The breach occurred at the junction where Trench Line One met the dry sandstone bluffs of the western salient.
In that sector, the defenses relied upon a double row of sharpened larch palisades anchored in frozen gravel. It was backed by an eight-foot ditch lined with iron caltrops. Under ordinary siege conditions, a frontal assault across the ditch needed thirty minutes of sapper work with ladders and fascine bundles.
The Three Steppe Titans didn’t bring ladders.
At the second quarter of the fifth watch, a dark, four-hundred-pound shape leaped clean across the eight-foot ditch from thirty paces away.
It was Mountain-Crusher Tie Le.
The barbarian titan landed with the bone-shaking force of a falling boulder, his heavy oxhide boots shattering the surface ice into powdered chalk. In his massive, calloused fists he held twin eighty-jin serrated cleavers forged from dark crucible iron, their spines four inches thick, their cutting beards notched from crushing royal breastplates.
Tie Le didn’t pause to absorb the landing impact.
His hips pivoted with terrifying spinning driving force. The twin cleavers swept through a level arc of three hundred and sixty degrees, delivering twelve thousand pounds of bone-shaking impact force.
