Dust & Rain by Patty Jansen

Author:Patty Jansen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, magic, steampunk, postapocalyptic, eagles, icefire
Publisher: Patty Jansen

Chapter 17

IN THE YELLOW-ORANGE light inside the tent, General Finnisius put the map on the table. Sady pushed himself to the edge of the chair so that he could see. The map showed the border regions, from the gentle hills of Ensar, east, to the rough country of Mekta and the rich agricultural region of Fairlight, with the southern platform at the bottom of the paper. The barrier was drawn as a thick black line interrupted only in the most mountainous terrain at the back of the little pocket of civilisation that was Solmeni. It also showed the telegraph line, of which Sady understood some poles had been uprooted by bad weather and that was why Fairlight wouldn’t come on the line. Fixing the problem was taking a little longer than he had hoped.

General Finnisius pulled the map so it faced Sady. “If there is going to be a southern attack, we are likely to see birds here, and here.” He jabbed his finger at the main railway at Fairlight, and the gently sloping road at Ensar. “As you can see, these are all strategic points where roads and railways provide access to the southern platform to quickly move an army on foot. We have already seen an increase in the number of scout birds reported in the Ensar region.”

Sady nodded. Milleus had even mentioned seeing a bird. He should have asked about it when he was there, even though Milleus had said that the bird was without a rider.

“We are as prepared as we can be, without going into full preparation for war. We have balloons ready to counter their eagles. We have nets to protect the balloons from claws and beaks. We have lightweight armour and shields to protect the balloon crew against their crossbows. But one thing I can tell you, Proctor: a skilled Eagle Knight is a deadly weapon. They’re quick, frightfully accurate and some of those birds are big enough to wear armour.”

Sady nodded while stifling a yawn. Not that he was bored, but he was so incredibly tired. It was cold in the army command tent, and he felt fearfully underprepared for a discussion about military strategy. Milleus knew all about military, having served himself. But Sady . . . he had spent two days going through the doga’s financial mess to find money to pay creditors, a mess that was worse than he had expected. Much worse.

“Are we prepared for any weapons they might use?”

“They use crossbows. They also use poison darts, but their range is very much smaller than that of our powder guns. On the ground, they use crossbows and daggers. Those are the weapons we know about.”

“Do we need to worry about the ones we don’t?”

The general hesitated. “I don’t know how much I should mention about this, certainly not to the troops. The southerners are rumoured to have sonorics weapons. They would gather sonorics and somehow shape or bend it into a single destructive beam. But I cannot find anyone who could verify the existence of this kind of weapon.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.