A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1177 The Ability to Overwhelm - Part 10
1177: The Ability to Overwhelm – Part 10
1177: The Ability to Overwhelm – Part 10
“Yes, yes, indeed, I know what you’re waiting for, you old goat.
As soon as my attention is distracted by this rabble, you’ll bring those archers of yours back to the front again, and all efforts of siege will be halted for the day,” Zilan said.
Even knowing that, presently, he was beginning to see few options.
His troops were being harried and picked off, bit by bit.
Even the counterattack offered by the chariots had been put to a halt, after Captain Lombard had warded them away.
Now both Lady Blackthorn and Lombard were returning to their different parts of the battlefield in order to take up their positions, and exert their continual pressure.
‘If those chariots had engaged, we might have been able to squash one swarm of flies,’ Zilan mused.
He’d been half-tempted to bark the order himself, but in the end, the Violet Commandant that had led the detachment had made the right choice.
It would have been an equal trade.
The chariot force would have wiped out in retaliation, and that was the sort of cutting blow that Zilan would have preferred to avoid.
“The real question is what do I do with you?” Zilan said, his attention now firmly focused on Oliver.
The boy had not committed himself entirely to his attack.
He sat at the front, but he didn’t press.
It was as if his attention was distracted by something.
That was obvious to Zilan even from a distance – and yet somehow, even distracted as he was, the presence of Oliver Patrick was yielding immense results.
A Violet Commandant had come to the front, correctly picking out the enemy leader, but Oliver had put an end to him with contemptuous ease.
It had been hard to see in the initial attack that Oliver had posed against Zilan, given how he had been forced to retreat with his tail in between his legs, but now the Verna General was beginning to see just why it was somehow so young had been left in charge of such an immense degree of responsibility.
“As dangerous as this looks, and as disorganized, they are merely legs of a single spider,” Zilan said, continuing to watch.
“Crush the body, and the rest will fall out of place… If they haven’t already.”
He noted the fifth force that had yet to engage.
He didn’t think it was for lack of opportunity.
There was something off about them.
A degree of discord.
The thought of it made him smile.
But that smile soon faded when he heard Verdant’s men beginning to raise their voices in an almost manic explosion of morale.
“OUR CAPTAIN HAS SLAIN ANOTHER VIOLET COMMANDER!
SALUTE!” Verdant shouted, his eyes not failing to miss the Violet Plume that Oliver had struck down across the other side of the battlefield.
“””URAHHH!””” The men bellowed as a result, pressing forward with renewed energy.
Even those men that were not Patrick found themselves joining in with the shout.
It was such an overwhelming energy that they felt powerless to resist it.
Worst still, when they joined in, and they pumped their fists in the air, they were afflicted by the same energy that had affected their begrudging allies, and they were unable to free themselves from its hooks again.
“What is that Verdant up to…” Oliver said, almost putting his hand to his face in embarrassment.
He knew very well how effective it was to use a particular General’s name or the like to raise the morale of men – Verdant had showed him as much in the past, just as he showed him again – but for it to be his name that Verdant was shouting so enthusiastically, as if he were some legend of eras past, worthy of the praise… It wasn’t something he could easily stomach.
He threw himself back into his own fighting in order to push that feeling down.
Though, he found that in the absence of his attention, his troops had been doing more than enough work for him.
“COME!” Firyr bellowed, slaying another man, thrusting his spear through his gut, and then removing him with a harsh boot in the chest.
He stood with a foot on the corpse of the recently slain man, and shouted a challenge at all the men near him.
“COME, YOU COWARDS!
FACE MY WEAPON!”
The men hesitated.
A small circle had formed around Firyr, and not a single Verna man seemed eager to take the way forward.
A trail of corpses followed where Firyr now stood.
Even his own giant men had not followed after him.
They forged their own ways, inspired by their leader.
They laughed at their foes, as they were wounded a hundred times over.
Their giant frames and their impossible strength made them seem like creatures from a different world.
“Are all Stormfront men like this..?” One man muttered, as he was forced to cower behind his heavy shield, against the prolonged assault of Oliver’s men.
They fought as if they’d forgotten formation.
They all spread out, looking for glory of their own, and with them, the men that they’d borrowed from Yoran followed.
All men struck out, looking for plumes atop of helmets, and seizing their chance to grab glory.
One by one, blue-plumed men were pulled into the filth, never to rise again.
It was a different manner of combat than Oliver usually preferred.
He would have kept his lines tight, in order to punch in as deeply as he could.
But now it wasn’t about depth, it was about numbers, and about destruction.
When put as such, his men knew exactly what to do.
They burned at the foundations of the Verna.
Small sparks became flames, as one victory from one man spread into the victory of tens, and bit by bit, that Verna line was pushed back.
Eventually, Zilan could tolerate it no more.
He gave his order, however reluctant he was to give them.
“A red plume for each of them,” he told his attendant.
He didn’t need to elaborate on what he meant by that.
The wiry little man dipped his head, signaling his understanding, and in the same instant he proffered a silver jug, the question obvious without him speaking it.
“I said it before!” Zilan thundered.
“I care not for a drink!
Deliver my orders, or I will find someone who can deliver it in your place.”
