A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 975 - The Verna Army - Part 7

975: The Verna Army – Part 7

975: The Verna Army – Part 7

There was a short window that their army needed to cover both quickly and quietly.

It was a gap between the cover offered by the rolling hills and the future forests in the distance.

The only thing keeping them from being seen was a particularly well-placed hill in the lands below.

It protected them from the most direct angle of sight offered to the moving enemy masses.

But, it didn’t protect them entirely.

It would only have taken one scout unit to round the hill in a different direction to the main forces, and they would have been caught.

Yet, somehow, that did not happen.

As they marched, Oliver had kept his eye firmly on his General.

He wanted to know what General Karstly was thinking.

He still couldn’t figure the man out.

He seemed more like two people than one person – there were two distinct sides that he had presented to Oliver so far, and they didn’t seem to obviously link up.

There was that side that was almost whimsical in its friendliness, and then there was that other side when his eyes hardened, and he looked like a hunting dog starved for a victory.

That was the man that they were placing their trust in.

The most minor of miscalculations on their part would bring the whole of the Verna army shifting.

The only advantage their comparatively smaller number of men had was in manoeuvrability, but even then it was not by much.

The enemy could quite easily have sent a detachment of cavalry to hound them whilst the bulk of the forces cut off their retreat.

As precarious as their position had been, there was nothing at all.

It was as if the enemy army had suddenly vanished.

As soon as they mounted the hill that the General had used as a vantage point, they couldn’t see the enemy at all.

They’d disappeared back into the wild terrain, hidden by the distant hills, and the occasional outcrop of trees.

As exposed as they’d been, not a single eye seemed to have landed on them.

Oliver had kept watch with both Ingolsol’s eyes and his own.

He could feel nothing that could have told him otherwise.

He hardly understood what had happened.

It seemed a small miracle.

The strangest part of it was that Karstly seemed to have done it intentionally.

Now they were back marching with the trees to one side, shielding them from the view of the Verna army marching to the southeast.

They relaxed again, briefly.

They’d made it where they needed to be, but it was only a temporary reprieve.

The next time they saw the enemy, they would be right in front of them, and they’d have to break straight through their line.

That grim reality started to set in, and even without the need to now be quiet, the marching men fell into a silence.

All but a handful.

The Patrick men still spoke.

Firyr as loudly as any other, drawing looks of annoyance from the nearby men.

Even Yorick’s cavalry seemed to be making an effort to distance himself from the noisy Syndran.

“Glory, that’s what it’s about, Nel boy,” he was saying.

“You race straight forward, and you paint your spear red.

That’s the beauty of it.

You see what I mean now, mm?”

“Yeah… I know, you’ve been saying that all day, Firyr, but it doesn’t do anything to solve the amount of em’ that we’re up against.

I say I’m nervous, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Everyone’s nervous apart from you,” Nel – an ex-slave – said.

“What’s there to be nervous about?

What’s there to go wrong?” Firyr said.

“All you need to do is take down a handful of enemies, and you’ve done what you need to do.

That’s a glorious death, something to be proud of.

No Patrick soldier is going to die without doing that, are they?”

“Doesn’t help with arrows, though,” Karesh pointed out grimly.

“That’s what I fear, an arrow to the back before I can do anything.

A pointless death.”

“With the size of you, like a big oxen you are, you should be fearing that,” Firyr said mercilessly.

“What you need is a size like mine.

A good, respectable size, but not stupidly overgrown, asking to be a target for arrows.”

“I’d say in that my size is better than yours,” Kaya put in.

He’d grown a degree of nerve in the last year.

He’d started to jab back at the energetic Commander whenever he could, and sometimes those jabs landed, throwing Firyr off-guard as they did now.

“H-huh?

The fuck you saying, boy?” Firyr said.

“Yer far too small, you are.”

“It’s strength that matters, isn’t it?” Kaya replied.

“I’m as strong as you, we at least agree on that.”

“No, you’re fuckin… Well, I suppose…” Firyr had started to rebuke it, only to realize how easily disproven that would have been.

Kaya had monstrously large hands for his size, and those hands carried a ridiculous strength too.

He was able to perform feats of strength that matched men twice his size.

As far as arm wrestling went, he’d beat Firyr more times than the men could count.

“But not with the spear.

On the battlefield, I shine brighter, Stormfront boy.

My spear dances.”

“My fists will beat it one day,” Kaya told him.

“I’m not so far behind anymore, am I?

One day, I might take your rank out from beneath you.”

“Bold… He’s gotten too bold,” Firyr complained to Jorah.

“Isn’t it your job to reign him in, Commander?”

“Not at all,” Jorah said.

“On this, I’m in agreement with Kaya.

He’ll overtake you, if you’re not careful.”

“…Not a chance,” Firyr hissed, more to himself this time.

He tightened his grip on his spear.

“If that young Lady Blackthorn could improve so quickly, just in the timing of one battle, I can do it too… I just needs the right circumstances.”

Since the battle with Talon, no more of the Patrick men had managed to break through a Boundary.

It was still a subject of some vagueness amongst the men.

They were well aware that something had happened to Nila and Blackthorn in the battle with Talon, but they weren’t quite sure what.

A handful of men mentioned the Boundaries by name, but even their understanding didn’t exceed the likes of the nobles.