Latio’s finger remained frozen, pointed into the swirling grey void. Both Ser Cleo and his nephew followed the line of his hand, their breath hitching in unison to what they beheld.

At first, there was nothing but the shifting veil of the mist. Then, a shape began to congeal, a ghost formed from the damp air.

As the figure drew closer, the whispers among the stranded knights died out, replaced by a hollow realization.

He was not one of theirs.

The stranger sat atop a stallion of such bone-white purity that it seemed even paler than the fog. The rider was a statue of iron and shadow, but it was only when a stray breeze thinned the mist that Latio’s heart truly turned to ice. Across the rider’s shoulders lay a heavy pelt, the signature of the elite, the killers who flanked the Peasant Prince.

Rumored by more than one to be his favorite.

The figure seemed to sense the terror radiating from them. He didn’t charge. He didn’t draw steel. Instead, he slowly raised a hand, a single finger thrusting toward the leaden cracks in the sky.

When he spoke, his voice was a rasping, bored drawl that nonetheless cut through the roar of the Zauern like a serrated blade against wood.

The call that had birthed a thousand nightmares at Aracina, the cry that had heralded the end of the old order, now reached their ears.

Simple in their words, ignoble in their intent.

"A fox," the rider called out, his tone almost conversational, as if he were merely spotting a bird in a bush. "A fox! There is a fox in the mist!"

Then he reached down and lifted a white war-horn to his lips. He took a breath, and the most pivotal sound Latio had ever heard in his twenty-one years of life tore through the open air.

AOOOOOOOOO.

As the echo died, the mist didn’t lift, though it seemed to retreat in fear, as from the grey curtains emerged the riders.

These weren’t the starving peasants or the desperate bandits they had thought to see.

These were the elite, the ravenous core of the Fox’s cavalry. Slayer of princes, heralds of cruelty.

They sat their horses in a perfect, terrifying line, two hundred Hounds of War staring down at the eighty shivering, stranded men. It was only then, as the first of the Hounds began to trot forward, that the men of the vanguard finally remembered how to pray.

Noros went stone-still.

Latio’s hands betrayed him, trembling at his sides as if his bones had turned to liquid.

It wasn’t possible.It just wasn’t....

The Hounds were the Fox’s light cavalry, his most lethal tool for the guerrilla warfare he played in the shadows. They should have been pinned to the Bastion, or at the very least, harrying the supply lines of the main host. How could they have covered such a distance? How could they have moved unseen through the heart of Oizen?What of their supply?Of the dust they should have raised as they rode? And how, with twelve thousand League swords at his throat, had the Fox found the courage and mettle to spare such a force?

Ser Cleo’s voice, thick with a rare, hollow awe, mouthed the answer to the question Latio couldn’t voice.

"They were waiting for us."

It wasn’t a pursuit. It was a trap they had laid.

AOOOOOOOOO.

The horn ripped through the damp air again, closer now, vibrating in the iron of their breastplates.

"To the Prince’s son ! Stay with the heir!" Cleo roared, his veteran instincts finally slamming into gear. He shoved twenty of the mounted guards toward Latio, forming a ring of steel around the boy, before turning to the eighty stranded troops. Most were on foot, their boots sinking into the river-mud, their faces a mask of pure, unadulterated terror as they beheld the enemy line.

"Square formation!" Cleo’s voice rose above the fog, a seasoned commander trying to build a wall out of broken men. "Mounts to the rear! Footmen to the front! Shields up and spears forward! Don’t let a gap show!"

Across the field, the line of Hounds began to move, a slow, rhythmic trot that felt like a heartbeat.

"They carry javelins!" Cleo warned, his sword flashing as he directed the placement of the shields. "They’ll pelt us first to break the line. Overlap your boards! Cover the man to your left! Stand your ground, and once their quivers are empty, they’re nothing but light riders. Our heavy knights will break them then!"

Even as he spoke, the lie tasted like copper.

"Men, if you break, you die!" Cleo’s shout grew more desperate. "You cannot outrun a horse. You’ll be run down before you take twelve steps. Unless you fancy a swim in that cold grave behind you, you stand! Victory is the only salvation the Five have left for you today!"

AOOOOOO. Thum. Thum. Thum.

The trot accelerated into a canter, the sound of eight hundred hooves beating a funeral drum on the sodden earth. They still weren’t charging, not yet, and still their presence became like that of giants.

