Limgrave Night's Cavalry

Описание: The night pressed down like a mailed fist.

Fog smeared the Limgrave plain, thick and low, stinking of rot and cold earth. The moon was a pale scar in the sky, its light barely enough to catch on steel. Out of that choking gray came the beat of hooves—heavy, measured, pitiless—each impact jarring the ground like a hammer on a coffin lid.

The Night’s Cavalry emerged.

Horse and rider were drowned in black, armor dead and lightless, as if forged in a grave. The helm’s plume streamed stiffly, and the halberd rode low in the rider’s grip, its blade long and cruel, made for reaping men from the saddle. The warhorse snorted, iron shoes biting stone, a beast bred for trampling bodies into mud.

Conan of Cimmeria waited in the road.

No helm. No shield. Only a scar-latticed chest bared to the cold and a broadsword in each hand. The blades were heavy, ugly things, not made for ceremony but for splitting skulls and cleaving sinew. His black hair fell into his eyes, and his mouth twisted into a hard grin that held no humor—only appetite. He had faced worse odds in darker lands and lived.

They sized one another up without a word.

The Cavalry lowered the halberd. The horse gathered itself.

Conan shifted his stance, boots grinding in gravel, arms loose, ready. He did not flinch at the oncoming bulk of horse and iron. His pulse drummed, his breath came slow, and his world narrowed to the kill-space between him and the charging wraith.

The spurs bit. The horse lunged.

Steel screamed as Conan stepped forward into the rush, blades flashing, daring the night to take him.