A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 995 - General Khan’s Head - Part 1
995: General Khan’s Head – Part 1
995: General Khan’s Head – Part 1
Even trapped, even fatally wounded, Inka was a man of the Third Boundary.
The second Firyr lowered his guard around him was the second that he lost the right to stand on the same stage.
The sword came again.
This time, it was led by a feint.
Firyr flinched heavily at the false first strike, only to find that he was well within course for the second.
Even with his renewed speed, there was no stopping such a blow.
It was strange to FIryr, to be trapped as such, to see death right there and then – and yet that was his moment of clarity, when his fear finally left him.
He accepted it with the calmness of a monk.
He even dared to smile, a warm glow in his chest.
He’d served Oliver Patrick, and he’d served him well.
Firyr prepared to die, accepting that fact.
But a careful strike dragged him out of his revelry.
If a swordsman had seen the blow, he’d call it unorthodox.
He might even have accused the man that threw it of being poorly trained, lacking in technicality.
Yet such a conclusion would be a misjudgement.
This was a sword filled with the passion and strangeness that defined Oliver Patrick.
Firyr recognized it in an instant, and then an arm was severed, the half-moon sword carried with it. fгeewebnovёl.com
“I still have use for you, Firyr.
Do not be going to your grave so quickly,” Oliver said from the top of his horse.
“And you,” he said to Inka.
“You ought to know when to die.
Make your peace with your God.
I’ll accept your challenge again in another life.”
“…Stormfronter,” Inka growled, holding the fiery wound of his arm, as he glared down Oliver with hate filled eyes.
He spoke those words in the Stormfront tongue, and he cursed him in the same language.
“May your descendants rot for the ground that you ruin.”
Those were the last words to fall out of Inka’s mouth, for a sword came slashing for his head, and severed it cleanly, and mercifully.
With a heft of his hand, Oliver raised it up for all to see, as it continued to bear the red plume that marked him as a Rogue Commandant.
“BEHOLD!” Oliver shouted, his eyes targeted towards the General, high atop his tower.
“THE VERNA HAVE ONE LESS COLONEL.”
It was not only the Patrick men that cheered that fact – Karstly’s men cheered as well.
In the ruthlessly sluggish advance that they were caught up in, it was the Patrick forces and their victory that brought them hope.
“…He’s all that Blackwell said he would be,” Karstly muttered.
“And perhaps even as much as Lombard claimed him to be.” Briefly, he cast his attention over to the far right, where Lombard and his men continued to fight.
He wondered if the Captain sensed his gaze, for he bellowed a command as if to respond to him.
“THE PATRICK’S STORM AHEAD!
WE SHALL NOT FALL BEHIND!” Lombard said.
His men rose up their swords in response.
Karstly could see Tolsey among them, drawing strength from a man fighting at the other end of the battlefield.
“The fire is spreading,” Karstly continued, once more reevaluating the position they were in.
About the only advantage the Patricks had over the main arrowhead was their lack of wagons that they needed to guard.
Arstly’s wagons sat right in the centre of his formation, as an eternal source of worry.
As the army slowed, the danger to those wagons only began to increase.
He bit his lip, withdrawing back from the front line, allowing his men to fill in his position as he set all the pieces into position in his mind.
Oliver Patrick was the first of the arrows that he had loosed.
The effect tht he was having, even if he had yet to charge the General directly, was immense.
But alone, he would not be enough.
Karstly knew that.
Years upon years on the battlefield, and decades spent studying strategy informed him of it.
Alone, the Patrick forces could not move the mighty boulder that was General Khan’s army, and it was Karstly’s job to find the next piece that they were to put together.
Chapter 16 – General Khan’s Head
“Inka…” General Khan murmured, acknowledging the loss of his man.
He’d seen him die twice now, and this time he was struck down by a man that should have been a lesser.
In Verna terms, Khan would have supposed him to be a mere Violet Commandant.
He’d liked men like Inka.
Fiery youths, full of purpose and determination.
They were filled with enough energy to make up for his own lack of it.
He smiled at their enthusiasm, and retained his calm.
Rarely did General Khan do anything quickly.
He never hurried.
He saw the way the majestic beasts of the wild moved, and how the gentle rivers flowed, wearing away at even the largest of obstacles.
He had admiration for them.
His own temperament was similar.
He knew the power in it.
“They’ve brought something interesting,” Khan said eventually.
“Something that we cannot overcome with simple numbers.
It is time to begin moving our pieces properly, Yadish.
They cannot be allowed to progress any further.”
Oliver had reunited with his men, and together they’d built up a steady rhythm.
They would attack the dense forces of the left, and then they would retreat, back and forth, as they used the enemies’ numbers against them, making use of their superior manoeuvrability.
They gained ground bit by bit, and also room enough for themselves to build back their speed.
Though, in compensation, the men were drifting towards exhaustion.
“Steady!” Oliver cautioned his men.
They were being forced to move far more than they would be in a normal battle.
It was only their training that kept them standing.
They were forced to run merely to keep their position, and back and forth they went, working a relentless pendulum.
They were synchronized now.
The Yorick men had drawn back the speed of their cavalry charges ever so slightly, so that they could match the infantry.
The Blackthorn men too had learned that their attacks felt far more effective when they timed it with Jorah’s infantry to the right of them.
And as soon as Oliver and Firyr’s men had rejoined, after quashing the last of the Inka forces, they’d solidified the rhythm.
