A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1147 Equal Scales - Part 2
1147: Equal Scales – Part 2
1147: Equal Scales – Part 2
“Time seems to both be a friend and an enemy…” General Blackwell said, sighing.
Karstly’s work on the left army that day had been a great source of morale for the Stormfront troops, but there was little more that could be done with it.
Even as he stared at his pieces, Blackwell realized that if they wanted a quick victory, then the ball was almost entirely in Karstly’s court.
If it came to it, Blackwell was quite prepared to abandon the central castle, and send his troops both left and to the right.
But he knew that to do so would only be to delay the inevitable.
To give their centre was to allow the enemy even better opportunities to attack the castles to both sides.
It was not a favourable situation.
He pondered it, completely unaware that in a village just to the west of his hometown of Ernest, the villagers of Solgrim were engaged in much the same situation.
Their siege too had begun.
The Yarmdon men threw themselves at the walls of Solgrim with their ladders, their shields, and their axes.
Their assault was overwhelming.
There were far too many of them for the Solgrim villagers to take any sort of comfort.
But still they had lasted.
Two days had passed now – and they’d lasted both of them.
The two hundred men that Oliver had spared them fought with the might of thousands, and so too did the villagers join the fray.
For the first time in years, Nila and Judas found themselves on the battlefield.
Neither hesitated to bloody their hands, but no matter how many of the enemy they cut down, there seemed to only arrive more.
“…It worsens,” Greeves said, inspecting the state of their defences for the evening.
They’d coated the wood of their walls in flame retardant, but they would only be good for so long.
Each day that the Yarmdon men came, they came with oil, and they started their fires, and each day the walls were worn away just a bit more.
For Nila and Judas it was far too familiar a memory.
They’d done much the same with Talon, in order to finally break through his gates.
To have it used against themselves seemed like justice from the cycle of fortune.
A justice that neither wished to have been served.
“We simply need to hold, Greeves,” Nila said.
She saw the defeated expression on his face, and she rejected it.
“I am well aware,” Greeves said.
“But when can we expect aid?
Ernest has refused us.
They can’t spare the men, so they say.
Then to whom do we send aid?”
“You know who,” Nila said.
“Oliver told us who.”
“Ha.
I know what he told us,” Greeves said.
“But the chances of that happening – they’re too pisisn’ slim girl.
I want to trust what he has to say, but on this, I believe him to be reaching.
We’re peasants, at the end of the day, no one is going to move for us.”
“Oliver would,” Nila said.
“Oliver always does.”
“But you don’t get it, do ya?
The boy is special.
The rest of them, they ain’t like that.
No matter how far we go, we’ll always be peasants in their eyes.
Only he remembers what we’re like, cos’ he comes from the likes of us.
Those damnable nobles, there’s nothing more to them.
The royals even less so.
Why do you think the High king sent this army our way?” Greeves said.
“You believe it to be him?” Nila said.
They’d had this conversation before, and Nila was still undecided.
“I FUCKIN’ KNOW IT!” Greeves fumed.
“These aren’t Yarmdon.
They’re dressed like it, but they ain’t it.
They’re just playing pretend.
They don’t even know the Yarmdon tongue.
What kind of Yarmdon man screams in Stormfront when he’s been stabbed through the chest?
I told you this was coming.”
“And it came,” Nila said.
“Oliver endured when it came for him.
He did it alone.
We can stand together as a village, we will not lose.
He will not come back to ashes.
Believe in him, Greeves.” freёweɓnovel.com
“Pissin’ hell, girl.
I believe in him.
I don’t believe in the other people though, how am I meant to?
I know that when the boy comes home, he’ll return a damn hero.
It’ll be another step forward for him, and there’ll be none to deny it… If we’ll survive until then, though.
I doubt it,” Greeves said.
“And I’m content with that.”
“You know what would happen if we fell here, do you not?” Nila said.
“What are you threatening?” Greeves said.
“There’s a dangerous look on your face, girl.
Are you set to pull a knife on me?”
“Oliver would go for the High King’s throat in the name of vengeance,” Nila said.
“You know that to be true, as well as I.
He’d abandon reason.
His anger… When the flames are stoked… It is a frightening thing.
We must not give him due cause.
He would cease to be himself.”
“…” At that, Greeves finally quieted.
Indeed, he knew anger himself, and darkness, for he swam in it as if he’d been born in it.
He sensed the same in Oliver.
Perhaps that was why he felt so for the boy.
A hero he managed to be, but he was not a hero of the purest heart.
There was a darkness to him that Greeves shared, and because Greeves knew of that darkness, it made Oliver an even greater hero in his eyes, that he could stay on the path of the light, despite the pullings of other directions.
“He would…” Greeves said finally.
“And he would not win.
Not yet.”
“So we must survive.
Not just for our sake, but for his.
For all of the Stormfront.
I believe it to be true, if we lose Oliver, then we would be committing a sin against the entire Stormfront, to rob him of it,” Nila said.
They sounded like the frivolous words of a young girl, to put it in such a high and mighty manner, but even the jaded merchant that was Greeves found himself nodding slowly in agreement.
“We had better pray that this letter of his lands, and that his trust in others, is just as worthy as our own trust in him.”
