A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 2076: Hurried Footsteps - Part 2

Capítulo 2076: Hurried Footsteps – Part 2

He found himself in the Emerson Capital, but even in arriving there, he was too late. He took the main road, and found the evident remains of a massive and recent battle. The scattered soldiers of dead Emerson men, wearing those red surcoats, now dyed the deeper red of blood, fallen down in a ditch on the road. Hundreds of fallen banners. A few hundred Blackthorn men amongst them.

He carefully picked his way through them. Some men were still groaning, likely having just woke up from unconsciousness. Edward stopped to help those that he could, even as urgency drove him on. For most, however, it was a simple sip of water that he could offer them, before they drifted off into the next life.

At the top of the hill, he found a body treated with a certain amount of care. A Patrick banner had been staked in the ground in front of it, seeming to warn others away from touching the corpse. Golden coins had been placed over his eyes, and his arms had been crossed over his chest. From the surcoat that the man wore, he was certainly Emerson, and from the quality of his armour, and the respect given to him, he was most likely a General. ‘Fitzer,’ Edward supposed, though he had never seen the man himself.

There was a slight feeling of relief, seeing the care that Oliver Patrick treated his enemies with. He hoped that, in seeing that care, he might be more easily able to convince his men towards reason, to see that Emerson King spared. That was, if he wasn’t already too late.

He remounted his horse, and continued down towards the city. The walls were empty of everything except corpses, but the gate was thrust open. He dared to draw nearer, and nearer, until he was pressed right up against the gates themselves.

Eerily silent, he thought to himself, as he paused just before entering through that gap that had been forged in the gate. One could see the signs of a massive impact having hit it – a depression some three metres in radius. He shivered, wondering what it was that could have done it. He looked around, and spied the remnants of the massive battering ram lying down in a ditch. The sheer size of the thing. “Surely not,” he thought to himself. There was no way they could have maneuvered that into position, was there? Not with the threat of arrow fire. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

He shook his head. It wasn’t something that he was going to understand particularly easily. Even in standing where the battle had taken place, likely no less than just an hour before, if the freshness of the dead-men, and the near dying were anything to go by, it was still difficult to really understand what had taken place.

He felt a nervousness begin to build up in his fingers. Was this the sort of place that he ought to be in. Was he really of a great enough magnitude that he deserved to be here? He was a man simply of the Second Boundary. That was all he could cling to. For all his journeying, all the missions and quests he had overtaken and overcome, that was all he was. His order had fallen into insignificance while he was away. If he were to evaluate himself, Edward would have had no trouble in stating that he was nothing at all.

Even the sigil of his order, the wings of Claudia, was faded on his surcoat. His armour had not been tended to in days, and the shine of polish that ought to have been there was none existent. He was a ragged man, with no plans, no real idea of what he ought to do. He had to stop King Patrick from executing the Emerson King – but how was he, of all people, meant to do that?

To walk in the footsteps of King Patrick, as he was now, so painfully close, was like looking at the aftermath of a battle between dragons. The sheer scale of destruction. It looked more like the hand of a God than that of a man. To smash through such ancient and sturdy walls as those of the Emerson Capital. That high and blackened brick, salted for centuries by the sea air – and from all the evidence that Edward could look upon, Oliver Patrick had pierced his way through, seemingly without resistance.

The corpses on top of the walls, where archers had once been. He could see no Patrick colours amongst them, just as he had failed to see many Blackthorn or Patrick men amongst the Emerson dead. Which was to say, King Patrick had shattered both Fitzer’s army, and the castle itself, with the sort of lagging resistance that it would have taken Edward to kill goblins?

Would Edward be able to even slow such a man? What could he say to a King capable of such things, when he had no authority, and no individual might of his own?

It mattered not. He gulped down his fears, and crossed in through the gate, feeling the fear stirring in his heart. Closer he went – closer to that dragon that had caused all of this. He could feel it, in the rising of the air pressure that he was nearing him. There was no doubt in his mind as to where Oliver Patrick now currently was.

In through the gates, and he found an army of over ten thousand standing in a conspicuous degree of quiet. More corpses he saw beyond them, wearing the colours of Emerson men. Once more, it was difficult to note any Patrick colours amongst the fallen.

The men shared quiet conversation, as if they were standing in a church. As if to speak in anything above a whisper was to unsettle whatever great ritual might have been going on inside that keep that they gathered around.

They were loosely ordered, in formation. They kept to their squares of a thousand man battalions, but they did not hold to their position with the sort of fastness that they would in battle. They were relaxed enough to turn to the men next to them, and those behind them.