A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1014 - The Counterattack - Part 13
1014: The Counterattack – Part 13
1014: The Counterattack – Part 13
Again, Oliver charged forward.
He feigned a slash from overhead, only to bring his sword in line with the man’s thigh, so thoroughly out of reach of the guard of the glaive that it should have been unstoppable.
He was determined to break through.
If not with strength, then it was speed he knew to rely on.
CLANGGGGGG!
This time, it was General Khan’s blade that stopped him.
It swung his sword off to the side.
He’d moved impossibly fast.
Indeed, Oliver hadn’t detected the slightest shred of intention from the man to move.
He thought he was accomplished enough in combat by now that such movements would not go undetected.
“Too few puzzle pieces,” General Khan intoned again.
“Your eyes betray your lack of true education.”
Now it was General Khan’s turn to raise up his glaive.
Oliver took an involuntary step back.
Whatever this man was… It wasn’t what Oliver had expected.
He was far too strong.
Stronger than anything Oliver had greeted before.
Likely just as strong as Dominus himself.
It didn’t make a lick of sense.
“Blackthor—” Oliver started to say, giving her the warning, but before he could, there was another clattering of noise.
An explosive sound of grinding, louder than anything he’d been subject to that day.
KAAASHAAAAAAACKKK!
With the sound, the whole of the platform lurched.
Even General Khan’s eyes betrayed his surprise, his calm shattered.
All the men were tossed to the same side of the platform, as the floor dropped, and angled towards it.
Oliver hit it hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs.
His head rang from the sudden shock.
It was difficult to take in exactly what was happening.
Right next to him, he saw much the same scene.
Two of the golden-armoured men had lost their footing and rolled into the wall at the same time as he.
Blackthorn barely managed to keep standing, though she leaned heavily on Oliver in order to keep her balance.
General Khan himself was only an arm’s reach away, his arms grabbing the tops of the low wooden walls for balance, his glaive on the floor in front of him.
“What in the name of the Gods…” He said in his foreign tongue.
“General!” Yadish cried.
“What’s happening?”
To that, General Khan could have given an answer.
They were moving.
The tower was in motion.
Something had stirred the mighty team of horses that dragged it, but they’d done so poorly.
Something had jammed in the process, and left them with less height. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
Even without looking, General Khan supposed that they might have lost a wheel.
His eyes were wide as he thought through it.
On a battlefield, there was no such thing as chance.
He firmly believed that.
That his tower would suddenly incur such a malfunction – were the Gods truly that set against him, despite how devoted he’d been?
He did not think so.
He recalled the last position of General Khastly in his head.
Khan had seen him weave out of the circle, in another one of his charges, as he dragged the Rogue Commandants off with him.
If he extrapolated that position, was it possible that Khastly had managed to worm his way back inside in time… To make use of that distraction?
For the first time in nearly a decade, General Khan’s heart thumped a beat of trepidation.
Not only was it possible.
It was likely.
This reeked of a plan.
All the pieces carefully set together.
Making use of a distraction in the form of the youth.
His target hadn’t been General Khan’s head from the start.
The young man he’d sent might not have known to expect such mighty resistance, but the General that led him would have.
Beneath the tower, with a smile that could have melted bars of gold, Karstly continued giving his orders, with three Rogue Commandants lying dead at his feet.
“Come now, off with it entirely!
You’ll make us look foolish!” He shouted, as he flicked blood from his sword.
The team of ten horses continued to drag the tall tower even with a spoke missing from one of its large wheels.
The spoke had been shattered, but the wheel remained intact, albeit slightly deformed.
They’d run a solid steel spear straight through its shaft, but even that apparently was not enough to break it.
A team of men with axes went in next.
They began to hack at whatever they could.
The golden armoured men that ought to have been there to stop them were stopped by a wall of Khastly’s men.
In an instant, the battlefield had shifted.
Oliver Patrick had served the purpose that General Karstly had intended for him.
All he’d needed was to rob Khan of his attention for three fingers worth of minutes, and the battle would be decided.
Once more Oliver felt the tower lurch beneath him.
Their height fell again, and the angle steepened.
They were flat against the wall now.
Even he could put the pieces together, knowing nothing of Karstly’s plan and nothing of the state of the battlefield.
“We’re moving, Blackthorn!” He shouted, amidst the creaking of heavy wood.
The girl nodded, showing her willingness, but the question was where?
If they had the chance to move, then the other men – their enemies – trapped in the same position as them would have begun to move already.
It was all they could do to keep their balance.
Against that vicious tugging of gravity, there was little else that could be done.
Now the floor was at such an angle that it was halfway towards being vertical.
Everything that wasn’t tied down skidded towards them.
If that was merely the extent of the physical deformities, then that would have been difficult enough, but the tower swayed back and forth dizzyingly to top it off.
Movement was all but impossible.
Or it ought to have been, had Oliver not spent so much of his years in an extended state of such dizziness.
