Pouring the First Mash

Thjora

The noon bell does not ring.

In Hrafnsker, that means one of two things. Either the bellringer choked on his own tongue during a midday seizure, or the old monster is finally dead.

I keep my left palm flat against the brass bleed valve of vat four. The copper is hot enough to blister pig skin through my split-leather work gloves. Beneath the curved underbelly of the tank, eighty gallons of high-gravity wort churn at a hard rolling boil. The smell is thick, bitter, and sharp with dried valerian, crushed roasted malt, and charred chicory root.

If the boil stalls for three minutes, the batch is ruined.

If the batch is ruined, ninety-four men in the lower tiers miss their evening ration. By midnight, their blood sugar crashes. By dawn, their surgically altered metabolisms burn through their own muscle tissue, driving them into the kind of screaming mania that cracks stone mortar.

I tighten the valve half a turn.

The copper manifold hisses. Steam billows from the iron roof vents, clouding the soot-stained granite arches twenty feet above my head.

"Stay at two hundred and twelve degrees," I tell the brass needle. "Just give me fifteen more minutes."

The iron bar across the outer corridor groans.

It is not Old Kolb with the grain cart. Kolb moves like a lame mule, dragging his left heel along the wet flagstones with a rhythmic, scraping shuffle. This sound is three pairs of heavy marching boots, fast cadence, iron-shod soles striking granite without any pretense of stealth.

I reach behind the mash paddle and slide my copper-headed spanner from its leather loop. It weighs four pounds. The grip is wrapped in tarred twine, worn smooth by five years of my own calluses.

The double oak doors of the lower brewhouse do not open. They buckle inward under the violent bite of a heavy iron pry bar.

Rust flakes off the top hinge. The seasoned timber shudders, splintering along the center seam with a sound like a cracking rib cage.

I do not step back. The only way out of the sub-level vats is through that doorway, up the spiral stair to the main courtyard. Behind me is thirty feet of solid bedrock and three cauldrons of caustic grain wash.

A second blow smashes into the crossbar.

The oak splits. The left leaf swings inward, screeching over the stone floor and scattering chips of dry pine.

Three men push through the gap into the steam.

None of them are Kolb.

The man in the lead is Torvald, one of Fjalar's personal enforcers from the upper barracks. He is broad-shouldered, thick-necked, and reeks of stale lard and cheap grain alcohol. He wears a boiled-leather jerkin stained with grease, a broad butcher's cleaver shoved through his rope belt.

Behind him stand two guards with clubbed iron stakes.

Torvald blinks through the sulfurous vapor, his small, piggish eyes fixing on me. He does not look at the vats. He does not look at the copper pipes vibrating under sixty pounds of live steam pressure. He looks at my leather apron, then down to the heavy boots braced against the flagstones.

"The girl is still here," Torvald says over his shoulder.

"The old man is dead in his bed," the guard on his left answers. "Throat opened ear to ear. Fjalar wants the cellar secured before the bastard climbs the outer wall."

My chest tightens. Hrokkr is dead.

The old butcher ruled Hrafnsker for twenty years with iron tokens, solitary cells, and chemical leashes. If Fjalar is already moving on the upper barracks, the succession war is not coming tomorrow. It is happening in the corridors right now.

"Step away from the kettles, Thjora," Torvald orders. He crosses the threshold, his boots splashing through the center drainage gutter. "Fjalar says the brewhouse belongs to the new command. Hand over the supply ring and the storehouse keys."

"The mash is midway through the second sparge," I say. My voice is level. Cold. "If I drop the temperature now, the enzyme conversion dies. You will not have Maltar tonight. You will have ninety gallons of sour slop."

Torvald grins. His front teeth are chipped and yellowed with tobacco. "We do not need a lecture from a brewer. Fjalar has his own crew coming down from the gatehouse. Hand over the brass ring, or I break your fingers and take it off your belt."

He takes another heavy stride forward.

