A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1166 A Youth’s Command - Part 5
1166: A Youth’s Command – Part 5
1166: A Youth’s Command – Part 5
“Mm…” Oliver mused.
Those chariots were better armoured than their men.
Covered in thick and weighty steel.
There were three men atop them at all times.
They were mobile, deadly fortresses with the blades that spun from the wheels of the hubs.
The Stormfront men knew not to attack them.
On a battlefield, especially on the plains, all that a Stormfronter could do was hope to avoid them.
Now Oliver found himself spying something in them.
The slightest shred of weakness.
His heartbeat sped up ever so slightly.
He wet his lips with his tongue, and swallowed down a pitiful amount of salvia.
He finally found himself with an order that he could give.
There were fewer chariots there than there were women in Solgrim.
A few hundred, at the very most.
Once they gathered speed, they would be monstrous things.
But bunched up as they were, with no speed to them, they seemed like awfully tempting targets.
“Verdant,” Oliver said, pointing his finger.
“We have our first target.
We’ll make to go left, to plunge into the infantry behind the siege units, but it seems to me like we’ll have greater success wetting our toes and breaking apart some pieces of famed Verna technology.”
Verdant considered it for a moment, before giving a brief nod.
“Very good, my Lord.”
Lombard listened in as well.
“I suppose I had better give the order then,” the man said.
The army of Patrick men slithered forward, ever so carefully.
There was hesitancy in their links, but it did not stop the procession.
Oliver came first with his own force, followed by Lombard, and then finally by a Yoran that was just barely keeping his reluctance from showing on his face.
They went slow across the sands, towards the left, with a swagger, as if it was not war they were looking to make, but entertainment.
They seemed like a gang setting themselves out on a town, for whatever interesting things they might find.
Lombard did not convey the order directly.
He simply said to aim left.
The men obeyed that, seeming to realize that there was a falseness in the words.
And so they did not commit, their movements were all measured, carefully, and waiting to be told the truth – waiting for the excitement to come.
They rounded themselves, following that invisible line that Walter had picked out in the sand.
Oliver knew not what lay beyond it.
He only knew that it was something he was unlikely to survive after daring to confront.
So he left it very well alone, taking all the measures that he could spare to ensure that none of his order would step out over it.
Then, when he judged that they had gone far enough, following an unmentionable rhythm and unidentifiable thread that he wasn’t sure even existed anymore, he cast his hand up high in the air, and he bellowed his order, unable to keep the aggression of his voice.
“VEER RIGHT!
TO THE CHARIOTS!” He spat, his dry mouth making his voice sound horse and aged far beyond his years.
Walter kicked up the sandy earth, and went lurching forward.
There came Verdant and Blackthorn behind him.
Soon enough, the entirety of the army was set to running.
They kept the same course as Oliver, not crossing the line, even without realizing that they were avoiding it.
The snaking procession twisted, and the rows of men went barrelling along the Verna line, their shouts finally drawing attention out of those almost phantom-like troops.
But it was only casual glances that they received.
Almost lazy.
They were made to seem like nothing more than circus performers by the lack of threat that the Verna men seemed to perceive in them.
‘If we be circus performers, then let it be a performance of blood!’ Oliver thought, finding his fury.
He turned then, straight towards the chariots.
Here was where he was forced to cross the line that he had so carefully avoided.
He cast all his senses as wide as he could.
He even borrowed Ingolsol’s eyes for that matter, seeing all that the Dark God could see that he could not.
It did little to mask his unease.
He found himself relying more on Walter than he had himself.
He anticipated Walter’s resistance to going any further… But the horse just plunged straight on through.
It was like a siege.
They were attacking walls of their own.
These walls were even more sturdy than the white polished stone that had built those Verna castles.
Of course, a boulder was likely to send them flying, but given that the steel armour that reinforced every open bit of wood that they could, those boulders were unlikely to break the chariots before them.
If those chariots were castles, then the horses were like moats.
There were four for each.
Oliver wouldn’t have thought that, in making the charge, those horses would pose any sort of problem.
But with their sheer size – they were larger than the average warhorse – it was difficult to avoid their mass.
Oliver had to find the smallest of gaps just to lurch in between them.
But find it he did, and from there, he rushed towards the chariot cart itself, his sword drawn, hungry for the blood of the chariot riders.
He wasn’t even allowed to bring that blade down in a swing before he realized his mistake.
It was like the flexing of the muscles of some giant animal.
He felt a rippling, and then he felt a danger, and then a sea of arrows were bearing down upon him, and he knew not from where they came.
Only by Ingolsol’s eyes did Oliver keep himself free of those iron-tipped missiles, but the same was not true for the men behind Oliver. freeweɓnovel.cøm
More than a few found themselves caught in the assault, whilst the Verna men simply raised up their shields, as if heaving up umbrellas over their heads.
This was not a rain that they minded.
They wore the smiles of men that had been long since waiting for the drought to end.
Throughout it all, the fat cat that was General Zilan did not even glance in their direction.
To him, they must have seemed like no more than a fly.
The General swatted them away without needing to change a thing.
He simply trusted in the mighty formation that he had built.
