Penelope Firenze's Arc

Chapter 12 of 3

By dusk Penelope's column reached a ridge above the storehouse. The building sat broad and squat on the salt flat, its guarded door barred with iron. She counted the men on the walls and her stomach sank. The warlord's fresh orders had held. The guard was doubled. Two hundred spears could take that wall, but half would die on it, and a crippled army could never march on the throne. Dario climbed beside her and studied the ground. He was the burly exile who had kept her warriors alive before they knew her name, and he spoke like a man who wasted nothing. "Force won't do it," he said. "Not without gutting us." He pointed west, where the salt cracked into a low bowl. "There's a wyldfire well out there. Pressure trapped under the crust, left from when dragons walked the Waste. It burns when you free it." "You can make it burn where we choose?" Penelope asked. "I can build charges," Dario said. "Bury them at the wall. One spark, the wall comes down. Then your spears walk in." Nai-Lee crouched at the well's edge that night, reading the ground the way she read bones. She had crossed this country alone after slavery, and she trusted the land more than any man. "Here," she said, flat and quiet. She scraped back the crust. Gas hissed up, pale and stinking. "Fill the skins. Don't breathe it long." They worked through the dark. Dario packed the gas into oiled skins and bound them with cord. Nai-Lee marked the safe path to the wall by starlight. Penelope carried skins until her arms shook, then drew her father's blade to see by. The golden scimitar woke in her hands. Its molten core glowed brighter than she had ever pulled from it. When she swept it low, the light bent and hardened, and the sand beneath it fused to glass. "It answers you now," Nai-Lee said. She did not sound surprised. Penelope pressed the glowing edge to a charge cord. The heat lit the fuse clean, no flint needed. She learned the blade's new hunger through the night, cutting fuses, hardening glass, shaping fire to her will. Before dawn Dario buried the charges against the storehouse wall. Penelope waited on the ridge with her spears. She raised the scimitar and struck the lead fuse with its light. The well's fire tore through the wall. Timber and stone flew across the flat. The doubled guard scattered, deaf and choking in the smoke. Penelope's warriors poured through the breach before the men could form a line. It was over fast. The storehouse fell. Penelope stood inside among the grain sacks, sword still burning in her fist. The warlord's food was hers. His army would starve, and his soldiers would soon learn who had taken their bread. But the smoke had climbed high and bright, a black column over the flats, and every patrol in reach would ride toward it by first light.