The battle at Ashford Junction was the battle where the king's ammunition ran out.
Not depleted. Not reduced. Ran out. The thundermaker batteries fired their last balls at the fourteenth hour of the engagement and the crews stood behind weapons that were now eight-ton monuments to the kingdom's former capability, weapons whose iron barrels gleamed with the dwarven craftsmanship that had made them and that the dwarves would never repair or replace because the grudge was the grudge and the Book of Grudges did not have an eraser.
The engagement had begun well. The king's army, reduced to sixteen thousand effective, had fortified the junction where three provincial roads converged, the defensive position chosen because the junction's geography created a natural funnel that compressed the barbarian advance into the frontage that the Threian force's reduced numbers could cover.
