A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1101 Movements of the Battle Board - Part 4
1101: Movements of the Battle Board – Part 4
1101: Movements of the Battle Board – Part 4
The effects of their enthusiasm reached as far as the Yorick men too, however, and some of them had begun to join in, along with Commander Yorick himself, who awkwardly asked Firyr for directions.
“What is it you intend when you train like this?” Yorick asked Firyr, swinging a spear beside him.
“Huh?” Firyr said.
“I dunno.
Just the ‘whooosh’, I suppose.
Cutting the air in two.
That sound.
You hear that?” Firyr said, demonstrating by thrusting his spear forward with all his might, twisting his hips over to support the motion.
As he had said there would be, there was a crisp whoosh, as the air rushed past the tip of the spear.
Beside him, Yorick looked rather doubtful as he tried the same.
He was no master of the spear.
He thrust with all his might, and turned his hips over just as he had seen Firyr do, but he found no song sung by the air, there was no whooshing.
All he felt was the aching in his arms.
“Naw, you’re not doing it right,” Firyr said, shaking his head.
“You’re missing it, you are.”
Even if Firyr hadn’t said that, Yorick could tell for himself that he wasn’t doing it right.
He was a cavalryman, after all.
The best blow that he could deliver came from the back of a horse.
“Yer got to put a bit more heart in it than that, nobleman,” Firyr said.
“Don’t they teach you that at your school?
You’ve got to stick your spear through it like there’s a man there.
You can’t train half-arsed, what’s that gonna do?
You really think just swinging at the air a thousand times with no heart in it is gonna get you anywhere?
Every strike has gotta be better than the last.”
He thrust again, and again there was a perfect whoosh.
‘Every strike has to be better than the last,’ Yorick repeated inside his head.
Watching Firyr, he could very well believe that.
There was an intensity in the man’s eyes that bordered on desperation as he trained.
The sweat ran down his nose.
He’d put everything he had into that single strike, enough to tear muscle from the bone.
Again, Yorick tried, attempting to put a degree more intensity in it.
Even he had felt the longing for change after being subject to the last two battlefields that they’d been on.
It seemed to him that they were places only for great men.
It was almost unfair.
It was like seeing giants do war, when the rest of them were insects.
But Yorick ought to have been no insect.
He was a man of the Second Boundary, after all.
A nobleman well trained.
He detested his own lack of effectiveness when he compared himself even to the First Boundary men in Kaya, Karesh, and Jorah.
He thrust.
A desperate strike.
He threw every scrap of muscle that he had in his body at it.
He ordinarily wouldn’t use the front of his shoulders to such a degree, but with his desperation, even they tensed.
Even the muscles in his neck tensed.
Everything was tight, and perfect, and he thrust, and still the air did not reward him.
There was no musical whoosh, no ringing.
He was made to feel perfectly ordinary.
“Better,” Firyr said, nodding.
Somehow, that grim acknowledgement from fear meant almost as much as the whooshing of the air would have to Yorick.
“How long have you fought under Captain Patrick, Commander Firyr?” Yorick asked.
“Hm…” Firyr thought on the question, as he readied himself for his next strike.
“Three years, I suppose…” Another thrust, another perfect execution, likely even better than the last, Yorick thought.
“Three years…” Yorick said.
“Were you this strong when you first came here?
Ah, obviously, that’s a foolish question.
You only just broke through the Second Boundary in battle the other day… So that’s an impossibility.”
“I wasn’t,” Firyr said honestly.
“I wasn’t no good back then.
I thought I was strong, but I was lacking.
Both here, and here.” He tapped his head, and he tapped his heart.
“What changed, then?” Yorick said, surprised at the hunger in his own voice.
He wasn’t the only one that had eyed Firyr in the battle with Amion, and even in the battle with Khan.
There was something fiery about Firyr that drew the eye.
“What changed?” Firyr said, laughing.
“Ain’t it obvious,” he said, pointing over to where Oliver Patrick stood, engaged in conversation with Verdant.
“How’s I to stay the same fighting under that?”
“…What’s so different about him?” Yorick asked.
“All of you men… You fight for him as if he’s saved each one of you personally.
It’s as if he’s a family member, or something… I hardly understand it.
I’ve always known loyalty to a superior, and I’ve seen it, but that’s loyalty with distance in it.
One can’t get too close.
And somehow, with Captain Patrick, you are close, and yet you’re still able to recognize him as a superior, I don’t understand it.”
“These are questions too complicated for me, nobleman,” Firyr said.
“If you speak yer tongue so fast, I won’t hear you.”
“…That is true, I forget that you are a Syndran,” Yorick said.
“Your accent only betrays you by the slightest amount, and you speak as naturally as any villager.”
“Ha!
A villager, eh?” Firyr said.
“But not a nobleman?
True enough.
I ain’t a nobleman, Commander, but me and you, we stand on equal rank here, eh?”
He turned to Yorick, after finishing another thrust, and he stared him down with those maddened eyes of his.
They were the eyes of a wild dog.
The sort of eyes that shouldn’t have let him stand in any one place for any length of time.
Yorick stepped back despite himself, as that man towered over him.
He sensed the hostility.
Of course, there would be that.
He was still a nobleman, after all, and this was an army of peasants.
“T-that is true,” he stammered.
“No doubt you must resent the typical way of doing things… that we nobles are given the positions.”
