Camouflage was not considered an issue at this particular posting. Shields, or more correctly, “bucklers, small, Perimeter garrison only,” were carried on their backs, the factory khaki long since submerged under brightly painted regimental or personal signs. In fact, the Perimeter was much more successful at keeping people from Ancelstierre out of the Old Kingdom, than it was at preventing things from the Old Kingdom going the other way.Īnything powerful enough to cross the Wall usually retained enough magic to assume the shape of a soldier or to become invisible and simply go where it willed, regardless of barbed wire, bullets, hand grenades and mortar bombs-which often didn’t work at all, particularly when the wind was blowing from the North, out of the Old Kingdom.ĭue to the unreliability of technology, the Ancelstierran soldiers of the Perimeter garrison wore mail over their khaki battledress, had nasal and neck bars on their helmets and carried extremely old-fashioned sword-bayonets in wellworn scabbards. Many of these strong points were designed to control the ground behind them as well as in front, and almost as much barbed wire stretched behind the trenches, guarding the rear.

Concertina wire lay like worms impaled on rusting steel pickets forward defenses for an interlocking network of trenches and concrete pillboxes. The Perimeter in Ancelstierre ran from coast to coast, parallel to the Wall and perhaps half a mile from it.

The abhorsen trilogy