Chapter 372 - 366 — The First Shot

The High Forge Complex, Central Continent

Karrek found Daren beside a completed field gun, wiping grease from his fingers with a rag that had long since surrendered any claim to cleanliness—or usefulness.

Behind him, smiths were fitting another carriage while two apprentices carried a padded instrument case between them. They moved with the terrified, eggshell-stepping precision like men carrying a sleeping dragon.

It immediately drew Karrek’s attention.

"What have you put in there? The forge treasury?"

"The sight," Daren replied dryly. "They dropped the last case."

"Was anything damaged?"

"Only my opinion of them."

One apprentice abruptly lowered his head, while the other suddenly discovered something intensely fascinating on the floorboards.

Daren shooed them toward the outer doors with a flick of his wrist and pulled the canvas cover from the gun.

The leFH stood tall on its iron-rimmed wheels, its barrel extending over the carriage like a predatory snout. Fresh tool marks gleamed around several key fittings, and a small inspection plate had been neatly fastened beside the breech.

Karrek walked around it in a slow circle, stopping at the recoil assembly.

"This has passed?"

"The barrel and breech passed their pressure tests without blowing anyone into the next sky," Daren continued. "We have fired the assembled gun as well. Today is for the sight and the crew."

Karrek gave one of the heavy trail supports a sharp kick, then ducked his head to look beneath the barrel.

"Show me."

Daren walked him through the mechanics, explaining how the barrel slid smoothly back within its mounting when fired and how the hydropneumatic recoil mechanism brought it back into position. He pointed out the handwheels the crew would turn to raise the barrel and traverse it through its available arc.

Karrek listened, occasionally interrupting to grill him on seal wear or access for quick field repairs. When Daren finished, he stepped over to the mounting bracket.

"And the instrument those two delicate souls were carrying?"

"That is what I wanted you to see."

"Then you should have begun with it."

"You stopped to inspect the bolts."

"One was loose."

Daren bent down, checked the fitting Karrek indicated, and cursed under his breath.

"I will have it attended to."

"Before the demonstration."

"Yes, sir. Preferably before the gun attends to it for us—and takes my head with it."

By the time the crew hauled the leFH onto the proving ground, the offending fitting had been torqued down and secured.

The firing position sat in a shallow hollow beneath a broad, grassy rise. Beyond the ridge lay the marked target field—completely hidden from the men around the gun.

Karrek studied the blind slope while Daren unlatched the wooden instrument case.

The sight was smaller than Karrek had envisioned. A sleek viewing head sat above carefully etched brass scales, with adjustment controls placed right at the gunner’s fingertips.

Daren locked it into the bracket and stepped aside with a sweeping gesture. "After you."

Karrek leaned over and peered into the rubber eyepiece.

"I can see the aiming marker."

"That is our reference point here."

"And the target is on the other side of a solid dirt hill."

"Yes."

Karrek straightened up, crossing his arms. "Then explain how this shiny tube of glass tells them where to fire without turning the hill to dust first."

Daren pulled a folded sheet of parchment from the crew’s table and spread it beside a thick, leather-bound manual. Several curved arcs had been drawn across the grid lines, each ending at a different point.

"Projectile mathematics-the most interesting idea," Daren said, tracing one of the curves with a grease-stained thumb.

"The shell keeps moving forward after it leaves the barrel, while gravity pulls it down. Its flight follows a curve. If we understand that curve, we can calculate how to hit something we can’t see."

Karrek bent over the drawing. "Just from the distance?"

"Distance is only the baseline. Elevation, air temperature, wind velocity, and variances in powder charges all play a part. Even the air itself fights the shell the whole way."

"And the gunner calculates all of that every time?" Karrek raised an eyebrow. "We’ll be at war for three years before he fires a shot."

Daren opened the book to a bookmarked tab. "Fortunately for his brain, the difficult work has already been done. These firing tables contain results verified through hundreds of test firings thanks to our allies. The crew takes local measurements, cross-references this table, and dials in the math."

Karrek ran a finger down a column of dense figures before looking back at the sight.

"Then what does the instrument actually do?"

"It gives the crew a precise way to translate those figures onto the gun. Knowing you need to point the barrel twenty-three degrees high is useless if you’re guessing whether you’ve hit twenty-three or twenty-five."

"And who works out the numbers on the field?"

Daren gestured toward a small canvas tent nearby.

