A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1149 Equal Scales - Part 4
1149: Equal Scales – Part 4
1149: Equal Scales – Part 4
Karstly had maneuvered them all the way to the back of Khan’s formation.
They were on the right-hand side, a distance away from any chariots.
Now all that waited them was a row of wide open back.
It seemed to be the very same conditions as had been present on the first day – but Karstly gave no orders to attack.
Nor did he show any signs of giving them.
It would have been easy to dismiss the man as foolish, and assume that he just hadn’t seen the perfect opportunity that was being dangled in front of him, but now Oliver knew Karstly to be far from such.
If Karstly wasn’t attacking, then that meant that was a reason for it.
There was likely some tactic that he didn’t see that Khastly had, or some strategic disadvantage that they would incur if they snatched for it.
It was a frustrating feeling not to be able to see the reason behind it, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar one.
He’d had that feeling hammered into him with regularity whenever he faced Volguard or Skullic on the battle board.
They were made to stand like that, with little prospect of any future movement, all the way until the end of the day.
And when the sun finally set, and Khan’s men went back to their camp, meekly Karstly’s men went back to their camp as well.
Firyr gave his complaints loudly, and they were echoed by more than a few Patrick men.
They were unused to such passive warfare, and they could well see the steady state of degradation of Blackwell’s central castle.
Any with eyes could see that they were losing, but still Karstly did not budge.
When the fourth day came, much the same happened.
The holes in the central castle only continued to widen.
Now they seemed big enough to ride an elephant through, if one had the wings to attach to it, so that it might fly itself up towards the gap.
The fifth day came as well.
The men’s unease continued to perpetuate.
The activity of the Karstly men lessened, until they spent the entirety of their days simply watching.
The only thing that seemed to change for those men – aside from the world around them – was the state of Karstly’s dress.
Every day, the man seemed to have a different outfit.
Oliver had overlooked such things before, for his clothing had always seemed to be well uniformed, but with little else to occupy his attention, as he was forced into such a stationary state, he couldn’t overlook that indeed, Karstly’s uniform changed day by day.
He wore the colours of the Pendragons, and a mostly black uniform to go with it.
One might have mistaken him for a Blackthorn man from the way that he dressed himself.
Oliver certainly had at first, until he’d gotten to know him better, and become all but certain that there was no chance that Karstly was in the Blackthorn’s employ.
The subtlety of the changes in his uniform were almost infuriating.
There would be red threads around his sleeve on one day, just the barest amount of it, and on the next, they would be blue, and his colour would be given a white frill, that hid the chain-mail underneath.
It irritated Oliver that it could have his attention as such.
His eyes should have been pinned firmly to the battlefield, for even though things were not changing for Oliver and his men, the battlefield continued to evolve.
The Verna General’s subtly manipulated the formation of their troops, positioning them as such to take best advantage over the progress that they’d made.
Khan had started sending his siege weapons further forward now, to target the base of the case walls, rather than the top of them as they had before.
But that was as much as Oliver could fathom.
What Karstly found ever so interesting, and what the looming figure of General Blackwell saw, from high atop his falling walls, Oliver could not understand.
He’d studied strategy, and none could call him incompetent.
Even Volguard had expressed that he was one of his more talented students.
Yet he’d never been immersed in strategy like these men had.
It was as though they were speaking a different language, or singing a song that he couldn’t understand the lyrics of.
When the change on the battlefield finally came, it was on the seventh day.
The men readied themselves for a prospect of fruitless watching, as well as for the arrival of the thousand-man changeover that Karstly had instigated, to keep their pressure constant.
They had not expected that the battlefield would turn itself entirely on its head.
Those thousand men that they had expected came just before dawn.
The fresh patrol.
They carried with them new supplies, and in exchange, Karstly sent a thousand men their way, to carry news back to the Lonely Mountain, and to rest, whilst also serving the purpose of defence.
Like Karstly was want to, it was a cunning maneuver that managed to accomplish multiple things at once.
Oliver was simply glad that he and his men had not been a part of that thousand man contingent that he had been sent away – though he was glad to see that Captain Lombard was amongst the thousand that had arrived.
He nodded to the man, noting his grim face, and Lombard nodded back, the morning sun shining off the bald of his head.
“Captain Patrick,” he said.
“I see that you are still standing.”
It was a poor choice of words.
Enough to make Oliver grimace.
“I might be, Captain, but I can not say the same for that central castle…”
He pulled himself and his horse out of the way to allow Lombard a better view.
To the credit of the man, his reaction to those ruins was most minimal.
His eyebrow twitched just the barest amount, and his hands clenched his reins ever so slightly tighter.
They were imperceptible reactions.
If Oliver hadn’t known Lombard as well as he had, he would have missed them.
But from those reactions, he could tell just how bad the situation truly was, if even Captain Lombard thought so.
