A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1111 The Hammer and the Chain - Part 5
1111: The Hammer and the Chain – Part 5
1111: The Hammer and the Chain – Part 5
“You too, Firyr,” Oliver said, speaking to the man on the other side of the battlefield to Yorick and Jorah.
“Make use of the Blackthorn men, not just your own men.
Even if your style of commanding is a straightforward one, you’re still a commander, and you will have those men follow you, whether they like it or not.”
“Aye, of course, Captain,” Firyr said, resonating with Oliver’s forceful sounding approach.
“When they see the might of my spear, why wouldn’t they follow?
They’d have to be pissin’ stupid not to. freēnovelkiss.com
That, or maybe they’re lovers of defeat.”
The only one of Oliver’s Commanders that he didn’t speak to was his Vice-Captain Verdant.
He, Like Jorah, was in charge of binding the entirety of his two-hundred men together, and ensuring a true full scale battle.
Blackthorn, as the overseer, was left apart from the arrangement, which Oliver could see was already beginning to unsettle her.
She felt strange when her sword wasn’t drawn, and she was put into a position of administration.
He grinned ever so slightly seeing it, and then, feeling particularly devilish, he carefully slid away.
“Forgive me, gentlemen, and forgive me, Blackthorn, but I have other things that I wish to pursue,” Oliver said.
He slid in between the rows of tents that governed the Patrick territory, and he found a home for himself once more at the very edge of the mountain – though this time, it was in broad daylight.
“Again, I come for you, Fourth Boundary,” Oliver announced to himself.
Somehow, he enjoyed personifying it.
Making it into a foe like any other man that he might cut down.
It seemed closer to him like that.
He swung at the air.
He allowed his right hand to join his left on the sword, though he could bear only the smallest amount of tension with it, and he wasn’t able to keep it there long.
Still, a few quick blows like that, and he was reminded of a flicker of what his previous strength was like.
“I was that close to being without this hand for months…” Oliver muttered.
“Praise all the Gods for Queen Asabel.
There’s a woman that a man like me doesn’t deserve to know.”
A few more slashes came at the air.
He found his mind clearer than it had been the last time that he had trained.
Blackthorn had helped with that.
She hadn’t spoken profundity, but merely to hear her perspective had put him at ease.
At some point, Oliver thought, he had become infected by the very idea of Oliver Patrick that other people had purported.
He had become overwhelmed with the notion that he needed to solve everything in one go.
That his mind could not immediately reach towards the solution, it frustrated him.
He was a man that constantly wished to have a plan in mind.
“A plan,” he muttered to himself, allowing his right hand to fall from the sword when it began to ache with pain, and renewing his efforts with the left.
“By all the Gods, that would be nice to have.”
But in place of a plan, at times, merely doing seemed to be enough.
He had trusted in merely doing as Beam, and it had ended up yielding some sort of result.
“It’s a momentum,” Oliver said, steadying his breath.
“Just like the battlefield.
It all accumulates, if you reach for it.”
He told himself that.
It helped, to the barest degree.
Without a plan, trusting in something else was an approach.
That he was here at all whilst his men engaged in their mock battling seemed to be a contradiction.
He was a Captain, after all, and here he was, swinging his sword, trying to be an even better Captain than he already was.
It hardly made a lick of sense.
A man could have seen him do it, and he could have quite rightly called him delude.
For to practice the sword by his lonesome, rather than commanding his men, that was hardly the path of the General, that was very much the path of the sword.
“And yet my greed pushes me towards it,” Oliver said.
His pride had been wounded by Khan, and it ached to admit it, but he had to admit it regardless.
“To have lost with the blade against any other man.
That’s an insult.
To do it against a strategist, that is even worse.”
Of course, he knew that it was not that simple.
He knew that Command had played its role, and that a General was no simple strategist, even if he hadn’t dedicated his life to the blade as Dominus had, but still, Oliver could not find it in himself to dismiss the defeat.
He knew his strategy, and he saw the value in it, but he couldn’t content himself to immerse in it entirely without knowing that he could rely on his sword in the end.
His sword was his most powerful checkmate.
His sword extended the reach of his strategy, as it had against Amion.
It gave him a freedom of strategy that he didn’t know even on the battle board.
And so he swung, if only one handed, he swung.
He was aware of the passing soldiers pointing his way, just as he was aware that the name Oliver Patrick was beginning to spread amongst the Karstly men not entirely for all the right reasons.
He knew he was becoming to be known as something of an oddball, with the way he both overachieved, and he highlighted himself for insubordinance.
“Isn’t that Patrick?” He heard one of them say, as the wind carried his words to his ear.
“Heard he got left out of the patrol.”
“Huh.
Big shot like that?
Hah, serves him right, I’d say.
Can’t be that strong if General Karstly is leaving him behind.”
“Watch it, you, if the Blackthorns that got left behind hear you saying that, you know they’ll take offense.”
“But I wasn’t even talking about them.”
“Still, half of them got left behind, didn’t they?
Can’t imagine they’re that happy about it.
Colonel Gordry is taking all their glory.
I’m sure even they’re starting to get a bit pissed off.”
“Why?
Isn’t it all the same to them?” The first man said.
