Two days later, at the drill ground outside Fran City.
In the early morning of deep winter, lead-gray clouds hung low, as if they were about to press down onto the walls, shrouding Fran City in a cold, murderous air.
Yet both inside and outside the city, there was an unusual clamor. A surging current of expectation, unease, tragic resolve, and the excitement of watching a spectacle mingled together, diluting the bitter chill of winter.
Outside Fran City, the broad drill ground and the connected open fields were now covered by a sea of steel and banners.
The Rochefort Family's Red-based Golden Lion Flag, Kahnford's Fir Flag, and the banners of nobles and knight orders large and small all streamed in the biting cold wind.
Nearly twenty thousand officers and soldiers, divided by corps, provinces, and families, stood in neat square formations.
The infantry's long spears were like a forest, their tips glinting with a faint cold light beneath the dim sky; the cavalry horses breathed out white mist, restlessly pawing at the frozen earth beneath their hooves; the wheels of the Supply Carts had ground deep ruts into the hard mud, loaded with provisions, arms, and tents, like winding giant pythons lying still in hibernation behind the army formation.
This was all the mobile force that Earl Rochefort's territory could draw upon. Thanks to the "nail" that was Kahnford and the solid defenses of the newly completed Fran City–Kahnford Fortress cluster, the earl could finally pull this elite force away from the long, fragile defensive line of the Northern Territory with relative peace of mind.
Their armor and weapons had been polished to a shine, but many soldiers' faces could not hide the exhaustion of long marching or their unease toward the unknown road ahead. They knew that on