A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1144 The Games of the Mighty - Part 5
1144: The Games of the Mighty – Part 5
1144: The Games of the Mighty – Part 5
The young man himself found his place once again in the centre.
His eyes had carefully tracked Karstly throughout the day, as he attempted to decipher his movements in his head.
Now he was caught up in a charge that he couldn’t find himself predicting.
As overwhelming as some of the Battle board opponents Oliver had played in the past had been, in the form of Hod, and Professor Volguard, never had he encountered a player of the game of strategy that seemed as difficult to predict as Karstly.
The charge seemed to come without a shred of warning.
Oliver would have expected a better bridge to be built.
Karstly had seemed to be careful the day before, after all.
He’d prodded, and poked.
Oliver had supposed that the same would be due here.
He’d send small groups of his men in to harass… And yet, he’d committed the entirety of his army in a single charge, seeing a weakness that Oliver himself couldn’t see.
The young Captain found himself caught up in a current that pulled him along without him understanding why.
The strangest feeling, though, was the lack of panic.
There was complete trust instead.
His limbs felt animated by strength.
It was a feeling that he had learned to feel in his chest, as a way of giving a physical sensation to the battlefield flow that he’d begun to understand.
Somehow, Karstly had managed to manifest that flow so strongly without even seeming to lay the groundwork for it.
And so they hit.
With Karstly at the front, he made that heavy shield wall look as if it were not more than a unit of archers.
To him, they offered resistance, and to his retainers around him, they offered even less.
They were a deadly group of men.
They were so easy to overlook for their lack of presence, just as Samuel had been, before he had been given a position of his own.
But when one really observed them, it was impossible to ignore just how elite a fighter each man was.
They inflicted murderous damage within the first seconds of combat, and they were on to the archers behind the two rows of shield walls before the bowmen could even let off a shot.
Oliver found he could hardly track the battle.
Before he knew it, there were enemies before him, and he was swinging his word, blooding what was there.
It was a feeling of lacking control that was so typical of a footsoldier.
He supposed it was what his men felt serving under him.
He’d feared that feeling at first, but now he found a certain degree of elation in it.
To be allowed to simply fight in the melee, and throw out his whole strength as if there was nothing in the world that he would be better placed doing… It was an almost intoxicating feeling.
They tore apart the enemy on their Generals orders.
From Oliver, all the way down to Firyr and to Karesh and Kaya, they indulged in the merciless bloodshed.
They felt, without exception, a strength to their blades that ordinarily ought not be there.
All traces of resistance were removed.
Every slashed seemed to cut deeper, as if armour was nothing more than paper so foolishly put in their way.
They didn’t slow for even a second.
From the front, Karstly and his retainers allowed that momentum to continue.
He blasted forward, even as violet plumed men dared to get in his way.
He dealt with them with the greatest ease.
Even as red plumes too walked to get a piece of the action, in an attempt of slaying a Stormfront General, they were put to the ground with the lightest flourishes of Karstly’s sword.
Even that weapon he wielded as if it were a brush.
The way he flicked with his wrist rather than his shoulder should have offered no strength at all, but it was as Karstly operated on different laws than the rest of them, for he tore the enemy apart, no matter who was in front of him.
The General in the centre of it all was stunned.
His mouth hung open.
Somehow, in the span of a few heartbeats, Karstly had managed to plunge his way through right to the middle of all their ranks.
Only when he was there did the General finally realize Karstly’s intentions – he intended to plunge straight through to the other side, and out again.
It was a piece of the board that the Verna General found himself to have overlooked.
His chariots were pointed at the gap in the ranks that the Stormfront men had created, as if expecting them to still be there and battling.
The other side of their formation was completely free of such threats.
Only now did he fumble to make the necessary arrangements.
“GET THE CAVALRY!” He shouted.
“AND TRIPLE THE SHIELD WALLS!
DON’T LET THEM OUT!”
By now, however, it was far too late.
There were points in a battle when the tide was no longer overturnable, and Oliver knew that this was one such point.
He knew that here, right in the middle of the enemy ranks, his men could not have been safer than they were.
It was that safety allowed him to keep his eyes forward, and pick his enemies almost selectively, targeting wherever the greatest boulders of resistance were, shattering it for all the soldiers that streamed out behind them.
There were already two rows of heavy shield wielders waiting for them on the other side.
They’d turned to ready themselves, and a third row was just beginning to form itself behind them.
But there wasn’t enough time for any true readiness.
Their meek resistance was still not enough.
Even knowing Karstly’s strength in the melee by now, they didn’t yet have the tools to stop it.
It was a testament to their bravery that they stood their ground regardless.
Karstly had to give them the briefest of nods before he cut them down.
The infantry had done nothing wrong, after all.
It was their lacking General that had allowed them to so easily fall into the trap, and to die for nothing.
