A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1150 Equal Scales - Part 5
1150: Equal Scales – Part 5
1150: Equal Scales – Part 5
What remained could hardly have been called a castle.
There were so many holes in the curved wall nearest to them that they could see much of the inside.
It was only the bottom section of the wall that still stood, barring the Verna intruders from waltzing in directly from that direction, but with General Khan’s siege weapons pointed towards them, they would be in soon enough.
Indeed, Captain Lombard had arrived just in time to see it.
Once again, Karstly took his new army out to the edge of the battlefield and he made them wait there, as stone after stone landed against the castle wall.
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
Now the men were wincing in time with every shot.
The tower looked frail.
Like an old woman that was on her very last legs.
If she was an old woman, then Khan was a cruel thief, trying to knock her off her feet, so that he might steal her purse.
With an arm extended, he gave the order for them to continue the attack.
A ballista rocked its way deep into the lower foundations of the wall.
There was a great coughing cloud of dust, and a quivering that went up the entire length of the wall.
All watching the central battle paused, expecting the clattering of the wall tumbling down that was sure to come after.
But to the castle’s credit, it did not come.
Not yet.
It was not until a giant boulder was cast by a catapult, right towards the same ballista bolt that was embedded in the wall that its luck began to run out.
It caught the ballista bolt right in its end, forcing it in even deeper.
And then it bounced over the top of the bolt, and slammed straight into the wall itself.
Down came the way, with a great clatter, and a great screaming of men.
There must have been hundreds falling there and then, as half the castle fell to the ground.
The very earth trembled as if frightened of the great down pouring of rock that was to come its way.
Even Karstly’s men found themselves wincing against the noise, as far away from it as they were.
It took a while for the dust to finally clear.
Khan did not immediately pour forward the second the wall had come down.
He waited, holding his men back, and holding his siege weapons to a halt along with them.
He was a careful general, to the very end.
It had taken him over a week of sieging to finally break through what had been his target.
He was in no rush now.
When that dust finally did clear, Oliver wondered if he was the only one surprised by the lack of corpses.
He would have expected there to be a good few hundred men more.
But all he saw, in total, likely amounted to fifty bodies at most.
He tilted his head.
“That rubble certainly seems to swallow men up.”
“…” Lombard did not reply to the comment.
He was watching, as if looking for something.
He, like the rest of them, likely expected General Blackwell to be amongst that rubble.
If he’d stayed where he had, he must certainly would have been.
But surely that couldn’t have been the case, could it?
He should have been aware of how close the castle was to collapse, just like the rest of them.
It was only that belief that kept Oliver’s mood from plummeting.
In truth, his heart was pounding, seeing the central castle smashed down right in front of them, but he’d had days to acknowledge that truth and prepare for it.
It was bound to happen, with the strategy that they were employing.
“Forward,” Karstly gave the order all of a sudden.
For the first time in days, he raised himself up out of his saddle, and he extended an arm, clad in that black uniform of his.
It irritated Oliver to notice the subtle white about his wrists that day – a change from yesterday’s blue threading.
It was not a cautious speed that he set them at, but a rather violent one.
With their positioning, they could rush straight towards Khan’s rear camp if they wished it.
They were placed right next to it, with Khan’s army to the front of them.
But it seemed too sudden a move.
Why wouldn’t they have gone earlier, when Khan’s soldiers were preoccupied by the assault on the castle?
Oliver didn’t know, but it certainly didn’t make the slightest lick of sense to him.
That was, until, beyond the smoke, as the rays of the sun penetrated the last of the cloud of dust, he finally began to see a great stirring of men, as they poured their way around both sides of what remained of the central castle.
Horses, Oliver saw.
A whole battalion of men that were mounted and readied for battle, as if they’d spent the entire night in preparation, and truth be told, Oliver figured that was exactly what they had done.
With Lord Blackwell riding so calmly at the head of them, as he drew round the right hand side of the tower’s white stone, there was no way he hadn’t planned that far ahead.
His castle had been entirely destroyed, but the man was as calm as one was likely to be.
He was as still as the surface of a pond.
Even Khan found that he couldn’t see through him.
From both sides, suddenly, Khan found himself besieged.
From the front, there was the threat of five thousand of Lord Blackwell’s men, led by the General himself, and from the rear, there was General Karstly, bearing down on the encampment.
Now Oliver understood.
It was the tactical advantage that Karstly had been waiting an entire week for.
A pincer attack that finally forced Khan to extend his attention elsewhere.
Karstly took them at a gallop, and he smashed them into the side of the Verna encampment, breaking through the wall of spearmen, with their spear tips extended outwards, before Khan could get any sorts of orders to them.
He shattered that wall, and he brought his men pouring in after him.
The Stormfront men followed as if in a bloodthirsty daze.
Their swords moved on autopilot.
They cut whatever was in front of them, but they were just as confused by the sudden assault as their enemies were.
