The advance of the Royal Army was a grimly beautiful spectacle. They moved with the practiced discipline of a lifetime of war, their lines dressed, their shields overlapping. They were a single, crawling beast of steel and iron, designed to crush everything in its path. But they were a wounded beast, and they were walking into a cage.
The battle began with the sound of a lone hawk's cry, the signal from Kai. From the ridges on both flanks of the valley, a storm of arrows erupted. It was not a single volley, but a continuous, rolling barrage. The Ashen Rangers were not aiming for kills against the heavily armored legionaries; they were aiming for a different kind of wound. They targeted feet, legs, and shield arms, the small gaps in the royal armor. Their arrows, many now tipped with irritating poisons from desert plants, were designed to sow pain, to break the rhythm of the march, and to funnel the legion towards the center of the valley, directly onto our anvil.
General Kaelen ignored the harassment, urging his men forward. He needed to close with our main line. The legionaries lowered their heads, raised their great shields, and pushed through the arrow storm, a testament to their incredible discipline.
They crashed into our shield wall with the force of a tidal wave. The sound of steel on steel, of wood on iron, was a deafening roar. The Oakhaven Vanguard, five ranks deep, braced for the impact. The front rank went to their knees, their shields angled, their spears forming an unbreakable hedge. The ranks behind them pushed forward, adding their weight and their own spears to the line. It was a wall of flesh and iron, and it did not break. The Ironpeak warriors on the flanks, with their heavy axes, began a brutal, methodical work, hacking at the legionaries who tried to envelop their line. The anvil was holding.
Kaelen threw his reserve cohorts into the fray, trying to overwhelm our center with sheer mass. The battle in the valley floor became a monstrous, grinding scrum, a contest of pure endurance and brute force. The legion was stalled, pinned against our unyielding shield wall, taking casualties from the ceaseless rain of arrows from the flanks.
This was the moment. From my command post, I gave the final signal.
A deep, resonant horn blast echoed from the west. Borin and his Dragoons burst from their hidden canyon. They were not twenty anymore; our best Ironpeak warriors had been trained and mounted on the captured warhorses, forming a heavy cavalry unit of forty riders. They were a vision of righteous vengeance, clad in the very armor the kingdom had sent to subjugate us.
They did not charge the front of the legion. They swept around the southern edge of the battle and slammed into the enemy's completely exposed rear.
The charge of the Oakhaven Dragoons was the hammer blow that shattered the Royal Army. The impact was cataclysmic. The legion, its attention and energy entirely focused on the shield wall to its front, had no defense. The heavy lances of the Dragoons punched through armor and men alike. The warhorses, massive and terrifying, trampled those who were not impaled. The legion's formation, their greatest strength, instantly collapsed. They were no longer an army; they were a panicked mob, trapped between a wall of spears to their front and a wave of thunderous death from behind.
The battle turned into a rout, and then, a massacre.
In the center of the chaos, General Kaelen, seeing his army disintegrate around him, fought with the fury of a cornered lion. He gathered his personal guard and tried to punch a hole through our line. It was then that he met Borin, who had wheeled his Dragoons around for a second, devastating charge.
The one-eyed captain and the King's Hammer met in a clash that was seen by all. It was a brief, brutal duel. Kaelen was a master swordsman, but he was exhausted, his army was broken, and his spirit was defeated. Borin fought with the unshakeable strength of a man defending his home, his family, his very existence. He broke Kaelen's sword with a powerful downward strike of his own and, with a final, decisive thrust, the Oakhaven Blade ended the legendary career of the King's greatest general.
The death of Kaelen was the final signal. The remaining legionaries threw down their weapons and surrendered en masse. The battle was over. The Valley of the Anvil was littered with the dead and dying remnants of the greatest army the kingdom had ever fielded.
We had done it. We had faced the full, unrestrained fury of the kingdom, and we had utterly, decisively crushed it.
The system's notifications were a blinding, triumphant cascade in my mind, but I barely noticed them. I looked out over the valley, at my victorious, blood-soaked army, at the banners of Oakhaven, Ironpeak, and the Ashen tribe flying together over the field. We had not just won a battle. We had won our freedom. We had broken the King's Hammer. And in the silence that followed the slaughter, I knew that the world had changed forever. The Wastes Confederacy was no longer a rebellion. It was the undisputed power in the west, a new nation born in the crucible of an impossible war.