A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1170 The Ability to Overwhelm - Part 3
1170: The Ability to Overwhelm – Part 3
1170: The Ability to Overwhelm – Part 3
In response to the continual attacks, he gave no signs of giving any orders.
His Colonels moved relentlessly to deal with the ladders that continually ran at their walls, but there never seemed to be the truest signs of a breach.
They were all just attempts, and a means of increasing the pressure, in the hopes that it would blow out somewhere.
The two Generals stared each other down.
It was difficult to see quite who was winning, though from the cracks that were beginning to form in General Rainheart’s castle walls, he did indeed seem to be on the worse side.
That wasn’t to say that the Verna weren’t incurring casualties either.
From their continual running at the castle wall with their ladders, they were dropping men, though they seemed to be precious few.
Now that Oliver and his soldiers seemed to have settled, General Zilan increased the intensity of his wall side attacks once more.
He sent double the amount of men running with their ladders.
The arrows came for them, and punched straight through them, but the men kept coming relentlessly.
For the instant that they were running, they controlled the entirety of that dead space between their army and the castle.
There seemed to be some significance in that, Oliver thought.
It was another means of pressure.
Another lapping of a great tide against the great cliffs.
Oliver tried to piece his lessons with Volguard back to the battle in front of him, but he didn’t know how to go any further than he already had.
He needed a means of matching the General before him.
No, he needed more than that – he needed a means of exceeding him, when he had so few troops.
With his current grasp of strategy, he didn’t think that was yet possible.
He found himself reaching for something that he did not yet have.
More archers were brought to the front of General Rainheart’s walls.
They switched places with the spearmen that had been content to hold against the ladders.
Rainheart seemed to be trying to rob the Verna of the ability to even have the wood of their ladders rest against the hard white stone that they themselves had placed there.
“We shall rob them of their ability to go any further,” General Rainheart declared in ponderous tones.
The Colonels saluted, and they made the changes with a rapidness that betrayed their excitement.
As the battles grew long, weary and momentous, the slightest change promised the opportunity to get the upper hand, and many of them seemed to believe that this was the slight change that they were looking for.
The change upon the battlefield was immediate.
The increased tide of men that Zilan had sent out was brought to a swift halt, filled with holes, despite their shields.
Their ladders lay uselessly in the middle of the fields, unable to go any further.
“Double the archers,” Rainheart said again.
The Verna men had made it to the middle of the no-man’s-land between themselves and the castle, before the majority had perished.
Even that apparently seemed to be insufficient for the aged General, for his wrinkled hand went up again, and he gave that order, whilst keeping his watery old eyes fixed upon the battlefield.
The Verna men continued to come – or at least they tried to.
They hardly made it ten paces before they were peppered with arrow fire, and ultimately brought to a seemingly complete halt almost tent paces after that.
“General,” came the request from the man’s advisor, and lesser strategist.
He seemed to know that there was an order set to come, and that was one of the things that General Zilan disliked most about him – he hated being predictable.
He hated it when another man finished his sentence for him, or guessed what it is he would have liked to eat.
“Yes, yes, yes, silence yourself, let me deliver the order when the moment is right,” General Zilan said, trying to block out the noise.
“You will sully the timing if you keep your twittering.”
The man nodded deeply, and went back to his quietness, showing no signs of offence.
It was not even thirty seconds later, as another wave of Verna men were dealt with, that General Zilan was forced to sigh, and admit to himself that now they were in pressing need of such an order.
He stood up tall in the stirrups of his horse, ignoring the strategist that served under him.
No doubt the man had been expecting the message to be sent through him.
Even the opportunity to cause a minor amount of disappointment to that man struck General Zilan with the greatest merit.
His horse’s legs visibly shook, as the great weight of the general was distributed even more poorly than it had before.
The man’s balance was a thing to be marvelled at, that he took the tremors of the horse, and hardly seemed to wobble himself – he certainly didn’t appear the type that would be athletic enough for such a feat.
“HEAR ME, MEN OF MINE!” He bellowed, his voice carrying all the way to the siege weapon operators at the front of his formation, and beyond him, towards General Rainheart atop his castle.
“WHY IS IT THAT YOU STRUGGLE TO WALK THE GRASS OF YOUR OWN LANDS?
WHY IS IT THAT YOU STRUGGLE, DESPITE THE SHIELDS THAT YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS?
DO THESE LADDERS HAVE TOO MUCH WEIGHT FOR YOU?
WHY IS IT THAT YOU ABANDON THEM BEFORE THEY REACH THE WALL?
DOES THE STING OF A BEE HAVE SUCH AN EFFECT ON?
DOES YOUR PRIDE ALLOW YOU TO FALL IN THE DUST, SO FAR SHORT OF YOUR GOAL?”
Oliver looked up.
He’d been lost in a revery, almost zoned out, as he regarded the battlefield, but the trembling of an immense degree of Command quickly shocked him out of that.
He’d expected an order from General Zilan.
He’d watched the back-and-forth game that they had been playing.
Each General tossed the other a stone, and they attempted to one up each other in the process.
