The sun was setting in streaks of yellow and pink in the west when the Khanish Jik’ar’es crested a red dune. Below them in a section of the auburn sand hard packed by centuries of travel, was a slow trundling cohort of an Imperial Legion. Their brass lamellar armor was caked with a red, dusty tint whilst they pulled several wagons of provisions.
There was a brisk short call from a the cavalry scout's horn and the Legionnaires dropped their current tasks, starting to draw weapons. A small detachment of scout cavalry rushed to get in a counter position in the plane below. Another two note call from the Signifier spurred the infantry to start forming a tightly packed, multi-row formation. Their long brass halberds beginning to form a deadly double layer facing the enemy cavalry, a maneuver the Jik’ar’es commander was all too familiar with.
However the commander, garbed in red leather that belied his station, answered with a high pitched horn call of their own. They would not give the scrambling Legionnaires time to brace. In a sudden burst of movement, the great Jik’ars lunged forward, the cresting of the dune adding to the crushing momentum of the great cavalry lizards. The Jik’ars glided over the sand the way a falcon dives to catch prey. To the Legionnaires it seemed as though a wave of leather clad lizard and man rushed towards them over a red sand sea.
Even in the time of the before the Unification there had been old folk tales spoken even in the fledgling Empire, that spoke of the infamous Jik’ar cavalry of the red sands.
So it seemed then to the Legionnaires that the Jik’ar’es somehow doubled in number. The plumes of sand disturbed by the Jik'ars charge coiled upward and formed into the ghastly spirits of great riders of old.
Then there was a vicious crash. The roar of battle cry’s and the softer slush of halberds rending flesh. An instant later the yells of men being trampled by lizards and gored on spears joined the cacophony. The melee was brief and brutal, short heavy spears served the Jik'ar'es well in piercing the bronze lamellar of the Imperial Legionnaires. Their lizard mounts crushing and rending men in two with their strong reptile maws. The sand was dampened an even darker red with the blood of the fallen.
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While the braced Imperial formation was a strong one, it was akin to a weak damn buckling under the pressure of a lake. The Jik’ar’es cavalry rent all eight rows of the hastily arrayed bronze cohort before them. There had been a small detachment of scout horse cavalry on the left flank, included with the cohort to blunt Jik’ar’es skirmishers. However, as the formation buckled and the Legionnaires panicked, all they saw were the crooked corpses of horses coated with red sand.
Witnessing the cohort beginning to break, the Imperial Primus, a young officer of darker complexion, ordered the Signifier to sound the horn for general retreat. With his Secundus by his side, gathering what fleeing Legionnaires they could, the Primus turned and galloped away from the sandy plain. He would later never speak of the slaughter he witnessed that day, save of how Khan was a cursed land.
The Primus, named Lisaron, would recall in his old age that it was the only time he had ever seen Legionnaires with fear in their faces as they looked back for commands. Whenever someone would bring up the famed cavalry of Khan, he would vehemently swear all the stories were true. That the Jik’ar’es fight with the red phantoms of the desert. That the forgotten lizard riders of old rise up from beyond. That they decimated near the entirety of the men under his first command.
Most of the common folk dismissed it as superstitious tales of an old veteran mired in shame. Yet the Legionnaires to this day still grumble about Khan.
Thus a saying quickly spread amongst all the Hosts of the early Empire.
“When in Khan, even the desert fights against you.”
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Period: Wed'alq Dinealuk 405 (405 years After the First City Dine)