Chapter Eighteen
On the eighty-third day,
we besieged
the jewel city Kasora. We began the investment with five thousand artillery,
ten thousand mastodons, and one hundred twenty thousand men who followed Jerem
Cozak because he was who he said he was. The artillery our warlord arrayed in
the mist at staggered positions all along the sloping valley, the mastodons in
broken lines to allow for charges through the gaps between the disks, and the
armored infantry massed and encamped to guard the river’s sole crossing at the base
of the ramp. All except the artillery remained a careful three hundred paces
from the base of the cliff on the river’s other shore. Our disks, of course,
had to stay in range.
Where the
greatships went I had no idea. After unloading, Jerem Cozak sent them away down
the River Kasora through the very canyon we had entered, and out to sea for all
I knew, out of sight of even the peaks of the Spine of the World. He would not
even say whether or not they were manned. But another mystery he did solve.
“Entrench!”
he shouted, and nearly a thousand Neverborn took out the shovels they had
carried since Ariel, and began digging defiles behind the artillery.
He smiled
again at my curious glance. “The towers of Kasora fire blindly always, and so
do not need to see us. But their energies follow the level of the ground.”
“But the
disks will need to move, won’t they? Kasora will also have artillery to defend
itself.”
He nodded.
“Just so. Hope, for our sake, that our operators move quickly.”
“But what
is this energy?” I asked. “Won’t it destroy our artillery, too?”
“Watch and see. Witness the wonder and terror until your
stomach turns.”
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