The ground continued to tremble beneath their boots as the deep horn blast echoed through the valley.
Down in the village of Veron, the slaughter was already underway, with Palatine Guards pouring bodkin arrows into the trapped cavalry ditch while sixty Menavliatons advanced across the bloodied turf with their eight-foot polearms leveled.
"We cannot cross the hills," Yuzon said, his voice tight as he kept his brass spyglass glued to the southern road. "The river curves around the entire eastern border, running thirty feet deep with spring runoff. If we head into the hills, we hit water with no bridge, and our sixteen-denar workhorses will drown before they make ten yards."
Jade stepped up beside Yuzon, squinting through the rising dust toward the southern tree line two miles away.
Through the pine gaps, a purple banner fluttered above the massive iron column of charging riders, bearing the silver scales of Clan Corenios.
"How could we forget Ovagos?" Jade muttered, pressing a palm hard against his brow as the pieces of imperial lore fell into place. "In the game, Ovagos was always the final trump card of Achios. Almost nothing was known about his exact strength because every single enemy detachment that ever encountered him on the field was wiped out to the last man. Achios keeps the infantry in the fortress and lets Ovagos erase anyone who steps into the valley."
"How many?" Nathaniel asked, his voice cracking.
"Sixty," Yuzon confirmed, his knuckles white against the brass tube. "Sixty barded warhorses clad in full scale iron, riders covered in lamellar plates from their helms to their greaves, carrying ten-foot Kontos lances."
Nathaniel threw his hands up, looking at Numerius and Mataranas in sheer disbelief. "Sixty Cataphracts? Max-tier imperial shock cavalry? We barely killed a single Elite Menavliaton at the sunken road four days ago! It took all five of us ganging up on him simultaneously while he was already on foot with a severed tendon behind his knee, and he still almost put a sword through Num's throat! We have zero advantage against Cataphracts! If we meet sixty barded cavalry in an open field, they will turn us into red paste before we can reload a single bolt!"
"Which is why we are not fighting them in an open field," Jade said, grabbing his horse's reins from the birch sapling and swinging into his wooden saddle. "In open ground, we are dead. But Ovagos is charging the stone bridge at Veron Crossing to cut off the Golden Boar's only escape route back into Vlandia. The crossing is forty yards of narrow flagstones with stone parapets on both sides. If we reach the bridge before Ovagos seals it, we can use the choke point."
Mataranas was already mounted on his stocky black workhorse, his heavy cavalry shield strapped to his left arm and his one-handed flange mace resting on his pommel. "Ride fast," Matty said, his voice low and steady. "The bridge is the only way across."
"Move!" Jade commanded, digging his heels into his gelding's flanks.
The five friends plunged down the southern goat track at a dangerous gallop, loose shale clattering into the gully behind them.
They rode parallel to the lower valley road, using the ridge's natural contour to stay hidden behind scrub pine while watching the massive iron column of Ovagos's charge. The heavy Imperial Cataphracts were moving at a measured, thunderous canter, keeping their barded mounts in tight ranks to conserve energy before the final hammer strike into the crossing.
The squad's lighter workhorses, carrying far less weight than the barded imperial mounts, tore across the rocky ridge trails, clearing the two miles in under seven minutes.
They skidded their lathered, blowing mounts down the final gravel cut, bursting onto the western riverbank of Veron Crossing barely two minutes ahead of the approaching imperial vanguard.
At the western bridgehead, Captain Mira had already formed her forty light cavalry scouts in a wide crescent around the company supply wagons. Her scouts were hardened veterans, equipped with fine mail coats and heavy two-handed broadswords far superior to common mercenary rabble, yet their light iron rings and boiled leather looked paper-thin compared to the suffocating barded plates closing in from the valley.
"MIRA!" Jade shouted, reining his panting gelding to a hard halt in front of the mercenary captain.
Mira turned in her saddle, her notched broadsword resting across her knee. "I hear the horns, kid. What is coming down the valley?"
