He pushed a wad into the cannon and rammed it into place with a rod. “This rag fills up the bore of the cannon,” he explained, “keeps the explosion from going around the ball—and puts the full force on the shot.” He slid a cannonball down the front of the cannon. It thumped into place. “Cannon can’t angle too low, otherwise we’d roll the ball out the front.”
“All right,” Tress said. “But…um, does the captain know you’re having me do this?”
“I’m cannonmaster,” he snapped. “Captain won’t care who I train. You just do as you’re told. Besides, a man needs to take care of himself. I don’t want to end up wounded, then get sunk because nobody else on this damn ship has the guts to handle zephyr.”
So. Laggart didn’t know that she was to be sold to the dragon. This struck Tress as odd, since he seemed to know the rest of the plan. But then she realized there was a good chance the captain considered him a backup sacrifice. He was one of the crewmembers who was least afraid of spores.
Laggart picked up a small wooden contraption near the railing, then tossed it overboard. It proved to be a kind of small buoy with a flag, tied by a rope to the ship. As they sailed, it trailed along far behind—like the most conscientious of stalkers.
“Take five shots a day,” Laggart told her. “The best way to get a feel for a cannon is to practice.”
He started to walk away.
“Wait!” Tress said. “You’re not going to give me any more training than that?”
“Training would be useless until you know more,” he said. “I’m busy. Figure it out and don’t bother me with stupid questions. If you sink a buoy, congratulations. There are more in the hold. Come bother me when you can do it in at most two shots, and then we’ll talk about some real training.”
“All right,” Tress said, an idea occurring to her. “But maybe I should start with something less expensive and wasteful than full cannonballs. We don’t have a flare gun on board, do we? I could try that out first.”
“What kind of a stupid question is that?” Laggart said.
It was, identifiably, the stupid kind of stupid question. Which at least is better than the redundant kind of statement.
“A flare gun is nothing like a cannon,” he said. “So just do what I told you, idiot.” He continued muttering to himself as he stalked off.
Tress folded her arms. She’d been planning to spend the evening either studying or trying to figure out how to crack Hoid’s curse. This was an unwelcome intrusion. Still, perhaps there were some advantages. If she was planning to build her own spore-based weapon to fight the captain, there were worse uses of her time than experimenting with a cannon.
It was just that Laggart, by refusing to offer any useful training, had ensured she’d waste hours figuring out the basic mechanics of aiming the cannon. Even with this brief delay at the border, she knew her time was short. Depending on where the dragon’s den was in the Crimson Sea, she had anywhere between a few hours and a few weeks to plan.
A solution occurred to her only a moment later. She pushed the cannon forward, as she’d seen Laggart do. Then she smiled, took a firing rod—which had a soaked bit of cloth on the end—and stuck it into the touch hole. A second later an explosion rocked her, knocking the cannon back along its track.
It took less than a minute for Ann’s head to pop up behind, wide-eyed and eager.
THE CHICKEN KEEPER
“You use these two winches,” Ann explained, rotating a handle—not unlike the one on a meat grinder—at the base of the cannon. “This one turns it port or starboard. This other one raises it up in the air. See, a cannonball drops as it flies. So you have to aim upward and kind of lob your shot in an arc.”
She pointed. “The tricky part is to judge the distance. You’ve got a lot of cannonballs with different fuse lengths. To properly immobilize a ship, you need the ball to explode right before hitting, so it sprays water.”
“Seems like there should be an easier way,” Tress said, sitting on the gunnery barrel. “Like making a cannonball that explodes when it hits something. Then you’d only have to aim for the ship, not judge the distance.”
“I suppose,” Ann said. “Ain’t ever heard of anything like that though.”
I have, Tress thought, realizing only now what the diagram in her quarters had been talking about. It had mentioned “impact detonation charges.” Someone’s planning weapons like that. Maybe already built them.