Five paces between us. Four.

"You do not know the pressure tolerances, Torvald," I tell him. "Turn the wrong stopcock and this chamber becomes an oven."

"I do not care about your stopcocks."

He reaches for my shoulder with a gloved hand.

I do not argue. In Hrafnsker, arguing is what fools do before someone shatters their jaw.

I drop my center of gravity, hook the iron claw of my spanner into the secondary purge lever on vat four, and throw my entire body weight downward.

The brass shear pin snaps.

A jet of boiling, two-hundred-fourteen-degree wort blasts out of the purge nozzle directly into Torvald's shins.

The roar of pressurized steam drowns out his first shriek.

The boiling liquor, heavy with sticky grain sugars and caustic wash, soaks through his wool trousers in less than a second. He collapses onto the stones, thrashing violently as the scalding syrup welds fabric to flesh.

The two guards behind him freeze, blinded by the dense white cloud rolling off the floor.

"You crazy bitch!" the taller guard roars, raising his iron stake.

He lunges blindly through the mist.

I do not wait for him to clear the cloud. I pivot on my right heel, swinging the four-pound spanner with both hands in a clean horizontal arc. The copper head catches him flush across the bridge of his nose with a wet, sickening crunch.

Bone gives way. Blood sprays across the side of vat three.

He drops like a felled steer, his iron stake clattering against the copper drain grate.

The third guard stumbles back toward the doorway, his eyes wide with shock, his boots skidding in the hot, sweet-smelling puddle spreading across the granite. He fumbles a skinning knife from his belt, but his fingers are trembling so hard the blade chatters against his scabbard.

"Get out," I tell him.

He looks down at Torvald, who is whimpering in the gutter, clawing uselessly at his blistered legs. Then he looks at the blood dripping from the head of my spanner, and at the vibrating copper line I hold with my left hand.

He turns and sprints up the spiral stairs.

His boots pound against the granite steps, his voice echoing into the dark corridors above as he screams for Fjalar's reinforcements.

I stand in the center of the brewhouse, drawing steady breaths of hot malt and copper steam. My forearm stings where a stray droplet of boiling wort caught the bare skin above my glove.

A minor burn.

I step over Torvald, take a handful of his collar, and haul him three feet across the stones until his head rests clear of the main drain line.

"Quiet," I tell him.

He curls into a tight ball, weeping into the slime of the floor.

I return to the manifold. Vat four has dropped eight gallons, the pressure gauge needle trembling near forty pounds. I reach up, crack the cold-water feed valve, and stabilize the boil before the bottom sugars can scorch against the firebox coils.

My hands show a faint tremor.

I press my palms flat against the cold iron frame of the control rig until the muscle twitch fades.

Hrokkr is dead. That means the entire fortress is an open carcass. Fjalar's enforcers, the ward wardens, and the perimeter guards will slaughter each other for the armory and the treasury. None of them understand the chemical reality of this place. None of them realize that within forty-eight hours, every altered inmate in the east block will tear their own skin off if my kettles go cold.

I hold the only leash that matters.

A thunderous crash shakes the ceiling above the stairwell.

It is not the guard returning with help. It is the sound of an iron-banded security gate being ripped clean off its pivot pins.

Metal screeches against stone. Then comes a heavy, wet impact, followed by a sudden, dead silence that swallows the corridor whole.

No shouts. No alarm bells.

Just footsteps.

Slow. Heavy. Iron-shod boots descending the spiral steps one by one, moving with the measured cadence of someone inspecting a slaughterhouse he already owns.

Torvald stops weeping. He goes completely rigid against the wet stone, his bloodshot eyes staring toward the doorway with pure, naked panic.

"No," Torvald rasps, blood bubbling at the corner of his cracked lips. "He was in the north garrison. He cannot be here..."

A silhouette fills the ruined doorway.

He has to tilt his head to clear the low stone lintel.

Vargun.