Day the Eighth of the Ninth Moon, Year Two Thousand Eight and Ten
Having routed the Beavermen of the far west, the victorious armies of Columbus, still as yet commanded by Lord Ryan of Day (in absence of the still-exiled Lord Protector) turned their attention to the east, lifting their visors that they might see cresting over the foothills the scarlet banners and pennants of a great host of brigands. This host, the so-called Scarlet Knights of Rutgers of the realm on the banks of the Piscataway River, did march upon Columbus with intents sinister. Bearing the memories of past defeats at the hands of Lord Meyer and his bannermen, the men of Rutgers did tip their chins sunward and did lift their shields in a most unseemly manner, that young ladies and children espying from the battlements might see inscribed upon them the lewd proofs of Saracen mathematics and the most rude sayings from the great sage Plato's Republic.
Enraged by this foul display of erudition and poofery, Lord Day did rally his troops at the gates and did pronounce bounty for the lurid shields and any appendages that might be severed along with them. There arose a great cheer, and the men of Columbus, led in the field once more by the young Sir Haskins, rode to meet their foes.
The men of Rutgers were ill-prepared for such a bout, as well acquainted with the craft of war as a cheesemaker is to a wine press. Against the hard, tempered elven-forged steel of the knights of Columbus, the men of Rutgers armed themselves with lances and swords of stale bread-make, that is to say stale loaves of bread: hard and painful when struck 'gainst soft flesh, but weak and brittle against the hauberks, shield, and gambions of the Columbus host. Twas a rainy day in Columbus also, and as the rain fell in pale imitation of the Great Biblical Deluge, the wheaten weapons of the Rutgers men--along with their will to fight--did become limp and doughy.
Sir Chase and Sir Bosa did once more run rampant upon their overmatched foes, eating any sword that strayed in their path and laying low with mighty warhammers scores of lesser men. Sir Haskins cut a swath through the men of Rutgers, capturing the brigand general Ash of Chrisbridge and parading him in fetters for all to see.
Though quickly bested in the field, the men of Rutgers did have but one sordid gambit left: an army of foul fowl. These chicken soldiers were the most unruly, ill-tempered, sharp-taloned, loud-beaked birds to have ever trod the soft untilled banks of Piscataway. Many stood as high as a man's knee, and in their beady, reptilian eyes the men of Columbus did perceive a million presentiments of mayhem and otherwise unwholesome conduct. These chickens were denuded of feather and clad instead in armor of scale, the scales forged from the hardest and most stale of bread crusts as rejected by the prisoners of a hundred dungeons. Charge the men of Columbus they did, fifteen rows deep, their infernal clucking taking the heart even from so gallant a man as Sir Martell the Even Younger than Chase Who Was Even Younger than Bosa the Younger.
"Hark, I fear they will unmake us!" the brave young knight cried.
But Lord Urban's Master of the Rather-Dimly-Understood-Arts-of-Science, Greggorius Schianus, was well-prepared for such an assault, and did command the boiling vats of oil to be upended from the battlements. In searing rivers of gold the oil poured over the battlefield, whelming the chicken horde and burning them alive in their suits of armor. The sound of their death-throes was sickening, but the aroma of crispy, crispy chicken flesh sealed in a crust of bread did restore the weakened appetites of Columbus, and in a riot of hunger the Columbus host fell upon their slain foe, eating the delicious spoils of war as the men of Rutgers, beaten and very hungry, did mind to their heels and beat across the foothills to fight another day.
Fattened and rejoicing, Lord Ryan of Day and his bannermen could ill-afford to tarry long, for they knew a much sterner test awaited them to the west, where the Frog-Men of Te-Xas were preparing for war most terrible.
