CHAPTER 4: THE MUD AND THE IRON
By four in the morning, the freezing mountain air gave way to a far more insidious enemy. A sudden, unseasonal warm thermal current swept up from the southern valley, melting the upper snowpack and turning the frozen soil into a treacherous, knee-deep sludge.
The path along Iron Ridge—already precarious and narrow—transformed into a river of dark, heavy mud flowing over a hidden layer of solid black ice.
Old Bertha, weighing well over three tons, began to sink. Her heavy iron-shod wheels churned through the topsoil, digging deep, inescapable ruts until the undercarriage scraped harshly against the jagged bedrock.
"PULL! KEEP THE MOTION!" Silas bellowed from the lead rope. His boots slipped twice on the slate, but he dug his heels into an exposed pine root to hold his balance. "DON'T LET HER SETTLE! IF SHE SETTLES, THE MUD WINS!"
The twenty-four men groaned in unison, a sound of collective agony that drowned out the howling wind. Muscles burned to the point of numbness; torn blisters bled inside frozen canvas gloves. The hemp ropes, heavy and soaked with icy slush, had stiffened like iron cables, biting mercilessly into shoulders and collarbones through thin wool coats.
"She’s not moving, Sarge!" shouted Miller, a burly former miner pulling mid-line. His hands were raw, blood oozing through his bandaged knuckles. "The mud’s holding her like wet cement!"
Captain Vance hurried up from the rear guard, his face pale with exhaustion and caked in dark mud. He pulled out a pocket watch, his hands shaking as he wiped frost off the glass.
"We’re almost two hours behind schedule!" Vance said, his voice laced with suppressed desperation. "Dawn breaks in less than ninety minutes. If we aren't at the peak when the sun rises, the Fascist high-altitude reconnaissance planes will spot this carriage out in the open. They'll level this ridge before we can even set the spades!"
Silas spat a mouthful of gritty mud onto the slush. He let go of his grip on the front line and walked back to the trapped carriage. The right rear wheel was buried up to the central axle hub in a treacherous sinkhole of liquefied clay. The gun was tilted at a dangerous fifteen-degree angle toward the ravine.
The men sank to their knees in the cold muck, panting heavily, steam billowing from their mouths into the freezing air. Their eyes were hollow, filled with a crushing defeat. The sheer, inanimate weight of the iron seemed to have broken their spirit.
"It’s no use, Silas," Miller muttered, resting his forehead against his mud-covered knees. "We’ve been pulling for five hours straight without food or rest. Human beings can’t drag three tons of metal through two feet of slush up a steep slope. It’s physically impossible."
Silas didn't raise his voice. He didn't issue a military reprimand or cite army regulations. Instead, he slowly unbuttoned his heavy wool overcoat, letting it drop into the slush. Beneath it, he wore only a threadbare flannel shirt, drenched in sweat despite the sub-zero air.
He walked to the very front of the towbar, uncoiled a section of the thickest hemp rope, and wrapped it twice around his own broad chest and ribs, tying it off with a heavy double-hitch knot.
He turned his back to the mountain, digging the steel toes of his work boots deep into the mud until he felt the solid granite beneath.
"Miller," Silas said softly, his low voice cutting cleanly through the heavy breathing of the squad. "Do you hear that sound down in the valley?"
The men went still. In the quiet lull of the wind, coming from miles below and muffled by the heavy mist, came the faint, rhythmic thud of distant artillery explosions hitting Oakhaven.
"That’s the enemy testing their ranges," Silas said, looking at each man in the eyes. "Down in that town, my younger sister is hiding in a root cellar with three hundred children. Julian’s mother is down there. Your families, your friends, the people who baked your bread and raised your families—they are all down there waiting for dawn."
Silas bent his knees, his broad back arching as he took the full, unyielding strain of the three-ton weapon directly onto his own frame. The thick hemp fibers pulled so tight against his ribs that his shirt began to fray.
"This iron doesn't care if our legs are tired!" Silas roared, his neck veins bulging, his face turning a deep, fierce crimson under the grime. "It doesn't care if our hands are bleeding! BUT I CARE! AND WE DO NOT LEAVE THIS GUN TO DIE ON THIS HILL!"
With a guttural, primal scream that echoed off the granite cliffs of Mistveil, Silas heaved his entire body forward.
The sheer, terrifying willpower of one man shocked the squad back from the brink of surrender.
Julian was the first to move. Screaming through tears of pain, the nineteen-year-old threw his shoulder directly into the mud beneath the wheel spokes. Miller let out a roar like a wounded bear, slamming his body against the rear trail-spade. Captain Vance and every surviving soldier grabbed the ropes, digging their feet into the mire, pulling until their muscles tore and their vision blurred with red.
SLUUUURP.
With a sickening suction sound, the heavy iron wheel burst out of the mud trap. The multi-ton carriage lurched violently forward—one foot, three feet, five feet—rolling over the crest of the slush mire onto solid, snow-dusted slate once more.
The men collapsed onto the frozen rock, coughing, weeping, and gasping for air in absolute exhaustion.
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Silas remained standing at the head of the line, his chest heaving like a blacksmith's bellows, steam rising off his bare neck into the dark sky. He untied the binding rope from his bruised chest, his skin marked with deep red furrows from the hemp fibers, and looked up the path.
Ahead, shrouded in the swirling morning fog, the narrow black pinnacle of Iron Ridge stood waiting—the gateway to their final, deadly mission.
