◆◆◆

Jon Trollope was drowning in snow.

The bloodied white drifts clutched at him with frozen claws, dragging the Lancastrian knight deeper into their depths. His armoured limbs burned from the struggle, gauntleted hands grabbing frantically as the icy slush sought to entomb him alive.

Merciful Light, his mind cried, summoning his last reserves of strength to break free of the killing cold. Help me... The reek of death and excrement flooded through his visor, blinding him in the whiteout. Help me! Jon drew a ragged gasp of brisk air, emboldened, as he pushed upward. He thrashed and convulsed, choking on the vile sludge until finally — clear air.

Jon emerged retching and gasping from the grave.

The sounds were deafening inside his helmet, harsh pants mingling with the howling blizzard. His body shuddered violently, eyes stinging against the onslaught of flakes lashing at his face.

All around, the Yorkists' arrows shrieked through the white squall, punching holes that bloomed like roses across the Lancastrian ranks with meathook impacts. Mail hauberks and plate proved pitiful defences as men wailed, clutching at shafts protruding from sightless eyes and torn throats. Those who yet lived died fresh agonies as axes and hammers sheared away limbs and bone, leaving naught but ragged tissue in their wake.

    Jon dared not linger.

Through the pale gloom he spied his poleaxe's haft jutting from the crimson snow. He ran, the split ice thundering underfoot, and strained until at last the reassuring weight was gripped in his mailed fists. Relief bloomed briefly, only to curdle to ashes as swiftly as it came.

Metres afar, a fresh Yorkist cavalry charge bore down, hooves shredding the crystalized quagmire into a pink froth.

Jon stood firm in their path, chest heaving frigid clouds, poleaxe braced for the impact. The horsemen rode like wraiths, knights wreathed in boar badges astride nightmare beasts. Their howls interlaced with the storm's own roars as blades cleaved the swirling white chaos.

Escape was death.

Light have mercy... The leading destrier was almost upon him. He could make out the whites of the rider's eyes through his visor slit. Its hooves churned the glassy muck into sprays as it surged forward, jaws foaming. Jon waited until the last heartbeat of life... flinging himself aside in an explosion of scarlet snow.

The war-horse flashed past, mane and tail streaming wet and savage. Before the rider could react, Jon's poleaxe hammered out. The spiked head crushed the knight's exposed face in a ruin of erupting teeth and splintered bone that steamed in the weeping cold. Horse and rider crumpled together in a gruesome heap.

Jon arose slick with filth and gore, the poleaxe's haft clenched white-knuckled as his panted breaths smoked the chill air. Yet the mordant taste of victory proved fleeting.

More snarling boar badges emerged from the driving snows — a new Yorkist charge gathered like the crest of a storm. He readjusted himself, planting ice covered boots to meet this newest hell. As the first cavaliers thundered in, adrenaline surging over the din of rent flesh and tortured steel, Jon waited—

Something heavy slammed his back with brutal force.

He was thrown forward, chest plate cracking against the searing ground as the breath was driven from his lungs in a raw cloud. Dazed and gasping for life, he rolled over to find the horror of a riderless armoured destrier rearing above him, death made flesh. Iron-shod hooves pawed wildly, seeking purchase to crush the defiant spark still flickering in his breast. The beast's jaws seemed to split the fog itself — a yawning, ragged maw cavernous enough to sever his throat in one decisive chomp.

Jon twisted with everything he had remaining, hurling his body aside even as one hoof stomped — raking a trench across his helmet with a shriek. His poleaxe swept up in an intercepting arc. The hammer cracked against the overextended leg, severing skin and cartilage in a sickening crush. White splinters exploded outward. Screaming, the crazed beast collapsed sideways, its ruined weight cratering the bloody snow where Jon's head had been moments before.

He scrambled away from the thrashing, squealing beast, poleaxe cast aside and forgotten in desperation. Jon gulped frantic pants that smoked in the bitter air. His dented helmet was torn off, flinging ice in a glittering spray. He spat out a mouthful of viscous mud and caked snow, blinking against the onslaught as his gaze scoured the carnage in mindless need of any weapon — anything to counter the next onslaught soon to trample these killing grounds and grind his bones to dust. His searching hands finally closed around a discarded bastard sword, the hilt rasping against his frostbitten fingers as he ripped it free of the filth.

"LORD FAUCONBERG! ADVANCE THE BILL-MEN!"

Jon tightened his grip, a snarl twisting his bloodied features beneath the storm's billowing curtain. The order rippled outward in a rising chant: "ADVANCE! ADVANCE THE BILL-MEN! ADVANCE AND CLAIM THIS DAY!"

All across the wintry fields, King Henry's bill-men surged forward. Poleaxes, falchions, and war-hammers gripped tight in mailed hands.

Jon fell into the ranks, sword sheathed with innards as he locked his stare on the boar-crested tempest still daring to keep this battle turning. All around, war-cries raged against the blizzard. The Yorkist cavalry's momentum seemed unstoppable, the ground quaking beneath their advance. Until the first wedges of Henry's bill-men slammed into the charge head-on.

Men and horseflesh collapsed in an abattoir of severed limbs and shattered lances as the Lancastrian foot soldiers unleashed their pent frustration in a whirlwind of hacking steel.

Jon stood at the core, clearing a path around him with every swing. His battered armour seemed to groan from the relentless motions, but he was careless — pouring years of experience into each death-dealing arc.

Steel sheared through plate like parchment, unleashing crimson geysers to merge into the arctic lake underfoot. Half-corpses sprawled in ruin, skulls cracked open to leak grey matter, contorted jaws locked forever in silent screams of torment.  The tang of fractured bowels and spilled viscera twined with the coppery aroma of fresh blood to coat his throat like some unholy sacrament.

