The sulfur-mastiffs bayed with a sound like iron scrap grinding inside a bronze cooking pot.
Five hundred Ironjack hired blades charged up the frozen switchbacks in a loose, hungry horde, their spiked boiled-leather coats bristling with throwing axes, cleavers, and potion-made fire-pots. At the center of their line, forty draft-mules and two hundred sell-swords strained against the heavy timber braces of three wheeled assault ramps. Towering structures of green pine clad in wet, salted bull-hide, designed to bridge the thirty-foot dry ditch and drop their iron-heavy boarding ramps straight onto Fort Karst’s outer low roof wall.
Beneath the roar of the war-beasts came the steady, rhythmic tramp of the Obsidian Legion. Four full cohorts of black-armored pikemen advancing in locked formation two hundred yards behind the mercenary wave, ready to flood the castle walls the moment a breach was forced.
Lord Ren stood on the stone firing step of the outer gatehouse, his broad-bladed shortsword drawn, his frost-wolf pelt pinned back over his left shoulder to free his sword arm.
“Hold your fire,” the Emperor commanded. His voice carried clearly down the line of trembling weavers and blacksmiths. “Let them commit to the gravel terrace. Not an arrow until the lead wheels cross the white stone.”
