Targovi must scale the wall surrounding the Zacharian defense command post:
"It sloped upward, as was desirable for solidity." (p. 407)
Is an upward slope desirable for solidity or just easier for Targovi to run up it?
"A five-meter wall, thirty meters on a side, surrounded an area forbidden to visitors." (p. 406)
"The material was unfinished stone..." (p. 407)
"A human could never have gone up, but a Tigery might, given strength and claws and eyesight adaptable to dim light." (p. 408)
From a running start, momentum carries Targovi high up the wall, then a momentary grip with fingers and claws both prevents a fall and thrusts him higher.
Off-the-wall Shakespearean reference: "Wall" is a character in the play-within-the-play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. See Tom Snout.
This post is a prequel to the previous one, Confirmation.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
A soldier or military engineer could probably explain the utility of upward sloping walls. I remember seeing in Rome how some of the old defensive walls around the Vatican were also upwards sloping.
I also recall seeing, in, I think, "The Troubletwisters," mention was made of how competent military engineer was careful to lay out a pomoerium inside the defensive walls of a city.
Ad astra! Sean
An inward batten in a wall lowers the center of gravity -- the proportion of mass near the foundations. It's analogous to how you're more steady standing with your feet braced apart than close together. That increases resistance to lateral stress.
Thank you.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And this kind of wall was better able to resist catapult shots or even early gun powder cannon?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yup. Castles have high, relatively thin walls; later forts have broad, thick, squat ones, often sunken down behind revetments and broad ditches.
The castle was designed to resist men with ladders or siege towers above all. It dealt with missiles secondarily, often by being somewhere where it wasn't practical to set up a mangonel or trebuchet within the rather modest range of those weapons.
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Still later, it was discovered that the best defense against solid cannonballs was thick earth -- which absorbed the shot rather than shattering as stone was prone to do.
Both these involved inward-sloping walls, for stability and to redirect rather than oppose the force of projectiles.
The Japanese had another technique, and a highly effective one; they built castles on reshaped hills -- putting the wall on the outside of a huge bulk of solid dirt. The outer wall often sloped inward slightly; it was a retaining wall for the dirt behind. Then at a suitable distance within the ramparts you could build a tower.
The fortifications of Mt. Angel in the Change books are basically of this type.
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