The low, shaking growl of the southern war-horns didn’t arrive through the air. It traveled through the bedrock first. It sent tiny ripples across the dark puddles in the drainage ditches at Milepost Five.
Telescoping her polished brass curved sound-cone through a slit in the forward watching cab, Maeve Swift-Ear froze. Her keen ears, trained to distinguish the creak of timber wagons from the shifting of mountain shale, picked up the rhythmic, timed together thud of sixty thousand iron-shod boots striking the southern dirt road.
“They have crested the Red Ridge, Lord Master builder,” Maeve whispered, lowering the sound horn. Her pale throat swallowed hard against the chill morning mist. “Cavalry in the center. Siege wagons on both flanks. The sound-cone catches three distinct brass tones. Grand Duke Val-Khorne has sounded the General Advance.”
Lord Giles Croft stood on the open timber platform of Flatcar Battery Three, his brass sighting scope mounted securely on its leveled tripod. He turned the level fine-scale wheel with his gloved thumb. He peeked through the crosshairs at the jagged mountain pass two miles south.
Through the optics, the southern gap was choked in a swirling cloud of red clay dust.
Out of the dust emerged the vanguard of the Southern Empire. Three thousand heavy cataphracts clad in fluted blackened plate, their barded war-horses snorting white plumes of vapor into the autumn chill. Behind them marched column after column of royal heavy shock legionnaires. Twelve regiments bearing crimson banners stitched with the roaring silver dragon…
