A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1163 A Youth’s Command - Part 2
1163: A Youth’s Command – Part 2
1163: A Youth’s Command – Part 2
“No?” Karstly prodded.
“I don’t think that to be true.
It would be foolish if it were.
You’re not as blind as you would have others believe, General Blackwell.
You caught the scent of potential, and you wish to nurture it, don’t you?
I wonder, though.
That sword that you’ve been sharpening – is that for the good of the boy himself, or is it for the good of the Blackwells?”
“What are you getting at?”
Karstly laughed.
“Nothing at all, General.
Either way, I would not knock you for it.
I was simply curious to see what was so different about him.
Why it was that he was causing such a stir?
Progress is one thing, to get as strong as quickly as he had… Mhm, I can see how that would invite the interest of the masses.
But you damn intellects have been looking as well, haven’t you?
That dusty Hod, that damn Skullic, Lombard, you, even my old Professor Volguard wrote to me of him.”
“So?
Is that what you’re aiming for?” Lord Blackwell said, suddenly pulling his horse to a halt, so he could look General Karstly in the eyes as he asked that question.
“It’s simple curiosity?
That’s why you gave that order?
It was a simple test for him, was it?
Or are you like a child, setting out to destroy a toy that you have no interest in?”
“Oh, no, General, you mistake me,” Karstly said, waving his hands in front of him.
“It was no test.
He’s been thoroughly tested enough.”
“Then why is it you put a thousand men in the hands of an eighteen-year-old Captain?
And moreover, you told him to win that battle to the right, when he ought to be stalling it, waiting for our own victory,” General Blackwell said.
With a shrug, Karstly’s smile grew even wider.
“Why else, but because I believe that he can accomplish it?”
“Tsch,” General Blackwell said.
“We can continue this conversation no further.
The men await their orders.
Do as we’ve planned.
The rear is yours entirely.
Any machinations you wish to carry out, carry out.
The more different our assaults are, the better.”
“Wait, General,” Karstly said, stopping him.
“Before you go, one last question… Why is it you believe that this to be strategically sound?
That our two minds together ought to be enough to overwhelm Khan?
What do you believe a battlefield to be governed by?
What is the foundation of your strategy?”
“That’s more than one question,” General Blackwell said, already having turned around to leave.
“A battlefield and its victory are the steady accumulation of advantages.
Nothing more, nothing less.”
“An answer straight out a textbook,” Karstly said with a sigh.
The Blackwell General rounded on him, finally showing a trickle of the rage that had connected the Blackwell bloodline to the Blackthorn bloodline all those centuries ago.
“What is it that you believe, Karstly?
All these games you play – and yet you still manage to eek out your victories.”
“Mm,” Karstly said.
“I did not have an answer before I became here.
But ’tis true.
I enjoy the battlefield more than normal men.
I find a thrill in dismantling their strategies on the Battle board… but nothing compares to the freedom of opportunities out here.
The board was ever so exciting, but this here is bliss.
I wondered why it was that I could have so much fun doing what other people treated as the most cruel of chores.
I certainly couldn’t reduce strategy to a mere accumulation of advantages as you do… My strategy is far more open-ended than that.”
“Then what?
How do you explain the way a position builds, and our options heighten?”
“Maybe you’re right in your idea of advantages, even if I do not like it, perhaps that is the way of the Battle board.
But I can tell you for a certainty, is not the way of the field battle.
The field battle, I do believe, to be an accumulation of something – not advantage, but of will.
The will of men.
A foot soldier exerts his will over his enemies.
Over the space that his stands upon.
Those wills compound.
There’s an answer I came up with only a handful of days ago, watching Khan continue his mindless sieging.
But I think it to be a better answer than yours already,” Karstly said.
His smile was gone now, and there was a serious tint to his eyes.
Somehow, General Blackwell found that serious face of his all the more unnerving.
He didn’t often look at man directly, but around them, and even that was enough to make his intelligence felt, as if he was analysing them inside and out.
“Will?” Blackwell mused.
“How does that explain your decision to send Oliver Patrick to that battlefield?”
“Because he has a will and a want far beyond his rank,” Karstly said.
“His men share a similar will.
They wish to dominate all that stands before them.
Of course, mere wanting isn’t enough, there’s something more… Something beyond my understand.
However, I have a belief, and a certainty.
Oliver Patrick in charge of four hundred men was far more frightening a creature than two Verna Rogue Commandants in charge of five thousand.
Shall we both wonder why that is?”
The General beside him pulled his horse to a halt, and he gave Karstly another careful and long look.
What he was searching for, it was hard to tell.
It was even harder to tell whether he found it.
But after a short while, he nodded, and said no more.
When he began to lead the way towards the battlefield again, this time Karstly followed.
…
…
On the other end of the battlefield, Oliver evaluated what was in front of him.
They’d sent their message to General Rainheart, and they’d brought their troops near the enemy, to exert the pressure that Karstly had once done, but that was where the tutelage ran out, and where the obvious orders ran out with them.
There were fifty rows of twenty men running across the plain, from the castle, all the way back down towards the encampment.
Those that looked towards the Patrick men only did so in the shortest of bursts.
The rest of the time was spent fully focused on what was in front of them, waiting for the next call to be taken up.
