The thunder that rolled down from the northern mountain pass didn’t come from clouds or siege engines.
It was the rhythmic, earth-shaking hammer of twelve hundred iron horseshoes striking the hard-packed gravel of the Great Northern Highway.
Riding down through the granite defile, banner lances held high against the darkening sky, came three hundred heavy lancers of the Highmarch Ducal Guard.
They were an imposing military sight. Massive destriers clad in fluted steel bards. Their riders wrapped in was full plate harness of polished cold-rolled iron, their dark blue surcoats blazoned with the silver rose of Wintermere.
At the head of the armored column rode Duchess Rowena Wintermere herself.
She sat astride a towering black warhorse, clad in a masterwork suit of said clearlyplate damascened with silver frost runes.
Her visored helmet hung from her saddle-bow. She showed a sharp, regal face framed by iron-gray hair drawn tight into a warrior’s braid, her cold blue eyes scanning the valley below with hungry high-born focus.
Behind her rode two heralds bearing the Great Charter of Northern Protectorates, ready to proclaim the annexation of the ruined frontier barony.
“Prepare the reclamation decree,” Duchess Rowena commanded, reining in her horse at the crest of the northern bluff.
“Baron Croft was a clever land-mapper. But a town clerk can’t hold a swamp against the Rot-Mother. If the settlement has burned, we plant the Rose Banner upon the ashes and secure the iron mines for Highmarch.”
Duchess Rowena touched her spurs to her destrier’s flanks, leading her armored squadron down the final switchback into the settlement avenue.
She expected to find panic.
She expected to see weeping refugees fleeing into the woods, burning straw roof roofs collapsing into smoking embers, and disorganized militia making desperate, bloody stands behind crumbling earthworks.
She found none of it.
Her heavy cavalry trotted onto a spotless, forty-foot-wide macadam avenue, surfaced with three layers of compacted, cambered stone that drained water cleanly into covered granite gutters.
Along the street, not a single building was on fire.
The four-story volcanic cement concrete insulae stood massive stone, silent, and secure, their heavy oak fire-shutters bolted tight against the dark.
From the high stack of the heat-proof blast fire, forty feet of clean, golden burning gas roared steadily into the evening air. The rhythmic chug-chug of the water-powered piston blowers beat with unbending heavy-duty care.
Along the central street, four hundred and fifty militia men marched in disciplined squads, their six-foot cobalt-blue Sky Shields locked together, their faces covered in grey linen-and-tin breathing mask snouts.
Rowena pulled her destrier to a halt before the central gatehouse, her sharp blue eyes widening in utter, blank confusion.
“Where is the screaming?” Rowena demanded, looking at the silent concrete buildings. “Where are the burning roofs? What manner of frontier outpost is this?”
Lady Beatrice of Dunwall rode forward to meet her, dismounting smoothly onto the clean pavers.
“Welcome to Grey Crag, Your Grace,” Beatrice said, offering a crisp, respectful bow. “You have arrived exactly on schedule.”
Rowena looked down from her saddle, her brow furrowing with suspicion. “Beatrice. My scouts reported an invasion of fifteen thousand corrupted beasts. Have they already breached the southern ditch? Where is Croft?”
“Lord Croft is currently conducting a time-motion study on the main rail line,” Beatrice replied with a faint, amused smile.
Before Rowena could demand an explanation, the clank of iron wheels on strap-iron rails echoed along the avenue.
Rolling down the center track came an armored rail check car, pushed smoothly by four laborers at a brisk eight miles per hour.
Giles Croft stood on the forward footboard, wearing his leather land-mapper’s coat, his tin snout breathing mask hanging loosely around his neck, holding a pocket watch and a folding wooden ruler.
He signaled with his hand, and the car’s beech-wood brake shoes gripped the iron treads. That brought the vehicle to a halt exactly five paces from the Duchess’s horse.
Giles glanced up from his watch, adjusted his glasses. Then he looked at the three hundred heavy lancers clogging the road.
“Good evening, Duchess Rowena,” Giles said mildly. “You’re currently obstructing the main logistics right-of-way for Battery Alpha.
Please clear your cavalry to Platform Two behind the granary. The raid wave is scheduled to make outer edge contact in six minutes.”
Duchess Rowena stared down at him. Her hand tightened on her rein until the leather creaked.
“Lord Croft,” Rowena said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, icy purr. “I have marched three hundred heavy knights through twenty leagues of mountain blizzards to relieve your siege.
I have the sovereign power to declare this valley a protectorate of Highmarch to save your people from total ruin. And you tell me I’m blocking your road?”
“You’re blocking an active heavy-duty transit hall,” Giles corrected calmly. He pointed his rule at the strap-iron track beneath her horse’s hooves.
“If your three hundred horses remain on the rails, they will suffer severe hoof damage from the switch frog, and Battery Alpha can’t reposition to Sector Four. Plus, your cavalry is fully unsuited for frontline engagement in a waterlogged peat canal.”
Rowena’s left hand dropped to the handle knob of her broadsword. “You dare dismiss the heavy horse of Highmarch?”
“Cavalry can’t charge through a four-foot drainage canal filled with ten thousand swimming mire-hounds,” Giles explained patiently.
“The mud will swallow the horses’ fetlocks, the beasts will drag the riders down by the saddle-girths. Your three hundred suits of plate armor will become three hundred underwater iron coffins. It’s an elementary tactical mismatch.”
