A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1181 A Passing Result - Part 4
1181: A Passing Result – Part 4
1181: A Passing Result – Part 4
He would put up the display that he had now, as if he was a vine, carefully plotting the day in which he would take over the bark of the whole tree.
He’d make advancements, small and difficult to track, like the way he moved his men into the gap that Karstly had created, making use of the small divots they’d carved into Khan’s solid formation, in order to advance his own order.
Against such a foe, Khan was able to keep his calm.
He was able to evaluate advantage with a professor’s eye.
It was more a battle of academics, than of Generals.
“GURRAHHHH!”
But then there would be a flash, just as there was now.
The passive General Blackwell, so content to lead from the back, would be afflicted by a sudden drive of aggression, and he’d bellow his rage, driving through the Verna men in front of him, swatting down his foes with a glaive, or a sword if he was attempting to move even closer in.
It was like a bull, tempted into a stampede, and when he started, he did not stop until he achieved something.
He galloped towards where Karstly had stood before his retreat.
He circled the wreckage, crushing the men that came in his way.
Those heavy shieldwielders that Khan had built such a reliance on became nothing but weighty bits of waste as Blackwell cast them aside.
It wasn’t only the man himself that was outrageously strong – the men that rode with him, some detachment of twenty, were just as strong.
In response to those explosions of rage, Khan would do as he had with Karstly.
He’d carefully disarm the attack before it could go any deeper.
Slowly, and methodically.
He knew his position was sound enough that no single attack or tactic could wipe it out in one go.
He trusted in the flow of the battlefield.
He knew that if a man reached in too deep prematurely, it was him that would bear the full weight of his own strength, not his opponent.
That was the very trouble with Lord Blackwell – he never reached in too deep.
He came to a halt, where Karstly had stood, and he set up a new temporary command there.
Then, he did as he did before, it was a careful squeezing, and all the efforts that General Khan had put into countering his suddenly aggressive attack were put to waste.
Now even Khan was gritting his teeth in frustration.
Each day, General Blackwell seemed to worm just a little bit closer.
This was the man that had beaten back the Verna army on the last campaign, and managed to capture all three of the castles before them.
Of course, Khan had not been the Commanding General at such a time – General Bluem had.
And General Bluem had been beaten back by General Blackwell’s relentlessness.
It would have been a fact easy to brush aside under the label of incompetence, but Khan could not possibly have agreed with such an assessment.
He knew General Bluem better than most.
There was a time when he’d even accepted tutelage from him.
He knew that Bluem was a General that a decade ago would have been called peerless.
For him to lose… General Khan had wanted to find out why – and now he knew.
“So this is what lies at the heart of the Stormfront,” Khan said.
In such a position, he didn’t feel foolish giving up his awe.
It was like staring up at the stars of the sky, knowing that he would never match up to it, and instead pausing to admire its beauty.
“Only… I can not afford to lose.”
Admiration only went so far.
General Blackwell was something that Khan could not fathom, but that did not mean he would accept a loss against him.
“For there to exist a man that makes even that General Karstly of yours look easy to deal with by comparison – what a frightening creature you are.”
He fancied that General Blackwell could hear every word he said, as he stared out from beneath that heavy black beard of his.
They were the eyes of the wisest of predators.
…
…
The second day of Oliver’s command had come for him, and he knew that by the events of the first, if he did not confront it with all the attention that he had to offer, then General Zilan was likely to walk straight through him.
As his thousand men made their way to the battlefield, Oliver was hit by the suddenness of the change in General Zilan’s presentation.
No longer did he ignore their arrival, but he met it with a long and piercing glare.
Without a word, that glare spoke of a promise.
He would exact revenge for the cuts that Oliver and his men had managed to inflict on the previous day, and he would do it with no shortage of glee.
The siege weapons only just began firing as the Patrick men made their arrival known.
It was as they were firing for the exclusive purpose of spite.
General Zilan sat heavily atop his warhorse, as he had the day before.
But this time, he did not shy away from the drink that his attendant offered him.
He acknowledged that he now had two foes instead of one – and he fancied that the younger of the two would be the far easier object to crush.
When he finished his goblet of wine, he lowered the cup, and his attendant hurried to refill it from a silver jug.
General Zilan did not find a reason to complain about his diligence then, when ordinarily it would have irritated him.
On that day, he had a purpose.
It was rare – despite what his hefty size might have implied – that General Zilan found the need to gauge himself on prey.
Even in his younger years, it had only arisen as an urge a handful of times in a year.
These days, it hardly manifested itself every second year.
But now General Zilan was starving.
Years without satiation bubbled up to the surface, and he who had once been called the Greedy General of the Sands made his presence known once more.
