A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1145 The Games of the Mighty - Part 6
1145: The Games of the Mighty – Part 6
1145: The Games of the Mighty – Part 6
Before the encounter had even begun, it was over.
Karstly burst his way out through the other side, and his retainers came with him, widening the hole through the ranks of men into a wide gulping mouth.
The infantry poured after them, without slowing.
Soon enough, Oliver found himself out in the open as well.
As suddenly as he had entered, he was out again, back in the light of the day, with the sun beating down on him from above.
He turned to look over his shoulder, as he kept Walter galloping after Karstly’s retreating back.
All the men that he’d brought with him had already safely made it out, and behind them the other forces made their way out too, as Captains shouted urgent orders, fighting to break free before the Verna could close their lines back up again.
Even the men all the way back towards the rear had the time that they needed to fight free.
They passed the last line of shieldwielders, stepping over their corpses, and they sprinted after Karstly, leading to a great snake of men that went twisting across the sandy plains.
Only when he was a good distance away did Karstly finally come to a halt.
He could hear the chariots before he could see them.
He knew that a counterattack would be inevitable if he were to stay too long – and that was exactly the sort of thing that he wished to avoid.
He watched over his returning men like a mother, carefully watching over her children, ensuring that they didn’t slip and fall in their rough play.
Of course, no children could have looked as ghastly as those men looked, as they returned covered in such blood.
Firyr had asked for battle, and to that lone Commander who ought to have been whipped for speaking up out of turn, Karstly delivered.
High in the central castle, Blackwell had to grunt.
His eyes were narrowed, and his teeth were gritted from the stress of it, but he had to acknowledge the results.
“I’m too bloody old for this,” he spat to himself.
His heart couldn’t bear the tension.
That was one of the reasons he supposed that he fought as carefully and as straightforwardly as he did.
He couldn’t take the gambles of Karstly any longer.
Those were the games of much younger men.
Of course, even Khan had to look.
Karstly had staged the attack to force those eyes of his to look his way, and make him acknowledge the threat that he was.
“Now you cannot stand by so idly, good General Khan,” Karstly said.
“How many men was that?
A thousand and a half?
More?
And what have I lost?
Barely a handful of soldiers.
I think it to be obvious now – if you leave this fledgling General with me, I will hound him and hound him until I have plucked all his feathers off.
And then, when he is no longer able to fly away, I shall wring his neck, and tell the future from his broken wishbones.”
Karstly’s retainer pulled a face as he listened to his Lord’s rather creative threat.
It was a reaction that Karstly rather enjoyed, and so he did not comment on it.
He supposed that, at times, exasperation was just as good as amusement.
“…What the hell was that?” Oliver said, unable to wipe the smile off his face.
“I ask you Verdant, what in the hell was that?”
It was as close to invincibility as he’d ever felt.
That rushing gamble.
To dive straight through the heart of such a large army, and to burst through unchecked from it.
It was madness to him.
It was not the sort of strategy that he’d been taught at the Academy.
The tactics that he knew had to be built… This, instead, was more like a tactic to be seized upon… Or, it was a tactic built of other bridges that Oliver could not yet see.
“That, I suppose, is what a hearty difference in skill looks like,” Verdant said.
“Though I would not have been able to spot the enemy’s mistake if Karstly did not seize upon it.
He eyes weakness as though it’s a hundred feet tall, and obvious from a thousand miles away.”
“Would that I had such a gift,” Oliver said, shaking his head, still unable to rid himself of his smile.
“I had wondered how we might win this, Verdant, but now I believe myself to have been enlightened.
This is what a mere two thousand men can achieve.
We might not be able to seize victory in one fell sweep – but we can create threats and pressure that makes that victory all the more possible.”
Pressure, as Oliver had considered it, seemed to be the act of remaining present, to cut off opportunities before they presented themselves.
That was how he’d known to wield it in the past.
But to have such an eye for weakness as Karstly, that pressure became a threat, and suddenly the battlefield was shifting.
It was not a two thousand man army against twenty thousand.
It was a sharp spear and swift spear against a large body of flesh that needed to do anything and everything that it could do to defend itself.
The left army found itself entirely immobilized.
They’d already been shocked into pausing before the attack, but after it, that shock lasted all the longer.
The General himself needed the time to recover.
He felt the humiliation burning in his chest, and he felt the regret for the loss of so many men.
He gnashed his teeth together, trying to bring a strategy to mind.
He almost gave an order, but the wise counsel of a retainer held him back from a second blunder.
“Remember what General Khan said, wise Lord,” the retainer said.
“Do not make a strong decision when you are already on the back foot, no matter how right that decision might seem.
We must build ourselves slowly back up.”
