While the ironclad fleet maintained its impenetrable blockade of the harbor, Bjorn shifted his intellectual focus toward the psychological deterioration of the enemy command structure.
He reached into his leather coat and retrieved his collapsible brass spyglass. Extending the precisely ground lenses with a click, he raised the instrument to his eye and focused on the shattered epicenter of the Tang encampment.
Through the magnified glass, the brutal reality of the morning was laid bare.
Jiedushi Shen, the rogue warlord who had crossed an ocean to forge a new empire, awoke not to a kingdom of subservient barbarians, but to an apocalyptic wasteland of his own hubris.
The problem facing the eastern general was mathematically insurmountable. Bjorn watched as Shen frantically inspected the perimeter of the inner bailey. The primary grain silos, which had held the stolen harvests of three conquered Scottish fortresses, were nothing but heaps of glowing white ash.
