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Of all matters in this battle, what mattered to you most now was to stop their cavalry - to create a line of defense from whence your muskets and arquebuses could fire upon them, and bring them down. You have no hope otherwise. You send out your pikemen to guard the ways south and west, across the roads and between them. Due to your lack of pikemen, however, your camp is left wide open, entirely unguarded. To that matter, you call the Banda Grisa, wounded as they may be, to protect the opening. You also have your warchest, the containers which carry the vast wealth you had brought in this journey, taken from the camp to be kept close to you, behind the wagons.
As your men rush about to their positions, you turn your heard. By now, the cloud of gunpowder smoke has dissipated enough that you are able to see the river...and the destruction left behind by your raising of the bridge. Debris lay scattered abount, half-sunk into the riverbed. You see corpses, some impaled on the rocks or stuck near the stone, some floating downstream in a grim march. So numerous were the dead, even before the bridge had been brought down, that the very area of the bridge has taken a red-colored tint, tendrils of blood continuing to move northwards towards the sea.
Shaking off these thoughts, you look southwards, towards your enemy. By now, the Famiglia is close enough that even you can recognize them - for how could you not, with such a sight? Hundreds upon hundreds of Cavalieri in gleaming armor, banners held high with the coats of the patrician families that compose their numbers. And their mounts - their mounts, taller than any horse you've ever seen, fierer than any horse you've ever seen, clad in armor more comparable to that which the Himmerians wore than anything that could pass for barding. Yet despite this armor; this weight; they are swift, swifter than even your own skirmishers, advancing towards you with ineluctable vigour. Had your cavalry been sent to fight them, to slow them down, you are not certain they would have not already perished by now.
