The eastern ridge of Granite Gap stood silent under the cold morning mist.
One thousand four hundred and eighty yards across the fractured shale basin, three rows of heavy timber palisades had been erected. Behind them stood fifty pine dummies clad in captured iron plate, arrayed in tight formation to mimic a royal infantry wedge.
On the raised test siding outside Grey Crag roundhouse, the armored battle-train The Iron Bastion hissed with steady clockwork breathing.
Giles Croft stood on the open roof platform of Gun Car 03, his ten-inch brass sighting scope resting on its heavy shaking-damped leveling plate. The level fine-scale clicked beneath his thumb as he lined up the hairline cross with the center marker of Target Grid Delta.
Beside him, Toby Karr held the layered firing cards, his pencil poised above the log sheet. Marta adjusted the fine-scale screw on the air-powered mortar turntable, reading the height dial with narrowed eyes.
“Air pressure twenty-nine point four inches,” Giles called out, his voice crisp and even. “Surrounding heat forty-two degrees Fahrenheit.
Crosswind from the northwest at seven miles per hour. Set compass bearing to two hundred seventy-four degrees, height fifty-two point zero degrees.”
Marta spun the polished cast-iron handwheel. The heavy bronze barrel of the ten-inch air-powered mortar tilted upward, its twin high-pressure recoil dampeners sliding smoothly in their machined cradles.
