The high artillery watching stronghold at North Ridge looked out over fifty leagues of rolling plains and jagged granite spurs.
Giles Croft stood on the timber platform with his land-mapper’s transit mounted on its heavy dark metal tripod.
He was adjusting the fine-scale drum on the height scale, checking the spirit bubble against the horizon.
Beside him, Toby Karr was kneeling over a massive circular plotting board covered in topographic contour lines.
“Twelve miles to the royal command pavilion in the dry valley,” Toby reported. He measured the distance with a pair of steel dividers. “Target bearing is one hundred and eighty-four degrees south-southwest.”
Master Borin Bronze-Lung stood behind them, his fire gauge swinging at his neck, squinting dubiously at the exact tables in Giles’s ledger.
“Twelve miles, Giles?” Borin grunted. “No cannon in the history of the world shoots twelve miles. The shell would fly over three mountain ranges and land in the next province.”
“A seventy-five tiny fraction of an inch sabot with a wind-cutting fin ratio of six to one and a first speed of four thousand feet per second will reach eighteen miles at thirty-five degrees height,” Giles said.
