“Make it quick—give it everything—break the gate before they even blink!” Harrison reined in hard and gave the order, and the army surged like white blades of dawn cutting the night.

Hooves drummed—thud-thud-thud—, a thousand warhorses tearing the plain, greatswords cold as moonlight and lances sharp as winter icicles held low.

The Radiant Knights’ forward post woke too late; though ready and rigid as iron, they were reeds before a flood against that charging tide.

Wooo—wooo—, heavy horns moaned into the night, then died; wood split and stone cracked, like frost biting through bark.

Thrum—boom—, meter-long bone bolts screamed skyward, scything far; they stirred a hard gale, the kind that drags a bystander into ruin.

Thud-thud-thud—! When the bolts hit, shapes fell into nothing, like sandcastles swallowed by a black wave.

Gerald’s hastily braced outpost collapsed; dozens of elite archers dropped with the towers before they saw a face, broken like pots on rock.

Those who survived the fall were crushed under earthshaking iron hooves, guts ground like grain beneath a millstone.

“That’s… the Eastern Nation’s pride in sieges, the Blackblood War Chariot…” A mercenary saw a massive carriage peek from the rear, quarrels stacked like slate.

He glimpsed a green-leaf sigil etched on the bolts, truth dawned like lightning, and then darkness took him whole.

Harrison and Clive watched their three Blackblood War Chariots with quiet satisfaction; the upgrades bit deep, runes of the Wind Sprite folk gilding their power.

With Wind Magic etched into the shafts, penetration leapt, and spiral heads drilled like storms boring through cliff-face.

More crucial, Medith had taught a way to brace the chariots themselves, Wind Magic married to Impado steel to fix the strings firm.

No more snapped strings; a monster of war that, crewed right, spat a shot every ten heartbeats, relentless as surf on rock.

Medith had also refined repeating and hand crossbows; the Wind Sprite folk supplied small, special wind tubes like bottled breezes.

A simple buffering principle soothed the bow; the old Eastern repeats could spit fast, but each Impado bolt kicked the frame.

That damage built up like rust; in peacetime you’d swap parts, but on a battlefield, a failure cuts lives short.

This device only sips natural wind, never touches the magic weave, so it never clashes with the Impado bolts.

Medith never knew—her kindhearted fixes were seized by Paris, turned into teeth for a wolf; if she saw them aimed at her, what storm would stir her heart?

Elsewhere, Dawnlight’s line was drawn like a silver river; the Hexclaw Legion’s riders, swift as hawks, cleared the outskirts in under ten minutes—yet the defenders rallied.

On the wall, crossbows went taut, javelins lifted sharp; mercenaries locked shields like oaks, nothing like coin-hungry rabble.

Under Gerald’s command, they stood like a city of stone; against the Eastern Nation’s Hexclaw Legion, they met the surge with rising thunder.

Hrrr—, the riders saw the wall bristle and pulled back quick; shieldmen formed a long rectangle at the gate, smooth as a practiced drill.

A wry chill touched Gerald first; he managed a bitter smile. “Good hands. I figured they’d body-charge the gate… shame.”

Cavalry is precious, each rider trained hard as iron; the finer the troop, the rarer the skill, the more costly the loss.

Horses most of all; harsh truth, a man can die, but don’t harm the horse—war lives on their breath and bone.

A warhorse isn’t a plow nag; size is a hard line. Anything under a ton fails—can’t carry heavy Impado barding at all.

And then there’s breaking them in, teaching them to meet chaos head-on, to dance in storms without bolting.

Across the Talos Continent, heavy cavalry rules the field, crushing fronts head-on; tactics are thin, a hammer against a wall.

Regido makes that worse; most wars are set fights or sieges—defenders bleed to bar the gate, attackers die to break it.

So the first collision weighs heavy; let force tilt a little, and Regido’s arrival becomes the last straw on a breaking spine.

That’s why Medith terrifies—she shapes plans to the enemy’s kind, trait, and skill, and treats information like grain in a famine.

To most on the Talos Continent, that’s smoke and fog; in battle, morale leads, and on a narrow road, the brave wins—what use is intel if you lose the front?

“Well met, Fortress Lord Gerald. Two days apart—are you well?” Hudson strode out smiling, framed by the Hexclaw ranks like cliffs.

Gerald wore a silver helm; his tall frame looked broader in steel, and the heavy sword in his hand felt able to cleave mountains and rivers.

“A duke of the Eastern Nation should bear the nation’s face and its strength. In broad daylight, doing gutless things—did Ogathas the Tenth teach King Paris that?” Gerald’s voice was ice.