Fires of Alexandria

by Thomas Carpenter

  Chapter Eighteen

 

  "Where is the Northman? We're ready for the test," said Plutarch with a touch of impatience as he paced.

  Heron pulled an hourglass out of her desk and flipped it over, starting the sands to fall. "If he's not back in a quarter hour, we'll start the test without him."

  Heron eyed her foreman Plutarch, covered in soot and grime. The sweet blue tunic he'd been wearing when he first arrived three days ago was blackened, ripped and burnt.

  Plutarch hated to get dirty, which was why he was such an excellent foreman. He never did what he could get others to do.

  Heron threw him a rag. "Wipe your face. You're beginning to look like Punt."

  Punt grinned and continued drinking from his mug of water. While Plutarch hated dirt, Punt reveled in it like a pig in the mud.

  The last few days had been a whirlwind of activity. Heron couldn't believe how much the four of them had accomplished. Actually three, considering she couldn't lift a hammer without falling down.

  She tapped on the hourglass. Lysimachus wasn't going to wait for her.

  "Plato have pity, let's put fire to our plans."

  "Oh thank the gods," said Plutarch. "Let's get this done. I'm dying for a bath. Even if it's just a bucket of rainwater dumped on my head."

  "My nose would be better for it," quipped Punt uncharacteristically.

  When Plutarch turned on the blacksmith, he just shrugged his shoulders and shot Heron a grin.

  They made their way into the workshop, Heron limping along with her harnesses and poles.

  On a heavy timber platform, an aeolipile the size of her head was suspended over a brazier. Like the smaller version, the spinning toy was connected to a pair of pistons similar to her leg harness.

  The pistons were hooked to a rotating disc by the brass device she'd had Sepharia make for her. The disc was wound with rope that was connected to a heavy door.

  Punt grabbed a torch and shoved it into the charcoal filled brazier beneath the aeolipile. Not long after he had a small fire burning.

  "Now we wait for steam," she said.

  Agog arrived with a wrapped cloth in his hand.

  "Couldn't wait for me, could you?" grinned Agog.

  As he grinned, Heron got the impression he was a great bear, sizing her up for a meal.

  "What did you learn from your source?" she asked.

  Agog narrowed his eyes. "Lysimachus has hired a group of mercs to make an assault on the workshop. He got the worst of the worst from the dregs outside the city walls."

  Heron nodded. She'd been expecting this. He wouldn't let her hide Sepharia forever and without his spies in the workshop, he had no other way to find out where she was.

  "When will they do it?" she asked, hoping they'd have a couple more days to prepare.

  Agog glanced up at the roof. "Tonight. When all is dark. Two tens of mercenaries. Worst of the worst. Not prone to breaking easily at the first sign of failure."

  "Plato have pity, that gives us no time."

  Punt and Plutarch looked deflated, so Heron willed herself to be optimistic. She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath and asked Agog a question.

  "How sure are you of this information? Might your source just be trying to scare us?"

  The Northman smirked and looked at the cloth in his hand, clicking his tongue once. Heron interpreted the noise as amusement.

  He slowly unraveled it, drawing even Punt and Plutarch's attention, who had been previously staring at the dirt floor.

  When he was done, he threw the object within onto the floor between them. A small black rod the length of a finger lay in the dirt. And then Heron realized what it was.

  It was a finger.

  And she knew whose it was, too.

  She felt Agog's gaze on her. He was studying her. Seeing what she would say about his act of brutality.

  She met his hardened eyes with her own intensity until he seemed to accept her willingness with a nod. She checked with Plutarch, who nodded and Punt as well.

  Heron detected that they'd passed some sort of test and that worried her more than the finger.

  She was about to ask a question when the aeolipile began to spin. Steam wheezed out the two ends and like the smaller version, it took a while to gain enough momentum to move the piston.

  Pretty soon the pistons were winding the disc which pulled on the rope connected to the door. The heavy door swung closed and as it slammed shut, a clever hitch on the disc grabbed the rope the other way and pulled it open.

  Once it got going, the door was banging between open and closed every couple of seconds. The aeolipile was spinning like a hell-bent chariot wheel.

  A grin bubbled up to her face, replacing the dark mood brought on by the rotten finger. Almost like a madman shifting feverously between one emotion and the next.

  Either the lack of sleep or the steady banging of the door which was proof of her invention, had made her light with laughter, but it started rolling out of her lips.

  The others began laughing with her: Plutarch's high and willowy, Punt's silently shaking his body, and Agog's deep baritone rumbling like a herd of oxen.

  Heron shared a moment with Agog, that through the steady banging, seemed like he saw through her disguise, as his eyes twinkled with devious mirth.

  And then everything started to go wrong.

  At first, a steady counterpoint to the rhythm developed.

  The motion of the pistons developed a slight ticking.

  Then the ticking turned to tapping, which turned to thumping.

  The contraption began to shake and the rope banged the door more violently with each swing.

  Heron saw the problem immediately. The aeolipile was spinning impossibly fast, more than she'd calculated in her designs, and creating force on the pistons. So much that the pistons couldn't handle the load and rocked back and forth to disperse the energy.

  The whole thing was going on like an unbalanced wagon down a mountainside.

  "Is there any way to stop this damned thing?" Plutarch shouted above the banging. The other two looked as worried as her foreman.

  Heron regretted not making the brazier beneath the aeolipile movable.

  "When it runs out of water," she shrugged.

  When the pistons began to whine, everyone backed away.

  "Run!" she screamed, limping away from the device as fast as she could go.

  Agog appeared at her side, practically dragging her through the workshop.

  When the whine hit a high screech and then a heavy thud, she pulled Agog to the ground.

  The contraption exploded when one piston came loose and the rod crossed over the other. The spinning aeolipile provided the momentum and slung pieces all over the workshop.

  The force of the pistons knocked the whole thing off the heavy timbers and as the tubes on the aeolipile grabbed the earth, it ripped itself free and rocketed towards the wall that separated the workshop and the foundry.

  Heron watched all of it from the floor, holding her arm across her face cautiously in case something was thrown her way.

  The runaway aeolipile hit the wall with the force of a battering ram, exploding into shrapnel and sending a cloud of dust from the ceiling.

  The coals were spread across the workshop and fires sprung up where they could. Punt began putting them out using tarp he yanked off the Horus head.

  Agog brought in the rain barrel, handling it easy in his massive arms and put out the fires that the other two couldn't handle.

  Once the fires were under control, they wandered to the hole in the wall. It looked like a giant had punched through the stone with a heavy fist.

  Plutarch had a hand on his head. His eyes were wide with fear. "We needed that for Lysimachus, didn't we?"

  Heron nodded. Her mind was whirling faster than an aeolipile and it was all she could manage.

 
"Dear me," said Plutarch. "Dear me."

  Punt had his arms crossed, shaking his head.

  Agog kept studying the hole and then tracing the destruction back through the workshop. The spinning object had left quite the trail.

  Timbers had been ripped in half. Metal sheeting had been torn like paper. The stone floor looked chewed upon. Half the projects in the room had been destroyed or damaged. There was even a few fist sized holes in the ceiling.

  The silence was damning as to the extent of the destruction, so they were all surprised when it was Punt that spoke first.

  "It's all my fault," he said simply.