A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1008 - The Counterattack - Part 7
1008: The Counterattack – Part 7
1008: The Counterattack – Part 7
The words were met with cheers.
Oliver had put his own Command into the shout, though it felt weak and transparent when compared to the likes of Karstly’s.
He was well aware that his troops were animated now more by the General than he, but the connection that they’d built up over years of fighting was not one easily snuffed out.
They followed his order to the letter.
“Blackthorn troops, you are to follow Lord Idris’ orders until I return!” Blackthorn said, raising her voice as loud as she could – which didn’t happen to be that loud.
Even in the throws of battle, it warmed Oliver’s heart ever so slightly to see that Blackthorn wasn’t merely throwing her duties aside in favour of a bigger kill.
The Sergeants under her were made to repeat those words to the rest of the men.
Disciplined men that they were, despite their dissatisfaction, they would not let it show.
Besides, at least it was an Idris man to be commanding them, rather than a Patrick.
Their House had grown close to the Idris’.
As Oliver’s men organized themselves, to the left, Lombard began to do much the same.
Though he might not intrude on a conversation directly, Lombard was not a man to allow himself ignorance.
He was alert to the changes of the battlefield, and he’d kept his ears open for their path forward.
“Prepare to support the Patrick forces!
We will secure the base of that tower!” Lombard told them.
Karstly still barrelled ahead.
By now, the tower guards were coming into sight.
After all the space that they’d traversed to get here, and the many ranks of men that they’d punched through, it became evident that what lay ahead was of a different sort to what they’d already conquered.
Even at a glance, the men there were different.
Their uniforms seemed more refined.
The men that Oliver had cut down so far had sported colourful garments, many of them being different from man to man.
The flowing robes were inconsistencies, but the armour above the top remained the same for each.
For the men surrounding the tower however, their undergarments were of the same colour.
Atop a handful of helmets, Oliver too saw the same sort of extravagant red plume that he’d seen from Inka.
Amongst them, there were dozens and dozens of purple-plumed men, all standing guard over the likes of thousands.
It might have been mere bias on Oliver’s part, but he felt these men to be more significant.
They seemed to have more presence, as if beyond just strength, their very place on a battlefield was more important.
It was a difficult sense to put into words, for it was a vague one, but it was as if the armies themselves had acknowledged these troops to be one of the few permitted to exert their own sorts of stratagems.
There was a freeness to them that the other men didn’t have, as if they were more used to working alone than in groups.
There was a fierceness to them for that.
They were less like a sea of men, and more like five separate groups of a thousand, each different from each other.
The uniform of each thousand-man group was a different shade, further distinguishing themselves from each other.
They seemed more like the Stormfront style of army composition, whereas the other soldiers that Oliver had encountered – aside from Inka – seemed to simply belong to General Khan wholly, with no other allegiances elsewhere.
Only now that Oliver saw such a group did he realize that there’d been something missing in their advance – there had been a distinct lack of red-plumed men.
So too had there been fewer purple-plumed men than there ought to have been.
It seemed very much as if General Khan had drawn in all his strength to one point, and now it stood like a thick granite wall, declaring well and truly that the Stormfront army could go no further.
Behind them, the sea of men that they’d waded through began to close up once more, like a wound healing itself.
New men filtered in to replace the fallen, and step by step, bit by bit, General Khan employed his typical strategy of suffocation.
He took away from Karstly all that space that he had not yet defended.
The wall ahead seemed perilous, but there was no other way now.
General Khan’s intentions were revealed obviously enough for all to see.
This was his plan.
To draw their two thousand men in, as deep as he possibly could – and there was nothing deeper than the very centre of his formation, where his tower stood.
There, he was confident that they could repel them, and in the process, he could entrap them, so that he could pick them off at his leisure.
“Beautiful!” General Karstly declared.
He’d slowed his horse to a trot.
There was no need to gallop all the way to the tower.
The men slowed behind him, taking a rare moment to catch their breaths.
The General met General Khan’s strategy with the same smile that he’d worn on the charge over.
If anything, he seemed even happier, as if he was satisfied about something.
But what was there to be satisfied about?
They were two thousand men, trapped at the heart of nearly forty-thousand, and their way ahead was marred by a solid wall of five thousand strong men.
What was to be done?
“BEAUTIFUL!” General Karstly said, even louder this time.
He tossed his hands up into the air.
He seemed nearly mad.
Not yet truly mad, but very much walking a line that could be either interpreted as madness, or excitement.
At least he was confident.
That confidence meant a great deal to the men that had drawn up to a quiet halt behind their General, as they acknowledged the way forward.
“What a charge, my men!” Karstly said.
He didn’t turn around.
It was as if he was speaking to a version of his army inside his head.
As if to look at the reality of them was to mar the conception of them that he held in his mind.
“We have battled through thousands.
We have waded through swamps, crossed rivers, and cut our way through jungles, and now we arrive at the promised land!
We see the hidden palace!
We see the clouds that declare the entryway to heaven, and we dream of the gold and promise the lies beyond it!”