"Hold! Resist the assault!" Cleo’s voice was a pitiful scream now.The three horses on his breast bursting as if wanting to escape. "When the charge hits, trust the knights to do their work! The Heir of Kakunia is watching! Show him your grit! Show him why you wear the Bull!"

Meanwhile said heir’s mouth was bone-dry.

He tasted the coarse roof of his mouth with a leaden tongue. He waited for the answering roar of his men, the defiant shout that usually followed a commander’s speech.

Silence was all that came.

No one cheered. No one roared. The only sound was the rushing Zauern and the terrifying, rhythmic approach of the Hounds. To Latio’s right, a veteran man-at-arms began to tremble so violently his scale-mail rattled like dry leaves on a windy night. Somewhere in the front rank, a spear-tip clattered against a shield rim.

It was apparent the soldiers didn’t believe the speech. They didn’t believe in the knights. They didn’t even believe in the Prince anymore. They were just eighty men waiting for the mist to turn red.

The silence was shattered not by a human cry, but by the terrified, high-pitched neighing of the horses in the rear, that somehow felt the same terror of their masters.

The Hounds of Yarzat responded to that with a precision that was as beautiful as it was lethal. Their unified line suddendly dissolved and reformed in a heartbeat, a choreographed dance that awed Latio even on the opposite side.

Before the Kakunian defenders could even steady their breathing, the enemy had reorganized into five fast-riding wedges, thunderous and dark, carving through the road like a blade through soft cheese.

Upon the middle of those five wedges a banner flapped by the thunder of the wind, was the head of a wolf howling to the moon.

The mist was powerless now. It fled before the sheer kinetic force of the advance

Their howls and cheers became demons’ laughter to the men.

Through all of that, Latio’s mind raced, frantically clawing through the papers he had poured over in the safety of his father’s library.

All new subjects that he held no doubt would be studied when their time was long gone.

He had studied the disciplined maneuvers of the Fox’s Legions, though notes that had been booked by those who had witnessed them , the infantry blocks and the calculated pincer movements. But the Hounds were a different breed. They were the Fox’s fluid shadow, famous for a flexibility that allowed them to move like water, crashing where they were needed, flowing around where they were resisted.

Almost nothing was really known of them, except that they half as cruel as a demon, and twice as mad.

He tried to find a counter, a historical precedent, a spark of brilliance in his knowledge that could save them.

Manor breakhorse had many times used steel caltrops and firm lines of spearment and bowmen to disrupt the light riders of the Malrai, the old lords of the east, back when the Red sported his ambitions for what stood beyond the Fingers.

Unfortunate enough they had neither of the three....

It was a useless endeavor, he knew that by then.

The most left and right wedges meanwhile suddenly veered away from the main group, banking in wide, sweeping arcs, like the warm embrace of a lover.

Latio realised by then it was one thing to read a chronicler’s account of a flanking maneuver while sitting by a warm hearth; it was an entirely different thing to be the target of it. On paper, it was a geometric exercise. Here, in the mud, it was the sight of a thousand-pound beast and a screaming rider closing the exit to your life.

The wedges on the flanks didn’t slow. They rode with a reckless, terrifying speed, their javelins held high, the iron tips glinting with a dull light that somehow managed to permeate through all that mist.

"There!There!They’re coming around!" someone screamed from the rear. "They’re meaning to get behind us!"

’’There is a river behind us they can’t!’’

’’Behind! Behind!’’

’’NO!They are flanking!’’

The Kakunian square, already brittle, began to buckle outward as men turned their heads in a panic, trying to face a threat that was now everywhere at once.

But the terror that seeped in Laetio’s heart was not about the footmen’s reaction as that as much of the mounted knights.

Ser Cleo had noticed it too, Latio saw it in his face when the old knight turned with a horrified expression.

He should have known of that, Latio should have been aware of it. Danger gave way to fear, fear gave ground to terror, and terror gave way for foolishness.

But it was exactly in that foolishness, that all the cleverness of his enemy became very clear.

They had managed to daunt the enemy even before the first javelin was thrown into the air, and now the very force that Ser Cleo had hoped to use at the end, was wasted at the very start of combat, not with a javelin, not with a horn, but the single sound of a horse trotting on that field.