The South Gate freight bypass was three lanes of fresh, crushed-granite macadam, rolled smooth as a tavern tabletop.
It was designed for fifty-ton ore drays and rapid-deployment fire-hydropump carts.
It was emphatically not designed for six armored war-mammoths.
Giles Croft stood on the edge of the curbing with a brass pocket tape hooked over his thumb.
He was staring at the lead beast. It was currently chewing on a fancy cedar sapling while its driver shouted ancient royal heraldry.
The mammoth stood sixteen feet tall at the shoulder.
It was clad in layered plates of gold-leafed solar steel that clattered loudly with every shift of its massive legs.
Its left tusks were capped with iron spikes that were currently gouging five-inch furrows into Giles’s freshly compacted asphalt curb.
