The ground beneath the Three Crowns Basin trembled with the fury of an empire on the march.
One point two million men surged across the grassy valley floor toward the circling ridge.
It was an advance that defied imagination. Four miles wide and ten ranks deep, a glittering, roaring sea of iron, bronze, and polished steel.
The battle-horns of the Holy Solar Empire screamed their golden notes into the heavens.
The heavy war-drums of Krell pounded like a storm of thunderbolts.
The shadowy banners of the Umbral Void-Court rippled with ghostly dark-fire.
Cataphracts spurred their armored chargers, berserkers screamed battle hymns, and five hundred war-engines rumbled across the meadows on hardwood wheels.
Inside the command car of Train Alpha, Giles Croft sat at a varnished oak desk with a cup of cold cider in his right hand.
