The cry of a horse echoed throughout the surrounding area, followed by that of its rider, who had no time to react.
His rider saw the steel coming. He saw it embed itself in his left eye. He felt the crunch of his eyeball bursting, an explosive, cold sensation inside his skull, before the real pain, a beat of white fire, blinded him completely.
The spear pierced the fatty, soft tissue of the brain. It emerged on the other side as a metal-and-wood skewer coated in a viscous mixture of black blood and brain matter.
The traps destroyed the initial charge. The spears of the Hall family soldiers emerged from the crops like hidden fangs.
They pierced bellies, burst bladders full of warm urine, and punctured lungs that exhaled their last breath in a hiss of pulverized blood.
The air was filled with the smell of iron, excrement, and exposed entrails.
