A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1133 The Next Patrol - Part 4
1133: The Next Patrol – Part 4
1133: The Next Patrol – Part 4
“We will have to play dangerously,” Karstly said.
“A thousand men will be all that we can spare to hold this mountain.
Two thousand men will pressure, and a thousand men will continually run the distance between the two, gathering supplies, and reinforcing wherever they are needed.
It will be a brutal affair, but is a way of extending our numbers to more than they otherwise would be.
It is a time for the strongest to take the lead.
Men that can do much, with very little.
As it happens, Captain Patrick, I do hear that a good portion of your victories have come when you are outnumbered.”
“Some of them, General,” Oliver said.
“Then, when the time comes, you might be one of the few that I have to rely on,” General Karstly said.
“Better to be able to use him as insurance, than to put whip lashes across his back, and drag him out of action, eh Gordry?”
“I agree, General.
My oversight was foolish,” Gordry said.
“I do not see far enough.
I will consider this a lesson to be learned.”
“Do,” Karstly said.
“But you, Patrick, I hope you know that despite your failure, you will have to perform.
Your punishment will be more brutal than death.
I will run ragged for that time that you had off.”
…
…
Another patrol of two thousand men set out the next morning, and the Patrick forces were a part of it.
General Karstly headed the men once more, after switching the majority of his soldiers out for fresh ones, and taking new Colonels under his command, leaving Colonel Gordry behind to oversee the Lonely Mountain fort with Samuel.
Oliver had been returned to his men the night before.
Somehow, that had been even more embarrassing for him than admitting his failure in front of Karstly’s counsel.
He’d told them outright, unable to keep from being a degree bashful.
He’d expected to see disappointment in their eyes, but there wasn’t even the slightest flash of it.
The men welcomed him back like they hadn’t seen him in a year, and they threw a feast – with what little supplies that they had – for his return.
As they rode behind him, Oliver couldn’t deny that they too had improved in strength.
There was more unity to them now, and those that had been lacking hardness before, such as Yorick’s men, now had a degree of toughness to them.
It was hard to tell just how far that toughness would go, but Oliver supposed that they at least ought to last longer than they would before.
The lines even between the Blackthorn men and the Patrick men had started to blur.
They weren’t as strongly strangers anymore.
More than a few of the men spoke to each other, as friendships began to blossom between them as a result of their fighting.
Behind him, Lasha Blackthorn rode, and in her, Oliver thought he noticed the largest measure of change.
She wasn’t quite so distant.
She often seemed almost distracted when they weren’t in battle.
Now, he caught her looking behind herself to check on the infantry jogging after them, as if it were her duty to see to the entirety of the Patrick men.
He nodded at that.
Like Lord Blackthorn himself, he thought that Lasha was wasted as a mere soldier.
She was strong, for true, but the strength of her spirit was even more impressive.
That was the sort of quality that a leader needed – to have a spirit strong enough to bear the woes of hundreds.
Already, the men knew that the Khan forces had made their encampment outside of Lord Blackwell’s castles, and come that morning, they likely would have already begun their siege.
It was an unfortunate decision that Lord Karstly had needed to make, to come back when he did, having lost a good few steps of momentum, and having to concede the board to Khan for a couple of days as he had.
Still, he did not seem to believe – nor did any of them – that Blackwell would fall in the short time that they were away.
Lord Blackwell was far too experienced a General for that.
Indeed, he did not disappoint.
From his central castle, come morning, Blackwell stood, looking over the state of the battlefield.
He saw the Verna army stretched out over the sandy plains in their tens of thousands, their numbers almost reaching a hundred thousand.
During their march, those numbers had only continued to swell, exceeding all the previous estimations that the Stormfront armies had projected.
“It seems as though these extra men that I brought with me are not only a boon, but a necessity,” Lord Blackwell noted.
Those men had meant to be for the purpose of pushing forward, and taking true ground for themselves – but the defeated Verna had come back with even more men to match him.
It was a terrifying sight.
More terrifying still were the siege weapons that they wheeled out in front of them, and the chariots that they wheeled out behind.
On these flat plains, the Verna army was at its most dangerous.
In a field battle, those chariots would rule the land, as they often did. freewёbnoνel.com
And in a siege battle, their siege weapon would knock down the bricks of their own walls without the slightest shred of mercy.
A horn sounded out, and the Verna forces began their advance.
Infantrymen rushed with their ladders, and the siege weapons, with the ballistas and catapults, fired the first of their rounds.
And so the battle began, just like that.
The first of the giant boulders hurled by the catapults crashed into the wall, and the stones gave a dreadful groan as they just barely repelled it.
The ballista stakes came firing shortly after, and they were not quite so merciful.
They burrowed their way into the rock, and cracks webbed out from where they hit, rocking the earth from the force of the blow.
The men had to duck and brace themselves in order to absorb the impact.
That was all they could do.
It was not until the infantrymen came into range with their ladders that the Stormfront men could truly retaliate.
And then they reached for their bows, and their oils, and they began their defensive battle in earnest.
