In the feeble, dying light of that grey day, the army of the Fox unfurled like a rose,its nectar sweet and inviting, its thorns hidden deep beneath the bloom and its flagrance.

Ratto stood in the fifth rank, the wood of his javelin biting into his palm. Around him, the Hounds reached for their quivers, fingers finding the familiar notch of their shafts. They waited as the gleaming line of the enemy crested the horizon, a thousand points of light that looked like fallen stars blessing the grass. In another life, such a sight might have been the stuff of songs, a tapestry of burning passion and chivalric grace. But today, it was to be song of their deaths.

The enemy had taken the bait. And why wouldn’t they?

To Oizenian eyes, the trap looked like a gift. The Prince’s banner flapped in the wind at the center of a line so thin it looked ready to snap under a stiff breeze.

Behind it lay the river, a watery grave for any who broke, that would certainly destroy the entirety of the prince’s host if the battle was won.

Six hundred knights formed the vanguard, a thunderous fist of steel. A charge of even half that number, if it penetrated just two ranks deep, would flatten the field, shatter the center, and open a gap wide enough for the entire Oizenian host to pour through and end the war by supper.

The Hounds were practically begging for the blow.

The trot began as a low rumble, a rhythmic shaking of the earth that made the water in the Lampianis dance behind them. Dozens of silk banners, azure, gold, and crimson, snapped alongside a forest of upright lances, held toward the sky like bloody declarations of intent.

"They’re just wrapping themselves in funeral cloaks," Ratto whispered to himself to give him courage, drawing a deep breath as he poised his javelin over his shoulder.

Behind him, the fourth and fifth ranks mirrored his movement. The first three ranks remained still, their buckler shields tight on their wrists and their axes gripped low. They were the wall; Ratto and the others were the sting.

The distance closed. Five hundred meters. Three hundred. At the two-hundred-meter mark, the trot broke into a gallop as it shoudl have. The Oizenian knights lowered their lances in unison, a wall of splintering death aimed directly at Alpheo’s heart.

Then, the earth took its due.

As the heavy destriers hit the expanse they had spent days drenching, the thunderous charge began to choke. The emerald grass, beautiful and deceptive, hid a sucking black mire.

What should have been a glorious sweep became a muddy bath. Hooves that were meant to fly through the air instead sank deep into the black soup, the momentum of the charge slowing with every sickening squelch.

Ratto watched, his heart leaping, as a magnificent white charger in the front rank lost its footing. The beast slipped, its legs splaying like a newborn fawn’s, before it tumbled sideways into the muck. The knight, a blur of polished plate with blue silk ribbons that swayed on his neck like bolt of cloth to the wind, was catapulted from his saddle, hitting the mud with a heavy, wet thwack that surely broke bone. Two more riders behind him, unable to veer away in the press, crashed into the fallen horse, creating a tangled heap of screaming animals and cursing men.

A ragged cheer went up from the Yarzat line.

They after all needed something to cheer about, when death was near.

"Look at ’em!" Boyle Ass-boil barked, a laugh escaping him. "The ’Flower of Chivalry’ is planting itself early and blooming never!Eh! Hope they like the taste of the dirt, ’cause they’re gonna be eating it for a long, long time!"

"Oi!" Red Eye shouted over the din. "I think that one’s trying to swim! Someone tell him he’s a bit short of the river!"

"How’s the taste of my piss? I went number one right in that patch before the sun was up!" Robett roared, his laughter jagged and wild.

"Hope you get pebbles and mud up your royal arse!" another voice joined in, the taunt rippling through the Hounds’ ranks.

Ratto found himself chuckling along, though the sound was hollow, a thin veil over the thrumming of his heart. They weren’t cowards, none of them were, but after a lifetime spent delivering death from the high vantage of a saddle, standing on the receiving end of a heavy cavalry charge felt like waiting for a mountain to fall.

Still, the sight of the horses faltering, their iron-shod hooves churning the deceptive emerald grass into a black, sucking soup, was a gods’ kiss. To see a knight in a hundred-silverii suit of plate tumble like a sack of turnips was better than wine and a fuck.

Yet, only a fool would think the mud was enough. You could spit on those knights all you liked, but they were men of the sword, bred for the kill.

