A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 985 - The Battle Strategies of the Verna - Part 2

985: The Battle Strategies of the Verna – Part 2

985: The Battle Strategies of the Verna – Part 2

He, as much as any, wanted to pave their way to victory.

He didn’t part from the main charge merely for the sake of it – he did it because he knew his men better than anyone else, and he knew they could carry more of a load than they were being assigned.

“HEAR THAT, MEN?” Oliver shouted.

“THOSE VERNA ARE TRYING TO SNUFF OUR CHARGE OUT!

IT SEEMS IT’S A PATRICK JOB TO KEEP THAT FIRE BURNING.

BUT THAT IS WHAT WE DO, IS IT NOT?

WHERE WE WALK, THE GROUND SCORCHES.

WHERE WE BREATH, THE AIR SPARKLES AFLAME!

EVEN THE BLOOD WE SPILL CATCHES THE SUNLIGHT AND BURSTS INTO A FIRE!”

He shouted even as he swung his sword.

His words were tainted by the furious passion of combat.

He was very much in the moment, his emotions were very much stirring.

Ingolsol’s excitement fed him, as did Claudia’s.

With both of them together, the young Captain’s Command was enough to be overwhelming.

Even those newer men, both Yorick and Blackthorn, wore the barest of smiles.

They were aware of where they were now – it was the depths of hell, where blood and fire were spilled aplenty.

The Patrick men pushed even harder, hearing their Captain’s call.

They began to approach that overwhelming unity, despite their individualism, that they had had for those three years before.

Bit by bit, Oliver moulded them towards that which he willed.

Soon enough, his will began to manifest.

He found his heaviest hitters by his side.

It was them that would have to clear the way forward, and push on despite so many obstacles in their way.

Blackthorn had come up just behind Verdant, and Jorah and Firyr were just to the left of her, with all the oldest men putting in as much work as they could.

“NOW IS THE TIME TO LOOK AT THOSE PLUMES AND TAKE THEM DOWN!” Oliver said, as he swung his sword in a swift downward slash, separating a blue-plumed man’s head from his shoulders.

He held the head aloft for his men to see, illustrating the point.

Once more, a wave of Command rippled through them, and their forward pressure redoubled. freёnovelkiss.com

It wasn’t long before they reached the wall of men that had formed up to the left of the main arrowhead that Karstly was leaving.

Bit by bit, they cut them down.

There were a mere four hundred of them, yet the pressure they were able to exert simply because of their positioning and their strength was overwhelming.

“I-it’s working, my Lord!” Karstly’s officer said.

Karstly had been fighting with the vaguest of awareness of his left-hand side.

He’d known that it was working already.

A kinder man would have sent men towards the left, to make the secondary arrowhead even bigger, to ensure that it worked even more strongly, but Karstly was an experienced enough General that he did not spare the kindness for that.

He knew that part of the reason the Patricks were having such a good deal of success was because of their number.

The enemy couldn’t afford to focus an equal amount of force on them, because they were so few compared to the main arrowhead.

That in turn allowed the main arrowhead to remain as strong as it otherwise would have been.

It was one of many contradictory holes that arose in the odd course of strategy.

“Your move,” Karstly said, angling his eyes towards the tower where that golden-plumed man stood.

He raised his sword up in a challenge.

General Khan Narook ground his teeth.

It was a gesture of exasperation, not overwhelm.

The very fact that the puny army of Stormfront invaders thought that he was overwhelmed was the very thing that pushed him towards exasperation.

“You think something so simple can best strategies as old as these lands itself?” He said, his exotic words as pretty in his strange tongue as birdsong.

“You are bold, Stormfront General.

Bold, but uninformed.

Yadish.

Send Inka and his men.

Cut this foolish secondary charge off at its head.”

“Very well, Supreme General,” the attendant Yadish replied, giving the golden-plumed General a stiff bow from the top of his tower, before raising the first of many coloured flags, and he communicated the General’s intent to the rest of the men.

“Something’s stirring, my Lord,” Verdant commented.

Both he and Oliver had felt it shifting.

An army was a body of men, and though a General might have thought he could keep his intentions hidden, by keeping his plans within the depths of his mind, and not even sharing them with his soldiers, those same soldiers would be the same little points that gave away those same plans.

There was little a man could hide from the pieces that had known him so well.

The Verna back ranks were moving.

Oliver had seen numerous blue-plumed men by now, but the others had kept their distance.

He didn’t know what the different colours meant exactly, but he assumed the blues to be the lowest, and he knew the gold to be the highest.

So too, though, did he see purple and red, both of which had yet to engage him.

They gave orders with flourishes, waving their arms, and waving their flags, but they hadn’t charged within range yet.

Not until now.

“General, Sir,” his officer Samuel said again, “they’re moving.

A thousand strong by the looks of it.

The young General Patrick appears to be their target.”

“The helmet colour?” General Karstly asked.

“Red, by the look of it,” Samuel replied.

“Our equivalent of a Colonel, then…” General Karstly replied.

“They aren’t playing games, it seems.”

“Your orders, General?” Samuel said.

“Orders?” Karstly laughed.

“I have none.

Focus your eyes ahead, Samuel.

The Patricks have served their purpose already.”

“Red, Verdant,” Oliver said, noticing the glorious plume of red horsehair that ran down the length of the man’s helmet, and down onto his upper back.

He was a serious-looking man, and he was riding right towards them, with what looked to be a thousand men.