A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 2072: A Castle to Keep - Part 3

Chapter 2072: A Castle to Keep – Part 3

“Can we afford to take it that easy?” Lady Blackthorn asked.

“What reason do we have to rush, Captain Blackthorn?” Jorah said.

“So that we might assist General Blackthorn,” Lord Idris offered.

“Do you truly think that he requires assistance?” Jorah said. “With respect, Your Majesty, it is you yourself, from the start of our pursuit of Fitzer, who has urged our armies to take it slow, and with caution. I do not see a reason to stray from that path now. I say, we aim to capture this castle entirely, before we rush to kill the Emerson King. He’s trapped as he is now.”

“Why?” Firyr interrupted. “Why bother with all the fuss? Aye, I’m in no rush to see this done either. But the way you’re talking, Jorah, it’s almost like you’re afraid of something. You telling us we need to be scared?”

Jorah shrugged. “There are unknowns that we still have not accounted for. We like to believe that we know the aims of our enemy, but we do not. They have still moved strangely, as if they are relying on something.”

Oliver considered it. “True enough, King Emerson has already made a prisoner of himself in his own towers. We need not waste the lives of our men taking unnecessary arrowfire. We can deal with the archers that are left.”

“A step further, I propose,” Jorah said. “I propose we secure the outer wall entirely, make the gates useful to ourselves, if we end up having need of them, and only then, do we move inwards.”

“…We do have the resources to allow that to happen,” Oliver said. “However, if I am to take it that slowly, and if we are to worry to that degree, then I would have you do something else for me, Colonel Jorah.”

“Anything you wish, Your Majesty,” Jorah said, dipping his head.

“Take a thousand men with you, and see General Blackthorn’s battle with Fitzer ended swiftly. These walls that you wish to take shall be useless if we have our allies trapped outside of them.”

Jorah knelt. “There is wisdom in that, King Patrick. I’ll see it done as you say.”

“Colonel Idris. Captain Blackthorn,” Oliver said. “Take five hundred men each, head in opposite directions, and secure the entirety of the outer walls.”

“Very well, Your Majesty,” Verdant said, saluting.

Blackthorn saluted her agreement as well.

“What about us?” Firyr asked, apparently unhappy to be left out.

“The rest of us, we will wait here, in the hopes that Prince Hendrick decides to attack us,” Oliver said.

…

…

The hill made for the most peculiar of battlefields. The deep divot in it, in which the hill fell again, only to rise once more before coming properly onto the road towards the Emerson Capital, it offered both sides the advantage in both defence and attack.

Any side that wished to cross the gap would have to race down their own slope, only to rush again, at great and agonising speed, up the steep slope of the other side, in order to attack them.

In that sense, fractionally, did Fitzer have the advantage. The size of the hill that he needed to clear in order to attack General Blackthorn was slightly small. But numerically, still, General Blackthorn held the advantage of a thousand men.

Both sides had immediately put their archers out to the front, in order to warn away the enemy. Fitzer did it more swiftly than Blackthorn. His troops were exhausted. He needed to break through, and make it towards their King – his scouts had already informed him of the dire state of the Emerson Castle. He’d seen it happening from a distance himself, and hoped that his eyes had misjudged what was already difficult to make out. But now he knew with a certainty that Oliver Patrick had already made it beyond the outer walls.

He needed to attack, but he found it difficult to give that order. To beat Blackthorn, he knew, he had to do it strategically. What good was there in sending his exhausted troops against the trained and disciplined Blackthorn soldiers, who were always so eager for combat? Of course, the bulk of Blackthorn’s army was made up of soldiers of a different kind, but they were still properly trained noblemen and men of the Serving Class. With Blackthorn at their head, they were nearly impossible to break through. Not in a direct assault.

Still, Fitzer needed to.

His exhaustion was secondary. He’d slept even less than his men, but he couldn’t afford to let sleepiness taint his mind.

His bowmen were in the front, their arrows at the ready. He reassured himself of that. A thousand archers, a thousand cavalry, four thousand spear-wielding infantry. He reminded himself of what he had available to him, and bid that he squeeze more out of them.

Another look at his men, his mind slightly fresher than it had been before. He saw the way their shoulders drooped, the way they were stiffened with tension. They’d cast away their honour, and now they found themselves to be placed in such a difficult strategic position, when their bodies were already exhausted.

They were mere moments away from breaking. A good charge from Blackthorn, and Fitzer could see his men routing. They didn’t want to die here. They hadn’t truly wanted to fight against Oliver Patrick in the first place. They walked the most tenuous of lines.

What was a General, if he could not bring back an army from the brink like this? Who was Fitzer, if he was not capable of inspiring his troops when they needed it most? When had he stopped believing in his own ability? Was it Oliver Patrick who had quashed that out of him?

His career was littered with moments in which he ought to have been defeated, but by sheer grit, he had held on, and found a ray of light, squinting its way through the tunnel. He could do it again, he ought to do it again. And why not at the very least try, if this was to be the last time?