The king and his allies moved westward at the head of fifty thousand men knights in shining armor with their pennons streaming above their helmets, pikemen in steel caps and brigandines, crossbowmen in leather jerkins. They crossed the border, took a frontier castle and burned three mountain villages, and then, in the valley of the Valkia, ten miles west of the boundary line, they met the hosts of Conan, king of Aquilonia forty-five thousand knights, archers and men-at-arms, the flower of Aquilonian strength and chivalry.