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<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">==== ALESSANDRO GALLIOTA =====</span></span>
You've sent quite a few men to their deaths these past few months. You know it to be the natural matter of war, and you know these men to have chosen this path when they surrendered their lives unto your service. Yet to let these men who had fought so valiantly against the inhuman strength of the giant, to let these men die out of fear for a risk...? No! By the splendour, you shall not. You shall take the risks, and if the price is to be your own safety, you shall pay it happily. You order your men to open up a narrow pathway through which the running halberdiers may move.
The sight of safety, of course, drives the fleeing men a burst of hope, picking up their pace to as fast as is humanly possible for them. The more desperate amongst them even go so far as to abandon their weapons entirely, dropping it so as to decrease their weight and gain even the smallest burst of speed. In the meanwhile, the Cavalieri continue to gain on them, closing the gap between. You grip your sword tightly, as if expecting the worst. Your retinue are already positioned in front of you. You had hoped the muskets would be thinning out their numbers, but from the angle at which they stand, only the northernmost soldiers are able to let off a pitiful burst of fire.
The final moments as the men charge are harrowing ones. The halberdiers, arriving at last, almost push the other over to enter the narrow gap, desperately clawing their way into the formation as the beating of hooves grows ever closer. When the last of the lot makes his way past the pikes, you almost immediately yell at them to close ranks, but it is too late. Thundering ahead, a single solitary knight bursts through the wall as they attempt to close it, striking the pikemen like an arrow through a deer. That lone knight is all it takes - the pikemen he fells with the impact of his great horse create a gap where more knights thunder through, at which point the situation repeats. Almost immediately, many of the knights are struck by a jab of the pike, falling to the ground where they are then quickly finished off by the closest man. Many more aim their charge poorly and impale themselves on the spearheads, their might armor rendered null by the velocity at which they had thrown themselves.
