A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1169 The Ability to Overwhelm - Part 2
1169: The Ability to Overwhelm – Part 2
1169: The Ability to Overwhelm – Part 2
“If we’re to rest, we ought to take ourselves further away from the field than this,” Colonel Yoran continued.
“Those chariots are reorganizing themselves, and they like us not.
They’ll want to inflict punishment for what the Lady Blackthorn managed to achieve.”
He had the reins of his horse grabbed already, and looked set to shift himself then.
He kept his helmet cradled between his legs, and he kept his sword sheathed in his saddle.
By all accounts, that was a man very much ready to head home for the day.
“All troops—” Colonel Yoran began to say, his voice loud, just short of a shout.
He heard no opposition, and so he pushed further.
He took their silence for agreement, until that silence was so carefully broken.
“Good Colonel,” Verdant said, affecting a smile.
He didn’t speak loudly either.
He didn’t need any degree of aggression in order to interrupt Yoran.
It was timing that won him that affair.
He took the helmet from his head, and he wiped his brow.
But the gesture as he did it seemed so much more different.
He shifted his hair out of the view of his eyes, and he checked the buckles of his gauntlets, readying them, before that helmet was back on his head soon enough.
Just as the Colonel had too, Verdant took up the reins of his horse, as if to gather somewhere – but he didn’t do it with a word to the others.
He moved of his own accord, before the Colonel could.
With plodding steps, Casper thrust himself behind the Colonel.
The imitating warhorse towered over Yoran’s own mount, thrusting its muzzle in close, head butting the other creature away.
“Can I assume that the raising of your voice there wasn’t an attempt to take a command that you do not have the authority to wield?” Verdant asked, a rather terrifying smile sitting on his lips.
Yoran glared back at him.
The man seemed at a loss for words, but a tension nevertheless prickled between the two.
The route that Yoran had been planning to take was evidentently sealed, but any watching the exchange would doubt that the Colonel would be content to leave it there.
“This is a farce,” Colonel Yoran said, taking a different approach, his temper hot in his words.
“You mean to defend what we just witnessed there?
The boy can’t even harry his foe.
He doesn’t have the slightest clue how to press this position.
You need a veteran hand here.
Are you going to say otherwise, Lord Idris?
And if you do speak such words, can we assume it to be out of truth, and not loyalty?
Do you not hold too much bias for us to your speakings at face value?”
“Loyalty – indeed, you can assume that my words are spoken as such,” Verdant said.
“But loyalty to whom, good Colonel?
Loyalty to my Lord – you can assume that to be the case.
But given that we are here on campaign, my loyalty ought to extend in multiple directions.
General Karstly gave us an order, as did General Blackwell.
I intend to see both orders fulfilled,” Verdant said steadily.
“Or were you aiming to press us in a different direction, good Colonel?”
“…Are you accusing me of something, Lord Idris?” Colonel Yoran said, grinding his teeth.
“I wonder,” Verdant said.
“What is it you think that I might be accusing you of?”
Verdant stayed steady on the line, but he went no further than it.
He blocked Colonel Yoran’s way forward, without giving him due enough cause to fight back.
Listening in, Oliver could almost see the Battle board pieces that they were exchanging.
It was a cunning of a different sort, but he couldn’t help seeing how analogous to it was to the problems of his current predicament.
A careful way forward – that was what he needed, enough to provoke a response, and enough to use the might that he knew his force truly had.
“Enough,” Captain Lombard stepped in, heaving a sigh.
“Enough, the two of you, I say.
Yoran, you’ve made your point, but if you try and push it too far, the weight of your word will be lost.
Captain Patrick can see his errors well enough – but I think you might be underestimating the significance of that engagement, as reckless as it was.
We have done enough for now.
We’ve bought time, and at the very least, we have made our presence known.”
“Then we rest?” Colonel Yoran said, playing with his helmet.
Lombard looked to Oliver.
“Do we rest, Captain?”
Oliver hesitated a moment, before nodding.
“For now, we rest, and we observe.
We see who this General Zilan is, and we look for weaknesses in his style of doing battle.”
…
…
It wasn’t much of an order to give, Oliver knew that well enough.
His men were wasted, as he himself studied the enemy, as if alone.
They could have been accomplishing a different task as he busied himself, but he couldn’t drag up enough ideas in his mind to call options in that regard.
‘All I can do is get this done as quickly as possible…’ Oliver told himself.
He was well aware of just how burning his men were with anticipation.
Blackthorn had shown him that much.
That she would be forced to engage so dangerously for the mistakes that Oliver had committed… It wasn’t a fact that he would be able to face Pauline or Amelia for, much less her father.
The siege weapons of the Verna army continued to fire.
Their sergeants would call the orders.
They’d load the stones into the catapults, from the great piles of ammunition that they’d set up, and they’d load the bolts into the ballistas.
Another order was given for the contraptions to be drawn back, and brought to their full tautness, and then an arm was cast down by the Rogue Commandant in charge of them all, and the bolts were sent off all at once, thundering into the walls of the castle.
The ground shook with every barrage, and from the top of the castle, General Rainheart took it all with an unwavering expression.
The white of his long beard blew with every gust of wind, and every tremor, but his face remained completely composed, as if his beard was his only means of true expression.
