The drums announced the menacing presence of the enemy close at hand. The drums grew louder and louder until they reached a fever pitchness of intensity. It was a performance of sound meant to instill fear in the hearts of my warriors. I saw the enemy for the first time as they rounded a bend further down the pass.
Their column was as wide as the pass and it bristled with the shiny teeth of war, even as the dull finishes of their shields and armor seemed to drag down what little light there was on this overcast day. I could see that they were surprised to find soldiers in massed file waiting for them, before the massive ancestral wall of this land they were set to invade.
I stood at the head of five thousand picked warriors. The wall's central fortifications lay behind us. We were flanked on either side by separate contingents of fifteen thousand warriors each. They too were handpicked for this battle before the great wall of Kingdom Pass.
The enemy columns spilled into the wide expanse of ground before the great wall. I could see hurried consultations occurring among their field commanders, which showed their evident surprise at our unlikely and unexpected appearance before our great wall. Their drums had fallen silent in the sudden confusion that our presence outside of the wall had elicited within their chain of command.
I didn't let them discuss it any further, but instead I lifted my shield high and within seconds countless trumpets blew as one in a direct hard challenge that buried whatever perceived threat the sound of the drums of the enemy had tried to drum up earlier within our hearts. As one we started to move forward stamping our feet heavier than necessary for the effect of the sound of a moving army committed to the action before them, even arrogantly so. Both flanking columns of fifteen thousand warriors each followed our central group of five thousand only they stayed close to the sides of the pass and kept slightly behind in pace from our central column of warriors.
The blaring of the horns ceased and all that pervaded the stillness of the peace that followed was the sound of our marching. My group of warriors slowly mounted a slight promontory rise in the relatively flat terrain, which had been created by sediment buildup from the two great rivers that used to flow through the pass. We stopped as one in complete unison across all three companies of warriors. In unison shields were slammed into the ground, even as spears were poked out through narrow gaps in the shields in the direction of the enemy. As one we roared out a military grunt of aggression as old to mankind and the history of fighting as two buck deer slamming their heads together in provoked aggression of purpose.