The brass swivel-gun didn’t roar with the earthy boom of black powder. It cracked like a snapping whip. A faster-than-sound discharge of lightning-salts that snapped mountain fog into ribbons.
A four-pound solid shot shrieked across the four-hundred-yard gulf of open air.
Ren didn’t drop to his knees. He didn’t cover his head. His instincts were the legalistic habits of an unlicensed keeper who had spent years scraping ink from court-ordered forced payout writs. When a force threatened to sever an existing physical tenancy, you didn’t plead with driving force. You audited the surface through which it traveled.
His right hand plunged downward, driving his mammoth bone awl into the frost-crusted granite between two paving stones.
The silver metal ring bit into the rock. Ren channeled his breath, feeding a droplet of his own dark, ink-poisoned blood down the ivory groove into the stone’s tiny fissures.
“By Right of Prior Settlement, Article Four,” Ren rasped. “Bending of Unlisted Kinetic Cargo!”
A violet sharp-angled circuit flared along the seam between giant stone blocks. The property-tenure clause bound itself into the atom-deep friction of the rock.
The iron ball struck twelve feet ahead of the rear cart.
