The dust on the horizon was no longer a suggestion, it was a signature. Five hundred men, three hundred infantry, one hundred archers, and a steel-clad fist of a hundred heavy cavalry. The Duke of Blackhawk hadn't sent a diplomatic mission. He had sent a "collection agency" of blood and iron.
Alaric stood on the battlements of the North Tower, his modern eyes squinting against the afternoon sun. Beside him, Kaelen paced like a caged wolf, his hand white-knuckled on the hilt of his sword.
"They'll reach the valley floor by dusk," Kaelen muttered. "They'll see the South Slope. They'll see the pikes. Alaric, if we don't break them at the bridge, they'll surround us. We don't have enough grain for a long siege, even with your hidden stash."
"We aren't going to have a long siege," Alaric said. He wasn't looking at the army. He was looking at a set of wooden stakes he'd had the surveyors drive into the mud near the bridge. "We're going to have a Demonstration."
---
As the vanguard reached the edge of Oakhaven's lands, a single rider detached himself. He carried a white flag of parley, but he rode a destrier armored in steel. It was Sir Gareth, the Duke's "Hammer", a man known for burning villages that couldn't pay their tithes.
Alaric descended to the gate. He didn't wear armor. He wore a simple tunic of dyed wool and carried a leather-bound ledger.
"Lord Alaric," Sir Gareth boomed, his voice muffled by his Great Helm. "The Duke is displeased. You've stolen his grain, you've built 'towers of smoke,' and you've armed the rabble with oversized toothpicks. Surrender the 'Architect' of these follies, and the Duke may leave your father with his head."
Alaric stepped forward, past the line of his trembling pikemen. He looked at the knight, then at the massive army waiting a mile back.
"Sir Gareth," Alaric said, his voice terrifyingly conversational. "You've spent your life mastering the horse and the blade. You believe that power is the weight of your charge. But power is actually the speed of Combustion."
"Speak plain, boy, or I'll have your tongue for the Duke's breakfast!"
"Look at that rock," Alaric pointed to a massive granite boulder sitting near the bridge, a landmark the locals called the 'Giant's Toe.' "If you cross that bridge, you are entering a world where your armor is just a very expensive coffin."
Gareth laughed, a hollow, metallic sound. "With what? Your sticks? Your mud-plows?"
Alaric didn't answer. He looked up at the North Tower and raised the ledger high above his head.
---
High above, Old Tom dropped a smoldering match onto the touchhole of the 'Dragon's Breath.'
BOOM.
The sound was louder than before, echoing off the valley walls like a mountain collapsing. A gout of black smoke and orange flame erupted from the tower.
A split second later, the 'Giant's Toe' didn't just break, it shattered. A two-pound iron ball, cast in the North Tower and propelled by Alaric's refined 'Devil's Dust,' struck the granite with the force of ten thousand hammers. Shards of stone whistled through the air, one of them slicing a deep gouge into Sir Gareth's steel pauldron.
The knight's horse went wild, rearing and throwing the veteran to the mud. Behind him, the vanguard's line buckled. Men fell to their knees, covering their ears, screaming about "Heaven's Wrath."
Alaric walked toward the fallen knight, who was struggling to stand in his heavy plate. Alaric knelt, looking into the narrow eye-slits of the helmet.
"That wasn't a catapult, Gareth," Alaric whispered. "That was a Ballistic Trajectory. And I have four more tubes aimed at your Duke's tent. Tell him the 'Architect' isn't surrendering. He's negotiating."
Alaric stood up and looked at the terrified army. He knew he couldn't kill five hundred men with one primitive cannon. But he didn't have to. He just had to break their Paradigm.
"Go," Alaric commanded. "Tell the Duke that if he wants Oakhaven, he has to pay for it. Not in blood, but in Trade Agreements."