He gestured toward the wide gravel assembly apron behind the northern stone wall.
“Station your lancers at the North Gate in reserve,” Giles directed.
“If an armored goliath manages to scale the western dyke, your shock cavalry can deploy across the dry macadam avenue and eliminate the breakthrough with maximum driving force. In the meantime, drink Sister Teresa’s tea and observe the operation from the narrow high walkway.”
Lady Millicent Croft stepped down from the granary porch, her double-entry thick parchment ledger open against her forearm, her glasses reflecting the lantern light.
“Duchess Rowena,” Millicent said, offering a crisp, measured nod.
“If you intend to deploy three hundred heavy warhorses within the town boundary of Grey Crag, you must file a temporary transit encampment permit under Section Nine of the Town Commons City law.”
Rowena stared down at the small woman with incredulous fury. “A transit permit? Woman, I’m the Duchess of Highmarch! I have brought three hundred lances to save your lives!”
“Your lances are currently standing upon our newly compacted macadam stone floor,” Millicent replied without blinking. “Each shod warhorse exerts a ground contact pressure of seventy pounds of pressure through its iron caulkins.
Three hundred horses standing idle for two hours will cause four silver sovereigns of road-surface degradation. Also, your supply wagons have failed to report to Sister Teresa’s burning lime powder foot-bath.”
Sister Teresa marched up with two hospital new students carrying wooden buckets of vinegar wash and stiff horse-hair brushes.
“Unsterilized hooves from the northern rifts,” Teresa proclaimed, eyeing the towering destriers with fierce sanitary suspicion. “They carry mountain scabies and horse-rot!
Every mount must have its frogs washed in carbolic vinegar before entering the granary apron! Knights of Highmarch, dismount and present your stirrups for disinfection!”
The heavy lancers looked at each other in sheer confusion.
Several knights glanced down at their ferocious, steel-barded warhorses, then at the stern sister holding a dripping sponge, fully unsure whether to draw their swords or hold out their boots.
Lady Beatrice leaned toward the Duchess’s stirrup, whispering softly.
“He doesn’t want our rescue, Your Grace,” Beatrice murmured. “He has already built the trap. He treats a fifteen-thousand-monster horde like a scheduled delivery of raw materials.”
Duchess Rowena looked at Giles’s impassive, soot-dusted face, then at the silent four-story concrete insulae, and finally down at the gleaming strap-iron rails disappearing into the southern mist.
A slow, cold smile broke across the Duchess’s warrior face.
She swung her leg over the cantle, dismounting onto the stone floor with a heavy clatter of steel shin guards.
“Then let’s see the Master builder’s theater,” Rowena said, handing her reins to a squire. “If your ditch holds fifteen thousand beasts, Lord Croft, I will sign your trade compact before midnight.
If your ditch fails... My knights will ride over your corpse to clear the pass.”
“The ditch won’t fail,” Giles said, turning his rail car back toward the south. “Its high-pressure dimensions were calculated to three decimal places.”
* * *
High upon the low roof wall of Sluice Tower One, Giles stood with Duchess Rowena and Lady Beatrice
Rowena walked along the low roof wall of Sluice Tower One, her gloved fingers tracing the slick, glassy surface of the cobalt-blue coping tiles.
“This blue enamel,” Rowena murmured, leaning over to inspect the joint. “Beatrice told me you baked it from borax and sand.
My armorer in Dunwall charges sixty silver coins to gild a parade shield with thin gold foil, and it flakes off in the first rain. You have clad five hundred yards of mountain stone in glass harder than cooled iron.”
“It’s a low-spreading heat-proof glass matrix,” Giles explained, keeping his eyes on his transit. “Impermeable to chemical acid attacks and possessing zero open air holes.
When the Rot-Hydra expels its rotting black bile, the acid can’t penetrate the crystal lattice. It simply drains into the scour water chute.”
Rowena looked down at the four hundred and fifty militia men standing behind their blue Sky Shields, their faces masked behind matching tin snouts.
“A frontier militia that stands in rank without screaming,” Rowena observed. Her voice dropped into quiet, reluctant respect. “No priest chanting prayers.
No sorcerer burning dragon blood. Just... Stone that doesn’t melt, and men who breathe through charcoal cans.”
“Superstition is a terrible substitute for proper material selection,” Giles said., peering out through the watching slits.
Below them, along the southern canal levee, the four Runic Torsion Rail-Lances sat locked on their sidings, their fourteen-foot brass launch guides gleaming in the lantern light.
Across the Black Fen, the darkness was total.
Then, out in the yellow mist, a sound rose that set the destriers in the northern yard pawing the ground in terror.
It was the wet, surging roar of fifteen thousand charging beasts.
Through the darkness, a huge wave of black sludge, churning foam, and clicking hard shell surged over the outer timber abatis.
The vanguard of the Black Fen had breached the swamp line.
Four thousand mire-hounds and two thousand spiny leech-crawlers poured into the canal cut, their black bodies tumbling over the concrete doorstep into the rushing current.
Rowena drew her broadsword with a ringing scrape, leaning over the low roof wall.
“They’re in the canal!” Rowena shouted. “They’re inside your walls!”
Giles Croft didn’t draw a sword.
He pulled the brass lever of the master drain tube gate. He locked the dog in place with a sharp, metal click.
“They’re not inside our walls,” Giles said softly. “They’re inside our water chute. Toby... Release the fire-oil.”