A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1190 The Revenge Strike - Part 5
1190: The Revenge Strike – Part 5
1190: The Revenge Strike – Part 5
However, instead of diving in, Yoran drew back.
His mouth closed, and all traces of that earlier excitement seemed to vanish for him.
When he drew away, he showed no signs of going back around.
He sniffed once, then twice, then dashed off in the other direction, towards where more blood was being spilt from the ends of Lady Blackthorn’s sword.
The Verna Commandant looked as confused as Oliver felt.
He relaxed for just a second, his shoulders falling along with his sword, seeming to think that he’d made it into the clear by sheer luck.
That was when Oliver struck.
The curved blade of Dominus Patrick pricked one man in the stomach, another and another in the neck, before it ran straight through the Violet Commandant’s sternum, sprouting a new branch out of the end of its back.
The shock was fuel for Ingolsol, more than anything.
When Oliver drew his blade, he knew that he couldn’t afford to wait on the back ranks any longer.
The men had found their rhythm, and they’d made their targets obvious.
Even Yoran, in his own erratic way, had established some degree of constancy.
It was left to Oliver to fill in those gaps.
It was he that needed to complete the final wall of herding, ensuring that no fragments of men could afford to escape.
Instead of his earlier plan to attack towards his centre, he went left.
Yoran had made his encampment in the same area as Blackthorn and Yorick – which happened to be central – and so Oliver was given his leave to stop the turning of the chariots that was just beginning towards the left, just as it was beginning towards the right.
Amongst that order of turning chariots, he spied a blood red helm, leading the manoeuvre with shouts in the flowing Verna tongue.
“I shall slow them from the side, my Lord,” Verdant said.
He’d noticed the manoeuvre as well.
He was dealing with his foes swiftly enough that he’d been able to keep an overall view of the battlefield almost on par with what Oliver had been afforded.
Wordlessly, Oliver nodded, accepting his assistance.
The rest of his cavalrymen were occupied elsewhere.
An extra hand, he thought, would only serve to make matters swifter, and it was all the better if that hand were to come from Verdant.
Once more, Oliver kept his distance.
Verdant rode in from the side.
He was even faster than he had been before, even more bold.
One would have thought he was bred for the express purpose of making prey out of chariots.
He pounced, finding another Violet Commandant near the heart of the manoeuvre, just far enough away from the influence of the Rogue Commandant that he wouldn’t be able to respond.
With three thrashes of his spear, he beat the chariot into submission, and sent it keeling towards the path of the others.
With how tightly grouped they were forced to be in their turning, one chariot spinning out of control was all the more effective.
Two more carts were brought down with it, along with a cry of men.
The Rogue Commandant noticed that.
He couldn’t afford not to.
He was raising his voice in anger, along with his sword, and making threats towards Verdant.
“WA JING TOSHIN LAM!” He said, but another chariot blocked his path.
He was a victim of the momentum of his own vehicle.
He couldn’t easily have stepped out of line, as much as he might have wanted to.
They were all animals, the lot of them.
In this situation, they had to be.
The chaos of a chariot engagement stung with a different sort of maliciousness than it did in the melee of the infantry.
Here, the explosion of a chariot going out of control yielded more damage than a spear ever could.
For both allies and the enemy alike.
That Rogue Commandant was not want to fall so easily.
He found his own sort of animalism.
His eyes peered out from under his helmet.
He looked for something to make a shell of.
He called orders to his men, and altered the nearby chariots to the degree that he could – which didn’t happen to be that much.
He wanted them close enough to fend off the likes of Oliver and Verdant, but not too close that they would hinder his future movements.
He seemed to take a deal of trust in the formation, once the chariots had shifted ever so slightly to do his bidding.
His knees bent, and he crouched in his plated armour, and allowed the other chariotmen on the cart to shield him.
If not for the red plume on his head, he would have seemed far more lowly, with how he’d positioned himself so defensively.
And now it was Oliver’s wall to crack.
Operating according to the Rogue Commandant’s will, there was a triangle of chariots, with him at the centre.
Breaking through there was no easy feat. frёewebηovel.cѳm
They were the limbs of the Rogue Commandant.
An extension of his reach, and Oliver had no limbs left of his own, having set his men to do as they pleased.
None, except from Verdant.
Verdant didn’t cower.
He seemed a giant of a man on the back of his horse.
There was weight to his every step.
With each chariot that he’d brought down, that weight had increased.
His appearances distorted in the eyes of the enemy.
They fancied that they could see his horse’s hooves sinking into the sandy dirt, trying to bear the weight of its colossal master.
With every fresh chariot that he turned over, he grew larger, and less human.
His skin seemed grey and impenetrable.
He’d lost his helmet, but it wasn’t hair that they saw on his head, but rather tusks.
Some sort of demon that they knew not what to do with, hitting with all the force of those behemoths that roamed further to the east that the Verna called elephants.
