The crash of three hundred steel-tipped ash lances against three-quarter-inch Bessemer boiler plate produced a sound like a collapsing iron foundry.
At thirty-six miles per hour, the armored wedge of The Iron Bastion plowed into the center of the royal cataphract formation.
The royal knights had envisioned a standard siege obstacle. That lumbering wooden wagon could be pinned by heavy horses, halted by sheer mass, and boarded with swords.
Instead, they met three hundred sixty-eight thousand pounds of moving steel, propelled by four hundred horsepower of white-hot steam.
The math of the impact was total and indifferent.
The sharp, angled nose of the V-plow struck the first rank of barded warhorses dead center. The fifteen-foot ash lances shattered into kindling against the sloped plates. Their iron tips slid harmlessly up the greased metal face.
A split second later, the wedge took the horses at the shoulder.
Under the violent shape of the forty-five-degree plow, the cataphracts were not merely knocked aside. They were lifted from their stirrups and discharged laterally.
