A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1110 The Hammer and the Chain - Part 4
1110: The Hammer and the Chain – Part 4
1110: The Hammer and the Chain – Part 4
Slowly, with halting actions, she finished the rest of the exam, with her eyes nailed to the floor.
Then she stood up, coughed in her hand, and gave her the verdict.
“The bones are all aligned, my lady,” she said.
“He should have no trouble in a few days, once the muscles heal around them.”
“Thank you for those very thorough examinations, Doctor Amelia, and thank you too for scratching my fingers with those talons that you wield,” Oliver said, flashing a new cut, and making the room gasp once again.
But he was in no mood to deal with such dramas any longer.
He was standing up, and he was striding for the door already.
“Lady Blackthorn, you’ve a commitment to see to.”
…
…
Within the hour, there was a woman giving halting orders, looking more out of place than a woman could want to be.
She’d gathered all hundred of her Blackthorn men.
They had four hundred soldiers not in total, after Karstly had resupplied them with some fresh recruits to make up for the men that they had lost.
“We’re going to be doing mock battles…” She said quietly.
It was doubtful whether even those closest to her could hear what she was saying.
“I hope that you fight with all seriousness, as if it is a real enemy in front of you, and uhm… I hope that you are able to take much away from this training.”
So she said, but it didn’t sound particularly convincing.
She’d used a line that Oliver had thrown to her earlier, and now that she said it herself, she was well aware that it didn’t contain nearly the driving force that it would have had it come from his mouth.
She looked around hopelessly, as only quiet met her words.
Oliver was standing a distance away, merely observing.
He had contemplated leading the training session himself, but his heart, he felt to be elsewhere.
There were two worlds that he wished to align.
The world of strategy that Professor Volguard and Minister Hod and General Skullic had introduced him to, and the world of the Sword that Dominus Patrick had introduced him to.
He felt he needed that time of contemplation to be spent more by himself, so he could marry the two, even if he knew it to be greedy to be training his men in other means at the same time.
If not for the Blackthorn men realizing that her speech was over, and raising their spear in a roar as if they’d just heard the most mighty of battle speeches, that silence would have endured for a painfully long time.
Seeing those Blackthorn men so excited to train made tolerating Amelia’s medical efforts seem worth it.
Under Jorah, or anyone else for that matter, they would not have been able to assert themselves with such enthusiasm – and Oliver found that he needed them to.
They were the most distant of all his forces.
To close the gap between the Patrick men and between them, that was where the real battle would be fought.
Verdant was beside Lasha, offering her advice in Oliver’s place.
“We can have them split into two camps,” Verdant said.
“To begin with.
One does not always need to proceed with the most rigid of plans in these circumstances.
Often, merely starting to move, and seeing the results of that movement allows for a plan to form of its own accord.
We might see some glaring weakness that we can work on.”
“I understand,” Lasha said.
She then proceeded to repeat, nearly word for word, what Verdant had said to the rest of the troops.
The trouble was, she said it in a voice that was far too quiet for any but those nearest to her to hear.
Soon enough, that problem was solved by a particularly quick-witted Blackthorn Sergeant, who took it upon himself to bark Lasha’s words after she said them, so that the men gathered would have no choice but to hear.
The two were night and day in their volume.
The men’s weapons had already been wrapped for the training that was about to occur, and all the safety measures that they could take had been taken.
Most men too had received the weapons that they wished to wield, even if they had not received them at the start of their campaign.
With the capturing of the Lonely Mountain, Karstly had seen to it that the requests for equipment were taken seriously.
No one in his army was left wanting.
Only Yorick’s force, out of all the gathered men, seemed out of place.
They were a team of cavalrymen, after all.
Their tactics were delivered from the back of the horse.
But even with wrapped weapons, bringing cavalry into their training seemed a step too far.
It was more than likely that lethal force would be dealt out from the back of a galloping horse, after all.
Slipping through the crowd of men as they prepared themselves for the first of their mock battles, Oliver told Yorick as much.
“Worry not about your lacking of the horse,” Oliver told him, as he appeared quite suddenly, enough to startle the Commander.
“You will have time to practice mounted drills later on.
Take this training for all that it is worth, and see how you can improve your men with it, and better work with the Patrick soldiers.”
“Y-yes, Captain!” Yorick said, recovering from his startlement, and offering a quick salute.
To Jorah, Oliver gave similar words of encouragement once he found him.
“You will be instrumental in having these differing men work together, Jorah.
I’ll leave it to you to demonstrate to them the strength that they can wield when their skills are combined.”
Already the men had been split so that both sides had an even mix of all three of the different forces, from Patrick, to Blackthorn, to Yorick.
Had there only been two sides, Oliver might have had those two sides go against each other, but as it were now, this seemed like a more reliable approach to force those different men into teamwork.
