness to move within three hundred yards. At dawn they would unleash a furious barrage to see if the walls could be holed from that distance. If they did enough damage they would pour their infantry into the city. If not, they would employ siege tactics. They were in no hurry. The prize was too large for haste.