The four thousand soldiers of the Sovereign Conclave entered Entry hall 120 with the arrogant swagger of conquerors entering an undefended palace.
The chamber was huge—four hundred paces in length, two hundred paces in breadth, flanked by double rows of huge square pillars carved from dark, iron-veined dark rock. The ceiling arched seventy arm-lengths overhead, its coffered barrel vaults pierced by high air-flow shafts that admitted narrow, cold shafts of gray light from the upper clouds. The floor was paved with vast, unmortared slabs of pale limestone, fully dry, swept clean of silt, and sloping gently toward the center at a barely noticeable slope of one inch in fifty feet.
To Grand Commander Tie Xuan of the Iron-Hull Guild, mounted upon a six-wheeled steam command-car, the entry hall looked like a gift from the sky high sky.
“Deploy the five banners!” Tie Xuan bellowed through his brass speaking trumpet, his heavy void-steel armor clattering as he stood upon the iron deck. “Form three battle lines! Infantry in the center, repeating ballistae on the flanks, war-chariots holding the high air! We have outflanked their water-locks! The road to the inner granaries is open!”
With disciplined, practiced speed, the three thousand eight hundred shock-fighters of the Conclave deployed across the dry basin.
