Quoted By:
The Famiglia by now had reached the road, the outskirts of the camp. The furthest of their formation continued on forward, their targets within sight. Your Rodeleros, your poor countrymen and mercenaries of the sword and buckler, they had not been fast enough. They had attempted to make it to the trees, as fast as they could, but as fast as they were, the Cavalieri were faster. You were unable to do anything but watch as the company of Knights, lances drawn, descended upon them like a swarm of locusts upon a field. There was no fight, no resistance - they simply rode through the men, running them through with such strength they did not so much as have to stop. In mere moments they had already passed, leaving but a field of broken corpses.
They continued to ride on past in a show of might, as though the men they had slain were but bugs in the face of their martial power. But suddenly - from within the corpses of the giants strewn out not much further, hundreds of men, armed with arquebuses, rose from from their cover, and unleashed an volley at the Knights in closest range. Whatever advantages of their armor - whatever weakness of the arquebus - at such distance, it mattered not. Knight after knight was thrown from their saddles, brought down by bullets. Wounded horses fell, tripping those before them much as they had before.
Indeed, it would seen that one of your captains - one of the leaders of the <span class="mu-i">volunteers who had chosen to join you</span> chose, rather than to bolt to the threes, to take refuge in the bodies of the giants. You thought of congratulating the man if he lived - but as if to remind you of the grim reality, you heard a distinctive whizzing yet again...before but a dozen meters before you, great arrows fell from the sky upon your pikemen, upon your wagons, crushing and impaling the men underneath. How could you have forgotten? The Himmerian Bowmen lived yet still, and they held no difficulties firing from the other side of the river. An errant movement of the hand on their part, and you could have met the fate of these men. Your immediate thought was to deal with them - to have your men move out to deal with those bothersome giants...but how? <span class="mu-i">Because you had chosen to circle yourself off</span>, your line of messaging was broken. <span class="mu-s">You could not relay orders to any man not within earshot of you.</span> Your sole hope was that the men had seen it, seen the arrows, and their captains decided to pursue the giants so.
