A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1184 A Passing Result - Part 7
1184: A Passing Result – Part 7
1184: A Passing Result – Part 7
With a detachment of cavalry, instead of the cavalry and infantry contingent that he had, the game would have been far easier.
It would have been more like herding bison.
Now, however, they needed a way to both herd the bison, and protect their slower infantry from the trampling that they were soon to suffer.
“URAHHHH!
COME AND FIND STEEL YOU VERNA BASTARDS!
I’LL TURN THOSE WHEELS OF YOURS INTO SQUARESSSSS!” Firyr roared, slamming the shaft of his spear into his chestplate, creating as much noise as he possibly could.
It wasn’t just an act – the man genuinely seemed that excited to break apart one of those Verna war machines, as much as he might have feared them on an instinctual level as any man should.
Oliver had to smile at the display.
His relentless thinking ground to a halt, as a simple and rather obvious solution presented itself.
The troubles that he was attempting to solve were theoretical ones.
He assumed an infantry of the theoretical, standard kind, as if he were back with Volguard, trying desperately to imagine the allies that he had under him.
But he needed do no imagining.
His allies were right before him, and the infantry he had was the most outrageous kind.
They were not fast, or light, but they were overwhelmingly strong to the highest degree.
They needed not be treated like liabilities.
“Firyr!” Oliver said.
“Captain!” Firyr responded with a salute.
“Given all the infantry that we have, how long do you suppose you could survive running those fools in circles?” Oliver said.
“Running, Captain?” Firyr said with a frown.
“You should know that I ain’t one for running.”
Oliver had to hide his smile, as the gold flecks took hold of their eyes.
“Is that right?
And then, what if I asked you to find a crack?” Oliver said.
“I can give you no assistance in this.
Our encirclement is broken.
A pincer attack is what we’ve fallen to.
And I will need all the cavalry that we have to achieve it.”
“A crack, is it?” Firyr said, frowning.
When Oliver spoke of strategy, the man was never the swiftest in keeping up.
Oliver could not blame him in that – he had not had the years at the Academy that Oliver had.
Nor did he have any real interest in strategy in the first place.
It took him a moment, but then a grin formed on his face.
“What yer telling me, is we get to have a go what they’re doing, eh Captain?” He said, pointing at the open castle gate.
There had been talk the night before – joking talk, for the most part – about what they would have done were they in the Verna shoes.
Firyr had claimed quite confidently that he would have had the gate torn open in half a day.
“We’re to tear a gate off its hinges?”
“More like break through a wall of the worst kind,” Oliver said.
“Jorah, you’ll support him.
And Kaya – you’ve found cracks in even the heavy shield lines that these Verna are so fond of deploying.
You had better do what you can to find those same cracks here.”
“””Captain!””” Came the three cries.
Oliver’s horse was already moving as he gave the orders.
When it came to the likes of chariots, with their rapid speed, there wasn’t time to do much more planning than that.
“Lady Blackthorn, Verdant, Colonel Yoran, Yorick – you’re all with me,” Oliver said.
“We move swiftly, and we give the infantry the assistance that they need.”
“As expected, my Lord,” Verdant said, falling in behind him.
“You found another route to safety for the infantry.”
“Hm?” Oliver said.
“Rather than have them run – they had merely need punch straight through the enemy that comes for them.
After all, what safer place is there from a chariot than behind it?” Verdant said.
All the light of the sun seemed to focus directly on Verdant’s face.
Despite the situation that they were in, he was positively beaming.
It was enough to make Oliver recoil slightly, even as he settled into the charge.
As much as Verdant might have been excited merely to see Oliver work, the young Captain himself could not glimpse even the smallest fraction of that satisfaction.
When the scent of blood was in the air, it was time for action, and action alone.
The chariots were even more terrifying upfront.
Their motion was endless.
As heavy as they were, and as much noise as they made, they went awfully fast.
It was an endless churning, like the black waters of the streams and rivers that ran through the Black Mountains.
They bubbled and frothed all the same – or at least, with the way they cut out pieces of the earth beneath them, and tossed them with every rotation of their wheel, it very much seemed as if they were doing such.
Only, unlike those rivers that Oliver had once found some degree of contentment towards – even after learning to fear the sting of their cold waters – these chariots didn’t seem to have a set number.
Compared to the likes of those handfuls of waterways, they might as well have been endless.
Just like the streams, they moved with the changing of the world around them.
The streams cut away rock, and the chariots cut away people.
When the people moved, they moved with them.
As Oliver and his cavalry went racing past, making obvious their attempts to attack the rear, a portion of the chariots to the left tried to swing with them.
A steel sword hissed at Oliver, coming down for his shoulder.
It was an angry thing, spitting its hate in the form of the sparks that flew, when steel met steel.
It was a far different thing from receiving the blow on foot.
The striker had been a man merely of the First Boundary, but from the back of a chariot, it hit almost with the strength of a man of the Second.