"It is Lord Ovagos," Jade warned, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "Sixty Imperial Cataphracts in full barding with ten-foot Kontos lances! The village was an ambush, and Rodrik's force is being cut to pieces in a trench! If your scouts take sixty barded lances on open turf, your mail will not stop them for thirty seconds!"
Mira's grey eyes narrowed into cold flint. A veteran who had survived twenty bloody contracts, she understood the brutal reality of heavy shock cavalry without needing an explanation.
"Dismount!" Mira bellowed, her voice cutting through the camp like a whip. "All riders off your horses! Haul those grain wagons into the throat of the bridge! Chain the axles! MOVE!"
Her forty scouts reacted with immediate discipline. They dropped from their saddles, tied their mounts to the rear picket lines, and grabbed the heavy wooden tongues of three loaded supply carts.
Straining their backs, twenty mercenaries dragged the first heavy grain cart directly into the eastern mouth of the stone bridge, wedging the wooden wheels against the granite parapet. A second cart was hauled alongside it, overlapping the wooden bodies to leave only a tight, five-foot gap in the center of the flagstones.
Mercenaries wrapped heavy iron logging chains through the wheel spokes and around the stone posts, locking the timber rampart firmly in place.
While the scouts hauled the carts, Jade sprinted over to their squad's supply wagon, reached into the back bed, and pulled out his light wooden round shield. He buckled the leather arm loops snugly around his left forearm, gripping the short spear firmly in his right hand.
"Pikes and shields in the gap!" Mira ordered, gripping her two-handed sword with both hands. "Hold the timber! If they push the wagons, we are finished!"
The Calamity Squad took their positions at the center of the barricade.
Mataranas stepped into the five-foot opening between the two wagon wheels. He planted his boots into the stone seams of the bridge, locked the heavy metal rim of his cavalry shield against the iron hub of the left wagon, and gripped his one-handed flange mace in a white-knuckled hold.
Jade stepped into the gap directly beside Matty, locking the edge of his round shield against Matty's cavalry shield to form a solid, two-man wall across the opening, his short spear leveled over the wooden rim.
Numerius stepped up directly behind their shoulders, planting his feet wide and raising his heavy two-handed iron-banded mace to strike over the overlapping rims.
Yuzon and Nathaniel scrambled onto the elevated wooden bench of the right-hand grain wagon. Nathaniel loaded a heavy steel bolt into his light crossbow, while Yuzon pulled two broadhead arrows from his quiver, sticking them point-first into the wooden wagon seat for rapid drawing.
The low thrumming through the stone flagstones built into an earth-shaking roar.
Rounding the river bend, the imperial cavalry came into full view.
Sixty barded coursers, draped in thick iron scale trappings that clinked with every thunderous stride, charged along the cobblestone approach in an unstoppable iron wedge. At their head rode Lord Ovagos himself, clad in ornate bronze lamellar with a purple plume streaming from his closed iron helm, his massive ten-foot Kontos lance couched beneath his right arm.
The sheer kinetic mass of sixty armored warhorses moving at full gallop looked like a moving fortress of iron and horseflesh.
"Look at the length of those lances," Nathaniel muttered, his voice trembling as he sighted his crossbow through the wagon slats. "They don't even have to get close to impale us."
"Aim for the horses' eyes and the riders' throats," Yuzon said, his tone dropping into icy focus. "The body armor will deflect everything we have. Wait until they hit the timber."
"BRACE!" Captain Mira roared from behind the line.
The lead Cataphracts hit the bridgehead at full speed.
CRASH.
The impact was deafening. The heavy ash wood of the lead imperial lances slammed directly into the solid oak bodies of the chained grain wagons.
Three ten-foot Kontos lances shattered instantly under the terrifying force of their own momentum, exploding into jagged white splinters that sprayed across the stone bridge. The two-ton supply wagons shrieked in protest, shoved back two feet along the flagstones before the heavy iron logging chains pulled taut, holding the barricade firm.
