Knight-Paramount

Jasmine Fontaine, Knight-Paramount of Westria, wheeled Dauntless around to avoid a spear that would have cut under her mount’s armored side. She barely paid attention to the offending spearman falling to the ground with a choked cry as her warhorse’s kick sent him tumbling. She was focused more on the echoing sound of a horn in the distance, strident and urgent. A call to return, an attack. She had specifically left the rest of her unit with the Baroness in the case that parts of the ambushing force attempted to break away but the bandits had been fully focused on engaging her. The ambush she had disrupted had been a decoy to draw away defenders from Baroness Durand’s carriage.

A crossbow bolt hissed through the air as she stood fully in her stirrups and she let it glance uselessly off her pauldron, adding another scratch to her new armor. The road took a bend through the forest so she couldn’t see the carriage and her men but she could just make out the sounds of distant clashing. Dauntless suddenly jerked as a particularly foolish bandit grabbed the slack in the reins in some attempt to wrest control of her mount from her. Her clever warhorse bit the idiot and bodily lifted him briefly before tossing his head, sending the man flying. She swept her lance around to bash another of the bandits away and then spurred Dauntless forward.

“Stop her! Spears!” someone called out and a few men rushed to block her path but she was already on them. They very much underestimated Dauntless’s speed due to his heavy armor but that just meant he was an unstoppable avalanche.

“Out of my WAY!” Only one had the presence of mind to dive out of her path, the rest trampled mercilessly into the ground.

 And she was away, thundering down the road. In only minutes, the carriage was in sight and the situation was not in her men’s favor. Two of the cavaliers had been pulled from their horses and were fighting on foot, backs nearly against the carriage itself. The other cavalier, his young face a mask of panic, was frantically fending off bandits attempting to get hold of him. And the man she left in charge, a veteran Hussar, was being held at bay by a wall of spearmen. None of her men were down but it was only a matter of time if she didn’t break the attack.

She urged Dauntless on faster, the thunder of his hooves drawing the attention of everyone around the carriage. She could see the leader of the bandits recoil, looking desperately back toward the spears already fully occupied. He knew what was coming and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Mana flowed through her and Dauntless as echoes of a full cavalry charge began to form around her, the manifestation of a  Knight-Paramount’s Unstoppable Onslaught.

They tried to run, tried to jump out of the way, but the wake of her charge swept them all away. The full force of her charge slammed into the spear line, the dust from her phantom charge billowing forward. Jasmine spun Dauntless around and leveled her lance toward the bandit leader who was staring in horror at the ruined remnants of his forces.

“Surrender!” she commanded. “And your lives will be spared!” For the time being. Most bandits ended their careers with the noose.

Weapons clattered to the ground but it was only to allow the bandits to run away faster. She didn’t have to command her cavaliers to chase them down, with the two dismounted delayed only long enough to call their horses.

“Keep them safe, Paul, I didn’t finish off the other force,” she said to the Hussar as he came alongside her. “I’ll watch over the Baroness for now.”