The triumphant return of The Iron Bastion into the great arched hall of Grand Central End-post was heralded by a blast of the brass chime whistle that echoed across the entire valley.
Six platforms of sharpened granite were packed with cheering citizens.
Twenty-five thousand people stood beneath the two-hundred-foot clear-span Waddell steel canopy.
Frontier farmers, dwarven metalworkers, elven arborists, mountain scouts, and fifteen thousand newly enrolled railway workers in fresh gray wool smocks cheered as the huge locomotive rolled to a halt on Platform Road One.
Behind the tender car rode the captive royal nobility.
Former Grand Duke Val-Khorne, Lord Silas Crane, and Donald Croft stood in chilled-Bessemer steel manacles, escorted by Captain Kenneth Drake’s heavy guards.
The citizens didn’t throw stones or scream for executions.
Under the steady civic discipline established by Grey Crag town law, the people simply stared in quiet, awe-struck triumph as the symbols of three hundred years of royal oppression were led away toward the town labor depot.
