The dark rock mud of Traverse Four churned like crude oil under the boots of twenty shouting artillerymen.
A four-ton siege carriage, mounting a heavy one-hundred-and-fifty-tiny howitzer, sat canted at an alarming thirty-degree angle in a flooded drainage trench. One massive iron-rimmed wheel had dropped into an icy fissure, pinning the lead draft ox beneath the heavy wooden draught pole. The beast—a massive, slate-gray bull chosen Goliath—thrashed wildly in the slush, his sides heaving as deep-throated, painful bellows tore from his throat.
His right hind leg was locked at an ugly, abnormal angle. The hock joint projected unnaturally outward, the skin stretched white over displaced bone.
“Clear the cross!” a thick, bull-necked sergeant roared, raising an air-powered captive-bolt cull gun toward the ox’s temple. “The gun carriage is blocking the ammunition train! High Command expects that battery firing by nightfall! If the beast can’t walk, shoot it and hack the harness!”
“Sergeant Miller, no!” Corporal Hauer shouted, throwing himself between the weapon and the thrashing animal. The artillery wagon driver’s face was smeared with black grease and frozen tears. “He pulled us out of the volcano bowl! He’s just out-of-joint! Give us ten minutes to winch the carriage!”
“Ten minutes gets this entire battery shelled by enemy mortar observers!” Miller snarled, his thumb clicking the safety toggle on the bolt-pistol. “Move aside, Corporal, or you face field court-martial for obstructing artillery transit!”
