A Few Acres of Snow

[ixnay]

The glove has been thrown! My natives were next to useless, no matter how many times I pointed them at the timbered walls of Oswego. But finally my first troop of proper English Rangers finished training and found their way around that infernal hardpoint. I had pushed my settlements out into the weeds of Fort Duquesne, and indeed further on to Fort Venango. I heard reports that during clear sunsets, one could catch reflections off the glimmery waves of Erie.

My green rangers snuck along the shores of that great water and found the surprisingly large encampments around Niagara. In honesty, I must credit the french, for I had not thought it possible that such a proper town could be founded so far west, so early in our shared history. It was so large, that my daring raid only managed to knock them back a few months. A broken cistern here, a burned bakery there, we managed to score a hit, but still they linger, and now so close to one of my precious frontier holdfasts.

I sent a priest into the north, to see about recruiting away some of the natives they'd been shanghai-ing of late, but he only managed to garner a few field reports on french troop movements. Time is no friend to either of us, but space is no foe. It is nigh impossible to predict what will happen tomorrow...