K2I AJ=. (After the Fall) 3OS YJO. (Year of the Oath) Commodore Maurice Fair lifted the uniform cap from his head and wiped at the sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief. He was standing on the liner docks on the north shore of Oathtaking's superb C-shaped harbor. Behind him were the broad quiet streets of Old Town, running out from Monument Square behind his back. There the bronze figures of the Founders stood, raised weapons in their hands-the cutlasses and flintlocks common three centuries ago. The Empire-Alliance war had ended an overwhehning Imperial victory. The first thing the Alliance refugees had done was swear a solemn oath of vengeance against those who'd broken their ambitions and slaughtered everyone of their fellows who hadn't fled the mainland.

After three years in the Land of die Chosen as a naval attach^, Farr was certain of two things: their descendants still meant it, and they'd extended the future field of attack from the Empire to everyone else on the planet Visager. Perhaps to the entire universe.

West and south around the bay ran the modern city of Oathtaking, built of black basalt and gray tufa from the quarries nearby. Rail sidings, shipyards, steel mills, factories, warehouses, the endless tenement blocks that housed the Protggg laborers. A cluster of huge buildings marked the commercial center; six and even eight 2 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake stories tafl, their girder frames sheathed in granite carved in the severe columnar style of Chosen architecture. A pall of coal smoke lay over most of the town below the leafy suburbs on the hill slopes, giving the hot tropical air a sulfurous taste. A racket of shod hooves sounded on stone-block pavement, die squeal of iron on iron and a hiss of steam, the hoot of factory sirens. Ships thronged die docks and harbor, everything from old-fashioned windjammers in with cargoes of grain from the Empire to modern steel-hulled steamers of Land or Republic build.