The head of the invading corpse army reached the narrowest throat of the Ashen Bottleneck forty minutes after sunrise.
From their aerie atop the Old Imperial Signal Bluff, Lin Tao and Tie Shan looked directly down upon the vanguard. Two thousand light armored corpses marched in a dense, box-shaped column thirty yards wide, their footsteps echoing off the upright cliffs like the rumble of distant siege engines. Flanking the column were twenty Ghost Sect Deacons, their black silk robes fluttering as they jogged alongside their files, holding bundles of shaking control threads in their gloved hands.
Suddenly, from the castle walls of Iron Pass Fort half a league down the gorge, a piercing bronze horn sounded.
HOOOOO-RAAAAH!
It was the royal signal for coordinated artillery discharge.
A second later, the air above the canyon screamed as sixteen heavy frontier siege ballistae released their steel bowstrings at the same time.
THWACK-THWACK!
Sixteen six-foot steel-headed giant crossbow bolts, thick as a man’s forearm, tore through the morning fog at four hundred paces per second. The frontier crossbowmen had not aimed blindly into the mass of corpses. Following Commander Yan Ding’s strict tactical doctrine, every giant crossbow had been pre-sighted along the narrowest choke points where the enemy handlers were forced to walk.
