Free Red by Ted Dekker

the saddle.
    â€œWhere are you going, sir?”
    â€œTo test this concoction of ours. Bring it down!”
    They descended on the cliffs with a vengeance, swinging with bronze mallets and swords and granite boulders. Others began to crush the suspected saltpeter into a fine powder. They hauled the charcoal in and ground it further down the line. The sulfur caked the bronze bowls into which they had poured it. The cakes ground easily.
    Very few knew what they were doing. Who’d ever heard of such a way to conduct a battle? But it hardly mattered—he’d ordered them to crush the rock, and the powder that was this rock would crush the enemy. He was the same man who’d shown them how to coax metals out of rocks by heating them, wasn’t he? He was the man who had survived several days as a Scab and returned to wash in the lake. He was the man who had led them into battle a hundred times and emerged the victor.
    If Thomas of Hunter told them to crush rocks, they would crush rocks. The fact that three thousand of their comrades had been killed by the Horde today only made their task more urgent.
    Thomas knelt on the large stone slab and looked at a small pile of ground powder he had collected above the quarry.
    â€œHow do we measure it?” Mikil asked.
    Despite his active participation, William’s frown persisted.
    â€œLike this.” Thomas spilled the white powder in a line the length of his arm and tidied it so that it was roughly the same width for the entire length. “Seventy-five percent,” he said. “And the charcoal . . .” He made another line of charcoal next to the white powder.
    â€œFifteen percent charcoal. One-fifth the length of saltpeter.” He marked the line in five equal segments and swept four of them to one side.
    â€œNow 10 percent sulfur.” He poured the yellowed powder in a line two-thirds the length of the black powder.
    â€œLook right to you?”
    â€œRoughly. How exact does it have to be?”
    â€œWe’re going to find out.”
    He mixed all three piles until he had a gray mess of powder.
    â€œNot exactly black, is it? Let’s light it up.”
    Mikil stood and backed away. “You’re going to light it? Isn’t it dangerous?”
    â€œWatch.” He made a trail of it and stood. “Maybe it’s too much.” He thinned the line so that it doubled in length to the height of a man.
    William backed up a few steps, but he was clearly less concerned than Mikil.
    â€œReady?”
    Thomas withdrew his flint wheel, a device that made sparks by striking flint against a rough bronze wheel. He started to roll the wheel on his palm but then opted for his thigh guard because his palm was moist with sweat. He lit a small roll of shredded bark.
    Fire.
    Mikil had backed up another few paces.
    Thomas knelt at one end of the gray snake, lowered the fire, and touched it to the powder.
    Nothing happened.
    William grunted. “Huh.”
    And then the powder caught and hissed with sparks. A thick smoke boiled into the night air as the thin trail of black powder raced with fire.
    â€œHa!”
    Mikil ran over. “It works?”
    William had lowered his arms. He stared at the black mark on the rocks, then knelt and touched it. “It’s hot.” He stood. “I really don’t see how this is going to bring down a cliff.”
    â€œIt will when it’s packed into bound leather bags. It burns too fast for the bags to contain the fire, and boom !”
    â€œBoom,” Mikil said.
    â€œYou’ve frowned enough for one evening, William. This is no small feat. Let your face relax.”
    â€œFire from dirt. I will admit, it’s pretty impressive. You got this from your dreams?”
    â€œFrom my dreams.”
    Three hours later they had filled forty leather canteen bags, each the size of a man’s head, with black powder, then wound these tightly in rolls of canvas. The rolls were hard,