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Choking dust clouds, harassing raiders, maps turned upside down, requests for reinforcements going nowhere. At one point, seeking shelter from the peltering rain of javelins, four Legios in kick in the door to the admin building of the check-point and near murder poor Brennus, but it's rather well timed in the sense of it because most of the Chemhounds who can still stand are leaving the checkpoint out west, at speed, uphill, towards a distant harried, shrinking circle of heavy cavalry. The Faithful shocktroopers go back to singing, although one takes the time to adjust an overturned desk. It seems a small thing, in the chaos.
--
There are, fundamentally, down in the dirt, where the things are decided, too many horses and too many riders. The 13th Blue Rats get themselves turned half around. Sixteen heavies of the 21st form a double-spaced line across the central road and plant their feet, and while the mountains might break before their formations does, sixteen troops in a tight, little line does not stem the flow of horses. The Evascians make a roaring go of it, in the fields to the south of the checkpoint. Natural broken ground, irrigation ditches flood with new, different fluids, the fields fertilized by a sudden abundance of available compost material.
And one formation, impressive, chanting, roaring, cannot turn back twenty.
Perhaps its time for a fighting withdrawl? But there are horses north. There are raiders west. There are attackers south. There are, at this time, tangled among the 404th, raiders east. . .
But -- behind *that* dust-cloud kicked about by ravaging outriders?
!!
--
Regulus, heavy troops by now in a tight collapsed square around a waving banner, hears - of all things - above the noise and the whining complaints of the last two horses to brave trying to spear the sub-decani - the incongruent noise of a polite cough. He turns. Brief three point scan, sword ready, lungs heaving for more stamina to do yet more impossible things, and there are, of all things, a mildly bemused Pathfinder standing behind him, inside the tight little formation that demarcates what ground is Legion and what ground is where a outlander horse-warrior murders you for sport.
" You know, Sir, you're not exactly easy to find when you bury yourselves in half a thousand horses. Dispatch for you, Scholae Decius. "
Some instinct makes the courier duck. A flurry of dark whistling thrown weaponry clatter down among the troops, but the 21st have shifted sideways, easy lock-step. No wounded. The pathfinder rolls back to his feet. Throws a quick glance at the javelin that almost speared him. Hm.
" . . . So you'll be wanting those reinforcements, I take it? "
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