A barded imperial horse slammed chest-first into the wagon body, its front legs buckling beneath the violent recoil, throwing its armored rider over the timber box directly into the waiting blades of Mira's dismounted scouts.
The second wave of riders could not stop in time. They were forced to bottle up in the mouth of the bridge, their momentum killed by the narrow parapets and the wooden wall.
"NOW!" Jade shouted.
Yuzon drew his hunting bow to his ear and released from five yards above, driving a broadhead arrow through the unarmored eye slit of an imperial helmet. The rider threw his arms back, tumbling from his saddle into the press of thrashing mounts.
Snap.
Nathaniel fired his light crossbow downward at point-blank range, driving a heavy bolt straight through the soft leather throat strap of an imperial courser. The horse reared with a wild whinny, its barded bulk crushing sideways into another rider and fouling their formation.
In the five-foot gap between the wagons, the real blood began.
An Imperial Cataphract forced his barded horse forward into the opening, drawing a heavy broad-bladed Spatha and slashing downward with murderous weight.
CLANG.
Mataranas took the downward slash on the upper curve of his heavy cavalry shield, while Jade braced his round shield against Matty's shoulder to absorb the sideways shock of the horse's flank. The sheer power of the blow sent a jolt of pain through their braced knees, but their combined stance kept their boots rooted to the cobblestones.
Matty stepped to the inside of the horse's shoulder, raised his right arm, and drove the flanged head of his one-handed mace upward into the imperial rider's knee.
CRUNCH.
The iron flanges shattered the rider's knee cop through the scale armor. The imperial soldier screamed as his leg folded, his grip on his broadsword faltering.
Before the rider could pull his mount back, Numerius stepped up from behind their shoulders, swinging his two-handed mace in a thunderous downward arc that caught the soldier square on his plumed helmet. The iron skullcap caved inward, and the Cataphract slumped sideways out of his saddle, dragged into the gap by his stirrups.
[+1 One-Handed]
[+1 Two-Handed]
[+1 Shield]
Jade thrust his short spear through the spokes of the wagon wheel, driving the steel head through the calf of another dismounted cavalryman trying to cut the logging chains with an axe.
The imperial charge was stalling, trapped in the narrow stone entrance where their heavy lances and horse weight counted for nothing against the chained oak wagons and crushing blunt weapons.
"Keep the pressure on!" Lord Ovagos's voice bellowed from the rear of the sixty-man line, his bronze lamellar shining through the smoke as he ordered his ranks forward with drawn swords. "Clear the wagons! Force the gap!"
While the squad fought frantically to hold the timber rampart against the imperial press, Yuzon looked up from his bow, his eyes scanning the northern river road across the water.
Through the drifting dust along the valley path, a ragged cluster of men appeared, running for their lives toward the bridge.
At the front stumbled Captain Rodrik, his fine quilted armor torn to shreds, his helmet gone, and his right arm soaked in dark blood. Behind him limped barely a dozen survivors out of the eighty Golden Boar mercenaries who had marched on Veron, gasping for breath as they fled the valley.
Half a mile behind them, the banners of Clan Corenios fluttered in the afternoon light as sixty Imperial Menavliatons and Palatine Guards marched steadily in pursuit, their eight-foot polearms gleaming like a wall of iron teeth.
Nathaniel saw them first from the wagon bench, his face draining of all color.
"It is Rodrik," Nathaniel yelled over the clash of steel. "They are running for the crossing, but the Cataphracts are blocking the entire front of the bridge!"
Jade shoved his spear through an imperial shield seam, his round shield taking a heavy javelin blow that splintered the outer paint as he looked from the barded cavalry pressing the wagons to the exhausted survivors sprinting toward them.
Between the Cataphracts hacking at the barricade and the Menavliatons closing from behind, the Golden Boar was about to be caught between the hammer and the anvil.