A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 965 - The Advance Force - Part 5

965: The Advance Force – Part 5

965: The Advance Force – Part 5

“Captain Patrick!

Your troops are to make camp with the Blackthorn Colonel Gordry.

The General urges that you make camp with haste.

Our march will begin again just after dawn tomorrow,” the man said, delivering them their instructions with a quickness, before he was riding off to deliver the orders to the next group.

“Colonel Gordry?” Oliver said.

He’d never heard of the man, and he had no idea where he was positioned.

“I believe him to be stationed in a group ahead of ours.

I imagine if we simply follow the men in front of us, they’ll lead us to where we ought to go.”

“Lasha?” Oliver asked, prodding the woman awake.

She half seemed like she’d fallen asleep at the saddle.

“Mm?”

“Colonel Gordry?” Oliver said.

“Oh, yes.

He’s where Verdant said,” Lasha replied.

‘So she was listening…’ Oliver thought, before turning to shout to Firyr, Jorah and Yorick.

“Follow on after the group ahead of us!

We’re to make camp with them!”

The men gave sighs of relief.

It was tougher on them than it was for Oliver, given that they’d marched the whole way on foot, whilst Oliver had rode, but he too was just as glad to finally be making camp.

When the men in front of them began to drift towards the left of the road that they’d been following, the Patrick men followed after them, plunging into the long grasses, replete with thorns in more than a few places.

“We’re not camping together…” Oliver noted.

Now that they were separate from the line, he could see that the men behind him were going off to the right, whilst the men in front of them were going off to the right also, but they were going further up the road than those behind them.

It seemed to be quite clear that the General was splitting his forces, but Oliver’s question was ‘why’?

If all the terrain was equally as poor, then why bother even splitting them?

The answer to that question came quickly enough, when they heard the breaking of branches, as large wagons began to force their way into a copse of trees.

“Ah…” Oliver murmured.

Apparently, this was the reason that they’d travelled so far.

Thick mixed and untended woodland.

It ought to have been a nightmare to get their wagons through, but somehow, the way up ahead of them was almost as clear as a road, and they simply followed the track that the others had set, snaking their supplies deeper into the forest.

It wasn’t long before they arrived at the other side.

What Oliver had initially thought to be a forest was no more than a small bit of woodland.

It would have been impossible to get all their five thousand men in it, but for a group that was only a little over a thousand, it worked well enough.

Their men had to press all the way to the edges of the woodland as they made their camp, but they were able to remain in the trees regardless.

Oliver supposed that there were likely other bits of woodland like this nearby, and if not, there were probably other bits of useful terrain that Karstly had spied.

It was the sort of position on a map that no one else would have given a second glance, but amongst the open plains that they’d been marching through, it made a world of difference.

They made a quick camp, and the men were asleep within moments.

Any adrenaline that they might have felt with how deep they were in enemy territory was overcome by the immense tiredness they’d accumulated throughout such a long day.

Fires were forbidden that night, but it did not matter.

The spring air was mild enough that cold wouldn’t injure them too badly, not when they had thick blankets to dive under.

For the most part, men did not even choose to set up their tents.

There wasn’t enough room in the woodland for all of them, after all, and besides, the ground with the canopy of trees overhead made for enough shelter, even in the event of a light shower.

Oliver too made his bed on the forest floor.

He tied Walter up, giving him a fair length of rope that he could graze with, and then he made sure that the animal had a good bucket of water that he could refresh himself through, as well as another bucket of oats to go with it.

When he was quite sure his mount was contented, he quietly laid his head against his rolled-up blanket, and dared to close his eyes in sleep.

Wakefulness came to him with a start.

As soon as the first light penetrated past his eyelids, he was sitting upright, feeling his heart beating.

He looked all around him, taking in as much information as he could, as quickly as he could.

Before bed the previous night, it was impossible to check on all his men.

It had been too dark for that, and the General had ordered a degree of a quiet as they made camp, which Colonel Gordry was set on enforcing.

Only now, with the light of dawn could he begin to see around him.

A great sea of bodies, lying in the woodland grass and leaves.

If someone had dared to pass through, they might have thought those men to be dead, from the strange angles that they lay at.

Hardly a man shifted as Oliver looked around.

He hadn’t ordered them to, but his Commanders had made sure to sleep closer than the others.

Verdant slept just a short distance away from where Walter was lying, and then Blackthorn was even closer, just next to the same tree as Oliver, curled up like a cat with her long hair splayed out messily behind her, all sorts of debris collected in it.

He sat up, and steadied his breath, spying more and more familiar men. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

There was Jorah, Kaya, Karesh.

Even Yorick wasn’t that far off, and beyond him, Oliver could see the Patrick cavalry, with their forces dotted all around them, some standing to graze and others lying down just like their riders.