#62 - Gun Lint

Ahrimaz actually hunched in the saddle in a way that would have had the Old Monster clouting him off the horse.  He folded the collar of his great coat up over his neck and the back of his head, buttoning it one handed.  “I don’t know,” he snapped at the gunsmith.  Ahrno.  That’s his name.  “Look, Ahrno, you’ve asked me half a dozen times and I don’t know any more precisely than that. I mostly used the stuff.  You soak cotton lint, the fluff before it’s woven, in sulfuric acid and nitric acid.  You keep it cold while its soaking or it’ll go bad.  You keep it cold and you’ll get the same reaction every time.  Let it dry in the sun.  You’ll get something that you daren’t put in these old muzzle loaders without blowing them to scorching flinders and taking someone’s hand or head off.”

“But…”

“Five grains of treated cotton will give you an explosion that puts thirty grains of black gunpowder to shame, however innocent it looks.  Thirty grains of gunpowder will crack a granite rock.  Five grains of gun cotton will blow it to gravel.”

Ahrno went pale as far as Ahrimaz could see since he had a knitted muffler up over his face.  “It would be best to invoke the God like that in the depth of winter where the Goddess controls the burn.”

“That’s a good way of putting it.”  Perhaps that’s one reason the Old Monster line suppressed Liryen’s worship.  She controls the God and they couldn’t stand that thought, even though it seems that He controls her in turn.  They are equals in this world.

The bicoloured mare’s astonishing gait was as easy to ride as a hobby horse and they were all gaited like her, except the stags… Pel had laughed and laughed and told him the ‘stags’ were actually does since they kept their antlers longer, all the way to late winter.  The does ploughed through the drifts like automata, but they devoured the bales of lichen everybody carried like snow melting in sunshine.  The horses inhaled grain and sweetfeed as fast as the deer, who sneaked as much of the sweetfeed as they could.  At least they could carry enough to take them through this cold quickly.  Every other day they’d hit another village and slept warm.  It made an immense difference.

In the Empire those villages had all been consolidated  into more distant and larger towns and this kind of winter military action wouldn’t have worked well at all.

The gunsmith urged his horse up to ride next to the Captain, riding reinless to stab urgent fingers at his book and make wild waving gestures.

Ahrimaz grunted and sank deeper into his coat.  He felt like he should be uncomfortable, the coat and the armour and the weapons shouldn’t fit him perfectly even though he and the other Ahrimaz were nearly identical in so many ways.  I’m not him. He’s a good man.  I’m not.  I was taught to be a monster.  I don’t deserve to be comfortable. I don’t deserve the animals…  Heylia, on the back of his saddle bunted her head into the back of his and he could feel her purr as she clung to the leather pads on his shoulders.

The dogs ran at his horse’s heels, all goofy lolling tongues and galumphing joy at going.  It didn’t seem to matter where as long as it was with him.

The great coat actually had a tuck-flap to cut the wind around his boots and he was warm enough from the exercise.  Not a bad way to travel, if one must, in the winter.

The gunsmith was making more interesting waving motions with his arms as he babbled at the Captain who kept looking back at him.  Gun-cotton.  So simple.  So innocent.  So deadly.

Pel dropped back, his st---doe grumbling as she stepped onto the plowed road.  “We’ll make Champ de Navet while it’s still light.  If the weather holds we’ll make it to the Mire in less than two days.”

Ahrimaz nodded shortly.  “Good.  I have this horrid feeling we’re cutting it too close as it is.”

“We don’t know that.  We’ll do our best.  And we are going to save your friend.  You are going to save your friend.”

“Won’t I be flouting the will of the Gods if I do?  I mean in the other world this happened more than a year ago and I couldn’t save her then.”

“Perhaps that’s one of the reasons you got swapped when you did.”

Ahrimaz nearly stopped the mare in the road, staring at Pelahir.  “You really think so?”

“I have no clue.  It’s a guess.  What with free will and so forth how can anyone guess the minds of the Gods?”

Ahrimaz found himself looking up at the clouds that had relentlessly covered the sky like a threatening dark gray blanket for days and sniffed at the sudden wind.  Pel turned his face up too.  “Stag Lord’s left nut.  It’s going to snow, or…”  He put his hand on his doe’s shoulder.  “Rain.  Frost rain it smells like.”

“Scorch.  Scorching anus of God.”