With Ragnar and Bjorn anchoring a pitifully thin line of defenders against an ocean of howling madness. Barely a hundred men of the Iron Guard stood with their Lord, bracing their blackened steel shields and leveling their ash spears against the crushing weight of two thousand enraged, cannibalistic berserkers. Since the devastating internal explosion of the Gyda had robbed them of their heavy naval support, the sheer arithmetic of the battlefield dictated a swift, brutal demise for the outmanned industrialists.
Seeing his Lord hopelessly outnumbered in the churning, icy mud below, Gyda did not allow the paralyzing grip of despair to cloud her fiercely analytical mind. Standing tall upon the precipice of the eastern ridge, the Master of the Ledgers commanded a reserve force of nearly a hundred and fifty fresh Grenadiers, their repeating crossbows fully loaded and their heavy iron powder-pots primed for ignition.
