A Matter of Tenderness

Basalt cooled quickly on the crags of Braam-Duin, but blood cooled faster, and Gijsbert van der Meulen had roughly four minutes before the ram's panic soured eight tons of prime shoulder meat.

He sat squarely upon the creature's massive rib cage, feeling the dull, subterranean thump of its heart through the soles of his boots. His belly gave a hollow, liquid growl that echoed off the blackened ravine. Every scrap of stored oxtail-broth qi had vanished into the granite counter-throw that put the beast on its back. Now his muscles felt dry, like salted stockfish hung out in a winter draft. If he did not bleed the ram and get the bronze kettle bubbling before nightfall, his internal heat would drop to the point where even walking downhill would feel like wading through cold grease.

A steel piton struck the stone lip three paces below his boots with a dry ping.

Gijsbert blinked down through the sulfur haze. A silver-braided helmet emerged over the rim of the ledge, followed by a lacquered breastplate, two polished greaves, and an iron capture pole topped with three serrated barbs.

"Clear the kill zone," the imperial scout barked, hauling himself onto the ledge with practiced military stiffness. He wore the three-braid insignia of an imperial sub-centurion upon his collar, his silver trim immaculate despite the volcanic dust. "By decree of the Grand Marshal's Vanguard, all wild horned stock on Disc Seven is requisitioned for the Imperial War-Pen. Step away from the specimen, barbarian."

Gijsbert did not move from the ram's flank. He reached into his belt and pulled out a squat, broad-bladed cleaver ground from pig iron.

"You're standing on my salt route," Gijsbert said. "And more importantly, you're shouting at an ingredient."

"It is not an ingredient," the soldier said, planting both boots on the basalt and signaling down the cliff with two sharp tugs on his guide rope. "It is an unblemished draft specimen of the Titan-Horn class. We have spent four months cataloging this herd's bloodline from the upper skiffs. The empire requires sixty prime rams to haul siege batteries across the Fire Seas."

Two more scouts vaulted the crest. They carried five-foot copper-tipped containment stakes and heavy mallets banded in brass. Without a glance at Gijsbert, the second soldier knelt near the ram's hindquarters, raising his mallet to drive a stake directly through the thick tendon above the hock.

Gijsbert's left eyebrow twitched.

"Don't do that," Gijsbert said.

"Stand aside or face field execution," the first scout replied, leveling the barbs of his shock pole toward Gijsbert's sternum.

"The hock carries all the connective collagen," Gijsbert explained, speaking with the measured patience of an elder explaining pastry crust to a clumsy apprentice. "You punch copper into that tendon and the whole hindquarter goes stringy within an hour. The iron in the beast's blood curdles when it tastes lightning. You might as well boil an old boot in swamp water."

"Restrain the beast!" the sub-centurion ordered, ignoring the cooking advice entirely. "Drive the suppression pins into its spine!"

The mallet swung downward.

Gijsbert did not possess enough stored broth-qi to summon the Mountain-Root stance. He did not have the caloric fire to ignite an internal explosion or shatter the cliff with a stomp. What he did have was two hundred and seventy pounds of cured bone, an intimate knowledge of tendon attachment points, and an acute resentment of anyone threatening his dinner.

He shifted his weight three inches to the left. The ram's rib cage dipped under his bulk like an uneven timber beam.

When the imperial mallet descended, the target was no longer where the soldier expected it to be. The brass head whistled through empty air and struck solid basalt with an ear-splitting crack, sending stinging chips of volcanic glass across the ledge. The jar rattled the soldier's wrists, throwing his shoulders forward.

Gijsbert did not strike. Striking cost meat, and striking burned energy he did not have. Instead, he reached out with one broad hand, hooked his fingers behind the soldier's neck guard, and pulled him smoothly downward into the natural leverage of the beast's flank.

The scout's center of gravity collapsed instantly. Gijsbert clamped his forearm beneath the man's armpit, turned his hips thirty degrees, and used the soldier's own forward momentum to pivot him over the ram's belly. The man flew through an arc of three feet and landed flat on his back in the loose scree, breathless and thoroughly disoriented.

"Drop your weapon!" the sub-centurion shouted, lunging forward with the shock pole.

The three barbs hissed, pale blue sparks crackling along the shaft as imperial lightning-qi charged the iron tips. It was a vicious weapon designed to paralyze three-ton steers in their tracks.

Gijsbert watched the tip approach. A martial artist of the orthodox mountain sects would have met the charge with an iron palm or a deflective blade. Gijsbert simply stepped inside the thrust, closing the distance before the spearhead could complete its acceleration arc.

He caught the pole just behind the crossbar with his left palm. The jolt of blue sparks bitten into his calluses, stinging like fire ants, but his grip remained locked. Cold-forged iron was hard, but leverage was universal.

Gijsbert stepped behind the sub-centurion's lead foot. He trapped the man's heel against a basalt ridge, lowered his center, and drove his right shoulder straight into the officer's breastplate.

The sub-centurion went over like an unbalanced sack of meal. His helmet clattered against the stone, and the shock pole snapped across Gijsbert's thigh with a crisp, fibrous crunch.

"Bad temper," Gijsbert murmured, tossing the broken spearhead aside. "Aggression ruins the marbling. When an animal dies terrified, lactic acid floods the tissue. The broth turns gray. No amount of charred shallot can fix gray broth."

The third scout, who had been unrolling a bronze-mesh containment net, froze with the net half-drawn from his pack. He looked at the sub-centurion groaning in the gravel, looked at his companion struggling to stand, and then looked at Gijsbert's butcher cleaver.

"You're Kettle-Claw," the third scout stammered, his boots sliding back toward the lip of the ridge. "The vagrant sect from the lower marshes."

"We are an alliance of culinary practitioners," Gijsbert corrected, stepping toward the containment stakes left behind by the second soldier. He stooped, picked up two of the five-foot copper-tipped iron pins, and tested their balance in his palm. They were hefty, straight, and remarkably well-weighted. "And these pins are entirely wasted on nerve suppression. With a bit of grinding on an oilstone, they make exceptional roasting spits. Even heat distribution. Very little rust."

He tucked the pins into the leather straps of his butcher roll.

The sub-centurion pushed himself up on one elbow, his teeth gritted in humiliated fury. "You think you can eat an imperial quarry, mountain pig? Our skiffs have secured the entire perimeter disc. You cannot drag eight tons of meat past our lines!"

"I don't intend to drag it," Gijsbert said. "Femke is bringing the six-ton pot up the eastern goat track. By the time your fleet finishes setting up their little tents, this ram will be reduced to forty gallons of clarified gelatin and six barrels of braised brisket."

The officer spat blood onto the basalt. With his free hand, he reached into his waist sash, ripped free a cylindrical brass canister, and struck the friction cap against his iron greave.

A shrill, screaming whistle tore through the quiet sulfur air.

A streak of violet fire vaulted from the canister, rocketing three hundred cubits straight into the bruised clouds above Braam-Duin. High above the disc, the flare burst into an expanding ring of purple smoke that hung motionless in the windless upper atmosphere—the imperial sigil for priority extraction.

Deep beneath the crags, from the direction of the lower cloud bank, a low, tectonic rumble answered. It was not the light clatter of the three patrol skiffs. It was the heavy, iron-plated thrum of a multi-deck transport scow, its immense bronze paddles churning the sulfur currents as it began its ascent toward the ridge.

Gijsbert looked at the purple smoke, then down at the subdued ram, which let out a sleepy, guttural wheeze.

"Now look what you did," Gijsbert sighed, tapping the flat of his cleaver against his leather apron. "Now I have to carve faster."