The bell above Ironshop's main gantry tolled twice—Konos's signal that a forge-sprint had reached its coda. Artisans streamed from sheds to see her: the first finished salvo cannon, thirty-five hand-spans long, barrel veined with spiral rune-inlays that still glowed ember-red. Somebody had painted a feral grin along the recoil shroud and scrawled a name in wet slag: THROAT-RIPPER.
Konos rapped a knuckle on the breech. "Twenty-six rounds, continuous, before thermal lock," he declared, voice pitched for the entire yard. "Two better than spec. Cool-cycle five minutes. If the others sing half so well, the choir's ready for opening night."
Even the jaded veterans—old campaigners who had seen star-glass mortars and mana-torpedoes—murmured approval. Throat-Ripper's test pattern had scythed a furrow through three meters of quarry slate, each shell landing inside the last's smoke plume. Precision enough to thread a Relict's rib cage.
Fornos allowed himself a small nod from the reviewing platform, then turned to the ledger beside him. One red column remained stubbornly incomplete.
Casings.
Salt-steel was easy to describe—manganese-rich pig-iron quenched in brine and spirit oil—but devilish to pour at volume. The coastal foundries that once supplied mainland artillery had fallen silent after the Eastern Tariff War; their crucibles lay rusting behind customs chains and city decrees.
The ammunition line therefore sputtered. Peter's machinists could lathe driving bands all night, but without shells the cannons would be nothing more than oversized organ pipes.
Martin, logistics chief and former smuggler quartermaster, proposed a remedy that began with nine words: "I know a lock that hasn't been changed."
Kinter Forge hunkered on a lonely spit of coast two hours south—limestone walls, broken smokestacks, gulls nesting in shattered cupolas. Officially condemned. Unofficially forgotten.
At moon-up, Martin's raid party—a dozen Ash Company sappers—beached two skiffs on the black sand. Bolt-cutters made short work of the corroded gate. Inside, dust thick as felt muffled footsteps; only the sea, sloshing through slag sluices, marked the minutes.
They worked by shuttered lanterns:
Crate the reusable crucibles—five survived, still lined with salt-glaze.
Unbolt the shell-stamp dies: 155 mm, 180 mm, and the rare 210 mm martin had prayed for.
Strip the wax-cord gaskets from the main pour spout. Even rot-stiff, they could be re-softened.
Trouble found them just as the last crate thumped onto a dolly. A detachment of harbour watchmen—lured by the glow—piled through the breach. Their sergeant opened his mouth to demand papers; Martin's answer was a sap-blow to the collar and a whispered, "Nothing personal, lad."
The sappers hauled two unconscious watchmen onto skiffs along with the loot—insurance that no alarm would sound until morning. The prisoners would wake in a fishing hut with five silver crowns and a note reading "Foundry's still condemned. Forget the dream."
Salt-steel bottleneck, broken.
Back at Varnhollow, Konos converted the entire southern shed block into a shell foundry. Crucibles bloomed white-hot; furnacemen sang timing shanties to keep the pour rhythm true. Every eight beats, a ladle tilted; on the ninth, a mold closed with a hiss like cymbals.
Fornos walked the line each dusk, counting pallets: six hundred, seven, eight… He carried Throat-Ripper's firing log tucked in his coat like sheet music awaiting orchestra.
When casings reached a thousand, Konos struck a triangle—shrill, celebratory. The yard answered with a roar.
The broad plain north of the workshops had been graded smooth by golem dozers—Konos's makeshift rehearsal hall. Siege models Aegis-1 and Aegis-2 anchored the baseline, bracing recoil frames with piston-spikes. Mobile cannon crews—three handlers per gun—ran leap-frog drills: one piece firing, the next limbering, the third racing past to establish a forward pit.
Autocarriages—steam-chain wagons with side-racks of forty shells—shadowed each crew. At the whistle, loaders flipped cradle arms, feeding the breech like bread into a baker's mouth. Every forty seconds the column advanced seventy paces.
Konos choreographed from a watch-tower, bark counting time: "One-and-two-and—haul! Breech clear—push! Fuse live—fire!" His baton a gauntleted fist, his orchestra thunder.
Misstep? Stop. Reset. Again. Eleven hours, breaks only to clear brass and swap gloves melted to fingertips. At dusk, crews could load blindfolded, guided by vibration and breath.
They chose Limestone Bluff as the audience: a crescent cliff outside town, twenty meters tall, long used by stone-cutters for quarry. If Throat-Ripper and her siblings could fell that wall, they might just rattle a Behemoth's ribs.
Night locked in. Torches were banned; only red-dipped glow-flies in jars lent navigation. Fornos stood atop a slag-heap dais, Konos beside him, stopwatch dangling.
"Guns ready," came the relay call.
"Commence," said Fornos.
Throat-Ripper barked first—shockwave slapping the valley. Flame spurted from her muzzle like the tongue of some iron dragon. Shell after shell followed: thoom-thoom-thoom… Each gun took up the rhythm until the air became a rolling drumbeat that pounded sternums and rattled teeth.
Limestone cracked on the seventh volley, sheared on the eleventh, and on the twenty-sixth burst—Throat-Ripper's over-spec shot—a whole section of cliff folded like wet parchment, crashing in a roar of pulverised rock. Dust geysered skyward, glowing ember-pink where shell-flares kissed it.
Stopwatch clicked. Twenty-six rounds, two minutes-eighteen. Thermal gauges read yellow; no locks, no seized gears.
Konos breathed out the chord he'd been holding. "That," he said, voice hoarse, "is a cantata."
Veteran gunners who'd once dismissed the project now exchanged grudging salutes. Some removed helmets, staring at the cliff's smoking absence like worshippers before a miracle.
Fornos let silence settle, broken only by distant rockfalls. Then, just loud enough for those on the firing line to hear, he pronounced the verdict:
"Choir approved. Curtain rises at the Fault."
Cheers answered—brief, disciplined. Crews moved to inspection without another word; discipline framed their elation, as wire frames a glass pane.
Later, in command barrack lamplight, Fornos added fresh ink to the campaign ledger:
Artillery assets: ten salvo cannons, validated for 26-round continuous fire.
Shell inventory: 1 270 primed; production rate 120/day.
Crew drill: leap-frog advance average 41 sec per cycle; acceptable.
Risk flags: barrel lifespan 60–70 shots before re-sleeve; forge spares packed.
Morale: high; veteran integration 90 % complete.
He drew a line beneath the section, signed "F.D." in compact strokes, then set quill aside.
Across the yard, Throat-Ripper cooled beneath a tarp, faint heat rippling through canvas like a beast's slow breathing. In three weeks she would stand on the Glass Steppe, muzzle pointed at a myth.
But tonight the forge-song echoed in memory: hammers for percussion, breech clacks for strings, and cannon fire for the soaring brass that crowned the piece.
A cantata of iron—composed by Konos, conducted by necessity, and soon to debut on a stage carved by ancient terror.
Fornos closed the ledger. Let the Behemoth hear the music, he thought.