The hardened carbon-iron searchlights turned the misty deep gap into a slaughterhouse of blinding white glare and black shadows.
From the mouth of the northern drainage chimney pipe, thirty armored wardens of the 3rd Iron Cohort poured onto the central mid-air bridge. They moved with the cold, heavy discipline of slaughterhouse drovers, their iron-plated boots thudding all at once against the spruce timbers. Over their right arms, air-powered bronze sleeves hissed with nonstop releases of white steam, powering the six-inch, broad-bladed cleaving chisels that gleamed with cold oil.
Pushing ahead of the formation were two heavy wheeled mantlets. Mobile barricades of riveted boiler-plate three inches thick, fitted with firing slits for heavy repeating heavy steel crossbows. Behind the mantlets rolled six wheeled cages of lead-lined oak, their iron doors swinging open like yawning iron mouths.
Foreman Harek walked between the mantlets, wearing a blackened breastplate and carrying a pair of three-foot brass measuring tongs.
“Sweep and grade!” Harek’s amplified voice bellowed through a sound brass megaphone mounted to his collar. “Standard harvest protocol! Grade-One and Grade-Two specimens into the lead cages! Sever any limb with end-post turning to stone on site to reduce transport tonnage! Five sovereigns bonus for any singing core!”
