The impact of Chieftain Ymir-Krag landing upon the northern glacis was like a falling meteorite striking the earth.
The twenty-four-foot titan had leaped clean over the eighteen-foot dry counterscarp ditch, carried by the terrifying strength of his frost-shrouded limbs.
His massive boots, wrapped in layers of cured mammoth hide and banded with rusted cold-iron cleats, plowed into the frozen gravel slope eighty yards in front of Bastion Four.
A huge blast wave of crushed ice, frozen sod, and shattered shale blasted outward in a thirty-yard ring.
Standing upon the high low roof wall of Bastion Four, Giles Croft felt the granite merlons shudder beneath his leather mittens.
Beside him, Toby Karr staggered against the stone coping. It caught his balance by grabbing the brass leg of the land-mapper’s tripod.
Down in the city, windowpanes of leaded glass rattled furiously in the four-story concrete insulae apartments. But not a single concrete top door beam cracked.
Giles stood upright, adjusting his brass-rimmed glasses against the freezing backdraft.
