A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1183 A Passing Result - Part 6
1183: A Passing Result – Part 6
1183: A Passing Result – Part 6
Naturally, it was Patrick men that Oliver found under him.
What he hadn’t expected, however, was for Colonel Yoran to be amongst that number, with a hundred men of his own.
Their feet hammered a rhythm against the floor.
It was as disorganized as their army had ever looked.
Their steps were heavy, and their armour weighed even heavier.
Panic set in, as if it was the most natural course of action.
As if they hadn’t seen any of the success that they had before.
“Run, damn you!” Colonel Yoran shouted.
It was his cries that offset it all.
He bulled his way through both Patrick men and Blackthorn men alike, trying to fight his way towards the front, as far away from the chariots as he could possibly get.
His driving divided their force into a second group of two.
The Yoran men panicked without their leader.
They began to run faster, and the distance between each man grew.
The five hundred man force that Oliver had gathered with him was scattered over a far greater area than it ought to have been – making it the most perfect target for those chariot men, as they began to turn.
The arrows thudded into the sandy dirt from a distance.
They left a wall that marked their range, warning Oliver’s men from coming any near them, limiting their retreating paths by a distance.
The cry of the chariots was endless.
It was almost mournful.
It had the sweeping whisper that the wind had.
It seemed a sound that ought to have belonged more to a dock than to the battlefield.
There ought to have been no reason for it – but the groaning of wood made that ominous whispering anyway, as if the souls of the dead that those chariots had claimed were reaching out their chains, trying to drag more pitiful souls down with them.
“ORDDDERRRR!” Verdant shouted, beating the control in the men before they could stray too far.
He took his horse, and he rounded them up.
His sword seemed more like a herding stick than a weapon.
It was Yoran’s men that he targeted primarily.
As Yoran had driven them apart with his fiercesome mount, Verdant used Casper to huddle them back together.
When words failed, actions like that were critical.
Oliver gave him a grateful nod.
Just as their army had split in two, the army of chariots had split in two as well.
Somehow, their parting seemed far more purposeful.
They were like an arrow that some clever smith had manufactured for the exclusive purpose of separating once it had travelled a certain distance.
There were too many options at hand.
It was the sort of battlefield problem that ought to have been solved with a piece of pen and paper rather than a weapon.
A merchant with his abacus would have been more at home there.
He would have seen all the colours of the Verna helmets, and thought that he had stumbled upon a mound of jewels.
There was more blue than Oliver thought he had ever seen.
There hardly seemed to be a chariot without a blue helmet on it.
He was not to know it then, but he soon learned that the position of a chariot rider was a position of honour amongst the Verna.
One had to be of a particular rank or caliber in order to be considered for it.
The number of Violet plumed men was especially frightening.
If they had been amethysts instead, their wealth could have been used to buy several villagers.
Instead, they seemed likely to carve a hole in any enemy formation that was foolish enough to present themselves in their path.
Rogue Commandants were just as plentiful.
Oliver spied five just in the roughly two hundred and fifty chariots that had been sent his way.
It should have been an unthinkable number.
They were each meant to be high enough ranking that they could command a thousand men under them, just as Amion had.
That they had such individual might amongst them only served to exemplify the threat.
It seemed a spread forged in the night just for the express purpose of thrusting at Oliver’s heart in the morning.
As the arrows continued to land, falling short of their targets, they reminded the Stormfront men of the other threat that they faced, should they stray too far to the left in their fleeing.
It allowed the chariots a different path, something more direct, making use of the speed that they bore.
The closer they came, the more the chariots began to spread out.
It was not a disorganized spreading, as the retreating Stormfront’s had been, but a careful fanning, thickening and widening their front row, preventing the most well-known tactic for dealing with chariots.
Oliver had already separated his men once, but the traditional strategy for dealing with chariots went further.
The best tactic for bringing a chariot down was to strike from the rear – and the best strategy in allowing that tactic to take place was to see the enemy surrounded.
Chariots had their weaknesses in changing direction, and so the most well-founded strategy was to make them turn in all directions at once.
To create an encirclement.
The fanning that they engaged in was too easy a counter to that.
It would force their encirclement to be wider than it had been before, and make it more time costly to set up – but once more, they needed to begin their movements.
“I call for the head of a Rogue Commandant!” Yoran declared, whipping his sword at the air in front of him, despite the cold sweat that stained his face.
Through Ingolsol’s eyes, Oliver felt his fear keenly, yet there he was, his horse pawing at the ground in supposed eagerness.
It seemed difficult to doubt his intentions to push himself forward, despite the uncertainty with which they were voiced.
“Then you can have it,” Oliver replied, searching for ways to put an end to the enemy’s rapid spreading.
If they were to conform entirely into a flat line, then the encirclement would grow as difficult as it could possibly get.
As he sat atop his boat, in those murky waters, he knew not where to cast his net, or whether he should use the traditional net at all.
It certainly seemed to be the most sound of strategies… and yet, was that all that he had available to him?
