A great cheer rose up from Brimstone’s knights and men-at-arms as he appeared in front of the pass, where most of them were working either on the trench or the glass and stone wall blocking the Iron Road. He’d been missing for days, long enough for more than a few of his subordinate knights to have begun murmuring about whether or not continuing to follow Roland and August was the correct course of action.

Behind the Paladin, however, were the tell-tale signs of advancing Legions. The dust cloud that accompanied their marching reached quite high in the dry heat of the central Bull Kingdom. Even the most inexperienced squire in the entire force could tell with near certainty that there would be bloodshed in the pass soon, if not before the day was done.

Roland leaped down from the castle walls, passing harmlessly through the enchantments that would prevent him from doing the opposite, and gracefully landed on the plain before the pass.

“Saturnius!” he called out as Brimstone approached.

“Roland!” the other Paladin responded, though with marginally less enthusiasm. Colleagues and allies they were, but not quite friends. “It’s good to see all of you, it’s been a hard journey from the capital,” he said, grasping Roland’s wrist in greeting as several of his subordinate knights came out to greet him as well.

“I’d love to hear about it, but I think right now our priority should be what’s clearly about to happen,” Roland replied, nodding back in the direction Brimstone came from.

“I agree, let me speak with my people and I’ll meet you in a little while. I need a few moments to catch my breath and to get the lay of the land.”

“No problem,” Roland said, not upset in the slightest with Brimstone effectively assuming command and telling him what to do. The other Paladin was stronger, older, and far more experienced, after all. Roland wasn’t much over thirty, while Brimstone was approaching the end of his first century of life.

Half an hour later, Brimstone and Roland met back up on the walls of the castle with their more important knights in tow. Brimstone had taken the time to catch up on the major details of the past few days with his own knights, gave the fortifications a quick inspection, and then eaten some food, so he was about as ready as he was going to be for their quick discussion.

“We have the 1st and 4th Legions bearing down on us,” Brimstone said with a grim expression. They only had two thousand to defend the pass with, along with whatever force the Count could bring to bear—the Count himself was busy preparing to evacuate his family, and so wasn’t present for this discussion.

“Any sign of other Paladins or their own personal retinues?” Roland asked.

“None that I could see. Far as I know, they haven’t left the capitol island since I escaped from it. I imagine they’re leaving our pursuit up to the Legions while they assist Octavius with consolidating his power back in the capital.”

“Well… I suppose that’s something to be thankful for, we’re not going to have to fight any Paladins…”

“Hmm, yes, thankful. I wouldn’t go feeling better just yet, I’ve heard tell that Octavius sent some additional forces to our south to try and circumvent this pass and that they were quite substantial in number, perhaps comparable to Legion.”

“Who would be sent? That’s noble land, not the Royal demesne. Other nobles can’t just walk freely through it with their armies even if they’re escorted by a Legion…”

“That depends entirely on whose land they’re trespassing on, how big their army is, and if they have dispensation from the capital to do so.”

Roland frowned in response. The army that Octavius would send would have to be substantial enough that they could ignore the minor Barons who might try to argue with their presence. Given that with Minerva on his side, August had significant support in the Eastern Territories, so he couldn’t imagine that any Octavius-aligned army could move unimpeded unless they brought overwhelming force, but regardless, he turned to one of his adjutants and asked, “Was word sent to Ironford of the army on our doorstep?”

The adjutant answered in the affirmative.

“Send another message about this possible incursion from the south.”

The adjutant nodded, then sent a runner to arrange the report.

“Defending from the south will be a much harder task than defending this point,” Roland observed.

The southern region of the Eastern Territories was some of the roughest terrain in the Bull Kingdom, crisscrossed with deep, forested valleys, powerful rivers, and steep cliffs, but they were still far more accessible at the current time than the pass they were defending—in fact, there were quite a few ways to get into the Eastern Territories from the south, some of them even wide enough for large-scale troop maneuvers. To the north, the cliffs extended all the way to the Great Plateau, essentially blocking off access to the Eastern Territories from that direction, leaving the rugged south the only way Octavius’ people could approach Ironford and the other cities in the east without going through the pass.

“Indeed, so we need to hold these Legions here for as long as we can until a proper response can be mustered.” Brimstone looked to the north, then back east. “The 3rd and 7th Legions should be in this area, no?”

“I know what you’re thinking, and they’re not going to get here in time if they move at all,” Roland replied. The 3rd and 7th Legions had marched with them to the Bull’s Horns when the Talfar Kingdom assaulted the fortress and August had them transferred to the Eastern Territories when he re-arranged Legion deployments the year before. However, none of that meant that he trusted the Legates in charge to march their troops to August’s defense, even if Minerva had vouched for them before. Right now, the only fighting men and women they could count on were those in their personal retinues and those in Trajan’s former retinue. Not even the local nobility could truly be relied upon, as the castle’s Count displayed by arranging for evacuation rather than resistance.

Not that Roland or Brimstone truly blamed him, but it was still disheartening to see. Fighting against the Legions was a daunting task for the lower ranks of the nobility, especially so when they had so little support. A single Count or Baron with a few hundred knights at their disposal would never stand for very long against a fully equipped Legion.

