Kael POV
"They're here."
I watch from the castle walls as Damian's army appears on the northern horizon. Five hundred men carrying weapons that shouldn't exist. I count at least twelve cannons—massive metal tubes mounted on wheels. One test fire could tell me everything I need to know about whether we'll survive the next hour.
"Your Highness." Rhys appears at my side, his face grim. "Lady Aria says the weapon is ready. But..."
"But what?"
"You should see it yourself, sir."
I follow him down to the courtyard where the entire court has gathered. Nobles whisper behind fans. My father's advisors cluster together, their faces disapproving. And standing in the center of it all is Aria's trebuchet.
It looks insane.
The frame is massive—forty feet tall, made of timber as thick as a man's chest. The throwing arm is longer than anything I've ever seen, with a huge sling dangling from one end. And at the base sits a wooden box the size of a small house, filled with what looks like sandbags.
"This is what she built?" Lord Chancellor Edmund sneers. "It looks like a child's toy. A very large, very expensive child's toy."
"It's not a toy." Aria's voice cuts through the murmurs. She walks forward, and I barely recognize her. She's covered in sawdust and soot. Her hands are wrapped in bloody bandages. She has a black eye from where something—or someone—hit her. But her spine is straight and her eyes are fierce. "It's a trebuchet. And it's going to save your lives."
"A trebuchet?" Edmund laughs. "Girl, that's not even a real word. You've wasted a week building nonsense while the prince's traitorous brother marches toward us with real weapons!"
"Then let's test both, shall we?" Aria gestures toward the old catapults lined up nearby. "Your 'real weapons' versus my 'nonsense.' Whichever throws farther and more accurately wins. If I lose, you can execute me immediately. Save everyone the trouble of a trial."
The crowd goes quiet. She just bet her life on a wooden frame and some rope.
I should stop this. It's reckless. Dangerous. If she fails, I lose my only advantage against Damian's modern weapons.
But something in her expression stops me. She's not afraid. She's confident. Maybe even excited.
"Load the old catapult first," I command. "Let's see the baseline."
Master Garrett directs his men. They load a two-hundred-pound stone into the old catapult's basket, crank the tension arm back, and fire.
The stone launches into the air with a loud CRACK. It arcs upward, traveling maybe two hundred yards before crashing into the empty field beyond the courtyard.
"Two hundred yards!" Edmund announces proudly. "That's the mark to beat, witch!"
Aria doesn't respond. She just walks to her trebuchet, checking connections, testing ropes. She moves like a surgeon preparing for a critical operation—precise, focused, deadly serious.
"Load the projectile," she says quietly.
Four men struggle to lift an identical stone into the sling. It takes all of them to secure it properly. The counterweight box groans under the strain.
"This will never work," someone whispers. "The proportions are all wrong."
Aria ignores them. She checks one last calculation, makes a tiny adjustment to the sling angle, then steps back.
"Fire when ready, Your Highness."
I should say something. Offer encouragement or warning. But my throat is tight and I don't know why. This woman—this impossible, brilliant, terrifying woman—is about to prove she's either a genius or a fraud.
"Release the counterweight," I order.
Master Garrett pulls the release pin.
The counterweight drops. The throwing arm whips upward so fast it's almost invisible. The sling spins, gaining momentum, then releases the stone at the perfect moment.
The projectile doesn't just launch. It FLIES.
It streaks through the air like a comet, higher and faster than anything I've ever seen. It sails over the field where the first stone landed. Keeps going. And going. And going.
It finally crashes to earth nearly five hundred yards away—more than double the distance of the old catapult.
Absolute silence.
Then chaos erupts. People shouting. Nobles arguing. Master Garrett staring at the trebuchet like it's a gift from the gods.
"Impossible!" Edmund sputters. "It's... that's not... how did—"
"Physics," Aria says simply. She turns to face me, and there's something fierce and triumphant in her eyes. "Your Highness, with ten of these positioned on your walls, Damian's cannons become irrelevant. We can hit his army before they're even in range to hit us. We can drop stones on those cannons and crush them before they fire a single shot."
"We don't have time to build ten," Rhys points out. "Damian will be in firing range within five hours."
"Then we don't build ten. We build three and position them strategically." Aria gestures to the trebuchet. "But we also need ammunition that does more than just hit hard. We need ammunition that terrifies them."
"What kind of ammunition?" I ask.
Her smile turns dangerous. "In my time, we called it psychological warfare. You're about to call it witchcraft." She nods to Master Garrett. "Show them."
Garrett wheels forward a cart covered with a cloth. When he pulls it back, I see dozens of clay pots sealed with wax.
"Greek fire," Aria announces. "Well, my version of it. Mix pine resin with alcohol and quicklime, seal it in clay pots, and launch it with the trebuchet. When the pots shatter on impact, the mixture ignites on contact with air and water. It burns so hot it melts metal. And it can't be put out by normal means."
"You built fire bombs?" I stare at her. "In six hours?"
"I'm efficient when I'm motivated." She meets my eyes. "Your brother has future weapons. So we give him future warfare. Launch these at his cannon positions and his artillery becomes expensive scrap metal."
Lord Edmund steps forward, his face purple with rage. "This is madness! Witchcraft! You cannot seriously be considering—"
"I'm considering staying alive," I cut him off. "Which means I'm listening to the woman who just threw a stone twice as far as our best engineers." I turn to Aria. "You have your three trebuchets. Master Garrett, mobilize every carpenter and blacksmith. We build through the night."
"Your Highness, I must protest!" Edmund says. "This woman is a condemned criminal! You cannot trust her with our kingdom's defense!"
