A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess by Ron Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

Londeac are just becoming aware, the great canyon of the Strait continued underwater for, perhaps, hundreds of miles to the north and south. By the slightest fraction of an inch every century, Guesclin is receding from the rest of the world. This is an appealing fact whose actuality and symbolism would have not only been appreciated but even applauded by the xenophobic people of Tamlaght, the country occupying the major part of Guesclin, have they been aware of it. Unfortunately, since science in general and foreign science in particular are anathema to the Tamlaghtans, they are not.
    The Strait runs almost exactly north and south, its vertical cliffs broken only by two wildly inaccessible embayments halfway along its course. These are the sites of fearsome seasonal whirlpools. At places, especially within the northern fifty miles or so, the Strait narrows to less than ten miles in width; it is quite easy to see the opposite shore from either side of the abyss. At their greatest height the brinks of the chasm are half a mile above the surging flood. More than one ambitious Londeacan engineer has dreamed of bridging that gap and thereby assuring a reputation that would be little less than immortal. However, the idea of a physical link to the continent, a veritable pipeline for foreign ideas, let alone foreigners, is so appalling to Tamlaght that thinly disguised threats of war, in the event that such a scheme should ever even begin to be implemented, effectively squelched the periodically recurring grandiose project.
    For most of the year the Strait is merely treacherous, yet nevertheless navigable, if just barely. A few experienced mariners make the trip every season, some even on a more or less regular basis. The waters of the Strait are for the most part deep (a cross section of its profile would reveal a V-shaped cleft whose bottom, at certain points, lay under more than five hundred feet of water) and as long as a captain is careful to avoid the jagged rocks that lined the steeply sloping sides the journey can be made with some assurance of safety. Which of course did not prevent a dozen more foolhardy or inexperienced ships from coming to grief every year, shredded against the rugged walls of the canyon like cheese in a grater.
    However, during one particular season even the most courageous and experienced old salt would laugh derisively at the suggestion that the Strait be traversed. At that time of the year, currents shift and the icy waters of the Mostaza Sea come thundering through the Strait with a velocity and power that can only be adequately compared to the impression a child’s copper poenig must have, if any, as it lies on the rail in the path of an oncoming express freight train.
    For nearly two months the flood thunders through the narrow channel with a sound that can be heard hours before an overland tourist reaches the cliffs, and feels a full day before that. The low permanent clouds, spanning a quarter of the horizon’s azimuth marking the width of the Strait, can be seen a hundred miles away. The visitor who, with great trepidation, approaches the rusty, slippery iron railing that has been installed for his safety and which suddenly looks pitifully inadequate, feeling the solid granite beneath his feet quivering and bouncing like gelatine and with the sound palpably overflowing the rim of the canyon making speech impossible, are there anything conceivably appropriate and nontrivial to say, finds himself gripping the wet, rusting bars with a white-knuckled grasp as he peers with grim fascination over the yawning, inviting brink. A damp, icy updraft raises his hair upon end, or so he explains physically the physiological phenomenon to his overobservant and mocking companions.
    At first little is seen other than swirling white mists that rise toward the visitor in cumuloid columns. But these break, leaving ragged holes through which the Torrent is revealed . . . some three thousand vertiginous feet below.