A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1045 Impatient Warriors - Part 5

1045: Impatient Warriors – Part 5

1045: Impatient Warriors – Part 5

Amion did not reply.

He knew that as well as Jericho did.

He would have shouted it, if he’d been so sure what would come out of his mouth were words worth hearing.

The grasp of different men’s Commands aligned with their temperament, and Amion found he preferred to exercise a degree of practise in his Command speeches, before he spoke them properly.

He felt he lent them more dignity that way.

“CHANG!” He said, refining his earlier words in his head.

“THE WEIGHT OF YOUR PEN LENDS TO YOUR SWORD!

DO NOT BE OVERWHELMED!”

He’d read some of Chang’s poetry, and for such an accomplished warrior, he had a surprising amount of skill when it came to the poetic.

He specialized in poems on nature.

He seemed to find endless hours of fascination with whatever he saw inside the lush forests surrounding their temple.

There was the weight of knowing to Amion’s words.

Because he knew Chang as well as he did, his Command came like a pointed arrow.

He could feel the power of it, and he nodded with satisfaction at his own words.

It was not confidence.

It was an experience.

It was the right thing to be said there and then.

Chang’s bellow confirmed it to be so.

The bald-headed man raised up his lance, and he allowed the anger that he’d been suppressing to overwhelm him.

Now, he had something to buttress that anger against, allowing him to retain his calm, whilst collecting all the energy of that wrath.

That buttress was his master’s calling.

“FALL!” He shouted, putting all he had into his lance.

He directed it firmly at Firyr’s chest.

A stronger, faster, more precise strike than any he’d thrown throughout their engagement, animated by the force of Amion’s Command.

The thrust caught Firyr head-on, and he met it with the same guard that he’d been practising, giving it that same twist.

His eyes widened, however, as that well-honed move proved to be far too insufficient.

He was thrown off his feet by force of the strike, and blasted backwards.

His twist sent the point of the lance further off to the side than it would have been, but it did not stop it from piercing low into his side, just barely avoiding his stomach.

“M-missed,” he said again, coming to a skidding halt a short distance away.

“FIRYR!” Karesh called.

“Shut up, you goon,” Firyr said back, his attention drifting from the battle for the first time in a while.

“I don’t need yer stupid shouting distracting me.”

“Firyr…” Kaya noted quietly.

The man was as competitive as they came.

He’d seen that competitive spirit more times than he’d cared to, as Karesh endlessly challenged the man, and Firyr endlessly put the boy in his place.

That same light of competitiveness shone in his eyes now as he stared down his foe, despite the fast-flowing blood that ran down his side, through his torn chain mail.

As Kaya and Karesh’s eyes were pinned forward, Verdant looked back, ever so slightly.

Oliver caught the look.

“I know, Verdant, I know,” he said.

He breathed in a deep breath.

‘Command,’ he muttered, collecting all he knew on the matter.

To reach a man, and compel him towards greater heights.

He’d done that before, but only to the mildest degree.

Nothing could match what he’d managed to achieve when he was infected by Divinity, back in Solgrim, and his Command had come like a strike of thunder, and the men had been transformed into creatures that they were not.

But that divinity was not available to him.

His Command, Oliver knew, did not even match that which he’d seen of Talon, even when Talon had but a few hundred men.

“Your Command depends on me,” Ingolsol said.

His voice was halfway between a growl, and a purr.

He knew the temptation that came with that reaching of power, and he pushed Oliver towards it.

“Through my eyes, you see their hearts, do you not?”

Indeed, Oliver did.

He could see that glowing gold at their very centres, if he struggled to look.

He could see when fear came, and when hope was afflicted.

The more he knew a man, and the harder he strained his eyes, the better he could see.

But it was not a comfortable feeling, and so he shied away from it.

It felt invasive.

It was far too much in the realm of the Gods for his liking.

“Coward,” Ingolsol tutted. freeweɓnøvel.com

“You’ve done this before.

They all do.

Khan shrouded himself in it.

He was so finely in tune with his men, that their power became his.”

“Then why did Khan not speak his Command, and have his soldiers heighten their strength?” Oliver said.

He knew too little, he could feel it.

Why would a General like Khan not use something that seemed like such an overwhelming power.

“Oh, but he did,” Ingolsol said, tutting.

“He spread that reach over forty thousand.

Do you think a man can control forty thousand without using Command?”

“He speaks the truth, Oliver,” Claudia said.

“With Khan’s ability, he is in constant use of his Command.

It is only in a position of great certainty that he might decide to concentrate it and use it more specifically.”

Oliver ground his teeth, though he was smiling.

It was an immensely frustrating thing.

No one could give him a proper answer on what Command was.

It felt similar to Dominus’ ideas of progress in that sense, though of course, Command was a very different thing even to that.

Still, there was little choice.

He didn’t feel as if he was about to suddenly stumble on a new piece of information.

Neither Ingolsol nor Claudia had the true answers for him.

“So resort to what you always resort to,” Ingolsol said.

“Overwhelm.

You’re good at it, aren’t you?

You used to have so many styles, that little boy, but over the years, it is only Overwhelm and Trickery that you truly remember.”