A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1171 The Ability to Overwhelm - Part 4
1171: The Ability to Overwhelm – Part 4
1171: The Ability to Overwhelm – Part 4
It wasn’t an order that came, however.
It was impossible to call it as such.
He’d berated his men, with his voice laced in Command, and that was as far as General Zilan had gone – he was already back in his saddle, weighing down that horse of his.
However, the results… The results ought not to have been what they were.
He’d done nothing but shout.
He’d left his men exactly as they were.
They hadn’t been able to make it even to the centre of that no-man’s-land before, and now they were going beyond it.
It was as if they were made of stone.
They were animated by rage.
They ducked behind their shields, and grunted when the arrows punched in through the wood, or glanced off the metal of those that were fortunate enough to have a steel shield.
Even when the arrows missed the protection of their shields, and struck up high, towards their shoulders, or low, towards their legs, the men didn’t fall.
They grit their teeth, and they moved onwards.
Some of those men remained standing with more than three arrows in them.
Those same men still had the strength to reach down and pick up those heavy ladders along with the rest of their team.
In time, those ladders were hefted against the walls, and the same arrow-ridden men climbed them, rung by rung, defiant, their half-moon swords drawn, swearing to themselves that they would find blood before they fell.
Even General Rainheart faltered.
Oliver noted that. ƒrēenovelkiss.com
To make a General falter – what would it take?
He had to know, he had to learn quickly the ingredients of it.
Was it a single cunning move, or was the worth in all the tension that had been built up before then?
Did it take a true General to survive long enough before a tactic of General Zilan’s sort could be used.
“Swords to the front,” Rainheart said, conceding the loss.
“We will stand our ground for a time, before their numbers once again thin.”
Then it was the turn of the Stormfront men to grit their teeth, lock their legs, and make sure that they didn’t take a single step backwards.
Their long spears were stretched out before them, in the famed Stormfront spear wall.
They thrust at their enemies before they could even make it to the tops of the ladders, and they sent hurtling back a good few.
But they kept coming.
Step after step, rung after rung, these were men that refused to fall.
They bled profusely, from multiple wounds across their body, and now there were puncture wounds, from where spears slipped past their shields and sprang through their chest, pulling back the dark flesh of organs with them – and still those men did not stop.
Their blood dripped down behind them, like water from a leaky gutter.
The blood of one man nurtured several men.
The wound of one man was felt all the way down.
That should have inflicted fear, and warned them against going any further, but their General had spoken, and those men would not stop.
“Gods be good… what is wrong with them!?” One Stormfront man cried.
He’d stabbed a man straight through with his spear, and the almond-skinned Verna soldier had looked down on the shaft through his chest, acknowledged the wound, before pushing along through it, allowing the shaft deeper, if it meant just getting a step closer to the enemies that waited beyond.
Now that same Stormfronter took a step back.
The half-moon sword was too near for his liking.
He couldn’t see a reason to give flesh here, not when they had the overwhelming advantage.
These were dead enemies regardless, there should have been no reason to bleed for their defeat.
He was not the only one either.
As five ladders reached the tops of the walls, the Stormfront men began to step back despite themselves.
The Sergeants bellowed their orders, but the men stepped back regardless.
All they had to do was wait.
It was animal instinct.
Why waste energy killing a foe that was already dead?
Why risk valuable life for it?
Trouble spread, drop by drop.
A foothold was secured by one ladder, as a Verna man made it all the way to the top, setting his feet down on the white stone that had once belonged to his people, and nurturing it with his blood.
He stood like a ghoul, looking this way and that, with lifeless eyes, barely able to contain the sense for what was around him.
He only knew forward.
Forward, and forward again.
It was the curse that Zilan had inflicted on him – no amount of triumph was enough to satisfy him.
His General’s words emboldened him, and he couldn’t allow them to slip.
“F-FORWARD!” A Sergeant stammered.
Somehow, he’d been thrust to the front himself now.
He was holding his spear out in front of him, begging his enemy with his eyes, praying that he would run his way straight onto it, and that he wouldn’t go any further forward.
His fear was evident.
The handful of men that were meant to serve under him could feel that fear.
It spread like a disease, weakening them, and strengthening the enemy.
Now the Verna words sounded like magic spells.
Some dark necromancy, meant to snatch their souls out of their bodies, and put them at war with the Dark Gods.
“WO TEN BARFARMA!” Came the cry of that man that had made it to the top first, as he circled his round, threatening the air itself with his sword.
His blood was falling, red, and then a dark red that was almost black, from a wound to his liver.
He employed the words of his order.
He spoke of the strength that they worshipped, and in turn, it filled him with strength, augmented by the will that Zilan had infused in him.
He looked for the enemy General, with his sightless eyes.
He couldn’t see him ,but he could feel his presence.
Like a zombie bee attracted to pollen, he dared to wander towards it, his eyes grasping for the sweetest of all fruits, that ultimate victory that they all ought to have aspired to.
