The earth shook beneath the timed together thunder of twelve thousand armored hooves.
Three thousand elite cataphracts of the Grand Duchy galloped across the Riverbend flood plain, their barded warhorses churning the wet marshland into a spray of black loam.
Their fifteen-foot steel-tipped ash lances formed a bristling, iron-hard hedge of iron. Above them fluttered the scarlet and gold gonfalons of the royal chivalry. It snapped fiercely in the cold river gale.
For two hundred years, this cavalry charge had been the apex of land-wide warfare.
No infantry square had ever stood before it. No earthen stronghold had resisted its driving force. When the cataphracts of Val-Khorne charged, kingdoms sued for peace.
Sitting astride his iron-clad charger at the head of the third squadron, Baron Corren raised his broadsword. It roared to his knights across the din.
“Lower lances,” Corren bellowed through his barred visor.
“Aim for the wheels and the boiler seams. Break the iron carriage and trample the peasants into the mud.”