Even as their momentum choked in the mire, they lowered their lances, the long ash shafts leveled like the fingers of a vengeful god.

"Crow food! Let’s make them crow food!" Rykio’s voice boomed, a challenge that seemed to rattle the very air. "Those at the back, make the bastards shit iron! All others, fucking hold!What do hounds do?"

’’WE BITE AT HARD!’’ The soldiers boomed

’’What do hounds do?"

’’WE BITE AT HARD!’’ And as if proving that they let go of their iron-teeth.

The grey sky went darker still. A rain of iron was birthed from the rear ranks, hundreds of javelins arching into the air with a collective, predatory hiss. They reached the apex of their flight and then plummeted, gravity turning the wooden shafts into bolts of lightning. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Ratto stepped into his throw, his muscles coiling and snapping like a siege engine’s spring. He let fly his first projectile, then immediately reached for the second, his movements a blur of practiced violence. He couldn’t even follow his own steel; there were too many in the air, a thick, whistling hail of death that blotted out the Oizenian banners.

He could not follow his own, but he saw well enough the impact in flashes.

On the far right, a javelin punched through the neck of a charging destrier, the beast collapsing mid-stride and sending its rider hurtling into the mud breaking his knees as he badly fell. Another struck a knight full in the chest, the heavy iron point shearing through the fine-linked mail and pinning the man to his high-backed saddle like a moth to a board sending the horse in a frenzy birthed from pain.

"Again! Give them another!" Rykio screamed, his axe held high as he stood at the very front of the line, uncaring of danger to himself.

Hail after hail of iron was launched. The charge was no longer a beautiful, coordinated strike; it was a bloodied, stuttering mess. Men were screaming, horses were shrilling in agony, and the emerald field was being paved with broken wood and dying nobility.

Yet, through the storm, the Oizenians kept coming. Bloodied, mud-streaked, and diminished, the core of the knighthood pressed on, their horses’ chests heaving as they forced their way through the muck toward the thin Yarzat line.

There were 300 of them and they could not be stopped by simple mud and javelins.

"Hold!" Rykio bellowed, his voice straining against the thunder of hooves.

The mud had been funny enough to look at, but his importance was not for the charge, but for what came after.

And indeed the Southern Knights were about to find that out.

The knights were close now, so close that men could see the terror in the horses’ eyes,the foam coming out, rein being held up as lances thunders down.

Ratto’s world narrowed until it was nothing but a wall of flared nostrils and hulking, muscle-bound chests. He felt the tremor in his knees, , but he did not step back.

To look upon such a sight and not feel the ice of terror was the mark of a madman or a liar, and Ratto was neither. He knew the plan, but knowing the trap is set does little to quiet the heart when the weight of a charging destrier is bearing down upon your skull.

Fear waited for him like a well-worn glove, familiar and suffocating as it always was, ready to wrap him like a mother.

A dozen horses filled his vision alone, a thundering apocalypse of meat and iron. Across the entire thinning line of the center, there were dozens more, a coordinated hammer blow meant to shatter the Yarzat dream once and for all. It was a staggering thought, the kind that could paralyze a man if he let his mind wander for even a heartbeat too long.

The Fox’s bait was about to be struck, and the world was poised to break.

And it did break, but only after the devil in the iron-hound helm finally gave the cry they had all been holding their breath to hear.

"BRACE!" Rykio bellowed, his voice a raw, splintering thing that rose above the deafening thunder of hooves. "BRACE!You fucks, BRACE! First three ranks, plant your feet! Let them taste the wall!"

And taste it they did.

The mud had not stopped the knights, only slowed their grace. The caltrops hidden in the grass and the javelins thrown by eager, shaking hands had reaped a toll in blood, but they had not broken the charge.

For all the blue-blooded courage of the nobility, for all the pomposity of their silk and the pedigrees of their towering chargers, they believed the thin line of Hounds was nothing more than a curtain to be shredded.

But that was the genius of the Fox. That was the beauty of the thorn beneath the rose.

As from the depths of the thigh-high emerald grass, the Hounds offered their most unkind gift. Hidden by the swaying stalks and now held up by eager hands, dozens of heavy, wooden pikes, each longer than any spears had the right to be and tipped with cold, hungry iron, sprang upward like predators lunging from the foliage.