“We’ll fight with what we’ve got,” Brimstone almost nonchalantly replied, glancing down at their meager fortifications and tiny unit facing off against twenty times their number. “Should be fun, if nothing else.”

—

There was nothing Avidius wanted more than to drag August back to the capital kicking and screaming, perhaps with a few less teeth than he had before. It would buy him quite a bit of favor with his new King—or at least, with the man who would soon become his new King, though Avidius thought it such a sure-thing that he already started thinking of Octavius as the Bull King.

Avidius wasn’t much of a military man, and he knew that. He’d achieved his position of Consul of the Central Territories mostly through personal acts of martial prowess in his younger years and a command of politics and bureaucracy that most of the Legates and other high-ranking knights in the Legions did not possess. In that respect, he was greatly looking forward to confirming his position through victory rather than through pushing enough papers.

The scene before him was one that he knew all commanders salivated over. His enemies were few in number though held a relatively decent position. He didn’t think the castle on the cliffs was that out of reach, while the meager fortifications built across the Iron Road would fall before his Legates and other sixth-tier mages like wheat before a scythe.

He was almost quivering in anticipation of the first battlefield victory of his long career. It was so close he could almost taste it. However, he had to dampen his excitement; immediately assaulting the castle wasn’t his goal, and though he hated to do so, he had to wait.

He ordered the two Legions and the knights at his back to dig in. It was time to rest and wait, to put the Iron Road to siege and wait for his southern forces to get into position.

—

“They’re… not charging…?” Roland whispered in confusion. He stared at the Legion lines completely surrounding the mouth of the pass as they made camp, erected walls, dug trenches of their own, and all-in-all, looked like they were getting ready for a protracted siege rather than a battle. “What are they doing?”

“Are they seriously going to give us more time to amass our forces and dig in…?” Brimstone wondered aloud, his own confusion rivaling Roland’s.

“Maybe they’re simply not willing to attack right after a march?” one of Brimstone’s sixth-tier mages mused.

“Yeah, and maybe they’re all chicken-** cowards and will run at the sight of their own shadows, let alone all the hard mother**ers we got,” another sarcastically replied. “They didn’t come all this way to just sit and stare at us from a thousand feet away. They’re going to attack, the question is when and for what purpose. Do they to push us back, or do they want something else?”

“They have another force going south, I know I heard some of their people talking about it as I made my escape…” Brimstone said as a possibility occurred to him. “This isn’t necessarily the main attack force, maybe they’re trying to draw our reinforcements away from Ironford…”

Roland frowned, understandably concerned. They’d already received a reply from Minerva and August about reinforcements—Trajan’s old retinue and Marquis Herrenia’s personal army would be on their way to reinforce them while a smaller unit would head south to assess the strength of the flanking unit and, if possible, to slow them down. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to scout out positions, so they were acting under the assumption that the forty-thousand-plus army on the doorstep of the Eastern Territories was the main threat.

The main force was usually the bigger one, and the flanking unit couldn’t be bigger than the one in front of them, could it…?

As Roland’s mind considered the possibility, his blood began to run cold. The 3rd Legion would arrive to reinforce them in a few days, while Minerva would be there in a matter of hours. The 7th Legion would be coming up from the south and likely encounter the southerly force loyal to Octavius. Most of the other eastern Legions were further to the east, largely guarding the border crossing points or other population centers deeper in the territories, and it would take a week or more for them to mobilize at their fastest—and that was assuming they would come to August’s aid. The fastest Legions that could reach their position apart from the 3rd and the 7th were the three Legions at the Bull’s Horns, but Constantine and the rest of the knights and Legions at the Horns were at least three weeks away from Ironford under the best of circumstances, probably more in this case.

Roland could tell that the same distressing possibilities had wormed their way into not only Brimstone’s head but into the minds of their subordinates, as they continued to quietly discuss their tactical situation. Slowly, the two Paladins glanced at each other, neither man looking particularly happy about their circumstances.

“We should send word back to Ironford about these concerns, let Minerva handle them, she’ll deal with any flanking forces,” Brimstone murmured. “We have two Legions and an unknown number of additional knights in front of us, we can’t simply turn and run as we did at the capitol island and the Naga River. We have to hold them here and keep them out of the Eastern Territories. We cannot tuck and run again.”

“But—” Roland began to protest, but Brimstone silence him with a fiery glare.

“Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it,” he growled. “We were caught with our pants down. Octavius has had his people assembled and ready for war for weeks, now. We knew that we were going to be floundering for a while, we just have to find our footing. Hold them for three weeks, give our eastern Legions enough time to assemble and for the eastern Lords to rally to Prince August. We just need to give them time.”

Roland’s eyes turned back out to the plain and to the forces there that continued to muster. They were so numerous and organized and in such a good position—across a flat, unbroken plain—that his and Brimstone’s people couldn’t even risk sallying out from their own fortifications to harass them without cataclysmic risk.

‘I hope we can buy them enough time…’ the younger Paladin fatalistically thought. At the very least, they had a good position in the pass. Whoever would be sent to the south to face off against the flanking force likely wouldn’t be so lucky.