An artilleryman sat at a makeshift desk, scribbling figures onto a slate while another soldier stood beside him holding a second reference book.

Karrek watched the seated man spit on his thumb, erase a line of chalk, consult the book again, and rewrite it.

"Is he a mage?"

"He spent eight years serving siege batteries."

"That was not my question."

"No, Karrek, he is not a mage. He can read, calculate, and not panic when confronted with fractions. We’ve been teaching him the method."

"And if his chalk slips and he gets the math wrong?"

"Then the gun will faithfully send a high-explosive shell to the entirely wrong place. Which is why the man next to him is paid to check his work."

Karrek pulled the book closer, flipping through the pages. The manual was filled with clear diagrams, look-up tables, and step-by-step instructions—the same obsessive, meticulous detail he remembered from Elarion’s earlier weapon packages.

"How much of this did you have to figure out yourselves?"

"The manufacturing checks for our own steel. The aiming method arrived packaged neatly with the blueprints."

Karrek rested a finger on the open page. "They sent the gun and the brain needed to use it."

"Yeah... and they appear annoyingly determined that we actually read both." Daren grunted.

Karrek gave him a sideways glance. "Do you object to reading now, Daren?"

"Not as a rule. I only object to discovering that the page I skipped was the one that keeps the barrel from exploding."

Under the awning, the artillerymen finalized their calculations. The assistant carried the figures to the gunner, who began cranking the handwheels while the rest of the crew prepped the shell and casing.

Daren watched them for a moment before nodding toward a stone observation shelter built into the side of the rise.

"We’ve added a little local touch of our own."

Inside the shade of the shelter, a robed mage stood waiting beside a slab of polished black stone.

Karrek stopped in the doorway. "You just spent ten minutes convincing me the crew doesn’t need a wizard to hit a barn."

"They don’t," Daren agreed. "But having one means we can watch the barn explode in real time."

Daren gestured to the tablet. The mage raised a hand and murmured a short incantation. The stone’s surface shimmered, projecting an image of the target field beyond the hill.

A reinforced timber barrier stood anchored between two heavy earth mounds. A broad white square had been painted right in the center, flanked by wooden target dummies.

Karrek leaned in. "An observation scry."

"The math tells the crew where the shell should go," Daren said. "This tells us where it did go. If the target moves or the crew misreads a table, the mage can spot the fall of shot instantly."

"Does he adjust the gun directly?"

"No."

Karrek looked back out at the leFH. The gunner was making final adjustments to his elevation scale. Neither of the scribes at the calculation table had even looked toward the shelter.

"Has this crew fired at that specific barrier before?"

"No. The range survey was done yesterday. This is their maiden shot."

"And the mage hasn’t slipped them any hints?"

"He activated the spell after they locked in their numbers. You were standing right beside me."

Karrek folded his arms. "Then let’s see if they’ve earned their breakfast."

Outside, the crew rammed the shell and locked the breech with a sharp metal clack. The men moved clear while the gunner pulled the rope ready to fire.

Daren stepped to the doorway, raised a hand, waited for the crew chief’s nod, and snapped it down.

"Fire!"

KA-BOOM!

The shockwave slapped across the proving ground, rattling Karrek’s boots and blowing a cloud of dust through the shelter door.

The heavy barrel slammed back in its cradle, coughing a ring of gray smoke before returning to rest.

Karrek kept his eyes locked on the magic projection.

Across the hill, the timber barrier abruptly disintegrated.

A fountain of soil, splintered oak, and shattered wooden limbs erupted into the sky as the shell detonated dead-center on the painted white square. A massive chunk of the earth bank vanished into the billowing smoke.

Daren grinned as the dust settled on the screen. The painted target was entirely gone. Broken posts leaned at crazy angles into a smoking crater.

Karrek turned toward the gun. Out on the field, the crew was already inspecting the mount for mechanical stress.

"First shot," Karrek noted.

Daren stood admiring the ruin on the tablet, one hand resting on the open artillery manual.

"This is the most brilliant thing I’ve seen come out of the forge, Karrek. They’ve turned arithmetic into a weapon. That fellow scribbled some numbers on a slate, and we just watched his math rip a fortress wall to splinters."

Karrek glanced sideways at him. "You sound more impressed by the geometry than the giant iron cannon."

"I can appreciate both," Daren replied. "But I’ve spent thirty years watching gun crews fire, miss by fifty yards, adjust, miss by twenty yards, and get wiped out before their third shot. Knowing the first shell will land where you want it? That’s worth more than silver."

