A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1132 The Next Patrol - Part 3
1132: The Next Patrol – Part 3
1132: The Next Patrol – Part 3
Oliver thought that in that tent, with his face stoney, he’d finally caught a truer glimpse of Karstly’s nature.
He was a man as changeable as the wind.
He often seemed completely whimsical.
It was as if no matter what happened, he would always turn it to his advantage.
It was almost refreshing to see that there was still the stuff that made normal men jostling around somewhere inside him, there were lines that he would not allow to be crossed.
“What of my punishment, General?” Oliver asked, deciding to press the point before it could be forgotten and returned to him with renewed anger, along with the accusation that he was avoiding the justice that he was due.
“The embarrassment on your face tells me that you understand your situation well enough,” Karstly said.
“And you should be embarrassed.
To make a declaration like you did, and then to return a failure – you should know what that entails.
In a different army, you would be laughed out… However.
I do not find myself entirely opposed to rash actions like that.
Samuel told me that you were honest beforehand.
You stated your odds of success as well as you knew them, and you did not seem intent on deception.
Samuel took you up on your gamble.
The fact that you would fail was already well within the realm of possibility.”
Oliver looked past Karstly to see if he could gauge anything from Samuel’s expression, but it was as if the man had wiped all traces of emotion from his eyes.
He stood behind his Lord as nothing more than a statue, ready to carry out whatever will that he was burdened with.
He felt a flash of relief that he they had proceeded as straightforwardly with Samuel as they had.
He seemed an even more dangerous man that he had first let on.
“If you had succeeded, we would have been given options that we did not have before,” Karstly said.
“However, the very fact that you thought you could succeed…” He shook his head, as if the idea maddened him.
“That you thought you could succeed, was either insanity, or genius.
I do not know which.
I can only hope that it is the former.
If you had returned here, having crossed that Fourth Boundary, Captain Patrick, I would not have been able to speak to you so levelly.
I dare say I would have hesitated to command you.
At eighteen, crossing the Fourth Boundary… You would not be man – you would be monster.
And you’re monster enough already, with your title of the youngest.”
The General scratched his chin, and drifted off into a brief quiet.
His severe expression remained.
His retainers seemed to know not to disturb him when he was in such a mood.
Both Oliver and Verdant followed their example, and remained just as quiet.
“Our patrol did not reach as far as we would have wished it to,” Karstly said.
“Or at least, we did not achieve all that we would have wished to, in the same manner that you were unable to, Captain Patrick.
We harried the caravan from the back – but that Khan, he’s a cunning man, he is.
I do not think there is a General in all the world that is as able to work with as well with such large numbers as he.
At every turn, he saw us blocked, and given another few days, he will arrive before Blackwell’s castles, and we will have achieved nothing for our efforts.
Now the fact that he allowed us through with such confidence is beginning to make a degree more sense… He supposes he still has certain victory, even with us camped where we are.”
To hear that they’d been met with failure themselves when Oliver was excluded from the patrol didn’t bring him any of the pleasure that it might have to other men.
Even if he was not part of the assault, he wanted victory for their campaign more than anything.
He thought that to be more important even than his individual glory, given what was on the line.
If Lord Blackwell were to fail again, then he would be in considerable trouble, as would all of those close to him.
“Thus, it seems our strategy changes,” Karstly said.
“Our next patrol will be one of all out attack.
We will not be able to simply harry them as they march.
They will already have landed, and it will be they that hold the initiative.
Troubling indeed… If I’d come back to hear you had crossed the Fourth Boundary, Patrick, it might have washed those troubles away.
I had half-hoped it, when I received the crow, even if I knew the impossibilities.
Hm… I wonder if you see the precariousness of our situation?”
“You mean to tell me that we will need to stay away from the Lonely Mountain for longer than we intended?” Oliver asked.
“That is the top and bottom of it.
If we’d been able to establish a foothold, we could have come and gone as we pleased, harrying the enemy from the back as we went.
Now, we’re forced to simply wait close by.
Our only use shall be pressure, until the opportunity presents itself.
But pressuring with two thousand men, when we still need to hold this mountain… it shall be tough,” Karstly said.
He said it as though he’d almost given up, but Oliver knew that a man who had given up couldn’t have held the sort of anger in eyes that Karstly did.
It was an anger that Oliver very much resonated with.
It was the anger that came when a man was confronted with an obstacle too large to clear in one jump, and even still he’d tried it, only to slip, and fall flat on his face, completely ridding himself of the momentum of the run.
He was in a position of stagnation, having lost all the rushing success that had come with his first two victories.
It was crippling, but it was a mistake, and a man like Karstly was not the sort to hold himself to a mistake.