"She's not a criminal. She's a strategic asset." I keep my eyes on Aria. "And right now, she's the only reason we might survive until tomorrow."
Aria inclines her head. Just a small nod, but there's something in it. Respect, maybe. Or recognition that we're allies now, whether we like it or not.
"Get to work," I tell her. "You have until dawn."
She turns to leave but freezes. Her eyes go wide, locked on something behind me.
I spin around and see a rider racing toward the castle gates. He's shouting something, waving frantically.
The guards let him through and he practically falls off his horse.
"Your Highness!" he gasps. "Message from your scouts! Prince Damian—he's not waiting until sunset! He's moving NOW! His army will be in firing range within the hour!"
My blood turns to ice. "One hour? You said we had five hours!"
"He changed his approach, sir! He's using the canyon pass instead of the main road. It cuts his travel time by—"
"I know what it cuts." I look at Aria. "Can you finish three trebuchets in one hour?"
Her face goes pale. "Not even close. Maybe one. Maybe."
"Then we use what we have." I turn to Rhys. "Evacuate the civilians to the inner keep. Get archers on the walls. Prepare for siege."
"Your Highness," Aria says quietly. "One trebuchet isn't enough. Not against twelve cannons and whatever else Damian brought from the future."
"Then what do you suggest?"
She's quiet for a long moment, her mind clearly racing through calculations. Then her eyes light up with something that terrifies me.
"We don't try to outfight him. We outsmart him." She points to the canyon pass. "That pass is narrow. If we can cause a rockslide, we trap his army in the canyon. Then we rain fire down from above. Turn his speed advantage into a death trap."
"A rockslide would require explosives. Which we don't have."
"Yes, we do." She turns to face me fully. "Your Highness, do you trust me?"
It's a loaded question. Trust the woman I tried to execute? Trust the woman who claims to be from the future? Trust someone who knows things she shouldn't know and builds weapons that shouldn't exist?
"I trust that you want to survive," I say carefully. "And that's enough."
"Good. Because what I'm about to ask you to do sounds completely insane." She steps closer, lowering her voice. "I need you to load one of those fire bombs onto my trebuchet. Then I need you to aim it at the cliff face above the canyon pass."
"That's half a mile away. You can't possibly—"
"I can. I did the calculations. If we adjust the counterweight ratio and the release angle, we can hit it. And when that fire bomb explodes on impact, the heat will fracture the rock. The cliff will collapse into the canyon, blocking Damian's advance."
"And if you miss?"
"Then we all die slightly faster than we would have anyway." Her smile doesn't reach her eyes. "Your Highness, I'm offering you a chance. A small chance, but better than none. Take it or don't. But decide now, because we're out of time."
I look at her—this exhausted, beaten, brilliant woman who rebuilt a siege weapon in six hours and now wants to cause a controlled rockslide with medieval technology.
She's either going to save us all or kill us trying.
"Do it," I say.
Aria doesn't waste time celebrating. She's already moving, shouting orders to Master Garrett, calculating angles, preparing the shot.
I watch from the walls as they load the fire bomb carefully into the sling. Aria makes minute adjustments, measuring distances with nothing but her eyes and a piece of string.
"This is madness," Rhys mutters beside me.
"All the best plans are," I reply.
Through my spyglass, I see Damian's army emerging from the canyon pass. He's mounted on a black horse, looking confident and powerful. Behind him, those massive cannons roll forward on iron wheels.
He thinks he's won already.
"Ready!" Aria shouts. "On your command, Your Highness!"
I raise my hand, watching Damian's forces get closer. Closer. They're almost through the narrow part of the canyon. Almost in position.
"Fire!"
The trebuchet releases. The fire bomb launches into the sky, arcing high over the castle walls.
For a moment, it looks like it's going to miss. Too high. Too far.
Then it drops, falling toward the cliff face like a falling star.
It hits the rock and explodes in a ball of fire so bright I have to look away.
The cliff face glows orange. Steam erupts where the heat meets moisture in the stone. And then—
Crack. Crack. CRACK.
The entire cliff face begins to crumble.
"ROCKSLIDE!" someone screams from Damian's army.
I watch through my spyglass as thousands of tons of rock cascade into the canyon, burying the narrow pass under an avalanche of stone. Horses scream. Men scatter. And those beautiful, terrifying cannons disappear under the rubble.
When the dust settles, Damian's army is split in two—half trapped behind the rockslide, half exposed in front of it.
And we have twelve trebuchet shots loaded and ready to rain fire on the survivors.
I turn to Aria, who's staring at her handiwork with wide eyes.
"Did that just work?" she whispers.
"It worked," I confirm.
Then the celebration is cut short by a new sound. A sound that makes every hair on my neck stand up.
From behind the rockslide, from somewhere deep in the canyon, comes a mechanical roar like nothing I've ever heard. Metal grinding against metal. Engines that shouldn't exist.
And then I see it rising above the rubble—a machine. A massive metal machine on tracks, bristling with gun barrels, rolling over the rocks like they're pebbles.
"What in the gods' names is that?" Rhys breathes.
Aria's face goes white as snow. "That's a tank," she whispers. "A military-grade assault tank. And if Damian has that..." She looks at me, her eyes full of horror. "Your Highness, we're not fighting one time traveler. We're fighting someone with access to an entire arsenal from my era. Someone who brought back enough weapons to level this entire kingdom."
The tank's main cannon swivels toward our castle walls.
"EVERYONE DOWN!" Aria screams.
The cannon fires.