His fingers tightened on the edge of the desk. "We can teach this. Every battery we assemble can be trained to do this."

"How consistently can they repeat it under pressure?"

"Our initial trials have been promising. We’re logging every round."

Karrek gave a firm nod, then pointed to the glowing projection. "And what happens when an enemy battle-mage dispels that tablet?"

Daren signaled the mage, and the scry vanished into thin air.

Outside, the gunner remained glued to his sight. The crew kept working systematically around the weapon.

"We lose the instant commentary," Daren admitted. "The crew still has their initial survey data and can keep pounding that exact grid coordinate all day long. Standard spotters can send reports back by runner."

"Which is slower."

"Much slower. If the target moves, we’ll be shelling empty dirt until someone tells us."

Karrek rubbed his beard. "Intelligence reports from Avarran say enemy batteries rely heavily on sight-mages directing their fire in real-time. The moment their spellcasters fall, their guns go blind."

"Our crews will still need spotters for moving formations," Daren agreed. "But they don’t need a wizard holding their hand just to hit a stationary fort."

"Which means one observing mage can cover three batteries instead of one."

"Exactly."

Karrek looked back toward the calculation table. "That’s going to matter when every spare mage is needed at the main defensive wards. What about bad weather?"

"The sight and the math don’t care about rain. So long as the crew has solid baseline data, bad visibility won’t stop the shell from flying. Fog doesn’t move a hill, and rain doesn’t shift a stone bunker."

Karrek let out a short, rough laugh before stepping back to the range map on the table. He pointed to a second target marker located further down the valley.

"Have them target this one. Keep the spell off."

Daren studied his face. "You want to wait for the range observers to report?"

"I want to see this crew finish a live drill without leaning on a magical crutch."

Daren called the crew chief over and indicated the new coordinates.

The artillerymen went straight back to their slates and manuals. This time, Karrek stayed beside their table, watching the scribes run their checks before handing the corrected notes to the gunner.

The process took several minutes. Karrek stood in silence and let them take the time they needed.

When the second shot thundered out across the range, the gun recoiled cleanly. Beyond the hill, only a faint, delayed thud and a plume of dust drifting over the ridge signaled the shell’s impact.

There was no magical screen. They would have to wait for the messenger to ride back from the far boundary.

Karrek turned back toward the assembly hall.

"How many of these optical sights can you manufacture alongside the guns?"

Daren’s enthusiastic expression instantly withered. "Ah. There it is."

"What?"

"The question that makes a successful demonstration dangerous."

"Answer it, Daren."

"We have enough completed sights for the first batch of guns. But ramping up production on the lenses and gear-teeth means pulling high-tier artisans off other projects or ongoing production. Plus, we need more inspectors to calibrate the optics."

"Put it in the production schedule," Karrek said without hesitation. "I want complete weapon systems delivered together. No cannon leaves this forge without its sight and its book."

"I figured you’d say that."

"And start training the crews while the next batch of carriages is being assembled. Teach them the math from day one. I will not have a battery sitting idle because the one guy who knew how to read a firing table caught the fever."

Daren nodded. "I’ll order the artillery cadres brought in from the frontier in shifts."

"Good. Bring the unit mages along too. They need to learn what the gunners actually need to hear instead of giving them poetry about cloud cover."

They walked into the main assembly hall, where the second carriage was still swarming with metalworkers.

Karrek stopped right beside it, examining the sight bracket on the new frame.

"The bolts have all been checked on this one too," the forge-master said with a sigh.

"I’m checking the alignment, Daren."

"Of course you are."

They were reviewing the forge schedule when a dust-covered range messenger sprinted into the hall, holding a sealed parchment from the far boundary.

Daren snapped it open, read the observer’s scrawl, and handed it across.

The second shell had slammed directly into the center of the secondary barrier, scattering debris over a fifty-yard radius.

Karrek read the short report twice, satisfied, then laid it on top of the production ledgers.

"Have the revised schedule on my desk by tonight."

Daren looked back out the open doors toward the gleaming leFH sitting on the smoking range.

"I should have let you inspect the whole complex before showing you the gun."

"You can eat while you draft the schedule."

"How generous of you," Daren muttered. "Shall I log that extra half-hour as an official perk of the job?"

Karrek picked up the heavy instruction manual and handed it to Daren.

"Then log it accurately, Daren. You’ve just spent the last hour proving to me how important the math is."