A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1154 Equal Scales - Part 9
1154: Equal Scales – Part 9
1154: Equal Scales – Part 9
“DRAW BACK!
DRAW BACK!” The Rogue Commandants found themselves bellowing.
They were students of Khan’s style of warfare.
They’d been too many a battle under the man, and they’d learned how he dealt with momentum, by pulling away from a fearsome attack, and allowing it to filter out its own accord.
But even with those orders, the men didn’t seem likely to have much of a chance of responding.
There were too many for them to get a handle on.
They were accustomed to commanding a thousand each, not five thousand.
Their cries drew reactions from some men, but not all of them, and it was the men that lagged behind that were snatched up by the fury of the Stormfront assault.
Their ill-formed lines were butchered, and the attacks neared their heads.
Eventually, they were forced to give up efforts of leadership, and they were made to deal with the attacks themselves.
“There’s Blessed amongst them,” said a short man, to his taller companion.
He was less calm than his voice would have had his men believe.
“We’ll have to deal with them ourselves.”
The man next to him nodded a stoic nod, fiddling with his drooping mustache.
“We are men of the Third Boundary, after all.
It is our duty to step up when the time arises, even if it means to forsake our role as Commandants.”
It seemed a poor bit of strategy that the man was expressing, but the shorter man didn’t have the time to correct him.
It was far from being a universal truth, but in the situation that they were in, it was true enough to let slide.
“Together?” The short man asked.
There was still strategy, once a man drew a blade, and decided to dedicate himself to the melee.
“Together,” the taller man affirmed, glancing at Lombard and his progress briefly, before deciding to commit everything he had to stopping the Patrick assault first and foremost.
It was the black-haired woman at the head of the Patrick formation now.
She was the bringing of death.
She was the tip of the arrowhead, forcing Firyr to fall behind to her left, and Jorah, Karesh and Kaya to take charge of the right.
She pushed forward with relentless intensity, until she found a pair of boulders that her sword could no longer cut.
CLANG!
The halt came suddenly.
She’d tried a slash, to cut down the infantryman in front of her, and then there had flashed a glaive, as the polearm was put in the path of Blackthorn’s weapon.
“Not beginning,” the Verna man said in a poor application of the Stormfront tongue.
“Not happening,” his companion corrected, as he swung his half-moon sword at Lasha’s side, taking advantage of the hold that the shorter man had created.
It ought to have been a finishing blow, but Lasha was too swift of foot for that, and her companions were too watchful.
Jorah had Karesh and Kaya there when they needed to be, throwing off the taller man’s strike, and in that short instant, Lasha was given the opportunity that she needed to free herself, and put distance between herself and the enemy.
“Tsch,” the man tutted, as his sword sliced nothing but air.
It might have seemed a failure in his eyes, but his companion did not fail to notice the fact that the Patrick charge had now been brought to a screeching halt.
“LOMBARD!” Oliver shouted.
He still had not engaged yet.
Lombard’s arrival was a curiosity that he couldn’t afford to overlook.
He was well aware that the Captain was angry at him, and he felt almost cheeky shouting his name.
Still, the diligent Lombard did not fail to look up.
This was a battlefield.
It was no place for petty games.
Not when their very lives were on the line.
Oliver pointed, as soon as he was sure that the Captain was looking.
Straight at those two Rogue Commandants, his finger traced a line.
The veteran Captain almost snarled at the insolence needed to give him orders by a point, or to give him orders at all, but he could not deny the strategy of it.
It was too sound.
Even if he didn’t want to, he was forced to play along with Oliver’s plans.
After all, the man had yet to commit himself.
He raised a cry, his anger lending Command to his voice.
“WITH ME!
TOWARDS THE CENTRE NOW!”
From the flank, they began to carve their path towards where the two Rogue Commandants stood in the centre.
Their momentum was almost as strong as the Patrick’s men had been before him.
With the Rogue Commandant’s attention entirely focused in one direction, they proceeded without incident.
“…He’s stolen seven hundred of my men,” Karstly said again, his voice sounding less irritated than before.
“…And he’s commanding them.”
“Come, Walter,” Oliver said, gently urging his horse with a pat on his neck.
He knew that the fighting was sure to get violent, and that the quarters were going to be close.
Walter hated fighting in those enclosed spaces, and so Oliver took the time to reassure the horse in advance.
The beast snorted, and pawed the ground with his foot, as if to state his impatience.
Oliver had to smile at the almost human-like gesture.
Then, he was leaning forward in the saddle, raised up in his stirrups, feeling an increasing amount of wind in his hair as Walter took them from rest, all the way to the height of his gallop.
He tried to time it to match Lombard as best as he could.
There could be no perfection on the battlefield, but the timing of that charge almost approached it.
Lombard consciously tried to match himself to Oliver the same.
He understood the intentions of Oliver’s order, and so he did what he could in order to obey it.
Lombard burst through the side of the Verna men, intruding onto the battle that Lasha and Jorah were engaged in, and losing, even now that Firyr had arrived.
Against the likes of Third Boundary men, there was little to be done – that gap was entirely insurmountable.