The fighting was endless.

Men from both sides fell in droves. Standards and surcoats whipped in the wind, ally and enemy nigh impossible to discern. A knight in Yorkist livery toppled backwards, his skull obliterated by a poleaxe strike that burst it like an overripe melon. Another took a grievous blow as a Lancastrian bastard sword punched through the links of his doublet in a meaty crunch, impaling his flesh. Nearby, two combatants grappled and pounded each other with mailed fists driven by addled fury until one sank a dagger deep between the other's shoulder plates. He savoured his meaningless victory mere heartbeats before a Yorkist mace crushed his faceplate into a ruined circlet of bone shards and bloody soil.

This is hell, Jon thought, his sword sweeping out to disembowel a Yorkist man-at-arms. And we are all its demons.

A halberd arced towards him, the deadly polearm raised high by another foe. Jon parried the overhead strike in a shower of sparked embers, their blades squealing together until he stepped past and swept his bastard sword around in a lethal arc. It bit deep, sheering fat and flesh from bone at the exposed neck junction as a plume of arterial blood burst forth to patter warmly against Jon's eyes. The grievous wound drowned the man's choked wails almost instantly.

He turned to face his next attacker, but took a jarring impact from a mace against his cuirass instead. The blow drove home as blunt trauma steered him back. A lance of agony tore through his side with each ragged gasp, ribs screaming under the battered steel. The mace whirled again, edges serrated to slice flesh — but this time met only the whistling air.

Gritting his teeth, Jon gathered his footing and raised his sword two-handed. The next mace strike he deflected with a parry. Pivoting inside his enemy's guard, he landed a pommel strike against the sallet. The Yorkistman staggered, and Jon seized the opening — digging his spike up through fauld and doublet in a gory thrust.

As he fell, another foe came from behind — a Yorkist sword-and-buckler fighter. His falchion whistled through the air, aiming for Jon's exposed neck. He twisted at the last moment, the razor edge delivering a deep gash across his dented cuirass with a screech.

They crashed together in a tangle of steel and tendon, the Yorkistman's weight driving Jon back into the crimson slurry. They groped for control of the falchion, gauntleted fists pounding against muscle and plate. Jon's mailed fingers scrabbled for purchase on the man's visor, trying in vain to pry it open.

A buckler hammered against Jon's cuirass, the impacts driving flecks of bone inward. He could taste the coppery tang of his own blood filling his mouth as broken shards sliced into his throat. Straining against waves of agony, Jon finally yanked the falchion free with a guttural roar and flung it aside. His mailed fist continued pommeling, slowly deforming the sallet into a ruined mask.

Throughout the grappling, Jon's searching hands finally closed around the shaft of a fallen poleaxe, its spike slick with gore. Bellowing a war cry, he brought the spiked head up under his opponent's fauld in an explosive wave of strength.

The Yorkistman's screams were drowned out by the din as the spike punched through the front of his cuirass, piercing the doublet below to erupt in a fountain of blood and shredded bowel from his back. Jon tore the weapon free in a spraying swerve, flinging gobbets of flesh across the chilled ground as the man's legs gave out and he collapsed in a heaving, babbling pile of loosened entrails.

Jon rose with a violent, bone-deep shudder, his body screaming in protest even as he ignored its final pleas for mercy. Ahead, through the churn of battle, a towering figure appeared — a Yorkist knight of immense stature, his snarling boar surcoat whipping like a banner in the teeth of the storm. His greatsword moved in an earth-shattering blur, demolishing any foolish enough to stray within its reach as it carved an inexorable path towards Jon amidst the sea of the slain.

There was no deflecting the Yorkistman's momentum.

Jon sought to meet him head on, planting his leadfoot as he swung the poleaxe in a looping uppercut from low-left guard. The weapons sparked like forge-lit embers, resonating in a deafening boom. For an endless heartbeat, the two arms of steel were at a standstill — fighting the force trying to tear them apart.

Then Jon's poleaxe twisted violently, shattering in a screech of pained metal.

The force whiplashed him backwards, ripping his soaked surcoat as he tried to roll with the impact. He crashed down back-first into the bloody slough, rattled brain struggling to track the horseman wheeling for another pass. His groping hands found only a fragmented sword hilt. Useless. The Yorkist knight levelled his lance as he spurred his destrier into the final charge.

Jon stared in horror, his body numb and waterlogged. He was too wearied to even raise the useless hilt, much less defend. No, he thought as time slowed to a still, not like this. But all he could offer was a final defiant glare. Silently awaiting this answer to all the bloodshed and butchery across these fields of winter carnage.

And it came.

The lance punched through the centre of his chest in an explosive burst of shattered plate and torn mail. White-hot agony boiled across his body as the tip emerged from his back in one brutal thrust. Yet still he remained upright, impaled by the sheer momentum until at last the heaving, snorting beast skidded to a halt in a spray of red mist. Its flanks heaved clouds of vapour as Jon stared back, mouth locked in a rictus of shock and searing pain.

All strength left his body in a torrent.

He crumpled backwards like a broken doll, sliding free from the lance and hitting the ground hard. His back arched for an eternal moment before slumping into the bloodied snow. Blurs edged at his vision, pierced only by the swirling white chaos above as bill-men and horsemen alike streamed past in blurred streaks of violence.

There was only the melancholic patter of snow, softly burying what remained. Tears from the heavens mourning a son's end amidst senseless slaughter.

Jon didn't feel the warhorse's final stomping hooves. Only the cold...