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// 1 Normandy today, Equestria tomorrow. 
// Story: The War in Equestria. 
// by BluesyTreble 
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  The English men-at-arms practiced in the camp, their various melee weapons clanging and whistling with each swipe and swing the steel-clad men gave. Terence of The Dale, son of a rich lord back in England, brought his sword down onto the hung log, the newly-sharpened broad blade sinking into the damp wood. Perspiration slid down his helmeted face. Sir Geoffrey, his company's liege lord had insisted they practice in full plate armor. Terence gave the oak log a frustrated savage hack, driving the sword nearly halfway through the wood. At the age of eighteen, Terence had been sent to Harfleur as part of "England's greatest army" and in just a month half of this "undoubtedly" superior 12,000 men strong army had been whittled to a mere eight thousand men by dysentery and starvation. 

Terence was pissed. He had come to fight the French on French soil, not fight logs of oak and birch! He wanted battle, to ransom the French nobles which he heard most of them had twice or even thrice the great fortune his father possessed. He desperately wanted battle. He yearned for it. And prayed for it.

And come battle did, for Henry had decided to assault the stubborn port the very next day.

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A rather excited and nervous Ralf Hunt uncased his long yew bow and started to string it. The powerful warbow had sent wickedly sharpened broadheads into hinds and elks. Now this length of stick and string would send bodkins raining upon Frenchmen clad in plates of shining steel. He finished stringing it, bringing the bow up to admire its dull gleam. The longbow of yew was a deadly weapon. The dark heartwood of the yew tree resisted compressions while the pale surrounding sapwood resisted stretching. This made yew a beautiful yet powerful weapon that sunk bodkins nearly one-third up their shafts into steel plate at two hundred yards and at a hundred yards, there was no hope of ever surviving an arrow this close. Ralf looked at his unit. He was an archer, easily recognizable by his enlarged arms and chest. the other archers all had similarly built upper bodies, which were gargantuan, almost grotesque. He turned back to their liege lord, Sir Slayton. The plate-armoured noble held his sword high in the air, waiting for the signal to strike. The French crossbowmen, sensing something was going to happen, leant over the walls and loosed bolts upon the gathered English army. More and more of the blue-clad men swarmed the walls, taking shots at the army. An English man-at-arms spluttered and gurgled on his blood, a bolt embedded in his throat. He fell to the ground, twitching. Sir Slayton, face stoic, now brought the sword down.

"Now, strike!"

Ralf pressed the whole weight of his body into the bow, right hand pulling the bodkin all the way past his ear. He locked his eyes on a clean-shaven crossbowman, adjusted his aim a little, and loosed. The bodkin whistled with the thousands of other bodkins in the sky, blacking out the skies in a cloud of steel headed death. He watched as his bodkin flitted through the night sky to puncture the chest of his target, the arrow punching through surcoat and hauberk like it was but leaves. He sped three more arrows at the crossbowmen before running after his unit, realising they were moving into the walls of Harfleur. A unit of sixty men-at-arms jostled and shoved to get into the breach the English-hired dutch guns had made. The men-at-arms shoved with their heavy bodies while the archers punched back at them, eager to engage the defenses. Ralf pushed and shoved and punched and kicked his way to the front, arriving in the city. Another English man-at-arms had also forced his way through. The steel-encased man smiled wearily and opened his mouth, about to speak before a blinding flash of lavender light, in a bloom larger than life exploded, enveloping the pair and whisking them off the face of the known world.