The Broken Bell Read Online Free PDF Page A

can put a hundred pound shell nearly six miles. We figure the eights can do nine.”
    Rafe raised his hands at our blank faces. “Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Look. You know how cannons work?”
    “A thick iron tube is packed with a powder that explodes when lit by a spark. This propels an iron sphere out of the tube at great speed.” Evis looked at Rafe over the tops of his dark glasses. “Is that correct?”
    Rafe nodded and grinned. “That’s exactly how the first cannon, the old Henry, worked, Mr. Prestley. Were you on the halfdead—er, the Avalante team—working on them, during the War?”
    “I was not,” replied Evis. “But I’ve read their reports.”
    “Then you know about the problems they faced. The unstable powder. The balls that got stuck and cracked the cannon bodies. Misfires. Duds.”
    Evis nodded, with a sideways glance at me. Whoever Rafe was, one thing was clear—the boy liked his cannons.
    Rafe waved his hands. “We’ve fixed all that. No more random explosions. Well, hardly ever. No more cracked shafts. And the rounds—Mr. Prestley, we have explosive rounds now. Timed rounds. We can penetrate walls or burst them in the air over troops or…”
    Rafe went on, describing in intricate, enthusiastic detail a brand new method of slaughter. I couldn’t follow all of it. There was talk of trajectory calculators and paper fuses and friction primers, delivered in a throaty bellow that got hoarser as Rafe grew more animated.
    I shrugged at Evis and quit trying to follow Rafe’s running description of Parrot guns and howitzers.
    I watched the camp instead.
    Everywhere I looked, there was more of it. More and more of the structures were brick. The largest brick buildings were set apart from other structures and flanked by thick mounds of sand. I spotted a couple of suspicious building-sized holes in the ground, also flanked by mounds and heaps of rubble that had been left where they fell.
    And everywhere there were men, moving with a purpose. They wore the same plain uniforms. My original estimate of hundreds was quickly giving way to thousands. No one shied away at sight of the dead man driving the wagon.
    In the distance, I heard crashes and booms. Not thunder, as it lacked the volume and intensity, but something much like it.
    Rafe grinned. “They’re just burning old powder kegs,” he shouted. “Can’t re-fill ’em. They tend to blow.”
    “Wouldn’t want that,” I agreed.
    Rafe turned back to Evis and resumed his cheery recounting of the wonders of an aught-eight, which could apparently be crewed by six men and fire twice a minute.
    I thought back to the weapons Evis and I had seen that day, many months ago, at Werewilk. They had been small affairs, and yet a few of them had brought down the entire House within moments. The things Rafe were shouting about were, I gathered, rather more destructive.
    A chill ran up and down my spine.
    Thousands of soldiers. A frantic, secret weapons development program. Funding that flowed from a bottomless purse—hell, just feeding several thousand men would require tens of thousands of crowns a day. But if you also have to clothe them and house them and pay them and provide them with big Aught Eights to fire, you were getting ready for something bigger than just another Victory Day parade.
    “Rafe,” I yelled, cutting him off in mid-sentence. “When’s the big day?”
      “The big day? Sir?”
    “When do the first of the big ones ship back to Rannit?”
    I was guessing. But it was plain Rafe didn’t know how much or how little we knew.
    He almost answered me. But then a ghost of caution whispered in his sunburnt ear, and he bit back the words.
    “Best ask the Corpsemaster, sir. I’m just an engineer.”
    I didn’t need a date anymore. I’d seen such a date existed.
    And that scared me worse than any number of dead carriage drivers or mysterious booms.
    Evis regarded me over his glasses and then drew Rafe back into a spirited