A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1017 - General Karstly’s Plan - Part 3

1017: General Karstly’s Plan – Part 3

1017: General Karstly’s Plan – Part 3

“I did not fall from the top,” Oliver replied.

There was no boasting in his words.

If anything, he seemed dissatisfied.

It seemed to take a great effort for him not to allow his bitterness to distort his voice.

Still, Lombard saw through it.

“You’re angry,” he noted.

“The General was more than you had expected him to be?”

Oliver said nothing.

“Do not dwell on it.

Not yet.

These are matters that ought to be discussed when there is some measure of peace.

And though you are not content with it, victory is well within our sights.

General Karstly has secured it, off all our backs.”

Indeed, that seemed to be the case.

Karstly was a force at the front of his men.

He couldn’t be stopped.

Formations that did not change couldn’t dull his charge.

It was only Khan’s careful manoeuvring that had managed to keep him in check, but now no orders came from Khan’s high tower.

There was only silence and ruin.

The Blackthorns under Colonel Gordry met with him soon enough.

With the supply wagons behind them, they burst through the side of the left-hand formation, falling straight into the road that Karstly had carved through the men.

With a delicate shifting, the two forces were reunited once more.

The two sets of men became one, with Gordry joining Karstly towards the front, and the rest of the Blackthorn men falling in behind, as the wagons were once more guided towards the centre of the gathering of men, kept safe, even from the continuous rain of arrows.

“We’re breaking through, Colonel Gordry,” Karstly announced.

“We could finish them off here and now, with respect, General,” Gordry said.

He’d seen Karstly’s victory from afar, and still hardly knew how he’d managed to make it happen.

“You’ve snatched us a great victory already, with the likes of General Khan’s head.

Lord Blackwell will surely be celebrating the news.”

“Ah, but he is not dead,” Karstly said.

He didn’t sound too disappointed by that fact.

He announced it as it as only natural.

“Not… dead?” Gordry said slowly.

“How can you be so sure?

A fall from that height, the very top of that tower, that would be enough to kill anyone.”

“He is not dead,” Karstly replied with iron certainty.

“If he was dead, I would know.

He is merely incapacitated.

Another handful of minutes, and he will manage to restore the order of his men.

Do not get greedy, Colonel.

Greed is a rotten thing.”

So the General said, but it was left for the Colonel to chew on those words.

He looked back on the fallen tower, and the ruins of the wood.

“Who could survive that is what you’re thinking,” Karstly said, as he slashed a man across the middle with his elegant swordwork.

“Captain Patrick and Lady Blackthorn did.

Granted, they did not fall from the top, but more halfway.

Still, they survived all the same.”

It was a statement that made Gordry want to ask how the General possibly knew, but as he looked back towards the rear himself, Gordry thought he could confirm it.

The mere fact that the Patrick forces were advancing as they had confirmed the life of their Captain.

“That boy…” he muttered.

“Ah, but he’s a young man now,” Karstly corrected.

“He’s a spark that will burn the whole Kingdom down if he’s ever allowed the chance to mature into a flame.

I am sure he is quite dissatisfied with the result today – he was after a General’s head, after all.

But I think you and I can not fail to recognize the influence that a mere Captain has had on this battle.”

Gordry was forced to grunt in acknowledgement.

He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t deny it.

The Patrick forces and their leader were reckless.

They brought chaos and disorder, and Karstly had expertly made use of it all, to secure what he had.

“AND WE’RE THROUGH!” Karstly said, raising his voice so that his whole army could hear, just as he broke through the last line of men, his sword slicing across the man’s neck, and his horse barrelling past.

The men’s cheers came like thunder.

“””URRAHHHH!””” They cried, they advanced, continuing with even more passion than they had before.

The Verna men did not stand a chance.

Even if Khan had recovered there and then and given his orders, they could not have matched the overwhelming might of men so high in morale.

Their energy seemed limitless, as did their achievements.

Behind General Karstly, hundreds and hundreds followed along, finally breaking through the enemy encirclement, greeted by the endless length of the mountainous passageway ahead of them.

They were cheers that even the Patrick men joined in.

They’d seen survival, and they’d played a major part in it.

Even the Yorick men began to shout their cries of relief, as the exit to the enemy’s formation came into sight.

Soon enough, the entire army had freed itself, and the reformation of its ranks began, as it pulled back out of the long snaking line that it had developed, and went back towards the flat ranks that were so typical of them.

“Well then, Khan,” General Karstly said.

“I wonder what you think of that?”

From the wreckage of the tower, a mighty man dragged himself, his bruised body stiff, and his flesh tender.

“G…General!” A gold-armoured man said, saluting him.

He seemed as stunned by the fact that General Khan still lived as the Stormfront soldiers would have been.

“They’ve escaped,” General Khan noted.

“…What do we do?” Came Yadish’s meek voice.

Even he had managed to survive the fall, thanks to General Khan’s protection, though he doubted he would ever recover from the embarrassment of it.

To have been held like a child by the very General he ought to have been giving his life to protect.

“This is still our victory, is it not, General?

You predicted their route.

You knew they would come here, and you knew what their target would be.

The five thousand troops that you have stationed in the Lonely Mountain will be able to hold.”

“…They will not,” Khan said.

“I have underestimated our enemy, Yadish.

That man is young, that General Karstly.

I did not think he would provide the opposition that he did.

General Phalem will not be able to contain him, not with a mere five thousand.”