As the enemy cavalrymen came into clearer view, the two men had no choice but to face the cruel reality.
Alba had ordered them to hold a defensible position, but they had never expected to encounter the enemy so soon—and the enemy they faced was cavalry.
There was not even a walled village or a slightly elevated hill nearby.
Most of the reinforcements they had received were infantry. The soldiers had already been scared witless by the clouds of dust rolling toward them in the distance, and some had already turned and fled toward the direction they had come from.
Langfero shouted himself hoarse, trying to rally the troops that were breaking apart.
They had received reinforcements, bringing their army to a full six thousand men, but now they were as disorganized as a frightened flock of sheep—soldiers shoved one another, while discarded weapons and banners tumbled through the dust.
"Form up! Quickly, form a square!" Boyle hacked down a deserter, blood splattering across his twisted face.
But fear spread like a plague. In the blink of an eye, nearly a thousand men had vanished into the wilderness.
The remaining five thousand or so soldiers barely managed to gather together, hastily forming a crooked, uneven square.
The spearmen in the front row raised their weapons toward the enemy with trembling hands, but their crooked spearheads looked like a patch of reeds. The archers, meanwhile, nocked arrows in a panic with hands that would not stop shaking.
"Hold the line! We have the numbers!" Langfero rode back and forth before the formation, but his voice was drowned out by the increasingly near thunder of hooves.
On the horizon, two thousand Watchman Cavalry had already formed a charge formation and were bearing down on them like a wall of steel.
An old