Chapter 32

I had to get atop the wall to put my musket to use. That meant finding a way to cool the wall off.

Even on the backside, protected from the worst of the thermal pulse, it was warmer to the touch than it ought to have been. As I climbed the steps, it got warmer and warmer until, at the top, I couldn’t touch the stone with bare skin for more than an instant. I could see why Degle had to rotate out spotters. The heat radiating off it was intense enough to cook the air around me. I’ve been to deserts that weren’t that hot.

What could I do about it?

Nothing, unless I was willing to get creative.

Look, improvisation isn’t my strong suit. I need at least a few minutes to think through a plan, and ideally enough time to lay the groundwork. Trying to wing something on the spot just isn’t something I enjoy.

With that said, I had to do something, and I had to do it fast.

But what?

Think, dammit.

I thought back to my conversation with Kaze on the autocarriage up here. She said that General Tias was a pyromancer who used fire to make ice. That would be a useful skill to have right about now. Not the ability to make ice, exactly, but the ability to draw heat out of something.

Fire needs three components: fuel, fertilizer, and heat. There’s plenty of fertilizer in the air for most applications. Anything sufficiently dry and organic can serve as fuel. As for heat, that’s usually a source of ignition, most commonly a spark, or another fire if you’re feeling too lazy to reach for a flint.

On a fundamental level, ignimancy is about manipulating substances to achieve the perfect mixture of fuel and fertilizer. That’s why we’re so enamored with our firelocks. The right mix of fuel and fertilizer lets us squeeze every last erg of performance out of our powder, and it lets us do it predictably. Anyone who takes the time to learn their musket’s ballistics can go from mediocre shot to marksman extraordinaire in far less time than it takes to learn a longbow.

Other applications, like tuning explosives yield, work on the same principles.

There are other, more esoteric applications. According to Pesden, the same materials that make steel strong are present in explosives. Learn to tell them apart from iron and you can spread them throughout an ingot and forge it into the perfect barrel, blade, or whatever else you need. That’s why his firelocks are the best. He doesn’t just forge the blade, he transforms the steel itself to suit his needs.

I had tried that a few times. I never had the feel for it. That was one area Flir always beat me. She could feel things in a way I never could. That’s why the musket she made me held up for centuries longer than it should have.

I never learned to work the iron like that. The particles that made up the steel bounced around too quickly for me to keep track of. When I tried to slow them down, the steel lost heat.

The steel lost heat.

Surely it couldn’t be that simple.

I knelt and placed a hand upon the stone. It burned, as expected. I pushed the pain to the side and focused on the particles. Sure enough, they were buzzing around at velocities my feeble brain couldn’t track. What’s more, they were speeding up the particles in my hand. That’s why it was getting hot all of the sudden.

Was that something I could fix?

I knew better than to stop them completely. Pesden warned me about that. Stop all the particles from moving and you’ve created something that’s not supposed to exist. There are consequences for that. Besides, I didn’t want to freeze my hand, just stop it from burning.

In a flash of inspiration, it did just that. The motion of the stone heated it back up again, which was to be expected. My hand weighed less than a kilogram. The stone of the wall could be measured in kilotonnes. There was simply too much heat in the wall. It started cooking my hand again immediately.

I had the proof of concept, though. So, I turned my attention to the wall at large.

Instinctively, I knew trying to cool the whole thing would kill me again. Mana does a lot, but it doesn’t do it for free. If I used enough to cool the whole wall to a manageable temperature, the overload would set me ablaze. Having been burnt to a crisp once that day, that wasn’t an experience I cared to repeat.

What if I turned my attention to this one section of wall? Not a huge section, just the five meters or so around me?

No, still too much. I narrowed my focus. Not the whole wall, just the top meter or so.

Borderline, but doable.

I got to work.

There was a problem the instant I started: that energy had to go somewhere. I couldn’t create it or destroy it. I had to foist it off on something else, or it would latch onto me, and I’d combust. That would defeat the purpose of the exercise.

A flash of motion and a clap of thunder caught my eye. A mortar lobbed overhead, inscribing a lazy arc through the air as it made its way to the final destination.

Could I?

I reached out with my mind. The shell eagerly drank the heat. The cast iron shell had great thermal capacity. That’s one of the reasons it was favored for a casing. The heat generated by the firing was barely enough to warm the surface.

I gave it as much as the explosives inside could handle, then turned my attention to the next, and the next, and the next. The mortar crews had hit their stride, launching a shell from one of the ten launchers each fifteen seconds or so. By the time one landed, the next one was on the way. I spent a solid three minutes giving each one of them a kiss of thermal energy as they lofted along their trajectory.

What would that do on impact? Not a clue, but I couldn’t imagine anything good for the poor bastards on the receiving end. Normal shrapnel was bad enough. Superheated shrapnel would well and truly suck. Already, the screams on the other end were growing more frantic. There was every chance the bits of cast iron were starting fires when they hit wood or cloth.

I grinned. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.

After three minutes, the wall was cool to the touch. If my math was right, it would heat up again, but by the time it did, the enemy would be at the gate, and I’d be behind it, ready to back up Kaze. For now, it was time for me to do my part.