The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,184

she came to know with more and more certainty as each day passed: the script of the world was now wholly, inalterably colored by a brilliant crimson streak.

Rin’s favorite part by far of the southeastern campaign was the Southern Army’s slow acquisition and mastery of Hesperian military technology. She made a game of it—the standing rule was double portions of dinner to the squadron that returned from active engagement with the largest haul of functioning Hesperian equipment.

Most of the pieces they retrieved were minor improvements on equipment they already had—more accurate compasses, sturdier splints for the physicians, more durable axles for their wagons. Often they found contraptions they had no idea what to do with—little lamps without wicks that they didn’t know how to light, ticking orbs that resembled clocks but whose arms corresponded to inexplicable letters and numbers, and whirring mini-dirigibles that Rin assumed were messenger crafts, which she couldn’t fly. She felt stupid, turning the devices over and over in her fingers, unable to find the controls to make them start. Kitay fared slightly better—he finally determined that the lamps were activated with a series of taps—but even he grew frustrated with machines that seemed to run purely on magic.

Three miles out from Bobai, a recently abandoned Republican holdout, they found under a thin layer of soil a hastily buried crate of functioning arquebuses.

“Fuck me,” Kitay murmured when they pried the lid off the crate. “These are almost brand-new.”

Rin lifted an arquebus from the top of the pile and weighed it in her hand. She’d never held one before; she hadn’t dared. The steel was icy cool to the touch. It was heavier than she imagined—she found a new respect for Hesperian soldiers who lugged these running into battle.

She glanced at Kitay, whose jaw hung open as he knelt down to examine the weapons. She knew what he was thinking.

These changed everything.

They’d made it this far with minimal ranged capabilities. There were only several dozen archers in the Southern Army, and their ranks weren’t growing. It took weeks for a novice soldier to learn to properly fire an arrow, and months if not years for them to fire with decent accuracy. Archery required tremendous arm strength, particularly if arrows were meant to pierce armor.

The next best thing they had to arrows were fire lances, a recent Republican invention Kitay had heard about during his stay in the New City, then reverse engineered. Those were tubes made of sixteen layers of thin wrapped paper, a little longer than two feet, stuffed with willow charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter, and shards of iron. The lances could shoot flames nearly ten feet when lit, but they still required a ready fire source to activate, and they backfired easily, often exploding in the hands of their wielders.

But arquebuses required less arm strength than bows, and they were more reliable than fire lances. How long would it take to train troops to shoot? Weeks? Days, perhaps, if they devoted their time to nothing else? If she could get just twenty to thirty soldiers who were halfway proficient with the arquebus, that would open up a host of new strategies they’d only dreamed of.

“Think you can figure out how to use these?” she asked Kitay.

He chuckled, brushing his fingers over the metal tubes. “Give me until sunset.”

Kitay took only the afternoon before he called her over into a clearing, empty except for the dozen dissembled arquebuses scattered around the grass. Pale little notches dotted the trunks of every tree in sight.

“It’s actually quite simple.” He pointed at various parts of the arquebus as he spoke. “I thought I was going to have to interrogate some Hesperian prisoners, but the design really revealed its own function. Very clever invention. It’s basically a cannon in miniature—you set off some fire powder inside the barrel, and the force of the explosion sends the lead ball ricocheting out.”

“How does the firing mechanism work?” Rin asked. “Do they have to light a spark every time?”

This seemed inconvenient to her, as well as implausible; the Hesperians seemed to fire at will without fumbling for flint.

“No, they don’t,” said Kitay. “They’ve done something clever with the match. It’s already a burning fuse—you can light it before you’re out on the field. Then when you’re ready to shoot, you squeeze this lever here, and it brings the match down into the powder. Click, boom.” He reached for an intact arquebus. “Here, I’ve loaded that one. Want to give it a try?”

She waved her stump