The destruction of the Vesper didn’t break the siege. It stripped the velvet from the iron.
Lord Malakor didn’t withdraw his fleet. He did what high-born generals had done since the First Epoch when their pride was stung by peasants. He committed his reserve boilers and closed the range.
The Vitreous Giant beast surged forward through the burning debris of the bomb-ketch, her triple thirty-foot ether-screws churning the smoke into swirling vortexes of violet eerie glow. Behind her, six heavy ironclads fell into a tight wedge formation. Their forward carronades maintained a relentless, rolling crushing weight fire that crushed the upper castle walls of Cloud-Rest into flying granite splinters.
On the Devil’s Pulpit, the air was unbreathable.
Ren Vale lay flat on the shaking oak planks, his arm wrapped around the giant crossbow’s trailing timber. A twenty-pound solid shot had just sliced through the outer signal mast ten feet above his head, showering the platform in smoking splinters of hardwood. The blast had sent his dizziness into an acute, blinding burst. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt himself tumbling end over end through endless, icy clouds. At the same time, his gorge rose with the bitter taste of stone salt water.
